Pacific Coast News has snapped a picture of Timberlake on the set of The Social Network, the Facebook flick also staring Jesse Eisenberg as co-founder and current CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Andrew Garfield as spurned co-founder Eduardo Saverin. We've put the shot, above, next to a Jan. 2009 Getty picture of real-life Sean Parker. Timberlake's got the the curly hair down; with some highlights and that wardrobe he might pass for the 'N Sync version of himself from the late 1990s. Click to enlarge.

Timberlake picture by Pacific Coast News

Jut ask the fellow at right in the picture above, snapped by Web developer Sean Percival on Oct. 31. It's an impressively faithful likeness of Rose's unintentional BusinessWeek pose. Rose, for his part, has a sense of humor about the costume, which is impressive, given that his unprofitable company is still waiting for its long-promised payday, and that his cover picture is now apparently a cultural icon of an absurd tech-bubble thinking.

(Right pic above by Sean Percival)

CNN's new look is here, and Salon's is here. Larger screengrabs below:

The Village Voice reprints a delightful little rant from an anonymous NYT staffer that originally ran 45 years ago. It proves that bullshit lasts longer than anything else. There's fake trend stories:

Times reporters who once kept a watchful eye on the doings and undoings of the numerous agencies supposedly serving the public are now scampering about the city on so-called non-stories, such as features and long background and mood pieces...The Times local news coverage is cute, but not very informative.

A Metro section that ain't what it used to be:

For all practical purposes there is now one City Hall reporter and a part-time housing reporter. The Times now depends for most of its city affairs coverage on the Associated Press, which mans a few "beats" with newspaper hacks; the mail, though which press releases come; and the various department public relations men who will "let you know" if anything important breaks.

And, of course, this stuff:

City politics is now left to reporters so anxious for page-one stories — with an angle and with "color" — that they are biting at every worm dangled before them by gleeful politicians. These stories embarrass the more experienced reporters.

Today the New York Times ran an op-ed about the wild world of internet microcelebrity by Bill Wasik, a senior editor at Harper's. But which one?! The mag's publisher sent this email to his staff about the threat they face today, and every day:

From: John R. MacArthur
Date: 2009/7/30
Subject: Harper's/Harper's Magazine
To: [Harper's staff]

I hope everyone has read Bill Wasik's excellent op-ed in today's Times. But I also hope you noticed that the paper of record, in its infinite arrogance, identified Harper's Magazine as "Harper's" in his ID line. Believe me, everyone on the staff has to insist — even fight — to get us identified correctly as Harper's Magazine. Title confusion with Harper's Bazaar is a terrible problem; if you don't believe me, ask Frank, who will tell you a story in confidence about the latest egregious example. Nowadays, these seemingly small details are crucially important to our health. Even in routine correspondence you must identify the magazine as Harper's Magazine, at least in the first reference.

Rick

He writes well for a fashion guy, don't you think?

[Frank, what is this egregious example to which Rick refers? Please tell us in confidence! (Not really in confidence).]

Edelman memo.

Stalinist propaganda.

Edelman memo.

Military-industrial complex propaganda.

Edelman memo.

Hitler Youth propaganda.

Bing is on the left; Kayak on the right.

Microsoft guards its own intellectual property fiercely, amassing a hoard of patents, threatening free, competing systems and, as the member of the Business Software Alliance, zealously "auditing" businesses that might be pirating software.

But it's been repeatedly accused of not practicing what it preaches:

• Apple sued Microsoft for copying the Macintosh's "look and feel" with Windows; it lost repeatedly in court and settled other claims out of court.
  
• Disk compression company Stac sued Microsoft for purportedly stealing its technology; it won at trial and Microsoft dropped its appeal after agreeing to pay $43 million in patent royalties and invest $40 million in the company.
  
• More recently, Microsoft settled a lawsuit over live gaming technology and lost another over XML technology. "Latest Microsoft Patent Describes Method of Losing Patent Infringement Suits" was the All Things D headline on that last one one.

Hasselbeck's masterwork has the catchier-sounding title The G-Free Diet: A Gluten Free Survival Guide, but what lies within bears a wealth of similarity to Living, Hassett and her attorneys claim.

TMZ has gotten their mitts on the legal documents, which detail the many suspicious likenesses between the two books. Chapter names, phrasing, and content, etc. Some examples:

So, hm! Not exactly smoking guns, but warm ones perhaps. While we're not terribly certain just how many ways there are to write a book about Celiac Disease and diet, we're also not sure that Hasselbeck (although she is a Boston College graduate!) has the wherewithal to come up with anything on her own steam, unless it's some bird-language rave about Sarah Palin.

Anyone read her book in full? Or Hassett's? Let us know!

[Pics: The Smoking Gun, Getty]

CIA: Use "intelligence" as a euphemism for doing who knows what.
Bankers: Use "finance" as a euphemism for doing who knows what.


The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.CIA: Train to ingratiate themselves with sources of information.
Bankers: Train to ingratiate themselves with sources of revenue.

CIA: Did cocaine with Colombians and spent all night partying with hookers in a drug lord's villa. It was a mission.
Bankers: Did cocaine with Colombians and spent all night partying with hookers in a Murray Hill co-op. It was Tuesday.

