If you follow the gossip sites — shut up; I know you do — you may have heard the story about Paris Hilton giving away diamonds, which was of course gobbled up by all the celeb outlets.

Turns it, the whole thing was staged as part of Ashton Kutcher’s new project, a sort of meta-media version of Punk’d designed with the celeb-focussed media, not celebs themselves, as the butt of the joke:

Pop Fiction, an eight-episode series, is a prank show targeting paparazzi and gullible media outlets. It’s made with the eager help of stars, who were the laughing stocks of Kutcher’s former MTV show. This time the shoe’s on the other foot, and the series has been kept so tightly under wraps that E!’s own website fell victim to the Hilton hoax and other planted stories that producers won’t yet divulge.

It’s really, really hard not to like this idea a whole lot.

Very, very small monkeys.

The TSA? Turns out it’s full of thieves. Some $31 million bucks worth of goodies have vanished from baggage in the last 3 years. Nice.

From the NYT Obit:

William F. Buckley Jr., who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, famously arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse, died Wednesday at his home in Stamford, Conn.

The oil heir, father of the American conservative movement, defender of fascists and McCarthyites, prototype of countless rhetorical bullies, vanity publisher, and general reactionary tool died today in his office. He was 82.

More: Alex Balk, writing at Radar, reminds us of Buckley’s civil rights record with his brilliant headline: William F. Buckley goes to White People Heaven.

Even more, from Making Light:

“The central question that emerges…is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.” –William F. Buckley, National Review, August 24, 1957

There’s your “refined, perspicacious mind” for you. The one that, we’re told, “elevated conservatism to the center of American political discourse.” Racism and power-worship–and, from first to last, uncompromising defense of the idea that society should be structured into orders and classes.

Preach on, Patrick.

Clarence Thomas hasn’t [asked a single question](“One thing I’ve demonstrated often in 16 years is you can do this job without asking a single question,” he told an adoring crowd at the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.) during a Supreme Court case in more than two years. Quoth he:

“One thing I’ve demonstrated often in 16 years is you can do this job without asking a single question,” he told an adoring crowd at the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.

We find this both disturbing and, ultimately, unsurprising. Why ask questions when Scalia will tell you how to vote?

Over at TechDirt, we find information about an idea from ABC to combat DVRs by providing the bulk of their programming via video-on-demand, with embedded commercials and no ability to fast-forward.

Read that again. We’re not kidding. The quote:

Anne Sweeney, the president of the Disney-ABC television group, claims: “You don’t need TiVo if you have fast-forward-disabled video on demand. It gives you the same opportunity to catch up to your favorite shows.”

It gets better:

Then there’s Ray Cole, who owns some ABC affiliates. He says: “As network and affiliates, we both have an interest in slowing down the explosive growth of DVRs. This is about combating DVRs. As we developed this at every stage, there was an agreement that however we put this together, disabling the fast-forward function was key.” I’m curious as to how Mr. Cole thinks offering a product that does much less and deliberately takes away a key feature will “slow down” the “explosive growth of DVRs.” You don’t compete by offering a worse product. You compete by offering a better product. Taking away one of the key selling points of a product is not exactly a major selling point.

We own Tivo at our house in no small part BECAUSE we can skip commercials easily. Why on earth would we pay money for a device that does less? Clearly, the quality of the dope at ABC is stellar.