With its "Easytone," Reebok's just the latest shoe company to make these magical ugly thick-soled unstable shoes that are "designed to help give definition to your legs and butt," "toning you up as you strut." Yea, bullshit.

1. There is no such thing as "toning." Never speak this word again.
2. The New York Times has a story about these shoes today, confirming that the idea that somewhat unstable shoes will give you great muscle tone is pseudoscience. Along with your "stability balls."

But the claim that the shoes offer muscle toning is backed by a single study involving just five people, not published in a peer-reviewed academic journal...
But it remains to be seen whether such effects will make a difference over time. In a July 2008 study of instability boards and balls, Canadian researchers found that among experienced exercisers, moderate instability balls like the Bosu had little effect on muscle activation.

Oh, and diets based on eating prepackaged Diet Cookies for two meals a day? They are not so healthy. Surprising, right? Because you would think that "eat a prepackaged preservative-filled 'cookie' product for breakfast and also for lunch and then eat a light dinner, restricting yourself to a near-starvation-level daily calorie intake" would be a recipe for a lifetime of healthy living.

You can't squat with wobbly shoes and a cookie in your mouth.

Contestant #1: Drudge sidekick Andrew Breitbart knows how to handle scientific disagreements.

Thank you. Contestant #2: Some crazy birther group, that put the following ad in the Washington Times about, I don't know, British monkey Obama something something.

Who is the biggest wingnut of this day? Choose, why don't you? [Pic via]

Stewart represented an accused terrorist. During his trial she relayed a message from him, regarding his thoughts on a cease-fire with Egypt, to a Reuters reporter. She then clarified the statement. This was part of her commitment to committing murder in a foreign country, apparently!

If, as prosecutors argue, Stewart knowingly violated specific restrictions again passing any messages from her client to any third parties, including the media, then, whatever, press charges. (Not that those specific rules seem particularly constitutional. And not that we should be complicit in the destruction of attorney-client privilege just because we really don't like terrorists.) But "conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism" seems like more than a bit of a stretch. You shouldn't really be locking up left-wing nuts for being naive about the beliefs and intentions of their clients. (And naive about the lengths to which the Bush Justice Department would go to appear to be serious about terror.)

Stewart was sentenced to 28 months in prison. The court of appeals did not specify how much tougher they'd like her sentence to be, but prosecutors sought up to 30 years. Stewart is 70 and about to go into surgery for breast cancer. And your IndyMedia types are about to start calling Obama a fascist, just like Glenn Beck!

They all totally agree.

Furthermore, the Observer reports that the following people have been spotted, at one time or another in the recent past, in Midtown: Paper magazine's Mickey Boardman, Penélope Cruz, Pedro Almodóvar, Debbie Harry and fashion couple Isabel and Ruben Toledo, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Anna Wintour, Zac Posen, L'Wren Scott, Richard Gere, André Balazs and Sumner Redstone, Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, David Chang, J Lo, Naomi Campbell, Clive Davis, Carolina Herrera and Calvin Klein, Agyness Deyn, Terence Koh, Vito Schnabel, Arden Wohl, Kirsten Dunst, Michael Stipe, Charlotte Ronson, and Julie Gilhart.

So you see, this is the new Midtown: Populated by celebrities, socialites, scenesters bored with downtown, and, above all, the rich.

Everything is different now.
[Pic via]

British gossip email Popbitch pulled up a story today from an obscure European website with pretty compelling evidence that state-run news agency Ria Novosti is taking pitch meetings in Brussels and want someone to play up the good things that the paranoid, genocidal dictator did. Good 'ol Joe kind of thing. (Even Hitler liked dogs.)

The conversation between a representative of the state-run agency and a bemused PR guy went thusly, as per the report:

the aim... is to help portray Russia as a benign great power entitled to negotiate with the likes of the US, China and the EU on global security and energy issues.

He added that part of the PR effort would be to cast a positive light on the actions of the Soviet Union before and after World War II in order to justify the idea that modern Russia should also impose its influence on neighbouring countries for the good of the world.

