I’m melting, this is heaven, hooray, so wonderful: here is the trailer for Bill Cunningham: New York, a full-length documentary about New York City’s Greatest New York City Resident. This is perhaps the best thing to happen ever. (via)

by Anonymous

16. Universal Gay

15. Worldwide Jew

14. Dogs Who Write

13. Rich Minorities

12. Science Quacks

11. Ducks!

10. Mantoloking, NJ

9. Scientology Today

8. Animal Misogyny

7. Drug Lord Interiors

6. Stevia

5. Salvia

4. Octoroon

3. Jewish American Princess

2. Tits

1. Steve Jobs

Previously: What Pays on the Web, Expressed by the Order That HuffPo Launched Sections

Anonymous consists of two devoted HuffPost readers.

I have not always been a Peter Thiel fan — the PayPal founder and Facebook investor’s politics and ideas are complicated and sometimes they stem from what I would consider psychological projections (see: affirmative action, although even in that case I totally agree with his embracing a larger concept of “diversity”!) — but honestly, I am on board with about 75% of this extended interview with him in the National Review. One idea in particular is extremely valuable, and we will all be talking about this a lot in the next decade: that America has group-hallucinated itself into an education bubble.

Thiel:

Education is a bubble in a classic sense. To call something a bubble, it must be overpriced and there must be an intense belief in it…. [W]hen people make a mistake in taking on an education loan, they’re legally much more difficult to get out of than housing loans. With housing, typically they’re non-recourse — you can just walk out of the house. With education, they’re recourse, and they typically survive bankruptcy. If you borrowed money and went to a college where the education didn’t create any value, that is potentially a really big mistake…. I estimate that 70 to 80 percent of the colleges in the U.S. are not generating a positive return on investment.

And:

The Great Recession of 2008 to the present is helping to bring the education bubble to a head. When parents have invested enormous amounts of money in their kids’ education, to find their kids coming back to live with them — well, that was not what they bargained for. So the crazy bubble in education is at a point where it is very close to unraveling.

That’s notable that he said “the present,” actually! I hate the conception that the recession “ended” in June, 2009, because we only define “recession” through very specific economic indicators.

Have you ever wondered why you can’t tickle yourself? Of course you have! Scholars have spent entire careers dedicating themselves to that very conundrum. Anyway, here’s your answer. Makes sense to me! [Via]

by Mark Lisanti

What is your sad story? Why were you sitting in the window of an otherwise unremarkable jewelry shop in New York’s Diamond District, just after Christmas, amidst other comparatively tasteful — if far less garishly ambitious — baubles? Did the primate-loving impresario who commissioned you, perhaps overestimating the sustainability of some heady, early success in the hip-hop and/or high-end poaching games, fall on hard times, leaving you imprisoned with other sparkling victims of a still-foundering economy? Are you roaring with rage at the nearby watches, with their diamond-encrusted faces the size of stop signs, for the utter banality of their excess? Do you long for a crystal-encrusted body, so that instead of living out your days dangling from the neck of a patron with questionable financial priorities, you might rise up on your mighty haunches, smash the glass through which tourists gawk at your beheaded impotence, tear at their fleshy, corn-fed necks with your deadly fangs, then escape onto 47th street, the less-precious jewels dotting your knuckles scarring the pavement as you scamper westward to terrify the wide-eyed throngs on Broadway?

Or are you content with your lot, and that seeming roar is intended as an inviting, if a bit incisor-heavy, smile meant to lure in the potential adoptive family whose eager fingerprints smear the wall of your temporary home? (Can we have him, Daddy? the children plead, tugging at the sleeve of his overcoat, then cry, He’d be such good friends with our sapphire Yorkie and Ruby the parrot!) And would you shed several flakes of glittertears from your brilliant-cut eyes when the father quietly shakes his head and ushers his kids up the street, leaving you once again to share your dreams of a different life only with the lonely rings and forlorn brooches that still surround you?

And, finally, before we move on, remembering with a curiosity-killing chill the suspicious jeweler’s gaze that drove us away before we could ask you these things in person, would you answer one last query? What the fuck is that thing in your mouth? We think it might be Texas, but we can’t be sure. Alas. Perhaps some questions are best left unanswered.

Mark Lisanti

is everywhere, if “everywhere” counts as Twitter and Tumblr.

