My distinguished colleagues at Daily Intel are in something of a snit today over some recent cameo-casting news from the cruel temptresses at Gossip Girl. On an upcoming episode of the unpopular teen soap will be, of course, a party. And at that party will be two editors from In Style magazine, making cameos as themselves. Also making cameos will be dozens of brand-name products. Then all of that will be tied up in a nice little bundle and covered in the magazine as a "real event." Whee for awkward, product placement synergy! But it's not the first time it's happened on the show. After the jump, we'll take a look at four other cameos, of people and things, that have appeared on the show and rate their Product Placement-ness, on scale from one to ten.

Aways handy with a dubious listicle, Forbes magazine is presenting us with its ranking of America's "Best Cities For Singles." Could Atlanta really be No. 1? Maybe! Dallas at No. 3? Perhaps! But there is no way in hell New York City should come in 8th place. Why? For the same reason this list ranks NYC as number one in the "Cool" category.

Cable news is a hyper-competitive environment full of huge egos fighting with each other for every scrap of a ratings point. And at this time of year, with all the shouting heads descending upon the political convention like a gang of ferrets into a small sack, conflict is inevitable. Plus it's hot, and there's not too much real news anyhow, so everyone is grumpy. After the jump, an illustrated guide to the most vicious feuds in the cable world. Pick your side, demonize your enemies, and play along:

The most telling economic indicator about Sunday's New York Times Magazine investigation into Advanced Obamanomics is how it is not very economical with the words! There are 58 incidences of the word "but" alone. (Plus 10 "yet"s, 6 "however"s and 2 "on the other hand"s.) See, he is at heart a radical Marxist, but also a Clintonian sellout! A lover of markets, but also regulation! Etc. etc…1. He wants to cut taxes BUT he also wants to raise them! Barack Obama actually wants to cut taxes by an average of $900 a year for the average household, which is wayyyy more than John McCain. BUT, for the average household in the .01% of households, he wants to raise taxes by an average of $800,000 a year! This is radical socialism yes BUT we agree with former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin who maintains that studies show it is not sufficient to "stifle innovation" especially with regards to how rich people do their taxes. 2. He thinks Ronald Reagan did some good things for the economy BUT he also thinks Bill Clinton did some good things for the economy. Put another way, he is from Chicago BUT he is also from the Chicago School. As we all know, Barack Obama was a community organizer in Chicago. That job led him to think welfare reform was not a good idea, probably because he worked with people on welfare. But at the same time he also taught a constitutional law class at the very "Chicago School" that is the hotbed of all those people who think despite all evidence to the contrary that markets solve everything. By some form of "osmosis" Barack Obama is said to have absorbed the realization that markets do actually solve some things and now he wants to apply them to solving pollution or something. 3. He likes Bob Reich BUT he also likes Bob Rubin! So did Bill Clinton, you say? True enough BUT! Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs moneylover Bob Rubin ultimately prevailed in the "Battle of the Bobs" with Labor Secretary Bob Reich over Bill Clinton's economic policy. BUT! It is not 1993 anymore! Fifteen years have passed! Bob Rubin got Bill to cut the budget deficit, which was good for interest rates, which was in turn good for rich people, and also deregulate the fuck out of everything, which was really good for rich people, but guess what he just told the Times? He said: "The distributional issues are obviously more serious now." A few weeks ago Obama even tried to broker a little peace agreement with the Bobs over dinner!

I have terrible news. The Broadway-bound revival of swingin' Godsex musical Godspell has been postponed. And you know why? The economy. Yes the bad economy is even stopping Jesus. What terrible, hellacious times are we living in, anyway? You'd half expect to see demons filling our streets... And! Wait, yes! Look, there they are. Hell beasts, and Bigfeet, and all manner of other two-headed ghouls. It's the summer of monsters, lurching into our world from the ruined corners of this modern world. After the jump we'll take a digested look at this season's many abominable creatures.

As these are the biggest stories imaginable in our plagued and ruined times, we thought we'd wax high school poetic about celebrity jinxes and death curses, and then provide you with a list of some of the best ones right. here. After the jump you can read all about the Poltergeist skeleton hex, the famous Rule of Three, and the Exorcist ailments, among others. There are seven of them, because that is a lucky number. Stay away, ghost of Burgess Meredith!

It goes without saying that we will not be in Beijing to cover the Olympics. Furthermore, we've never been to Beijing, and our Olympic experience is limited to one pair of first-round tickets to see the Dream Team crush Kyrgyzstan or somebody in Atlanta in 1996. None of this precludes us from rounding up all of the information on the Internet in order to tell the media that actually is covering the Olympics in Beijing how to do its job. So listen up! Don't be just another sap writing about Michael Phelps while being beaten by Chinese police. After the jump, the only guide to covering the wondrous 2008 Olympics you will ever need:

Political thinking, wrote Orwell, suffers from a universal problem. "People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome." You'd think by now that sentence would be printed and tacked above every editorial desk in every newspaper bureau around the world. Yet who hasn't read recently that Barack Obama is already the next president of the United States? Even where this presumption isn't stated outright, it's implied with enough moonbeams-and-gillyflowers sentimentality (halos if you're Rolling Stone) that every guilty hack in the country must have laughed hardest at last week's Onion headline: "'Time' Publishes Definitive Obama Puff Piece." ("When the American people cast their vote in November," remarked the only slightly exaggerated version of editor Richard Stengel, "this is the piece of fluff they're going to remember.")

