Week in review

• Iranian President Mahmoud I'vebeenjabbed speaks at the United Nations and (in a move criticized by American right-wingers who decry the lack of freedom in other countries) at Columbia University. President Bush also speaks to the U.N., but no translator was provided.
• In a House hearing, congressmen criticize sex and violence in hip-hop, but shies away from censorship. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., refuses to the attend the hearing, saying that most "Congressional hearings are wack, and I'd rather get crunk on a budget bill."
• Nepal's mountaineering authorities are calling for a ban on nudity and attempts to set obscene records on Mount Everest. If naked people literally freezing their buns off on the world's tallest mountain are the worst things your country has to deal with, you're in pretty good shape.
• A Maiden, N.C., man who bought a smoker at an auction found what he thought was a piece of driftwood wrapped in paper inside. When he unwrapped it, he found a human leg, cut off 2 to 3 inches above the knee. The smoker had been sold at an auction of items left behind at a storage facility, so investigators contacted the mother and son who had rented the space where the smoker was found. The mother, Peg Steele, explained her son had his leg amputated after a plane crash and kept the leg following the surgery ‘‘for religious reasons’’ she doesn’t know much about. The new owner of the smoker was obviously upset, especially when his homemade honey barbecue sauce just didn't work with the leg.
• Matthew Hiasl Pan's fight to be declared a human in an Austrian court fails. Pan happens to be a chimpanzee, but the Vienna-based Association Against Animal Factories. Pan's argument went astray when he pooped on the judge's desk and began picking bugs out of his hair. Reached for comment, Judge Lance Ito of the O.J. Simpson murder trial simply shrugged and said, "And?"
• The Atlanta Falcons pick up their first victory of the season by beating the Houston Texans 26-16 before a thrilled crowd of 12 people at the Georgia Dome and dozens more watching at home on television.
• Amid the antics of the Falcons' DeAngelo Hall, the latest legal woes for Michael Vick and cheaters like the San Francisco Giants' Barry Bonds, baseball bid farewell to one of the classiest team players to ever take the field as the Houston Astros' Craig Biggio played his final game. And if your eyes didn't mist up seeing Biggio reduced to tears when messages from his kids were played on the giant screen in Houston, then you have absolutely no heart. Might want to compare that to Bonds' whatever reaction to playing his final home game as a San Francisco Giant.
• The world's major philosophers meet in Buenos Aries to re-examine the manta "What doesn't kill me only makes me stronger." It is revised to "What doesn't kill me only makes me bitter and more depressed." The philosophers add that "Behind every dark cloud is a lightning bolt just waiting to strike you in the butt."