Despite Imus being fired from his gig, a small AM radio station, KCAA 1050, will continue to air reruns of the show according to the Associated Press. “I’m not going to let networks dictate to me who I run on my station,” said the station manager. KCAA also plans to air mostly supportive listener mail and e-mail reacting to the controversy. KCAA adds “What Imus did was deplorable, inexcusable, but it shouldn’t end the career of a man who has done so much good. This is an overreaction beyond anything I’ve ever seen in radio.”
Goodbye Mr. Vonnegut. The plainspoken author of such classics as Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle, and Timequake, passed away at the age of 84, due to complications from a fall. Vonnegut’s also famous for giving one of the most widely read commencement speeches ever in which we advocated that MIT graduates “Wear sunscreen.” However, the whole thing was a hoax. (Just go to Google and look up “Vonnegut Commencement.”) The best tribute any of us can pay the literary icon is to keep his witty, insightful, darkly comic works alive by actually reading them.
Shia LaBeouf will be joining the cast of Indiana Jones IV, playing Indy’s younger side-kick. LaBeouf couldn’t confirm early rumors that suggested he’d be playing the archaeologist character’s son. “I can tell you I’m sort of the sidekick character, obviously,” he said. “I’m sure there are a lot of laughs at my expense, and some kind of creature crawling on me.”
Google Inc. has launched an initiative designed to highlight the Crisis in Darfur. A scan of the globe using the Google Earth satellite mapping program Central Africa in orange. When you zoom in, the words “Crisis in Darfur” appear, along with flames marking 1,600 villages destroyed in fighting between government militias and rebels which has led to the deaths of more than 200,000 people. The program is a joint effort with the Holocaust museum.
The recent winners of the YouTube Video Award for Best Series based on viewer voting, AskANinja.com creators Douglas Sarine and Kent Nichols’ have created THE NINJA HANDBOOK: A Guide for Non-Ninjas To Become More Ninja-like, claiming to be the first “video podcast to book” deal to go for six figures at auction. Not bad for screwing around on the Internet.