• Federal government trying to make Times op-ed page less boring. [NYT]
  

Usual caveats apply, but a tipster writes:

A recent post mentioned the "plan" by "North Carolina billionaire" "Percy Walker" to deprive us of our gays. Mr. Walker's blog is incredibly humorous and a cracking good read, and we would never suggest the possibility that it might be some sort of hoax or parody. And why would we need to? The scrappy investigators at Forbes have put their crack team of non-departed staffers on the case. Mr. "Walker" was nice enough to forward their query as to his veracity, along with his response. After the jump, find out what Forbes writers are doing when they're not coming up with reasons that you shouldn't marry a career woman.

Just over the transom:

A delicious deaf dumb and blind item filled article in the Financial Times picks up where Forbes left off with more tips on how to successfully marry, and stay married, to a Manhattan business mogul.

Is it just the weirdness of repeating "food" that makes Forbes's piece about the new Yahoo Food portal sound so strange? Some quotes:

• Blogger Michael Arrington holds his New York City TechCrunch party at BED, the bar/restaurant furnished with beds instead of couches, once featured on Sex in the City. One Yelp reviewer says, "It's a definite must for the bridge-and-tunnel crowd." Expect plenty of confusion as the selective bouncers reject Arrington's more unfashionable guests. [TechCrunch]

• Missed out on every significant Valleywag post since June? Forbes writer Erika Brown wraps up the creep of "cool" into Silicon Valley. By finishing with a quote from Almost Famous, she's won me over. [Forbes]

We came a bit late to the tech mogul scene, so we missed that whole "Bill Gates is t3h suxxors" phase. Or at least we were still young enough to say "suxxors" without irony when that phase passed. So it is with complimentary — no, congratulatory — attitude that we announce: According to Forbes, Bill Gates is $2 billion richer than he was this time last year, and he's still the richest American alive.

Co-written by Beth Gottfried

Last week, the New York Times' business section tut-tutted at Forbes.com's selling itself to advertisers with best-possible audited site traffic (15.3 million visitors in February) when that figure has been slightly revised down by the auditor, not to mention much less impressive recent numbers (7.3 million visitors in July). Forbes.com exec James Spanfeller claimed the poor July showing conflicted with their much more cheerful internal log numbers, and could thus be discounted. High card always wins! The NYT also grumbled about the percentage of Forbes.com visitors actually going to the latter's car-sales site, not to mention traffic-whoring like the "career women" debacle, "American's Drunkest Cities," etc., rather than content ostensibly of interest to the business reader (or advertiser). Ignoring all that, Spanfeller complained that NYTimes.com prefers its own optimistic internal traffic numbers, so Forbes.com is hardly alone in that respect — something the competing NYT biz section should have noted for transparency's sake. NYT business editor Lawrence Ingrassia admitted that Spanfeller was right, but added that the point didn't "warrant a correction." Just because you're correct doesn't mean you get a correction, see.

Why, Forbes, that is a clever theory on "waves of computing" you have there! It reminds us of the theory published last July in competing magazine Business 2.0!

Bar the gates! Pull up the drawbridge! From Forbes's latest cover story (scary emphasis mine):

With Mountain View blanketed in wifi from Google and San Jose more wired than Too Much Coffee Man, how did Silicon Valley's towns get sidelined from Forbes's "America's Most Wired Cities" list? Only San Francisco made it in (fourth place, baby). Well, Forbes explains their methodology (emphasis ours):

Forbes's top-of-the-homepage coverage of the "naked short-selling" scandal at software firm Sedona and investment bank UBS is impressive not because of the double exploitation of "naked" (it got you to read this, right?) but for how that makes us interpret the other head, "Utah Governor Caves On Shorts."

Paragons of good taste and sharp-eyed journalistic integrity, Forbes leaves behind the salient issue of why women should stay in the kitchen, and tackles the much more pressing issue of just how drunk is everybody who has a job?

• 2500 astronomers from 75 countries decide Pluto isn't a planet, but a dwarf planet. Copernicus has no comment. [CNN]
• 250,000 women from 1 country decide Michael Noer isn't a dick, but a COLOSSAL dick. Everyone continues to comment. [The American Prospect]
• Do The Killers need to be taken down a peg? Two new songs to help you decide. [stereogum]
• Speaking of killers, we present MyDeathSpace. [via bestweekever]
• This girl's taking a killing, but a finance intern in London acting a little snootay? Shocking! [TimesUK]
• Eliot Spitzer seems slightly less jovial than Tom Suozzi. [NYDN]
• Publicists and fashion bloggers congregate together. Ewwww. Watch from a safe distance. [youtube]

Forbes sex "exercise porn" feminism "offensive gender stereotypes"

Readers: A word of advice. Ask Forbes.com the following question: Why the hell would you print one of the most sexist, chauvinistic articles in the history of respectable periodicals and then republish it, but as a debate?