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Katy Perry is probably one happy "California Gurl" this week. The Maxim Magazine annual "Hot 100" list came out today, and the pop singer beat out the likes of Sports Illustrated swimsuit bombshell Brooklyn Decker and "Avatar" star Zoe Saldana for the top spot. Billed by Maxim as "The definitive list of the world's most beautiful women," the annual contest is a fierce competition between actresses, models, singers, reality-TV stars, and even the girlfriends of celebrities.

Calling this Perry's "supernova moment," in the Hot 100 issue of the magazine, Maxim's Editor-in-Chief Joe Levy explained Perry's appeal as more than just about her looks: "It's that feeling you get when you suddenly realize that the smartest, funniest, coolest girl you know also happens to be the best looking and a pretty good skateboarder, too."

When contacted by Yahoo!, Levy jokingly explained the way in which the Hot 100 is determined. "The Maxim Hot 100 is a highly scientific selection process involving a hermetically sealed laboratory and blood pressure monitoring devices," Levy said. "But we've had to junk all the equipment, because the editors serving as test subjects busted it when someone brought a picture of Katy Perry in the room."

Perry, 25, has been on the public radar already lately -- her latest single, "California Gurls," hit the airwaves late last week, and she got attention at the Met's Costume Institute Gala last week when she showed up in a glow-in-the-dark dress. And the singer is a tabloid favorite ever since she started dating British bad-boy comedian Russell Brand, who no doubt appreciates his fiancee's skateboarding skills in addition to her bikini-perfect figure.

Olivia Wilde moves down the list. Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage Last year's winner, "House's" Olivia Wilde, placed 20th on this year's list, which includes newcomers like "Modern Family's" Sofia Vergara (#47) and Ke$ha (#56), as well as regulars like Britney Spears (#54), Scarlett Johansson (#14), and Angelina Jolie (#38). Here are the ladies who round out this year's Top 10, and what Maxim had to say about their attributes:

1. Katy Perry

[She's] the hottest woman alive because she's sexy and because she's talented. But more important, because she's the best friend you suddenly realize you've loved your whole life."

2. Brooklyn Decker

This model and 2010 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover model is married to tennis star Andy Roddick. Says Maxim: "We think it's time to crown a new world supermodel...Let's go, Brooklyn!"

3. Zoe Saldana

"The scorchingly sexy "Avatar" star had dudes the world over learning to say 'Damn, she's hot,' in perfect Na'vi."

4. Blake Lively

"Gossip Girl's breakout bombshell was destined for stardom. Born in LA, she started acting at 11 and grew into the ultimate California girl."

Actress Olivia Munn places eighth. Steve Granitz/WireImage Brooklyn Decker, number two on the list. Jacob Andrzejczak/Getty Images

Maxim's "Hot 100" special issue will be included with the June issue of the magazine, on newsstands Tuesday.

At least, that was the promise of a press release that landed in the NEWSWEEK inboxes this morning. "Secret texting codes: Are kids having sex and getting high under your nose?" asked the release. It's true: Under Your Nose has become a popular make out spot for today's youth. The solution, says this e-mail, is an interview with two authors willing to discuss both the perils of sexting and the value of good manners. The authors can also help parents decode the secret texting codes teens use to talk about sex, drugs, and, presumably, bad manners. To wit:

LH6 . P911 . 8 . Al Capone . if your kids use secret texting codes like these, they just said "let's have sex (LH6)", "alert—parents coming into the room (P911)", "oral sex (8)" and "heroin (Al Capone)"

Make no mistake: that would have been one hell of a text. But what's more shocking is the continued attempts to rend garments over sexting, or the assumption that teenagers don't know how stupid sexting is. Last year, we interviewed Dr. Leslie R. Walker, director of adolescent medicine at Seattle Children’s Hospital, who noted that most teens are already aware that sending naked photos or suggestive texts to someone is, like, totally dumb—they just don't think that their boyfriend or friends would ever betray them the way girls (because it's almost always girls) were humiliated by their pals and paramours.

She also made the very astute observation that kids who send text messages are the same kids who in previous generations played spin the bottle, or wrote dirty notes, or experimented with phone sex. In other words: teenagers are going to sexually experiment via whatever media and technologies they can get their hands on. Cell phones don't turn kids into sex-crazed maniacs, and cracking the code for "oral sex" won't stop kids from doing it—they'll just find another code. (As one NEWSWEEK staffer privy to the memo asked in fake horror, "If sex is 6, and oral sex is 8, I guess we can figure out what 7 is. But how many other numbers have the youngs co-opted??" The answer, according to another: "All of them." )

It's important to teach kids about respecting one another and themselves by limiting the circulation of raunchy texts and photos. It's also incredibly essential to talk to kids about sex, relationships, trust, and responsibility. But it's delusional to think that by "speaking their language" parents can put all illicit behavior to a stop—especially because it's implied that parent will use their new code-breaking skills to read your child's private cell-phone messages, which will both discredit and alienate parents trying to do good.