CIA: Have been known to foster regime change in far-flung foreign countries to bolster the interests of the US military-industrial complex.
Bankers: Ditto.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.CIA: Hunt down moles.
Bankers: Hunt down the city's best molé sauce; price is no object, just bring us our fucking food, Pedro.

CIA: Will ride through the rugged mountains of Afghanistan on horseback to make contact with tribal leaders.
Bankers: Wife once suggested some sort of "adventure vacation" crap. I was like, I don't work 100 hours a week to spend my vacation in some tent in the desert getting pissed on by a camel. Go shopping, why don't you, I have a client meeting tonight.

We predict success!
[NYP]

At yesterday's White House press conference, the AP's Jennifer Loven asked White House press secretary Robert Gibbs why Barack Obama is only asking his cabinet secretaries to come up with $100 million in budget savings. Gibbs answered the question, and Loven tried to follow up but Tapper smelled big game! So he just talked over her and started badgering Gibbs about the budget, inserting himself into Loven's question like the true gentleman that he is.

Tapper puts his exchanges with Gibbs on his blog with his no-holds-barred take-no-prisoners questions in bold so his mouth-breathing wingnut readers will know who's who. He didn't want any of them to miss out on his hijacking of Loven's question, so he posted that yesterday, too: "I interjected in an exchange between White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and another reporter today, so I've included their exchange (with my interruption) as well as my own."

We should point out in fairness that, unlike many of Tapper's presser questions, the one he interrupted Loven with was actually reasonable. But he still asked it in a very dickish way, so Michelle Malkin's blog thanked him for it. There's a lesson here: Jennifer Loven asked Gibbs about the budget by waiting her turn and being courteous but insistent. No Michelle Malkin link. Tapper asked Gibbs about the budget by interrupting and being confrontational and a dick: Michelle Malkin link!

Get with the program, Loven.

The photo is dated 1999 on the ScanCafe website; a company rep said in an email that the shot is believed to be from one of Madoff's costume Christmas parties. Between the hat, dollar-sign chain and fur coat, worn shirtless, it's pretty clear the photo subject is dressed as a pimp.

In other words, a criminal who normally impersonated a legitimate businessman apparently liked to sometimes impersonate a different type of criminal. A less ambitious type, and one who would be facing far less jail time right now if busted by the cops.

The ScanCafe picture could always be a prank. We wonder who would go to this much trouble, though. If it is a fake, then the subject has a future career ahead of him as a Madoff impersonator.

[ScanCafe]

• January 9, 2009: The First Documented Reference is Made: "I saw a picture on Google News that caught my attention in that it made him look eerily like George Washington. "
• February 26, 2009: Blogger wonders if anyone else notices resemblance: Maybe investors trusted him simply because he looks like the Father of our Country!
• March 6, 2009: Staten Island commenter notices the same thing. The seventh seal has been unbroken, the dead are rising, the end of the world is near.
• March 11, 2009: Appearance of First Video Mashup Youtube mashup: Interestingly, in this one Madoff is simultaneously both Washington and Ben Franklin.
• March 11, 2009: NBC Washington commenter Emory Humdorf notes, "The strange irony is that he bears a striking resemblance to George Washington.The strange irony is that he bears a striking resemblance to George Washington.
• March 12, 2009: The very next day the same irony is noted by NYT commenter: ironically, he kinda of resembles the guy on the one dollar bill in this picture…
• March 13, 2009: Sensing the zeitgeist, Gawker overlord Nick Denton commissions Steven Dressler to create two portraits. (See below)
• March 14, 2009: The official history of the Geo. Washington/Bernie Madoff similarity is published on this website, thus validating the meme as a true social phenomenon.
• March 15, 2009: Joshua David Stein is offered six figure book deal to write a blog-to-book book about Madoff and Washington tentatively entitled, "George Washington and Bernie Madoff: They Kind of Look Alike." to be put out by Knopf.

• 
  
  
  [Photos: Top: DarthAbraham/Flickr] Middle: Steve Dressler did the two top good ones. Bottom: I did the kind of crap bottom one. If anyone knows how to make a layer look like an engraving in Photoshop, I'd welcome any tips.]

"Highlights" (ha) of an LA Times story from April 9, 1993:

GRAY GETS RESPECT; THE PRESIDENT, A PREMATURE AND UNABASHED SILVER FOX, CREATES 'POSITIVE IMAGE CONSCIOUSNESS'

Though still shy of his first hundred days in office, Bill Clinton has not been spared his share of media criticism. But there's one rite of presidential passage he will never have to undergo: the comparison of two photos, one from before Inauguration Day and one some time later, the former showing the chief executive with shiny dark hair, the other illustrating how much grayer he has become as President.

Clinton, now 46, began going gray five or six years ago — "probably about the time he started thinking about running for President," says Jim Miles, owner of the U.S. Male hair salon in Little Rock, Ark. Miles cut Clinton's hair regularly from 1979 until the inauguration.

The only difference is Obama trotted his barber out a full month earlier in his term than Clinton did, proving once again that Hope is Progress. [Pic via]