Happy Summer, everyone! The folks at nbc11.com have assembled a big ol' slideshow of totally adorable animals (and a couple of kids) being totally adorable. Cuteness run amok after the jump!

Actor/comedian/VH1 fixture Michael Ian Black is sick to death of memoirist David Sedaris hogging all the best-seller lists for himself, so he's taking the NPR man down. To get the ball rolling on his would-be literary feud-and to promote his own book, My Custom Van: And 50 Other Mind-Blowing Essays That Will Blow Your Mind All Over Your Face-Black offers suggestions on ways to belittle Sedaris in casual conversation. "Say, for example, you are at league bowling night and your buddy finds himself facing an easy pick-up for a spare. Just before he bowls say something like, 'Don't miss, Bob, or you might hear David Sedaris telling a long and humorous story about what a boob you are on 'This American Life.'"

Scary-hot attack doll and terrible person Naomi Campbell says the victims of her latest round of beatings are racists, though she can't or won't identify who supposedly uttered the slur that supposedly sent her into slap-and-throw-things-at-people mode. "British Airways rejected claims of racism on Saturday after supermodel Naomi Campbell, who pleaded guilty to assault in a foul-mouthed 'air rage' incident, said she was likened to a black 'Golliwog' doll during the flight. BA said it did not accept the accusation made by Campbell, who was convicted of assault on Friday and sentenced to 200 hours of unpaid community work, that someone on the flight called her a 'Golliwog supermodel.'"

As long as the movie studios keep releasing trailers for their giant-budget, crashy, explosion-fests on the weekends, I'll keep posting 'em. This week. it's The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. This one's got Jet Li! Much more importantly, it's got Michelle Yeoh.

Even in America, most people know that the last 50 years have been a nightmare of war and death for much of the planet. Turns out, it was actually three times worse than most people thought! "Wars around the world have killed three times more people over the past half-century than previously estimated, a new study suggests. The finding supports the notion of armed conflict as a 'public health problem' whose instability leads not only to violent deaths, but to indirect deaths from infectious disease and other causes, experts add. 'War kills more people than we had previously thought,' said lead researcher Ziad Obermeyer, a research scientist at Brigham & Women's Hospital, in Boston. 'And that has to be taken into account when we're looking historically, and it's important for people and policy makers to know when they're looking at the consequences of the war. It's important that there's an awareness of how many people actually die.'"

He beat cancer and won that phony Tour de France thing seven times, but Lance Armstrong's insatiable appetite for blondes of every shade from dirty to platinum is totally overshadowing all of his causes. "BOTH Lances were in town last week.The first, Lance Armstrong the bicycle champion and anticancer campaigner, was making television appearances to promote a new Web venture, livestrong.com, devoted to healthy living [...] But there was also plenty of publicity unauthorized by Mr. Armstrong, including three days of coverage in The New York Post, a string of articles on Us Magazine's Web site and an article in Life & Style entitled 'How Lance Stole Kate From Owen,' all chronicling Mr. Armstrong's relationship with the actress and tabloid darling Kate Hudson. This is the second Lance, the one people.com called a 'notorious Texas playboy.'"

Those Britishers. First they cast off the Pope. Then they make the royal family just a bunch of symbolic bobble-heads with questionable DNA. Now they're out to get rid of religion altogether! Is nothing sacred to these people? "More than half of Britons think Christianity is likely to have disappeared from the country within a century, according to a survey. Research by the Orthodox Jewish organisation Aish found that just over a third of people thought religions like Christianity and Judaism would still be practiced in Britain in 100 years' time. Although four in 10 people said they would choose to be a member of the Christian religion, almost the same number said they would rather practice no religion at all."

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner wrote the pilot episode of his show about 1960s advertising execs way back in 1999, only to have it rejected by pretty much every cable outfit in the world. But now that it's a gigantic, critic-worshipped hit on AMC, he's not about to let anyone muck it up. "Matthew Weiner stood on the set of his hit show, 'Mad Men,' ready for his close-up in extreme anxiety. He was watching the rehearsal of a scene that seemed fine to me, better than fine, but his staccato commentary was a scene in itself. 'He should be standing,' he said of an actor who was seated. 'That should be on the table,' he said of an accordion folder that an actress had placed on the floor. 'They're overreacting, paying too much attention to each other.' He heard himself and looked slightly sheepish. 'You'll see it turn from theater to movie in the next take,' he told me. "I want them not to pay too much attention to each other, so it feels real, more perfunctory. Not that TV thing.' His smile was wry. 'I'm very impatient.'"

VICE Magazine, the magazine whose readers are too cool to read it, had a party last night! It was a free concert sponsored by their friends at Nokia NSeries! But VICE didn't want its enthusiastic fans to get too worked up about the possibility of having fun, so they sent out an email in advance warning everyone who had RSVP'd that "many, many, many folks on the list will NOT be getting in. Including you, maybe." It concluded, "Please do not reply to this email, no one will read it." Refreshing honesty, or an outrageous insult? The attendees weren't too happy about it, judging by the flood of angry comments that came into the Brooklyn Vegan blog today. The commenters' conclusions: VICE sucks, you suck if you went to the show, and furthermore, they went to the show, and it sucked:

In her memoir Audition, news anchor Barbara Walters reveals her affair with a married senator, as well as hooking up with Alan Greenspan. In the book's new audio version, however, the sex bits are left out! As Time says the audio version is "read with breathless earnestness," perhaps that's for the best. [Time]

