You do not want to miss the weekly festival of swooning self-regard and misty incoherence that will be Peggy Noonan's "Study Group" for undergrads this year, during her fellowship at the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics. Let's read the syllabus.

Concentrate engineers and tech executives in one conference hall, and the ensuing sausagefest is bound to produce some moments truly offensive to women and foreigners. Just ask the organizers of TechCrunch 50 and Demo about their recent low points.

• Michelle Obama had lunch at Gramercy Tavern today; chaos ensued. [BB]
• The Jane Hotel drama continues: Apparently an article about the hotel/club's outraged neighbors was supposed to run in the Times last weekend, but the Jane's co-owner Richard Born managed to get the paper to quash it. [Curbed]
• Trader Joe's may be opening a location on Sixth Avenue and 21st St. [NYO]
• The competition between Greenhouse and Provocateur is heating up. [P6]
• Dean Poll sure is off to a great start: Union workers say they're planning to hold a rally outside Tavern on the Green on Friday afternoon. [Crain's]
• The lawsuit filed by ex-Masa employees for getting shafted out of the 20% service charge added to diners' tabs? A judge says it can move forward. [Eater]
• Guinness is celebrating its 250th birthday today. Cheers. [Serious Eats]

Photo: Flickr

This is Michael Finton, a.k.a. Talib Islam. He was arrested for allegedly planning to bomb a federal courthouse in Illinois. Also he's a Sagittarius and he wants children "someday."

[The Jon Gosselin Mid-Life Crisis Action Figure comes complete with dangling cigarette, trashtastic helmet, and kung fu grip—Please Think I'm Cool Four Wheeler sold separately. Image via INF]

Justine Bateman called to talk to us about how she called some Twitter users "human waste" and "jackass" the other day. And, in about a half an hour, the screenwriter and prolific Tumblr-er distilled some important lessons for everyone.

You will soon be hearing a lot about Barack Obama's "Safe Schools Czar." His name is Kevin Jennings, and you will learn that he wants to promote homosexuality, he hates God, and he does drugs.

• Twitter is close to raising $100 million in new funding. And despite the fact it makes no money, the deal will value the company at $1 billion. [WSJ, CNN]
• A new survey finds that 86% of the public thinks the news media tries to influence public opinion. One reason to discount the data: Fox News came in as the country's most-trusted and least-trusted news source. And Bill O'Reilly ranked as "the most-trusted news anchor on cable TV." [THR, Poynter]
• MTV reports that it plans to go ahead with the drug-intervention reality series featuring DJ AM that was shot just before he died. [THR]
• Michael Moore's new documentary is off to a strong start, alas. [LAT]
• Tim Knight, Newsday's publisher, has handed in his resignation. [NYT]
• Corynne Steindler of "Page Six" is joining Bonnie Fuller's new website. [NYO]
• NBC Nightly News' audience is growing, believe it or not. [HP]
• Yahoo is spending $100 million to remind you it still exists. [BrandChannel]
• CBS has a brand new viewer today. Chief exec Les Moonves and CBS Early Show anchor Julie Chen had a son named Charlie this morning. [ET]

Eric Dane and Rebecca Gayheart filed a federal copyright suit against Gawker Media in California yesterday morning, seeking more than $1 million and an injunction against our publication of this video. Here's the complaint.

The Jane Hotel's crotchety neighbors were about to get a big ol' story about just how noisy downtown's latest celebrity hangout is, but then the Jane Hotel's owners stepped in and killed it. At least that's what the writer says.

"Mayor Michael Bloomberg is trying to raise awareness about how white rooftops can make buildings cooler and more efficient, but the city hasn't painted hundreds of its own buildings." That isn't the only building that needs a paint job, clearly! [AP]

We're still one father-daughter pairing short of a media-certified trend, but as of this morning "celeb blurred family boundaries" is tracking on the Hollywood horrors power rankings chart with a big up arrow.

September 24 @ 2pm The First Lady lunched at the Gramercy Tavern. We heard she just left looking "really pretty." Apparently word got out about the meal and a crowd formed around the establishment. [Image via Black Book]

Here's a question for you: How much do you think this brand new garbage bin is costing the town of Greenwich? If you guessed $675, you've probably been to Beverly Hills recently, since that's one of the only other places that has purchased the "hunter green and gold-lettered" receptacle. The total tab for the 34 new bins is going to come out to about $25,000; the good news is that an anonymous donor has stepped in to cover the costs. And Greenwich will be now cleaner than ever. Which is great to hear because as we all know—and as one local official points out—"it's important to have the proper receptacles so that the trash hits the bin and not the sidewalk." [GT]

Everybody's just itching to prove that the two camera-toting, self-promoting goobers who blew the lid off the prostitute-advisory ring that is ACORN are creatures of a right-wing media conspiracy. Of course they are! But so what?

Together-at-last trio Jason Schwartzman, Zach Galifianakis, and Ted Danson star in Bored to Death, a new HBO comedy series based on a Jonathan Ames story from his collection The Double Life Is Twice As Good.

Together-at-last trio Jason Schwartzman, Zach Galifianakis, and Ted Danson star in Bored to Death, a new HBO comedy series based on a Jonathan Ames story from his collection The Double Life Is Twice As Good.

Well, Jim and Pam, possibly the blandest characters in sitcom history, have set a date. The episode where The Office characters tie the knot is October 8. Does that mean we have to hear about it until then?

Is real estate mogul Kent Swig headed down the same path as Hassan Nemazee, the banker who stands accused of providing banks with false information to obtain nearly $300 million in loans? The Real Deal reported on Monday that Swig, who is facing a series of lawsuits over several real estate deals that have gone bust, may be forced to file for personal bankruptcy if a $28 million judgment against him is enforced.