New York Observer revolving door update, for the two people playing along at home: This week alone, one straight man out — but one woman and one gay hired! Don’t everyone get all excited at once. Back to your desks!

by Christian Vachon

In Egypt, the most popular topics are also the most discouraged. Yesterday, what is thought to be the ninth person to attempt self-immolation in the last month in Egypt was arrested before he could light himself on fire. These protest-suicides — often attempted suicides; of the five this week, at least two have died — mimic the dramatic suicide in Tunisia of mid-December, which preceded the fall of that country’s government by just a week. This is a thing that, were it occurring in America, would literally obliterate all other news.

I sensed this system of discouragement before I was formally given any rules, riding in the back seat of a taxi from the airport the day I arrived in Cairo. On the highway we passed an empty granite pavilion. “Sadat! Sadat,” the driver yelled to me, pointing out the window. He held up his hand, making a gun. “There, Sadat killed.” Seeing I understood, the driver breathed a prayer and we continued down the road.

I had accepted a position teaching at a private school in Cairo after six years of living in Brooklyn and teaching in Harlem. I am American and had never been to the Middle East, but each year in New York City had become too much like the last and I feared that I might wake one morning to see that 25 years had passed. But I had no clear vision of where to go. I knew only that I had to get as far from the familiar as possible. A Palestinian friend once told me, “The only trace of Arab culture left is in those places where there is no oil beneath the ground.” With this in mind, I moved to Cairo.

Upon arrival, my administrator then did formally brief me on all I would need for a comfortable life. “There are only two rules here,” he said. “Do not talk about politics. Do not talk about religion.”

On occasion, rules are broken. Egyptians are very familiar with 26-year-old blogger Kareem Amer, who was released from prison on November 17th, 2010. In February 2007, the former law student was given a four-year sentence — one year for defamatory statements about President Mubarak and three years for mocking Islam.

Some rules are not. I discovered this after assigning a photography assignment around the question: How is power projected in society?

The assignment died almost as soon as I’d handed it out. Egyptians know that they cannot walk around in public taking photographs. “We have lives and futures ahead of us. I don’t want to begin with a jail stint,” a student said. “You don’t understand. Here they arrest you first, then they ask you questions.”

Egyptian society functions on the careful maintenance of exterior surfaces that are the result of these rules. But this week, in public and in their daily lives, Egyptians have been breaking rules.

The local press made little note of the 100 demonstrators gathered outside the Tunisian embassy in the Zamalak district. They were shouting, “We are next, we are next. Listen to the Tunisians, it’s your turn, Egyptians!” — before security forces were called in to break up protests.

The following afternoon I sat in a taxi through 15 minutes of traffic, attempting to enter Zamalak, the leafy upscale Nile island district that is home to 1.8 million Egyptians. Six police guards carrying machine guns blocked the neighborhood’s access bridge.

Along the side of the street, standing in formation in two single-file rows, twenty men deep, were police in riot gear. They stood silent beside the passing cars, dark visors down, batons dangling from their sides, shields resting at their feet.

At the top of the checkpoint an officer halted the taxi. He looked inside the cab. We made eye contact. I smiled. He grinned and waved us through.

And the next morning in my English class, for the first time all year, my students brought up politics. One student, without irony, explained the reasoning behind his support of Gamal Mubarak, the president’s son and potential successor: “He was born into wealth so he will not need to rob the country any more.”

“Does everyone know what is happening in Tunisia?” a student said. On this note the room fell silent. Half the class nodded. A few others put their heads down. “It is going to happen here,” a girl said.

Last month I was eating sushi in Beirut, discussing Egyptian politics with the restaurant’s 50-something Lebanese owner. In the background was a speech by the head of Hezbollah. The speech had interrupted primetime programming on all major networks. “Elections are coming next year. You are going to have a revolution in that country,” the man said.

“Impossible,” I said. “There will be an election.” This will be Egypt’s second presidential election ever. “Gamal Mubarak will win. Perhaps there will be protests, but the police will restore order and life will continue as it has.”

“You live in a country in which 65 million people are controlled by one million people,” he said. “How long can this go on?”

Gordon Reynolds is the pseudonym of a teacher in Cairo.

Photo from Flickr by Al Jazeera English, from election night, November 28, 2010, when unusual protests took place in Egypt against government corruption.

by Abe Sauer

Yesterday, we looked at how taxpayer-funded USAID has been supporting evangelical organizations in Haiti, in direct violation of executive orders by both George W. Bush and Barack Obama regarding federal grants to faith-based organizations. We noted in particular how Franklin Graham — Billy Graham’s son — uses federal aid to increase his personal profile and influence and, using USAID-funded Haiti clinics as scenic background for Fox News specials, has secured Sarah Palin’s enthusiastic, fervent endorsement, no doubt in return for election support come 2012.

