Gender bending, Spiritual monopolies

Good week for:

Rational self-interest, after it was revealed that at least 17 universities had accepted $1 million from a wealthy donor under the condition that they make Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged required reading in a course on capitalism from a moral perspective.

Zach Dunlap of Oklahoma, who was declared brain-dead after an accident, but then began moving his foot and hand as doctors prepared to harvest his organs. The 21-year-old slowly regained consciousness and was sent home to continue his recovery. “I feel pretty good,” he said this week.

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Gender bending, after an Oregon man who used to be a woman revealed that he is pregnant. Thomas Beatie went through the early stages of a sex change but kept his female reproductive organs. When his wife found out she was infertile, Beatie stopped taking male hormones and got pregnant. He is now 22 weeks along.

Bad week for:

Having people over, after an Oregon man arrived home after work to find 30 people carrying off nearly everything he owned. A prankster had posted an ad on Craigslist.com announcing that Robert Salisbury was giving away everything in his house. “They refused to give the stuff back,” said Salisbury. “They honestly thought that because it was on the Internet it was true.”

Spiritual monopolies, after the Provenance Hotel chain replaced its bedside Bibles with a “spiritual menu” from which guests can order either the Judeo-Christian text, the Book of Mormon, the Koran, or books on Scientology, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism.

The passengers of Flight 1536, after a U.S. Airways pilot who was landing a plane in Charlotte, N.C., accidentally fired a gun in the cockpit. The pilot was part of a program begun after 9/11 to allow pilots to be armed. “This has never happened before,” said a spokesperson for the Transportation Safety Administration.