Hot on the paw heels of the news that Ryan Seacrest was devoured by sharks over the weekend, comes word that Gordon Ramsay, the blustering British cook who yells at cooking school dropouts for a living, was viciously attacked by a puffin. He is expected to live. What's going on? Are animals rebelling against the most rich and glittery of our species? We'll take a look at some other celebrity animal attacks after the jump and try to detect a pattern.

Poor Maureen Dowd doesn't know how to make fun of Barack Obama. It's actually pretty easy! Everyone misses Bill Clinton because he enjoyed extramarital sex with interns and oddly unattractive women, he had a southern accent, and he was kind of chubby. Everyone will miss George W. Bush because he's stupid. Those traits are so, so easy to mock! But the problem is jokes about those traits were and are and always have been terrible. Have another Big Mac, Bubba! Then put a cigar in someone's vagina! Hey George Bush you look like a chimp! And, like a chimp, your grasp of complex concepts like grammar is often lacking! Jesus. Stop already. Obama's a godsend, because he lacks those easy buttons. So everyone has to be more creative with their humor. Allow us to help you!

Babies! Famous people have been having them! And then they also sell photographs of the babies because, in some twisted Dina Lohanian world of logic, selling the photos of the babies somehow mitigates the other paparazzi attention the little squirming things would inevitably receive. It's a highwire act of faux inferential reasoning, but it seems to be popular. Probably because of those millions of dollars. Brad & Angie (Pitt & Jolie) haven't yet announced plans to sell their new twins' souls (if you believe the Injuns), but they did hawk pictures of their other real kid, Shiloh, donating the proceeds to charity. So yeah, lots of people are doing it. But who hasn't? Which big-time celebs adamantly refuses to publicize, for no valid reason, their progeny? Take a look at a little gallery after the jump.

British Tetra Pak (an "aseptic solutions" company) heir Hans Kristian Rausing was just charged, along with his wife Eva, of possessing crack cocaine. What a shame! Rausing's father is worth billions. Other wastrel heirs?

Did you hear? The Reverend Jesse Jackson made reference recently to the testicles of Barack Obama. Only he called them "nuts." Nuts! A funny, elementary school word, isn't it? Totally harmless. But of course you'd have no idea what the hell Jackson said if you only read the Times piece on the story. Because the New York Times apparently won't print the word "nuts." Which is ridiculous. We understand that the Times, like most major publications, has a self-censorship policy that almost always forbids it from using genuine expletives (unless the president says them!), but to elide the harmless word "nuts" actually misleads the reader into thinking Jesse Jackson said something far filthier and more obscene. This is not the first example of the Times censoring such harmless bullshit, either. The most egregious examples, after the jump.

Yesterday, a grown man threw a tantrum and stormed off the internet. Because we bullied him. It wasn't pretty. Are we proud? Well, it's a living. We spent today mulling over some wise advice we received. And, of course, it's true. We should be constructive! In the spirit of friendship, we'll explain how to survive the Internet without letting the bastards get you down. Heed our words, and you'll never have to shut down another blog. Or quit a message board, or ban yourself from a comments section. Never again will you hear the sirens of the waaaahmbulance.

As we learned in Vanity Fair yesterday, Bill Clinton has spent his post-presidential life gallivanting about the world with a small cadre of scummy billionaires. All aging boomers, all sadly unwilling to mature, all addicted to sex with women a third their age. Who are they? What do they want from us? (Hint: if you are a girl aged 14-22, they want to have sex with you.) Let's meet the whole crew! They are just like Entourage except gross old billionaires.

Andew Krucoff asked Rex Sorgatz which Twitter feeds he should follow. If those names mean something to you, you may already be familiar with this list. (Which is, in Krucoff's words, "a little tech, a little New York, a little media and lots of girls, girls, girls.") If not, here are the Internet Glitteratti's most personal thoughts and dreams, expressed in 140 characters or less. After the jump, the 23 people you Tweet in heaven.

Humanity's age-old quest to subdue nature is chronicled nowhere so epically as in cheesy Hollywood movies. And today Entertainment Weekly went ahead and chronicled that. A selection of classic screenshots follows.

Santiago Calatrava's improbable residential skyscraper on South Street, a tower of boxes as unsteady as Jenga blocks at a late stage of the game, is dead. And the Port Authority is scaling back the Spanish architect's daring design for the financial district's PATH station. The architectural critics will no doubt bemoan the loss of New York's civic ambition, and wonder why rival world cities such as Shanghai and Dubai have taken up the mantle. (Oh, yes: authoritarian regimes, unbridled capitalism and cheap labor, but let's not go there.) Truth is that the drawing boards are littered with visions of Manhattan that were never realized. Here are my dozen favorites.

I'm guessing that Time's "Most Overrated Blogs" feature doesn't include Tumblrs. There's a readers' poll that goes with the article-we're on it, natch-but I like that Time has picked a few blogs out for particular ridicule. "Reading Slashdot these days is like visiting the IT guy at work. He's infuriatingly smug and cares passionately about stuff you don't care about, and views your lack of interest as further confirmation of his intellectual superiority. Enjoy." Jim Cramer's money.com rantings? "The place to go to be reassured that the financial market is fine, just fine and Bear Stearns isn't in any trouble at all. Be sure to check back later in the day to see if Jim has posted any updates."