A senior executive at the PR firm in question recalled one particular exchange with the ...envoy: "I asked him 'Do you want us to say that Stalin was not such a bad guy?' And he said 'Well, I know it will be difficult.' I said 'So, you want history to be rewritten?' And he said 'Yes, in a way'.

There is no word on whether any agencies bit and took the contract, but the source also says that we should expect to see more 'but Stalin also did good things' news stories soon. It's part of an existing campaign, say Russian journalists, to rehabilitate Stalin within the country. New school textbooks now refer to him as "an efficient manager". Which I suppose is technically true.

At some point while we weren't looking, Ad Age reports, Mountain Dew apparently let you, the consumer, come up with three new flavors for it? "Distortion, Whiteout and Typhoon?" Which are undoubtedly terrible? Anyhow, now they're also letting you, the con-Dew-mer, go online and pick the ad agency to make the campaign for these terrifying "flavors," all in the name of connecting the consumer public with the brand image interactivity category extension dialogue Twitter Facebook engagement crowd-sourcing.

And here it is, the future of advertising: 12-second user-generated brand worship clips, at no cost to PepsiCo. You finally got what you asked for, America. YOU'RE A STAR.
[Pic via]

We can all agree, as patriotic Americans, that the House of Representatives should only pass bills that name post offices after Ronald Reagan and honor country music's contributions to America.

What Congress should not do, ever, is try to vote on bills that are long.

Despite the badness of long bills full of evil Government words, every Congress passes thousand-page bills on transportation, energy, and education. No Child Left Behind was 1,033 pages long. The House Conference Report on the 2005 highway bill: 1,231. All of this is in the public record. You can download PDFs of any bill you like from the Library of Congress and Adobe Reader will tell you, right there at the top, how many pages of unreadable bureaucratese passed right by the Republican majority.

What is awesome here is that Politico is not simply playing into a meaningless Republican talking point, they are lovingly assisting in the creation of a meaningless Republican talking point.

Wouldn't it have been much more terrifying for conservatives if Nancy Pelosi's health care reform bill ended up being short? Like, it coulda been a four-page Jack Chick tract of jackbooted Americorps thugs throwing insurance company executives to the "death panels," which are grizzly bears, obviously.

This Carl Bialik column is not a direct assault on the existence of numerology (although such an assault would be warranted, and welcomed, by us, so anybody out there, just go for it), but it does contain subtle reminders that numerology is totally made up.

Beverly Kay, a numerologist in Mequon, Wisc., doesn't buy fears of 13. However, she says her work reading meaning into clients' birth dates and names is consistent with math. "This is scientific," Ms. Kay says.

Stop lying, Beverly Kay. That is so dumb. Stop making things up. I just read RZA's new book and while I enjoyed it, message to RZA: Too much numerology. Numerology is totally fake and made up and based on nothing except the ease with which it can be employed to fool uneducated people. So stop with it.

On the other hand, the same article totally makes you wish you were friends with some mathematicians.

Thomas Garrity, a mathematician at Williams College, has always had a particular fondness for the number 9. The number 51, however, doesn't make his favorites list.

"This might stem from childhood, when I regularly thought that 51 should be prime, even though 51=3x17," he says, taking a trip down mathematical memory lane.

Haha, wonderful! Tell us another one, UC Berkeley mathematics professor George Bergman: "Today, when Bergman parks at a commuter rail station, he finds it 'amusing' to get the spot numbered 233 (a Fibonacci number), 235 or 238 (atomic weights of uranium isotopes), 245 (the course number of a course he's taught) or 256 (two to the eighth power)."

If you are a (sexxxy) mathematician, email me and let's be friends.

"Younger employees help senior executives unlock social media mystery," declares a Chicago Tribune headline [via PRNewser]. What is this amazing mystery that has been unlocked? For Edelman—the world's largest independent PR firm, and one that loves to market itself as a "digital" expert that will help you, the corporation, navigate the wilds of the internet for a large, large fee—the mystery is, "How can we get people to pay us so much for this shit?"

