In one of the more memorable scenes of Casablanca, French police captain Louis Renault feigns shock at the uncovering of a secret gambling room at the rear of Rick’s Cafe Americain. Just moments later, with perfect comic timing, an employee of the establishment walks up to Renault and hands him the proceeds from his winnings that evening.

I couldn’t help but think of this moment when I came across a story in Slate’s news digest section titled “Partner in damaged oil well slams BP for ‘reckless’ actions — and inaction.” Read more »

Title: “The Road to Serfdom”

Author: F.A. Hayek

Rank: 4

Blurb: “Originally published in 1944 — when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program — The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production.”

Review: “This guy is well spoken and insightful. But beyond that his style makes his writing hard to follow. Preferably books ought to be written in the most easily understood and comprehended form. This author’s style is one where the sentences are long and filled with commas and interjections. Also the text is somewhat old so the phrasing and expressions sometimes were extremely hard for me to understand.”

Customers Also Bought: “Ayn Rand Box Set”

Footnote: Hayek in the Amazon Top Ten? Glenn Beck, of course. Let’s see Oprah do that.

The Road to Serfdom [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

A friend of mine had lobster gazpacho at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central on Friday and loved it.  So how hard can it be? We’re about to find out:

Yield: Makes 6 servings

Ingredients

• 1 1/4  pounds  ripe tomatoes, cut into chunks
• 1  large red bell pepper, quartered
• 1  small onion, cut into chunks
• 2  large shallots, quartered
• 6  large garlic cloves
• 3/4  cup  loosely packed cilantro leaves
• 2  tablespoons  prepared horseradish
• 2  teaspoons  salt
• 3/4  teaspoon  freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4  teaspoon  ground red pepper

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European powerhouse teams such as Germany, France, and England are collapsing. The workaday Dutch continue their systematic move forward in the World Cup play.

Today’s World Cup Hottie of the Day is a product of the Ajax training factory recently profiled in the New York Times, plays for Inter Milan, and scored today’s goal in the 1-0 defeat of Japan.

Meet Wesley Sneijder.

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Corporations around the world are eager to exploit Afganistan’s newly discovered mineral wealth.  JP Morgan has just sent a team of mining experts to Afghanistan to examine possible projects to develop. No word if Goldman Sachs is going to Kabul next.

[NYT]

Hey, it was either this or a detailed explanation of why you have to nil your asynchronous NSURLConnection instance delegate when deallocing a view, lest the spare thread create a zombie and crash your app when it finishes its work in the background and discovers that its callback protocol left the building.

Because that’s what we spent Friday night thinking about.

[via 27b/6]

Alright, due to overwhelming bitching by the str8 boys about the Department of Lady-Bits’ objectification of the men in the World Cup Hottie of the Day series I’m running, today we’ll feature some World Cup ladies.

While I will do you boys a favor, I insist that there must be at least one photo of an actual athlete, therefore, I begin with the iconic image of Brandi Chastain in 1999 when the U.S. won the Women’s World Cup in a shoot-out.

World Cup WAGs and announcers after the jump.  What is a WAG? Well, I’ll explain that too.

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