Felix Salmon

Hedge funds fudge their quarter-end valuation numbers — WSJ

Maybe because they’ve been lagging the stock market since 2003 — WSJ

“100 Tweets” opening next week at Dumbo Arts Center — DAC

The STRATFOR names-and-credit-card-numbers data dump — Pastebin

MSF Shocked And Deeply Saddened By The Killing Of Two Staff Members In Mogadishu — DWB

Samoa will have no Friday this week — NYT

Did Mark Hurd woo Jodie Fisher by showing her his checking account? — All Things D

I can’t see how ruining Rakoff’s Xmas for no reason was a very smart move by the SEC — Reuters

Carrick Mollenkamp gets his first Reuters byline — Reuters

The infuriating story of Ayded Reyes — ESPN

China supports Argentina in Falklands dispute — Univision

“You can have opacity and an industrial economy, or you can have transparency and herd goats” — Interfluidity

Annals of immovable objects, LACMA edition — NYT

Thinking about god does help you achieve your goal, but only if your goal is to successfully resist the urge to do something — PRBNM

2011′s worst chief executives — Dealbook

Greece’s diabetics can’t get insulin — NYT

Meet your newest Fed Board nominees — WSJ

Wherein Khoi Vinh calls the NYT’s user experience “haphazard”, “insulting”, and “hostile” — Subtraction

More or less the entire market now believes Greece will default. — Bloomberg

It now costs a record $5.8 million upfront and $100,000 annually to insure $10 million of Greek debt for five years using credit-default swaps, up from $5.5 million in advance Sept. 9.

One of Buffett’s successors is a guy who paid over $5.2 million to have lunch with him. –Fortune

[Weschler's] three biggest positions were W.R. Grace (GRA) ($412 million), DaVita (DVA) ($368 million), and DirectTV (DTV) ($328 million). DaVita runs kidney dialysis centers. W.R. Grace is in bankruptcy, but its stock trades actively in the market.

The United States has the lowest share of small businesses of any OECD country. — Washington Post

in France, when a company grows to 50 employees, it has to set up a Works Council that coordinates with employees on workplace conditions. And so “many small French companies limit themselves to… 49 employees.”

The US Department of Defense is the world’s largest employer, by far, with 40% more employees than the Chinese People’s Liberation Army . — The Economist

Student loans for for-profit universities are about as safe as sub-prime. — @rortybomb

Groupon Needs to Get Its Growth On — WSJ

The story isn’t all bad. Groupon gained market share in North America in August compared with top rival LivingSocial, Yipit Data reports. Meanwhile Facebook, a potentially worrisome competitor, recently shut down its daily-deals product.

86% of Americans now approve of interracial marriages. — Gallup

More Americans disapproved than approved until 1983, and approval did not exceed the majority level until 1997.

Warren Buffett called on Congress to tax the rich more heavily, which would include fellow richie Carl Icahn’s potential half-billion dollar capital gain in the Google-Motorola deal. Kudos to Staska for predicting that deal, by the way, though he low-balled how much the Goog was willing to shell out.

An analyst estimates that AOL is spending $160 million a year–half the cost of buying the Huffington Post–on its local news network Patch.

Record labels, apparently not screwed enough at the moment, are facing the threat of losing much of their backlist to artists and songwriters such as Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel.

Presumably as some mysterious element of their plot to take over the world, Carlyle Group is reportedly selling America’s ninth-largest cable operator for about $3 billion while also paying over $4 billion for clinical research company Pharmaceutical Product Development, Inc.

And there are fewer Freemasons than there have been in a long, long time.