"I am so all over this Delish thing," Cabot bubbled, punching up delish.com on her computer in her office at Edelman, a Chicago-based public relations firm.

"Oh, you're doing so well!" Spohn said delightedly, counting the recipes Cabot had collected on the food lovers' Web site. "Look, you've got so much!"

Her pride was as evident as the exchange was notable. Though Cabot, 56, is Edelman's central region president with more than 30 years in the business, she is the student. Spohn, a 23-year-old account executive on the firm's digital team, is the teacher.

Hahaha. Do you see what is going on here? Edelman, like many of its peers, is a PR firm that will charge your company a hefty fee for all the digital insight that its 23-year-old account executives can deliver. Because the people in charge aren't really so good on this "internet" thing. Which would be fine if they were not the same people in charge of convincing you, the client, to spend tens (or hundreds!) of thousands of dollars with Edelman for their expert strategic online influencing services. Their mentoring program for the olds is called "Rotnem" because that's "mentor" backwards and you must be a backwards-ass fool to pay money to a bunch of 23-year-olds to teach you how to make a Facebook page and shit at an Edelman markup, when you could get them off Craigslist for much, much cheaper.

"Edelman strongly advocates that companies participate with and engage online influencers." Did you know that Edelman, a massive corporate PR firm, started a blog called "Authenticities"? Edelman, how much do people pay you for your services? Because I am totally going to undercut your prices by one dollar, once the last media outlet finally stops paying employees. Please engage.

[Pic of Edelman's Global Head of Digital Strategy via Flickr]

The most basic definition of insider trading is: information that isn't available to the public shareholders of a company is given to sketchy assholes who already have more money than you, first. That way, said assholes can buy or sell stock based on whether or not a company's about to blow up or be royally screwed. Once the information becomes publicly available, the stock price is either too high for you to buy or your stock's already been screwed because they sold their gigantic loads of the company off before you could. And you would've bought and/or sold your stock because you know that when a company produces a bunch of planes that explode nine seconds after takeoff, you should probably sell your stock.

So: insider trading is bad, right? Bad for morals, bad for the economy, bad for people who get manipulated by other people by shady backdoor deals, right? Wrong, motherfuckers! Bwah. Ha. Ha. says the Wall Street Journal's suspiciously named Donald J. Boudreaux. How is this possible? Let's learn. Dr. Evil Donald J. Boudreaux suggests that because it's hard to tell what's a sketchy secret and what isn't, it (A) wastes the time of federal authorities, (B) it keeps asset prices "honest" by telling the truth about what their real value is and (C) it helps the market adjust rather quickly. Watch how he phrases this:

Time to stop telling horror stories. Federal agents are wasting their time slapping handcuffs on hedge fund traders like Raj Rajaratnam, the financier charged last week with trading on nonpublic information involving IBM, Google and other big companies. The reassuring truth: Insider trading is impossible to police and helpful to markets and investors. Parsing the difference between legal and illegal insider trading is futile-and a disservice to all investors. Far from being so injurious to the economy that its practice must be criminalized, insiders buying and selling stocks based on their knowledge play a critical role in keeping asset prices honest-in keeping prices from lying to the public about corporate realities.

Well, considering the small fact that federal authorities completely fucked the dog on Bernie Madoff, I'd say that anything that even remotely resembles something that might cost people who don't have the money of megalomaniacal bajillionaires a few bucks is probably worth the time of federal authorities. Also, a stock's "real value" is based on information attained through sketchy means? No, I'd say that's an asset's "shadow value." Its real value is based on the people whose fortunes are turned by it that can't afford (or, inversely, shouldn't be allowed) to have it do so. Information that insider trading works off of should be made public, not hunted out and used for profit; the big point Frederick von Dumbass is missing is that letting illegal information be freed up for legal use once obtained by white collar criminals makes said propriety information even more proprietary.