As we told you Monday, one sad editrix of celebrity gossip sheet thinks her profession is living on borrowed time. It's one big void out there, the canvas is blank, there is no news. And it's not just low culture. The zeitgeist at large seems to be suffering from tired blood (maybe too much vital energy spent looking at mobile porn?). Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke was the most noteworthy book to be published so far this year, and it argued that World War II wasn't worth fighting. World War II. That's not even counterintuitive in a fun Slate-y kind of way. As for the election, we're in a massive lull until at least Labor Day, barring Israel's surgical strike on Natanz, which happened yesterday while you were updating your Tumblr page. The arts? The worst film of the year, M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, is (tellingly) about about an epidemic that causes inanition followed by suicide. The Jewish Museum's exhibiting action painting at a time of supreme lassitude. Elsewhere the herd of independent minds has taken a collective nap: the red siren that blares in Matt Drudge's head has been as silent as the one in James Wolcott's. So what's going on?

Bloomberg staffers in London received a company email recently advising them how to handle the newfound responsibility of caring for the plastic water bottles each employee had been issued. "'These bottles are yours to look after and as stated in the original message, you will only get one,' it says. To ensure 'your bottle does not go walkies and [you] are drinking out of your own one and no one elses [sic]' it might be an idea to mark them with your name. 'There are permanent markers in the stationery cupboards you can use.'" Well then. Quite an embarrassing place to work. [Times UK]

Hey everyone it's the happiest goddamn day of the year! You probably read as much in your local paper? According to a scientist—a scientist!—June 20 is the happiest day of 2008. He uses a mathematical formula to prove it! With science! Look, here is the equation: O + (N x S) + Cpm/T + He. The scientician who developed this formula is named Cliff Arnall. If that name is familiar, it may be because you read him calling January 22 the saddest day of the year. In 2007. And 2006, and 2005. The story runs, twice a year, like clockwork, in newspapers across the US and the UK. All because a quack psychologist is more than happy to sign a check from some corporation and then attach his name to a press release. It's the happiest day of the year for newspaper editors desperate to fill a news hole on a summer Friday! [Mind Hacks]

Heinz has a new commercial out in the UK starring a guy who works at a deli. He's so popular for his delicious mayonnaise, you see, that the man of the house gives him a kiss on the way out the door. But Bill O'Reilly sees this for what it really is: "It was obviously a gay thing!" O'Reilly's insight into the gay issue is almost as piercing as his colleague John Gibson's was when he cracked all those gay jokes about Heath Ledger right after the actor's death. "This whole gender-blending thing, it's confusing to me," says O'Reilly. "I just want mayonnaise. I don't want guys kissing." Sorry; you must have a man's tongue in your mouth before you get any mayonnaise, Bill. Watch the homosexual Heinz ad after the jump.

HuffPo gets to the bottom of Erica Jong nemesis Matt Taibbi's philosophy of journalism: Q: "You spend a lot of time describing the physical features of the people you attack — is there a particular logic, or reasoning behind this?" A: "Um... it's funny?" [HuffPo]

The people who run some of the (once) grandest institutions in print media are tumbling from their perches like so many fallen leaves, cast off in the face of a new season. It's not always their fault. Print is slowly wasting away, and as companies shrink, they cut off their own heads in a desperate bid to prove that they're doing something to address the problem. Not fair, but that's capitalism for you. After the jump, a list of recently deposed members of the old guard; mourn their passing, briefly.

The Wall Street Journal has a piece today in which it attempts to scientifically determine the best overall male athlete in the world, by submitting a long list of famous athletes to a panel of exercise physiologists who rank them on this and that. This is the newspaper equivalent of Rolling Stone's "100 greatest albums" list—pointless, and meant to generate argument. But they do settle the issue of who is not the world's greatest male athlete: WSJ reporter Reed Albergotti, who goes up against a top decathlete to prove that reporters are, as suspected, goofy, unathletic white guys. God, what a 'Nilla. Video of Albergotti's good-natured crusade of unathleticism is below.

"James Frey might be a surprising choice, but I liked A Million Little Pieces." [Post]

That was fast: In March a casting call went out for socialite Tinsley Mortimer's reality show, and apparently MTV has already shot — and rejected as too boring — Mortimer's show. According to Page Six, the cable network's producers, who by this point are surely experts in whipping up drama from the barest of reality TV ingredients, couldn't make anything of the footage: "She looked good but she just got dressed and went to parties every day and didn't have anything interesting to say," a tipster told the Post. Uh, right, because reality television is all about stimulating conversation, and Mortimer was hired for her intellect. Translation: She didn't get into any brawls, do enough drugs, say anything racist or have a sufficiently interesting sex life. The show getting cancelled is a no-lose situation for Mortimer. She either takes it happily in stride or has gigantic breakdown that brings back the reality TV crews and launches her into broader starletdom. [Post]

The new issue of W is a fine example of a shameless girl-on-girl magazine cover: to this day, one of the surest ways to guarantee sales on the news stand, regardless how vapid the interior editorial content may be. Whether you loathe it (exploitation!) or love it (exploitation is hot!), it's a design trope almost as common as the between-the-legs A-frame photo. Below, five more famous examples from the recent past. The only way to fight the enemy is to know the enemy.