Late Night with Jimmy Fallon producer Gavin Purcell hopelessly shopped for shoes.

CNET News reporter Caroline McCarthy stayed focused on the big, important story of the day.

Slate writer John Dickerson exhibited profound laziness.

Meet the Press host David Gregory fell victim to Twidiocy.

Techmeme editrix Megan McCarthy made a joke about Google's nondiscovery of Atlantis.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us more Twitter usernames, please.

Wired editor Joe Brown lived large on Si Newhouse's dime.

Gawker alum Choire Sicha gave an actor the hairy eyeball.

Slate columnist John Dickerson got in quality time with the kids.

Attention-seeking omnimedia entrepreneuse Sarah Lacy primped for a fellow pundit.

NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof even enjoyed a funeral.

The business of blogging has been run into the ground by, as lovable former productivity fetishist Merlin Mann put it, "a gentrifying wagon train of carpetbaggers, speculators, and confidence men, all eager to pan the web's glistening riverbed for easy gold." Competing with "thought leaders" in your "space" isn't just cocky, it's foolish dollar-for-dollar. Besides, as Agger points out, the hardcore blog audience of yore is migrating to Twitter, FriendFeed, and Facebook to discover blogs — not Google, and not other blogs. The audience a baby blogger has to impress has already said, "You know what, you get 140 characters of my attention." Good luck with that.

To answer Slate's question, it depends on what you feel you deserve. If you want to join the private jet-set class, you'd be a fool to take up any form of writing as a career. But if you are blogging for your own sense of intellectual and civic pride, as fast-fading and uneasily monetized as that may be, then forget about the Benjamins. (Diagram by Jay Hathaway)

The long tail functions in sex work, too. Half of the 300 sex workers Venkatesh has interviewed work in the so-called "high end" of the business, but they hardly constitute half of sex trade workers. The majority are pulling the equivalent of paycheck-to-paycheck for barely middle-class wages; few get paid vacations or stock grants. Never does Venkatesh define what the high end is. Slate's photo of a high-heeled model leaning into a car is a cliché from another decade, before the Internet made streetwalking unprofitable.

Lawyers are a saving grace. Venkatesh proposes that client diversification is essential to sex workers, just as it is to financial firms, for making it through an economic downturn. Yet he believes this is difficult for workers to pull off in our closed professional networks. He's halfway there. Even though I had the reputation among my colleagues for entertaining (and consensually humiliating) lawyers, hedge fund guys, ex-military, and even a few who made good with their startups, that didn't mean those were the only types of clients we collectively had access to. Honestly, lawyers — the bread and butter of the $1,000+/hour market — were the clients who hopped from escort to escort the most, sampling everyone. A few were notorious for this, and we all did well for it, by sharing them.

Even high-end workers lose money by "paying for protection." He's part right, again: Successful high-end workers are more likely to pay a premium to start a corporation under a proxy board, or hire a private detective to figure out if they are under surveillance, or keep an understanding attorney/accountant on retainer just in case. This is the reality of running a cash-rich business, gray market or not — not an inevitable risk assumed from fucking for money.

(UPDATE: Original pic swapped out, Aug 21 2009)

(Pic via)

• Dog
• Disco ball
• Pirate flag
• Exercise spheres
• Free eat-in lunch
• Costco snacks and drinks
• Ikea desks and Aeron chairs
• Founder who says "cool" nine times in three minutes
• Conspicuous daytime drinking

Meanwhile, just as the Journal is trying to expand its readership beyond managers and executives with expense accounts, Slate is introducing The Big Money — billed by the New York Times as "a Business Site for the Facebook Set," which includes a Journal-watching Twitter feed. Because as we all know, the Facebook set doesn't like to read anything over 140 characters.

Slate staffer Chris Wilson's plea:

Slate wants your suggestions on the most useful queries that, when given to a variety of search engines, neatly show the differences between them. To borrow an example from my review of Powerset, the phrase "Who shot John Lennon?" demonstrates the semantic search engine's ability to answer simple questions better than Google; more conventional queries usually favor the incumbent. Or, to take another approach, perhaps a given keyword returns pages on one search engine that another refuses to crawl altogether.