But I don't have a column at the Wall Street Fucking Journal, so, you know, I wouldn't know my ass from my face when it comes to money, which is to speak nothing of Mark Penn's Microtrends (For You To Buy Into, That My Clients Would Like You To Buy Into) column.

Boudreaux's column goes on to cite examples from the gas "crisis" of 20 years ago that allowed Big Unleaded to screw our parents in the tank, and the potential of Big Pharm to inflict damage on the public's health and wallets. Which is fair, but also, why we have regulatory agencies that exist to vette out this kind of thing. The second we let people with access to insider trading use it—people on Wall Street, guys who sit in front of their computer every day for hours at a time scanning forums for the slightest piece of corporate gossip—is the second we put the markets even further out of control of the majority of people who are layman's stockholders. This would be like letting the biggest Star Wars fanboys write the plot of the next three movies (and look what happened when we bought into George Lucas writing the screenplays for the last three).

Even more curious is how the Wall Street Journal allowed themselves to run this kind of complete nonsense without anything remotely resembling a counterpoint; they're big press. People who don't know Wall Street read the Wall Street Journal. This is dangerously stupid rhetoric. It's funny when Clusterstock does it, because they're mostly read by psychopathic, gossipy market obsessives, and because they often to have the counterpoint up five or ten minutes later. This is a little different. This is just patently ridiculous.

At the time, Al Sharpton called for a hate crime investigation. And why wouldn't he? Megan Williams said that she had been "stabbed, sexually assaulted, beaten with sticks, forced to eat human feces and doused with hot water" in a trailer where she was being held captive by white people shouting racial slurs at her. Six people are in prison for the attack (because of physical evidence and their own statements, according to the prosecutor). Now, Williams says she was just trying to get back at her boyfriend, who beat her up. She also says she was pressured by her mother to inflate the case for financial gain.

So: Just another case of race-baiting by Rev. Al! Right? He singlehandedly forced those six convictions into existence! Right? Even though he didn't even get the hate crimes investigation he was asking for? Well. This maybe was a contributing factor to the downfall of the suspects: The two people Williams was living with in the trailer were both convicted murderers, says the NYT.

At the time of the alleged assaults, Ms. Williams was staying at a ramshackle trailer owned by Bobby Brewster and his mother, Frankie Brewster, in Logan County, about 50 miles from Charleston. Mr. Brewster had killed his stepfather at the trailer when he was 12, the authorities said, and served time at a juvenile facility. In July 1994, Mrs. Brewster shot and killed an 84-year-old woman she was looking after, also in the trailer, according to court records. She served six years at a state correctional facility and was paroled in 2000.

By all means, throw out the convictions. Let the people unjustly convicted sue. Hell, fire the prosecutor. But let's skip the "JESSE JACKSON AL SHARPTON PLAYS THE RACE CARD AND IT BACKFIRES AGAIN" bit. (Drudge: "Sharpton pushed WV rape story which turned out to be a hoax..."). Hate crime laws are dumb, but that's not what anyone is arguing about here. They're arguing that Al Sharpton should have known this girl was lying about her charges, even though no one else knew that.
Al Sharpton is not a detective! Although he'd be a funny one. Al Sharpton has many, many cartoonish qualities. But he's also on the right side of most issues. Particularly racial issues. Unlike Drudge, or the New York Post, or most of West Virginia. So, let's all save our valuable breath.
[Pic via]

Companies these days love to sell you their crap by assuring you that simply by purchasing their crap you are not just purchasing crap—you are actually doing good. In fact, if you don't purchase their crap, you likely suffer from a severe moral defect. Furthermore, your mundane purchasing choices are now decisions of great moral import. And they define who you are, as a person. Do you buy your mutt Pedigree® brand dog food, to support pet adoption? Or Milk Bone® brand dog snacks, to give canine companions to people in wheelchairs? If you're a good person, buy both! How can you spurn either cause by failing to buy the associated consumer product? Both of them are so fucking good.

