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We were trying to make sense of today's LAT story on the ongoing FBI investigation of a former Us Weekly editor accused of hacking into (read: using someone else's password to access) the magazine's e-mail system to gain an unfair competitive advantage in obtaining scoops about the newest busty brunette with whom Nick Lachey may be having intercourse, when our eye drifted over to the Related News box at the right hand side of the page. The article does mention Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards by name, and is certainly an "entertainment" story, but there is no explicit mention of "hot chicks"—trust us, we checked. (In the name of research, we also visited the web presence of the aforementioned brunette to confirm her hair color and relative bustiness, and she checks out on both counts. We are nothing if not thorough.) But compounding the sin of the Topix Related News box's cynical attempt at attracting click-throughs with suggestive keywords is the fact that no "Hot Chicks" topic page exists. [Audible gasp.] We trust that the FBI will immediately abandon its piddling Us Weekly investigation and launch a new probe into Topix's criminally misleading practices.

UPDATE: A representative of Topix has informed us that the Hot Chicks page is now operational, and that their software is so artificially intelligent that the mere mention of an attractive female celebrity's name can trigger a Hot Chicks Related News recommendation. These are truly wondrous times we're living in.