When you send us your search queries, make sure to include your thoughts on what the results reveal about Google, Cuil, Ask, etc. Different engines prioritize results in different ways, based on notions of a page's authority, usefulness, or popularity. Like dictionaries, does this make some search engines descriptive and others prescriptive? Or are those terms out of date? If so, send us some new ones.

To share a small anecdote, the preternaturally wise and socially gifted Manjoo managed to unintentionally charm another Bay Area reporter into a small fit of personal inhibition. But because I can only assume that Manjoo demurred when the offer of charming reciprocation was made clear, I ended up receiving the kisses meant for his hot bod and better byline in a Berkeley backyard. I'm probably misinterpreting, but still, thanks, Farhad! Better kisses than a scoop or some stupid paycheck any day.(Photo by )

"According to researchers in Palo Alto," Wilson says, "1 percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site's edits." Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales believes the same; he told the Times, "the vast majority of work is done by this small core community." So Slate buys the party line. But these are fake statistics: The Palo Alto study counted the number of edits. If I add five hundred words to an article about fortune cookies, that counts the same as if I rename a category. All this proves is that a small set of wonks are organizing Wikipedia.

The masses are still writing it. Aaron Swartz compared the number of letters added to several articles and found that most articles are written by people with little other Wikipedia experience. That is, most of Wikipedia comes from people who dropped in and added a chunk of text. All the edits? Those are just Wikipedia diehards rearranging the other users' contributions. (A more thorough study confirms Swartz's conclusion.)

It's obvious, really. Why does Jimmy Wales believe that only 500 people wrote everything of import on Wikipedia? With 2 million articles on the site's English version, that would mean each core user wrote nearly 20,000 articles in the seven years since the site launched. That's eight articles a day per user, and clearly physically impossible. Is Wales unaware of this math, or is he so bent on maintaining Wikipedia's respectability that he can't admit how innovative it is?

So much for Wikipedia being in the hands of the few. But Wilson also aims at Digg, saying the site "is largely run by 100 people." The top hundred Digg users submitted almost half of the stories that went to the front page, he points out. Of course, Digg recently adjusted its algorithm to lower the influence of those Diggers.

Wilson tries to spin this: "The super Diggers published an open letter of grievances and threatened to boycott the site," he says, implying that the hundred top users were in united revolt. But the actual threat only came from four users. That's hardly enough to threaten the site.

As Wilson notes, founder Kevin Rose talked to these four Digg users and reached what Wilson calls a "shaky truce." What exactly is shaky? Rose and CEO Jay Adelson merely explained what they had just done and how it would encourage new users to contribute. They didn't actually concede anything to the four users.

Isn't Slate supposed to be the reasoned, second-guessing news source? Then why does Wilson assume Rose has any fear of his top users? Talking to these users wasn't Rose's way of saving his site. It was a cunning move to make these users feel important, and get his message out to the entire Digg community. Rose came away doing just what he wanted and making everyone thank him for it.

Wilson even reaches for unsubstantiated arguments against Digg; he points to rumors that the site hires secret moderators to delete stories. Rose has denied this publicly several times; it's hard to believe he'd lie about this one aspect of the site when he's been so open about all others.

It'd be easy to blame this story on Slate's need to be contrarian, but the message here was so conservative and mainstream, it seems it's just a plain old bad story, bad enough to be retracted. If only we could vote on that.

Maybe you've heard about this site YouTube? I hear it's kind of a big deal. Slate Magazine's new articles about the video site may not cover entirely new ground, but they're definitive explanations of the history and meaning, not of the company, but of the videos it made famous. Somewhere in here is a doctoral thesis.

• Slate's cover story: See lip-synching Israeli ladies, a geriatric pyromaniac, and the last 50 years of dance in Slate's video history (with all the videos) of YouTube. [Slate]
• How is YouTube like porn? It's instant, it's a guilty pleasure, and it's not about the plot. (Plus, well, Lonelygirl15.) We've heard this story before, but never so eloquently told. [Slate]
• But is YouTube useful? For desk-chair quarterbacks, it sure is. Online sports footage is the perfect ref-refuter, bar-bet settler, and a chance to find more angles than the one on TV. [Slate]

Correction, Sept. 21, 2006: The piece originally miscalculated the relative value of Google's commitment. One billion dollars represent less than 1 percent of Google's market value, not less than one-half of 1 percent of it. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Google.org director Larry Brilliant was heard to shout, "Yeah bitch! Less than 1 percent! You got owned!"

