DJ AM - né Adam Goldstein - was the Kevin Bacon of LA's music-celebrity scene, except he was connected to everyone by two degrees. His death gets more tragic as it unfolds. The outpouring for him out there's large.

Yes, well, you will allow us just a bit of sentimentality in the headline, right? Don't worry: the rest of this week was your usual greed, crime, death, sex, and reality television.

You sorta feel sorry for Leon Panetta. He has no intelligence experience, he's taking control of a dispirited and publicly shamed CIA, and Justice and Obama apparently blindsided him with this investigation business. But on the other hand...

An odd line in the Times obit of Dominick Dunne seems to suggest that the late writer's family wanted to delay the announcement of his death in order to make sure it wasn't overshadowed.

It might be crass to ask, but will the death of Ted Kennedy help health care reform, what Kennedy called "the cause of my life"? Yes, probably. But maybe not!

Major league asshole and Kennedy biographer Adam Clymer makes the case that Ted Kennedy's first years in office were not quite as unaccomplished as usually assumed. [NYT]

Dominick Dunne, chronicler of crime, celebrity, and the intersection of the two, has died at 83. Dunne had been suffering from bladder cancer.

It is hard to respond intelligently to the death of someone as complicated and accomplished as Ted Kennedy. Unless you're a regular on cable news. Then you just talk about yourself.

So what was redacted in the publicly released version of the CIA Inspector General's report on torture? Oh, mostly death and stuff. Also there were the times the CIA accidentally misplaced detainees.

Arizona has been on a crazy streak this week. Judge not, coastal elites; if you had vodka in your tampons and crystal meth in your highlighter, you'd be crazy too.

Right this very minute, trillions of deadly Mexican Pig Flu microbes are just cold chillin' in nooks and crannies somewhere, waiting for the fall flu season, when they will emerge and strike nearly 100,000 Americans dead. Say scientists!

As Perez Hilton readers know, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro died two years ago today, when he fell off some cliffs in New Zealand while filming a movie with Jeff Goldblum. Despite that, the Cubans keep releasing new photos of him!

It is time to ban candle-burning in restaurants, bars, hospitals, and other workplaces: they give you cancer. Experts have proven it with science!

Three Disney World employees have died at work in the last month and a half. Disney World is a hellish soul-eating death vortex.

Conservative political journalist and long-time syndicated columnist Robert Novak died early this morning after battling brain cancer for more than a year.

The body of the guy Andrew Jackson shot in a duel in Kentucky has been located! The thousands of Indians he killed remain, for the most part, at large. [UPI]

The President of Costa Rica has swine flu. He vows to "carry out my work by telecommuting"—presumably from the Conde Nast building, which is the Pig Flu World Headquarters. His nation's only hope now: Flying Rabbis.

A prematurely born baby: died, given a death certificate, had funeral arrangements made for him. Then he started crying from his box. Also, I read the tag on the linked post as "Old Stuff," which - LOLZ - terrible. [Guanabee]

We killed it dead! Let's look back at a week of stories shamelessly stolen from hard-working real reporters, some of which you might've read during the ten minutes our servers were functioning.

Science is a "thinking man's game." And excessive tanning is a dumb man's game. But now science itself has proven that thinking too much will kill you—by tanning. Uhh, Jersey wins!