Remembering collateral costs in synthetic ETFs — Index Universe

Daily Intel commenter says the only cure for Goldman’s PR troubles is PUPPIES FOR EVERYONE — NYM

Man puts $25k downpayment on a “Warhol” dated 1996 (he died in 1987) featuring “Matthew Baldwin” (who doesn’t exist) — SLT

Guy invites 700 FB “friends” to meet up; 60 RSVPs as “maybes” & 15 “attending.” One actually showed up — NYT

Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Renaissance and Enlightenment ‘thinking’ — Carbon Fixated

Sinoscience chartporn — Kedrosky

AOL’s New Image: Animated Edition — Paid Content

Just another day in the sleaze of the art world — AFC

Dick Fuld made $541 million in cash from bonuses and stock sales, never mind the stock he owned at the end — NYT

Flags by color proportion — Shahee Ilyas

Where can you find a coveted bottle of 1997 Champagne Salon? In first class on Japan Air Lines — USAT

Empty LA

Bad stock art

Vivendi, GE agree to interim payment on NBCU stake — Reuters

I’m now “the dark prince of the financial blogosphere”! — NYM

They Might Be Giants: “Meet the Elements”: Make your kid love chemistry! — YouTube

Signs the world is coming to an end: John Baldessari’s Catalog Raisonne launch party took place at the Fendi store — HuffPo

Sarah Palin angers her base — Rumproast

Ken Lewis’ replacement could be… Ken Lewis — Alacra

The secret behind Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile — Telegraph

How ingrained is corruption in Albany? Even Joe Bruno’s personal secretary was stealing from Joe Bruno! — NYT

A huge infographic on the front page of the The Daily Herald in Everett, WA — Visual editors

The Paradou deathwatch begins, and I hope its owner loses a fortune — Gawker

Easterly hangs out with TESFA, a successful locally-owned tourism initiative in Ethiopia — Aid Watch

College students arrested for not paying tip — Philly

Vice magazine has audited Ebitda — FT

A classic 2002 Calvin Trillin piece on wine tasting — TNY

How TV works — YT

HFT “is happening because it’s just more cost effective to employ one programmer over dozens of expensive traders” — FT

Elizabeth Warren earns a six-figure salary from COP on top of what Harvard pays her — Bloomberg

Gotta love those ombudspeople. 800 words on whether it’s “Rahm” or “Mr Emanuel” — NPR

BusinessWeek staffer: Bloomberg “seems to be getting rid of voice” with columnist axings — NYT

Annals of famous Belgians: Hilarious Herman Van Rompuy profile — BBC

ACORN conspiracy theory datapoint of the day — TPM

I want a dedicated RSS feed for Heather Horn’s “Screed” columns — Atlantic Wire

Texas Accidentally Bans Straight Marriage — Newser

The Daily Mail news headline randomizer — Qwghlm

Cats for Gold

The semiotics of death penalty attire — WaPo

Simon Johnson’s testimony on TARP — Baseline Scenario

‘Too Big to Fail’ now $13.50, below cost — Amazon

Not generally a fan of listicles, but I like these Weird Error Messages — ZDnet

Jonathan Ford and Peter Thal Larsen on how to shrink the banks — Prospect

Everything you ever wanted to know about delta-hedging and options vs cash equities strategies — TITGR

Thomas Kinkade Cannibalized — 2CoP, Flickr

New York Times is ditching Times Extra — PC, FS

The Kanjorski amendment: Sanati has a Q&A with the man himself — NYT

Microcredit might not raise incomes, but it’s still a good idea — CGAP

Can I now outsource to Alphaville the job of calling the PE firms for comment? — FT

“I attend Sotheby’s tastings to remind myself that there is no shortage of multi-hundred-dollar wines I don’t like” — Atlantic

Bankruptcy nerdcore — Credit Slips

Best New NY Buildings of the Decade — Curbed

Peak rock music! — Ritholtz

Whisky company drills in Antarctica for Shakleton’s Scotch — HuffPo

Congratulations to Adam Pasick, who’s moving to DC to work for the Atlantic. Sadly that means he’s leaving Reuters.com — MB

How to monetize the prestige of the NYT: Turn it into a million-dollar book deal! NYT itself, of course, gets $0 — NYO

Joe Biden Needs a Bicycle — Cityfile

BusinessWeek Under Bloomberg: About 100 Staff To Be Laid Off — PC

Hipsters discussing Cyclocross — Xtra Normal

Get an email per week from Maria Bartiromo for only $300! — Investor Place

Conversion Closing Rap — YouTube

Baumkuchen is my favorite cake ever! So it’s sad the article on it isn’t online. But the summary is great — TNY

NFL stadium sells for less than the cost of a Manhattan 1BR — Bloomberg

Brooklyn Chef Goes Ballistic, Throws Live Lobster on Patrons — Eater

Who sold credit protection on AIG to Goldman Sachs? They’re a huge and unknown beneficiary of the bailout — NYT