This is not to say that parents should just accept that their children will probably turn into sex-crazed heroin addicts. In fact, just the opposite: parents who have done a good job raising kids thus far, who have been open and honest with them from the start about sex, drugs, and responsible behavior, as opposed to specific chats about cell phone etiquette, have likely raised kids that will end up with high-school diplomas, not juvenile records. But freaking out about one's children sending secret heroin-fueled text messages just because that's what kids are doing these days won't have any positive effects: the real way to get through to kids is to talk to them early and often about big issues, not tech fads. Besides: if you need to snoop through your kids phones to find out if they're using heroin, a few tips on manners probably won't help.

Shocking misses can happen to anyone at any time, but the latest footballer to suffer international embarrassment by not scoring a goal he really, really should have is Kansas City Wizards striker Kei Kamara.



In Saturday's MLS match against the Los Angeles Galaxy, Kamara found himself right in front of an open net with the ball mere inches from the goal. He was a little too eager to tap it in, though, and ended up falling on his rear end as he stretched to kick the ball in for the easy goal before knocking it in with his hand. He was quickly called for a handball and the game went on to end in a 0-0 draw.

After the match, Galaxy defender Gregg Berhalter still couldn't believe it:

"It was one of the most unbelievable things I've seen in soccer.

"It was unfortunate for Kamara but it was a handball and credit the linesman for seeing it."

Video of the miss has already spread far and wide. The Sun is calling it "a contender for miss of the century," but there are quite a few in the mix for that crown. Back in January, we featured another open net shocker from a bit farther out, then there was the now famous Rocky Baptiste's from December, but I think this miss from Dinamo Zagreb's Ilija Sivonjic last October might be even worse than Kamara's...

And so the countdown begins until the next "WORST MISS EVER!!!

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If you want the fastest average broadband speed in the world, don't move to Japan. Instead, buckle up your Birkenstocks and pile into the VW Bus, because it's time for a road trip to Berkeley, California, home of the fastest average Internet speeds on earth.

This nugget of data comes courtesy of the most recent State of the Internet report from Akamai Technologies, which collects and analyzes a unique data set of worldwide speeds and IP address usage. When all of the company's speed data was sorted by city, three US locations top the list before South Korea and Japan begin to dominate.

Those three spots are Berkeley (average speed: 18.7Mbps), Chapel Hill, North Carolina (average speed: 17.5Mbps), and Stanford, California (average speed: 17.0Mbps). The next US city on the list is Durham, North Carolina (average speed: 13.6Mbps) in eighth place, followed by Ithaca, New York; Ann Arbor, Michigan; College Station, Texas; Urbana, Illinois; Cambridge, Massachusetts; University Park, Pennsylvania; and East Lansing, Michigan.

If you're not from the US, you might not see the pattern: each of these cities houses a major research university. Akamai obtained these results by filtering out all cities with less than 50,000 unique IP addresses, to make sure that the averages weren't affected by outlying small cities. The result was that "so-called 'college towns' are some of the best connected in the United States."

As someone who lived in Chapel Hill for years and spent plenty of time in Durham, this result raised a huge and obvious question: are these high speeds truly representative of what home users in those communities can purchase, or are they largely a result of on-campus high-speed access from Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill? (My guess would be the latter, especially in Durham.)
The college town advantage

Akamai had the same question, fortunately. Their answer: "However, what this likely represents is the extremely high speed connections these university/college campuses have to the Internet, as opposed to particularly high-speed consumer broadband services available to local residents. (However, it may also be the case that the speed of local consumer broadband offerings is potentially higher than average.)"

Regular readers may recall that last week we looked into the claim by Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg that US broadband was number one in the world. Akamai's data, showing that these top US cities beat out anything in Japan, south Korea, and Europe, would seem evidence for that assertion. But consider Akamai's explanation; if universities are actually the drivers of these high speeds, which are not then available to community residents, they don't say much about the state of US consumer broadband at all.

Indeed, when you filter the list to exclude US towns with a major college in the middle of them, every US city on the list goes away. This also applies to other countries, of course; Norway's top entry on the list is Trondheim (average speed: 10.6Mbps), home to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The UK's top entry is Oxford. South Korea's top city, Masan, also has a couple of colleges.

The data, then, is of limited use if we care about arguing over consumer broadband and where it's best. But it does remind us of one thing: around the world, if you want fast Internet, it's good to be a student.