Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"New York University economist Nouriel Roubini, who predicted the US financial crisis, says surging food and energy costs are stoking emerging-market inflation that's serious enough to topple governments. Hosni Mubarak can attest to that. The United Nations reckons countries spent at least $1 trillion on food imports in 2010, with the poorest paying as much as 20 percent more than in 2009. These increases are just getting started. In January, world food prices rose to another record on higher dairy, sugar and grain costs. Events in Egypt are a graphic example of how people living close to the edge can get motivated in a hurry to demand change. Keeping that rage bottled in the age of Twitter, YouTube and Facebook won't be easy. Hence Roubini's concerns about geopolitical crises. There's an extreme irony in the timing of all this. It's coming as the world is becoming a heavier place. Obesity rates have almost doubled since 1980 and almost 10 percent of humanity was seriously overweight in 2008, according to the medical journal The Lancet. People have never been fatter at the same time when food prices have never been so high. The Westernization of Asia's diet is partly behind the rise in food costs." (William Pesec)

"At 6-foot-2, the green-eyed babe with a 30-inch waist has already chalked up a number of bookings at Fashion Week, modeling women's wear at shows like Kimberly Ovitz and Nahm. For the past two months, the fashion flock has raved about the 19-year-old's unique look. 'Stunning New Global Catwalk Sensation,' exclaimed Australia's Herald Sun. But there's just one difference between this mannequin and the rest of the gals. This model is a man. Andrej Pejic, who was born in Bosnia and bred in Melbourne, was discovered only last year by European designers, who were bowled over by his incredibly feminine appearance. Now he's modeling women's clothes on New York's catwalks for the very first time. '[Being cast as a woman] is not something that I feel uncomfortable,' Pejic tells The Post. 'Sometimes women's wear is more fun and less restrictive.' So far, Pejic is pleased with the reception he's received in the Big Apple. 'I can't say that I've been shunned,' he says. 'It's my first season in New York, so it's exciting. I'm fairly new to women's wear, so let's hope it goes up from here.'" (NYPost)

(image via NYSD)

"The wonderful Judy Collins opened to a packed house last night for her fifth annual appearance at the Café Carlyle. I think I’ve seen her every time she's appeared there, and I have been a fan since she first came on the scene in the 1960s. The voice is still as strong and as delicately sweet and effecting as it always was. The long brunette hair is now snowy white, piled abundantly and elegantly atop her beautiful head, Edith Wharton-style ... The serenity in her voice and manner is catching. For those of us who were around when she began her career and followed her thereafter, her work has become a harmony of personal Proustian moments. The audience last night, obviously responding to this, settled in for a cozy evening of those moments. Power, turbulence, rock-n-roll and folk music aside, Judy Collins casts a spell with her grace, her voice and the gentle, yet off-handed wit of her patter between numbers." (NYSocialDiary)

"Three years ago, at a time when Russian politics was reduced to the anointing of a new czar and the dead hand of state patriotism lay on everything, I got bored of my life as a journalist in Moscow and decided to go for a walk. It was less of a stroll, more of a trek -- a four-month journey from the Black Sea to the Caspian, across the northern flanks of the Greater Caucasus Mountains, which rise in a palisade on Russia's border with Georgia and Azerbaijan. In popular Slavic imagination, this 700-mile belt of country below the snowy peaks is a domain of warriors and bandits, a stereotype that owes at least something to fact. I met a murderer on the run, got arrested on suspicion of being a spy, and saw more Kalashnikovs than you could shake a stick at. Violence felt like it was always just around the corner. But I was lucky; my journey coincided with a relative lull in the guerrilla war that has gripped the region since the end of full-scale fighting in Chechnya in 2001. Sadly, the peace turned out to be illusory, a mere interlude in the battle between Islamist militants and the Russian state that has since roared up with renewed intensity, spreading further and further through the North Caucasus and bringing terror back to the streets of Moscow." (ForeignPolicy)

"I don't think there are media companies that are ignorant about technology any longer. It's not like everyone in media companies is 75 years old and out of touch. The Internet has been around a long time now. Those 50-somethings running media companies have been using the Internet and earlier technologies since they were 20-somethings. This shit ain't new no more. The challenge for media companies is to balance hitting earnings-per-share numbers for shareholders or debt holders and finding money to invest in new technologies and create new business opportunities. Sure, they have lost subscribers and advertisers and advertising dollars, but many have managed to hang on, and some have thrived." (Mark Cuban)

"It wouldn't be a #NYFW (for those of you not on Twitter, that's 'New York Fashion Week') without a Visionaire Magazine party, and this season, they teamed up with not-yet-opened Mondrian Soho to celebrate the 21st Issue of VMan. And seeing as the magazine just reached drinking age, the crowd certainly did turn out for the Belvedere Vodka-splashed event, including Kanye West, Vera Wang, Sean Lennon, Visionaire's editor-in-chief Stephen Gan, Brad Goreski, Peter Davis, Derek Blasberg, Genevieve Jones, Sophia Lamar, designers Prabal Gurung and Richard Chai,  Teen Vogue's Andrew Bevan, and Harley Viera-Newton. Rumors abounded for most of the afternoon about some sort of V-themed surprise, specifically, that Kanye West was going to give a performance. Instead, guests were treated to the rare spectacle of dollar bills falling from the sky." (Papermag)