Is there anything Marc Faber won’t say to get more media attention? — JRE

How do senators place a hold on a nominee? By sending a press release to the NYT! — Newsweek

Qaddafi and the Italian models — NYT

Josh Tyrangiel to BusinessWeek: another sign that Bloomberg’s determined to go mainstream — BW

The Paul Wilmott magic show has disappeared! Or never appeared in the first place! — Wilmott

Two weeks until Latin America’s first gay marriage! — Inca Kola

49 million Americans lack dependable access to adequate food, the largest number ever — Alea

Alloway sums up what we do and don’t know about those weird Goldman CDO structures — Alphaville

More tales of price-gouging by Verizon from Pogue — NYT

“Duh” news of the day: Study finds eating dark chocolate helps people deal with stress — Epicurious

James Kwak asks why on earth we’re allowing tax-loss carry-backs. It makes no sense! — Baseline Scenario

My contribution to a Newsweek listicle; unfortunately they’ve jumped onto the white-on-black bandwagon — Newsweek

CNN paid Lou Dobbs $8 million to quit — NYP

Newsweek tries to convince NYT that 50% ad drop isnt that bad — NYT

It’s good to be Elin McCoy, living the life sybaritic at the Villa D’Este — Bloomberg

Clay Shirky on ontology, circa 2005. Still very fresh — Shirky

Hedge funds aren’t too big to fail. Even in aggregate, they’ve proved systemically unimportant — Rivast

Lesbians are better parents — Times

Town’s ‘Diana style’ show of grief for dead albino rodent — Daily Mail

Must-read Pinker review of Gladwell and his “cherry-picked anecdotes, post-hoc sophistry and false dichotomies” — NYT

The WSJ discovers Bob Hodgson and his debunking of wine tastings — WSJ

The fate of the bluefin — Politics of the Plate

Autocomplete Me

Fox Business is in 50m households, Bloomberg TV in 60m. Neither can crack 35,000 viewers per show — VF

Megan Fox, in verse — Awl

Craig Brown channels Gladwell — VF

James Meek meets President Obama in Arlington — NYDN

Thanksgiving feast, circa 1881 — NYT

A gorgeous power-of-ten visualization — Utah

Lou Dobbs, in verse — Newsweek

One advantage of citizenship over a green card: authorities can’t threaten you with deportation to get a plea bargain — WSJ

Those Apple-to-buy-Nintendo rumblings are back! — Deal

ISDA’s attempt to fire back at Dodd is a damp squib. Expect no substantive opposition from this front — ISDA

How Providence, R.I. got rid of a freeway and gained valuable real estate — NYT

Warhol’s ‘200 One Dollar Bills’ Fetches $43.8 Million — Bloomberg

The editor’s revenge — Torontoist

“Thain let out a gutteral animal howl. Half-rising from his chair, he lunged toward Pandit. “BRAINS!” he moaned.” — NYM

Resignation video from Lou Dobbs — YouTube

Zagat takes 24 months to update its DC guide — WCP

Helmeted NFL players are about 25% more likely to sustain head injuries than unhelmeted Aussie-rules players — WSJ

$1.5 Million In Blatant Insider Trading Profit Following 3Com Acquisition — ZH

Conde Nast lost 8,359 ad pages in 2009. That’s a good $1B in revenues right there — NYT

CBO chief Elmendorf sums up deficit dilemma in a single sentence — WSJ

Learn about syllepsis, then refuse to stop employing it — Stickley

Rock supergroup, or Jubilee 2000 campaign? — Wikipedia

If you’ve been looking for a 4,800-word article on parking in Miami, here’s a great one — MNT  

“Feeding primary school kids less fat, sugar and salt, and more fruit and vegetables, has a surprisingly large effect” — FT

Treasury Dept. charging $522,886 for a single FOIA request — Wired

The incestuous New Museum — NYT

Learning About Outsourcing Via Craigslist — Mediabistro

Why is the Washington Times installing armed guards on the floor where management works? — TPM

A huge incentive to fire now: Bloomberg’s not responsible for paying severance to laid off BusinessWeek staff — TBI

America’s best-performing cities for job creation — Milken

The idiolects of lego — TMN

The art of comment-trolling — Doghouse

Mineral sequestration: where you use common rocks to eat CO2 and convert it into minerals. Neat! — Miller-McCune

Moscow’s deputy mayor has VERY expensive taste in watches — Hettena

Tweet your weight daily! Talk about an incentive to keep the pounds off — LAT

The FHFA has no external auditor — HuffPo

UPS vs. FEDEX–Ultimate Whiteboard Ad Remix — YouTube

Ponzi PriceChopper: Madoff’s UES Pad Drops $1 Million — Curbed

Those impenetrable Bloomberg headlines — Economist

New renderings of the 9/11 museum — 9/11 Memorial

Real retail sales during the last 5 recessions — Ritholtz

Love these Japanese barcodes — Dieline

Rather excellent 404 page du jour — Food52