Now, proving that the left hand of the politically-active religious right doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, over 160 Republicans in the House have endorsed defunding USAID.

From Foreign Policy:

The Republican Study Committee (RSC), a loose conglomeration of 165 self-identified conservative GOP House members, unveiled their plan Thursday that they argue could save $2.5 trillion in federal spending over ten years. The proposal is centered around legislation that would eliminate federal funding for USAID, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the U.S. Trade Development Agency, the Woodrow Wilson Center, the USDA Sugar Program, economic assistance to Egypt, and many other programs.

This would-be massacre is being led by Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Scott Garrett (R-NJ).

Those two nincompoops can be forgiven for still believing their pre-election Tea Party promises actually need to be honored anymore.

Jim DeMint, meanwhile, as the Senator who will reportedly chaperone the bill, and who supports not just school prayer but also barring gays from teaching in schools, should know better.

DeMint, a senatorial suppository inserted during the Bush II-era, should be fully aware that during Bush’s administration, USAID funding for faith-based organizations doubled, accounting for around 20% of the agency’s total awards. A Boston Globe report found that about 98% of the “faiths” that received that USAID money were Christian. Barack Obama’s orders on USAID funding to faith-based organizations basically reiterated Bush’s, giving the green light to an ever-increasing income stream for U.S.-based Christian organizations.

Cutting USAID funding would rob Christian aid groups of somewhere just south of $2 billion.

The South Carolina Senator has tried this before. In 2008, he moved to cut a funding expansion of Bush’s worldwide AIDS program, a goodly share of which was granted to Christian organizations. (USAID was sued in 2010 by the ACLU for refusing to release documents regarding USAID’s support for abstinence-only AIDS programs in Africa that included Bible teachings.)

Why does Jim DeMint hate Christian charities?

Millions of those USAID dollars go to Billy Graham’s charities (in Haiti and elsewhere), while Franklin Graham has partnered with Sarah Palin in anticipation of the next election — going so far as to defend her from the terrible slander following the Arizona shooting.

Not to mention Greta Van Susteren, who just went to Haiti with Palin to do an hour of (exclusive!) Fox News tragedy porn for Graham’s fundraising efforts at his USAID-funded Samaritan’s Purse clinics. Susteren called their work there “inspired.” Why is the GOP trying to undermine Fox News and Sarah Palin? Cut USAID? It’s almost like they need a Karl Rove to run strategy again.

Also, just a bit of advice to the GOP: don’t tell North Dakotan beet farmers about murdering the USDA Sugar Program until after you pick up Kent Conrad’s Senate seat in 2012.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer [at] gmail.com.

There’s a funny little profile of New York City’s mayor in the February Esquire, though it’s not online. So, in it, Mike Bloomberg goes to Hong Kong, and he takes along Jon Liu, the comptroller, and Esquire is all like, why did he invite you, and Jon Liu’s all, “I’m sure he has his reasons.” Heh. So over there what they do is, the transit system owns rights to land around the train station, so they build malls around the stations, in conjunction with private developers, and this pays for a good chunk of the excellent transit system. And of course Bloomberg loves this. “In America, the ultimate capitalist system, government is getting in the way of everything,” Bloomberg says over there. Funny stuff!

“I never use ‘Dear…’ It’s old-dearish.”
 — Jon King, managing director of the digital marketing agency Story Worldwide, weighs in on the debate over the proper salutation with which to start an email. King, who is the same Jon King who used to dance like a chicken undergoing electro-shock therapy and sing amazingly great, spiky, neo-Marxist punk rock songs with his band Gang of Four, generally begins emails to clients, “Often with no intro line at all. I assume they know who they are, and cut to the chase.”

Those clients include Faberge and Estee Lauder.

Gang of Four reunited a few years ago and — wow! I’m just learning this today — have a new album coming out next week. It’s called Content, and it’s getting very good reviews in the British press.

Oh, here’s a video for one of the songs from the new album:

That looks a little bit more like a scene from Lethal Weapon 2 than it should. And Jon King looks just like James Cromwell. But it’s good to see that he still dances like that.

Anyway, I think all emails should begin, “Buckle your seatbelt,” and end with “Flocka!”