Failing to purchase Milk Bones is tantamount to walking (jerk) right up to this wheelchair-bound man and killing his dog. Failing to buy Dawn dish soap is no different from hunting down a snow white baby seal, dousing him in crude oil, and shooting anyone who tries to clean off his soft, beautiful fur.

These companies are not fucking around any more, America. They have brought out the baby seals. That means no marketing tactic is too mawkish; no advertising icon is too cliched; no leap of logic is too grand. We must warn you, the consumer: This slope is as slippery as the grease-soaked coat of an otter in Valdez. Want to help some good cause? Buy the fucking store brand. Save money. Give that money to charity. You give these companies one nickel and we'll all be seeing baby seal logos on every fucking thing until we just throw up.

[Also, America? Stop buying those "Herbal Remedies." They're fake. God. ]

• USA Today: "What happened to civility?"
• Hartford Courant: "US Lacking In Civility."
• Houston Chronicle: "Incivility is heard 'round the nation."
• Washington Post: "Call it the Glenn Beck-ization of America or an erosion of civility."
• San Diego Union-Tribune: "There's been a real shortage of civility lately."
• ESPN: "What has happened to civility?"
• Minneapolis Star-Tribune: "Psst: The death of public civility."
• Columbus Dispatch: "Public figures aren't the only Americans who act this way, says P.M. Forni, co-founder of the Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore."
• Examiner.com: "All three episodes are a sad reflection on the politics of civility in contemporary society."
• Wichita Falls Times Record News: "If civility isn't dead, it's definitely on a respirator."

[Pic: Getty]

This was the Wall Street Journal's first real test of journalism ethics under Rupert Murdoch's ownership. And, surprisingly, they've fucking failed, big time. The story broke yesterday afternoon—complete with a leaked email showing top execs at Burson-Marsteller suggesting how to use the latest column by Penn, their CEO, as a tool to recruit clients from the industry he wrote about. The paper assured us yesterday they were "looking into it," and cited their clear conflict of interest policy. That policy, they assured us, was the Dow Jones Code of Conduct that we excerpted in our own post yesterday, which demands that the company ensure that:

* Our analyses represent our best independent judgments rather than our preferences, or those of our sources, advertisers or information providers;
* Our opinions represent only our own editorial philosophies; or
* There are no hidden agendas in any of our journalistic undertakings.

Well. Didn't take long to throw that away! Today, WSJ spokesman Robert Christie explained the results of the paper's thorough investigation like so:

"Mark has assured us that through our conversations that he's complied with his conflict of interest policy. He does not have any glamping clients nor did they target them before the column appeared."

That's right: The WSJ's investigation consisted of calling Mark Penn and asking him, "Hey, did you comply with that conflict of interest policy?" The world-famous investigative skills of the WSJ in action, ladies and gentlemen. As a follow-up, we asked Christie if he was implying that it's fine for a columnist to go recruiting clients from a column he just wrote after it's published. His reply:

Obviously when you have a contributor, they use a column to market themselves. Clearly what was done is not something that we liked. But we're pretty sure that it's going to stop.

The Wall Street Journal is "pretty sure" that Mark Penn's PR firm will stop using its CEO's purportedly unbiased column as a business recruitment tool! Why are they "pretty sure?" Because Mark Penn said so! Fuck that published email evidence, anyhow! It was on a "blog," and "blogging" hasn't been a Microtrend for like two years.

Here's what this means for you, the reader of the WSJ: You should assume, when you read a Mark Penn column, that Burson-Marsteller will run to the leading companies in any industry mentioned in that column and set up meetings for them with Mark Penn, who will try to use that column as a tool to recruit them as PR clients. If you really want to be safe, intellectually, it only makes sense to also assume that Mark Penn may decide what to write his columns about based on the business needs of Burson-Marsteller—which are, after all, his primary responsibility.

You should also assume that any other WSJ contributing columnist could be doing the same thing. Because the paper clearly does not consider it a firing offense.

Don't worry, Mark Penn. We won't forget about you. We're looking forward to your next column.

[Previously: The Full Story]