Philanthropy Smackdown [Slate]

• CrunchBiz, the newest title from the TechCrunch blog network, went prematurely live today with some blank test posts after the bloggers at Supr.c.ilio.us outed it. Now the site (which is the B2B-centric blog I thought would launch last week) displays a South Park splash image, which is sadly the coolest thing we'll ever see on it. Love the favicon though. [Supr.c.ilio.us and CrunchBiz]
• Tony Brummel finally repents of his petulant e-mail to Apple honcho Steve Jobs. [Idolator]
• Mom, I got in Slate (and the Journal)! Writer Daniel Gross explains why Yahoo's short-notice forced Christmas vacation (which we revealed here) is an "idiotic" cost-cutting measure in light of the money this company throws around daily. [Slate]
• Intel's CEO says YouTube, not satisfied with shelling out about two million dollars a month in bandwidth costs, will eventually go to high-definition. Speaking at the Intel Whatever-the-hell Forum today, Paul Otellini goes on to say that YouTube is inspiring technology to move videos from the computer to TV. When was the last time you and your family curled up in the living room for a good hour of Lonelygirl15? [Bit-Tech]

As I told CNBC, I whipped up my article in five minutes. I figured Gross did the same. The man does a great job of taking this seriously on CNBC's On the Money. (In the intro, I'm talking about Larry Ellison, Oracle founder and owner of the world's biggest yacht.)

It's no Long Tail Theory, but it'll do.

The CEO Bought a Yacht? Then it's time to sell. [Slate]
Earlier: The State of Ships: How yachts kill companies [Valleywag]

• Reader Aleks found User 22646185, who looked for "latinas laughing at little white dicks." They probably won't be tapped for an "AOL, fun for families!" commercial any time.
• Reader Georgia says, "Does Ted Turner use AOL? User 20853699 is a classic with only 5 searches to his name: 'why you shoudnt drink after surgery,' 'why you shoudnt drink after surgery,' 'can you drink alcohol after surgery,' 'does alcohol thin your blood,' and 'time warner cable.'"
• Slate's Paul Boutin IDs the seven types of searcher, and the subspecies of the Pornhound. [Slate]
• Speaking of search habits, has anyone noticed that even the dirtiest searchers will eventually take a break to search for food? It's all like "rape porn," "tentacle," "bdsm," "steak sandwich."

Earlier: AOL creepy user watch: volume 9 [Valleywag]

Found in: The Middle East Buddy List [Slate, right column]

Slate writer Troy Patterson makes Amanda's chest a running gag throughout its latest Rocketboom story: "Her main mandate was to jiggle." "Over time, Congdon became more confident, more polished, more thoughtful about how to deploy her chest." He even says Amanda "redefined the role of the bimbo."

Troy says this got her past the show's bad writing and her awkward presentation style. So he's not being sexist — just calling it like he sees it.

On the other side are Amanda's supporters, like blogger Robert Scoble, who earnestly believes that her skill as a presenter earned Rocketboom its 250,000 views-per-episode. He's not saying Amanda isn't pretty — just that she's actually a great presenter, and that thousands of Internet geek-boys wouldn't be swayed by a busty woman talking about technology.

So who's right? The cynics or the idealists?

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

All the News That's Fit To Vlog [Slate]
Photo: Rocketboom [archives]

Slate, reveling in its not-owned-by-a-media-conglomerate-ness, today published a MySpace profile of Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp billionaire who owns the social site. It's clever. Especially the bit about meeting "Consumers 12 14 to 34 years old," and the comment from "Todd."

Rupert Murdoch's MySpace page [Slate]

Friendster isn't Siegelman's first hot product. At Microsoft in the 90s, he was employee #1 of the MSN division (which, granted, is already dying a decade later). Then he launched the snappy magazine Slate (which was hemorraging money until its sale to the Washington Post).

So if our source is right, the burnout master will be off Friendster's board and job-hunting soon. Watch for him moving into biotech, energy, or mobile apps.

Bio: Team: Russell Siegelman [Kleiner Perkins]