The surveillance tape showing a woman wearing a cat mask robbing the Arche store on Astor Place has been released by the NYPD. It is pretty low-quality, but you can tell that she spent a lot of time practicing her cat moves in a mirror before heading off on her crime spree. Such devotion to character! [Via]

New poll! "Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is trailing President Barack Obama by only one percentage point in a potential 2012 matchup."

Laurel Touby-founder of the Ponzi scheme called Mediabistro-now, by her own lifestyle calculus, "either has a car and a driver but not a whole new life, or a whole new life but no car and driver: According to city records, she just closed on a $3,905,000 penthouse loft at 43 East 19th Street."

Alex Balk: Hey Balk: Can you explain something to me? Choire Sicha: DID YOU JUST "HEY" ME? Balk: What exactly does "meow meow" signify? Choire: asdlfkasdf; Choire: That's a complicated one Choire: Because Choire: "Meow!" means "CATTY!" Choire: But MEOW MEOW MEOW Choire: Or just MEOW MEOW Choire: Means "LA LA FINGERS IN MY EARS I CAN'T HEAR YOU" Balk: Okay, that's what I was working with, but I just wanted to make sure. Choire: Annnnd this is a blog post now.

So in today's Times Janet Maslin tears into Malcolm Gladwell's new greatest hits book collection. It is brutal, because she is endlessly making fun of his sentences and his paragraphs: "He liked to begin by framing some kind of broad question. Then he liked to change subjects abruptly. Let's suddenly talk about Ben Fountain and Jonathan Safran Foer." Ha ha, that is funny. For some reason though, this makes me uncomfortable! And when I am uncomfortable with conflict, I ask myself: whose side am I on? After some internal investigation, I realized: I'm not on either of their sides! Why should I be? What horse do I have in [...]

We were a little slow getting to a dissection of Malcolm Gladwell's latest piece over here, because, well, we are like the old times, we like to carefully weigh our opinions before publishing. (Just joshing!) But the U.S. mail and the letters desk is even slower, so it took until today's New Yorker for their letter pages to be dominated by people trashing Gladwell for the application of his ideas, for his understanding of history and, naturally, about the basketball.

"Back in the wonderful Clinton era, Matt Drudge introduced Andrew Breitbart to Arianna Huffington. At the time, Arianna was a famous conservative pundit. She was also well-known, even by 1994, as a loopy new-ager and cut-throat bitch." -There is so much Alex Pareeneing going on over here right now.

Bloggers. You never know who or what they know! Who they have had lunch with. Or what mustard company is giving them money to blather about delicious French's© mustard, which I just can't get enough of this season! What a mustard! It is so yellow and delicious, and also works to unstop drains, did you know that? But seriously, folks. Bloggers! Why, I remember a time when Sharon Waxman, New York Times reporter, would email with bloggers, but only if they weren't unreasonable or unhinged or otherwise inappropriate, and then she would Not Speak To Them because they were Beyond Saving. Since then, of course, Ms. Waxman has taken that [...]

Trevor Butterworth, of STATS, and Damien Cave, of the Times, today have suggested that full-time media consultant (including to the dangerously ill Newhouse Newspapers) and Google enthusiast Jeff Jarvis stop complaining and start doing, on the occasion of Jarvis' latest very angry rant about, yes, newspapers.