I wasn't going to post the Ron Artest Michael Jackson Tribute video below, even though it's pretty awesome. But then I found out, from Dave, that Ron Artest chose his new number with the Lakers, 37, because that's how many weeks Thriller was #1. And then I had to share it.

Thanks to Dave, I now have the genius E-mails from an Asshole in my life.

Matt Taibbi's recent take down of Goldman Sachs in Rolling Stone, The Great American Bubble Machine, is full of Taibbi's usual clever turns of phrase and acerbic prose. What I feel differentiates this article from his work is the high pitched response from Goldman Sachs and detractors in the media who are making tons of points about Taibbi's article, none of which are, 'It's not true.' (PDF and Full Text of article.)

Felix Salmon has a refutation by a Goldman flack.
Taibbi responds to the flack and notes why Goldman's POV is not represented in the article. They didn't want to talk.
Time Magazine steps into it in a somewhat ham handed way. Not making many points or adding much substance to the discussion.
Taibbi responds to Time, taking most issue with Time's 'everyone was doing it' defense of Goldman.
Megan McArdle somehow connects Taibbi's writing to Sarah Palin, which doesn't make much sense. Then she hangs out in the comments section saying, "I'm just not down with the idea that there's some sort of elusive "central point" to stories that permits you to write a bunch of total nonsense as long as the "central point" is good." Which, as a commenter points out, will probably be posted as a comment on every McArdle piece for the rest of time.
Here's Obsidian Wings saying the article isn't as bad as Kevin Drum said it was (though Drum then recanted his statement based on the fact that Rolling Stone confusingly posted excerpts of the article online instead of the full text).

More as it comes in.

True Blood was exciting and creative for the first 8 or 9 episodes until it turned into Vampire Veronica Mars. For some reason, I didn't pick up on the fact that the murders were the overarching theme of the show until it was too late. And then I just got mad because I learned to despise Veronica Mars something fierce.

Everything seems to be out there in the open in this book, and yet, I couldn't help shaking a general feeling of uneasiness. I think this was the first of Tim O'Brien's books I read not set in Vietnam (though you could say it was) and the first I read about a soldier after coming home. Easy to read, but not a beach book.

"Mexican naval officers found slabs of cocaine inside more than 20 sharks aboard a freight ship."

Art Howe didn't come out of 'Moneyball' looking that awesome, so he was hoping for redemption from the recently axed 'Moneyball' movie. In this article, he claimed Michael Lewis never talked to him. Only thing is, Lewis did. "Accusations of journalistic bias are the last refuge of the scoundrel", says Lewis, replacing patriotism with accusations of journalistic bias in Samuel Johnson's famous quotation.

This is as funny as she was on Saturday Night Live! It gets especially good in the comments.

Obama legally kills babies and now he can legally kill Grandmas!

Hitler did this. He killed the weak, the sick, the old, and babies and races/religions he didn’t like. Hitler also controlled the media. (Where’s the public debate between scientists on “Climate Change/Global Warming?”) Hitler had the VW bug invented as the state car. What will O’s nationalized car be? So… kill off the weak. That’s the plan. Tax the workers to death. Erase the middle class. Sounds like the evil governments we studied in high school long ago. The evil governments were : kings, oligarchies, facist, socialist, and communist. Now it’s called the Obama Administration. Sounds like candy or a rock band.

I've written before about "Fake Traffic" and a developed theory called "The Wave Theory of Traffic" and I'm happy once again to write that scientists have used math and science to prove that ‘Phantom’ Traffic Jams exist and they're working to mitigate them.

The MIT team found speed, traffic density and other factors can determine conditions that will lead to a jamiton and how quickly it will spread. Once the jam forms, the researchers say, drivers have no choice but to wait for it to clear. The new model could lead to roads designed with sufficient capacity to keep traffic density below the point at which a jamiton can form.

Via Boing Boing.

Malcolm Gladwell's recent review of Chris Anderson's latest book, 'Free: The Future of a Radical Price' caused a round of reactions from big thinkers. Here's a round up:
Gladwell started things off by disputing the thesis of the book:

The only iron law here is the one too obvious to write a book about, which is that the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold that there are no iron laws

Seth Godin stepped into it, saying Malcolm was wrong.
Mark Cuban says:

The videos on Youtube, magazine articles, newspapers reports, anything that used to be analog that now is digital have a perceived value that is based on their legacy delivery.

and

The music is often free, but it is NEVER freely distributed.

Anil Dash takes a step back, says the dust-up is likely conceived to sell books and magazines, argues that Gladwell's main point is that Anderson didn't provide evidence only anecdotes and then goes on to mention all the people who say Gladwell is heavy on the story and light on the science.
Henry Blodget agrees with Gladwell.
Mike Masnick at TechDirt is firmly in the Anderson camp.
The Opinionator Blog (at NYTimes.com) gleefully discusses some of the bloodsport.
Fred Wilson says some things will be free and some won't.
Finally, Chris Anderson somewhat bitchily responds (sniffingly referring to Gladwell as a 'journalist' (the horror!) using GeekDad to prove the idea of paying people to get people to wirte instead of paying writers.