Kathy Griffin: Comedic Genius

Along with PZ Myers, I think Kathy Griffin, a self-professed "D-list" celebrity, is actually pretty damn cool. She won an Emmy for her reality show, and then,

In her speech, Griffin said that "a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus."

She went on to hold up her Emmy, make an off-color remark about Christ and proclaim, "This award is my god now!"

Even better, the "off-color remark" was apparently, "Suck it, Jesus." He can't of course, being 2,000 years dead.

(Via Pharyngula.)

If Only the War Were Imaginary, Too

From today's American Progress Report:

Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner said yesterday that a feared Iraqi insurgent Omar al-Baghdadi "never existed." "General Bergner told reporters that a senior Iraqi insurgent captured this month said that the elusive Mr. Baghdadi was actually a fictional character whose declarations on audiotape were read by a man named Abu Abdullah al-Naima.

Why do they call it "intelligence" again? Read the full article in the Times to get the full flavor of this wacky situation: the guy might have been faked by al-Qaeda of Mesopotamia so that they could get more Iraqis to believe in that organization's aims, or the guy might really exist and the captured Qaeda operative who claims he didn't exist is lying, or or or.

CT on the Radio

A month or so ago, I was interviewed by a Minnesota Public Radio reporter for a story about Capella University, a former employe of mine (and the other two After School Snack bloggers, as it happens). I had volunteered my perspective on Capella's addiction to student loans when MPR sought information from its listeners after the recent student-loan scandal erupted. A scrap of my interview survived in the final story, which is, as they say, "fair and balanced."

Unlike my eyeballs, which seem to have relocated to one o'clock on the dial.

Napalm Hilton

You know that iconic picture of the naked Vietnamese girl fleeing an American napalm attack? Click through to read about the truly mind-blowing link between that shot and Paris Hilton.

Internetastic

Maybe I'm too easily impressed or too easily boggled by techspeak, but this Times article on how Google manages its search algorithms blew me away, especially the part about how the company goes about

maintaining a giant index of all the world’s Web pages. Google has hundreds of thousands of customized computers scouring the Web to serve that purpose. In its early years, Google built a new index every six to eight weeks. Now it rechecks many pages every few days.

And Google does more than simply build an outsized, digital table of contents for the Web. Instead, it actually makes a copy of the entire Internet — every word on every page — that it stores in each of its huge customized data centers so it can comb through the information faster. Google recently developed a new system that can hold far more data and search through it far faster than the company could before.

The entire internet! I guess I can stop making those printouts now.

What Would Jesus Buy?

I'm home today, spending quality time with Fiona (who turned one yesterday), and was watching the Today Show and was entertained by a piece on Rev. Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping. It's a bit of Culture Jam Lite. Enjoy.

Joost

I'm checking out Joost in beta right now -- the new internet TV system from the folks that brought us Skype. Yes, I'm watching the pilot episode of Starsky and Hutch. I heard about Joost yesterday on NPR. The internet continues to transform traditional media in very interesting ways.

Wii-ding the News

I don't have a Wii, but I know some people who do, and I love Google Reader, and so I think Google's making their RSS reader work on the Wii sounds amazing.

Talking Points Propaganda

Via the Joey Skaggs blog, The Art of the Prank, we have an analysis of Bill-O' from Indiana University. Here's a sad stat from the IU research:

A 2005 Annenberg Public Policy Center survey found that while 30 percent of Americans viewed Washington Post and Watergate reporter Bob Woodward as a journalist, 40 percent of respondents considered O'Reilly to be a journalist.

C'mon people, he was only a journalist when he worked for A Current Affair.

Roger Ebert on Roger Ebert

37 Signals had a great post (which links to a Sun Times update) about Roger Ebert's cancer struggle...from Roger himself. I think it's pretty cool.

Being sick is no fun. But you can have fun while you’re sick.