News Net Northwestern's joke-telling robot portends the logical, calculated future of comedy

Since sifting through dull newspapers, hyperbolic blogs, and overflowing RSS feeds for meaningful news can be an arduous process, News Net catches and compiles both the amusing and the significant reports that were overlooked throughout the weekend. Here are some things to think about as the work week begins.

• Chicagoist discovered a $712,883 grant funding a Northwestern University project that aims to build a robot with the ability to tell jokes in the same manner of a professional comedian. While Bankrupting America derided the project as prototypical wasteful government spending, surely we'll see its benefit to society once CBS rolls out its new sitcom in which Harry Anderson lives with a joke-telling robot.

• Fresh off his legal victory of merely becoming a convicted felon, ex-Governor and world's greatest victim Rod Blagojevich made a paid appearance at the Chicago Comic Con on Saturday. Blagojevich signed autographs (for $50 a pop), chatted with supporters, and dropped his usual pabulum: "I met some of my heroes today. I met the Bionic Woman, Batman. I met Shaft, and I know something about getting the shaft." Blagojevich was also spotted chatting with Adam West, until an advisor whispered in his ears that West wasn't actually Bruce Wayne and that he didn't have millions of dollars to pay for legal fees.

• Former Sun-Times sports columnist Jay Mariotti was arrested in Los Angeles over the weekend. A spokesman from the LAPD said the ESPN personality was at a Santa Monica club with his girlfriend when the two got into a heated argument, leading to an alleged physical altercation at the couple's apartment in Venice. He was released on $50,000 bail on Saturday.

• Yesterday was Go Topless Day 2010 (NSFW) and local anti-bra advocates touted a woman's right to bare her chest by demonstrating at North Avenue Beach. The primary backer of this annual protest is the always-entertaining Raëlian Movement, which you may remember as the group with ties to Clonaid and its bogus claims that it had produced the first cloned baby in 2002. Evidently the Raëlians, who believe extraterrestrials created life on Earth as a kind of "why not?" experiment, also have a thing for sexual freedom. Either that, or they just couldn't handle those dull gray uniforms alien life forms always end up wearing.

• The Sun-Times posted a piece about a 10-year old Beverly boy who calls himself the CEO of his own shoe-shining business and publishes his own Joey McGuire Gazette, leading the Sun-Times to compare his entrepreneurial spirit to Donald Trump. When asked if he saw the resemblance to Trump, the boy reportedly said "this interview is over," knocked the notepad out of the reporter's hands, and walked out in a huff.