Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"George Soros cites Isaiah Berlin as an important intellectual influence, so it makes sense to see Soros through one of the Riga-born philosopher's best-known lenses -- the division of the world into foxes and hedgehogs. In his public life, Soros is a broad-minded fox: As a hedge fund manager, his success rested on his ability to make many different bets every day. In his philanthropy, Soros is foxy too, supporting, under the broad umbrella of 'open society,' dozens of causes in dozens of countries. But intellectually, Soros is a more narrowly focused hedgehog. He has been pondering, articulating, elaborating, and publicizing variations on one big idea for more than half a century. The way he describes that central thought today is "the significance of imperfect understanding as a motive force or determinant of history.' Over the years, Soros's written expositions of this concept have sometimes met with bafflement, even as his financial prowess and philanthropic accomplishments have been widely admired. For Soros himself, though, his big idea and many public initiatives are intimately connected; his intellectual framework, he believes, is what has made him good at everything else. And, to his delight, after years of struggling to be accepted as a public intellectual, the turmoil in the world economy has finally made the rest of us more receptive to his insight. 'The present moment is a potent illustration' of how imperfect understanding shapes bad outcomes, Soros told me when I interviewed him recently for Foreign Policy. 'We have had 25 years of a superboom, interspersed by financial crises. Each time, the authorities intervened by reinforcing the credit and leverage in the economy, until it became unsustainable. Then you had the crash of 2008, where the financial system actually collapsed and had to be put on life support, which consisted of substituting sovereign credit for the financial credit that was no longer credible.' Soros sees this boom-and-bust cycle as a real-world example of his theory, illustrating how flawed ideas shape events: 'It was all due to a false dogma which postulated that financial markets tend towards equilibrium.'" (ForeignPolicy)

"Fallen anti-virus mogul John McAfee is still running from his demons and Belizeian authorities despite claiming (quite unconvincingly) on his website that he had been apprehended over the weekend. 'I apologize for the silence, and misdirection,' he writes today. 'I am currently safe and in the company of two intrepid journalist from Vice Magazine, and, of course, Sam,' his 20-year-old lookout. According to McAfee, who is wanted for questioning in the shooting death of his neighbor last month, a decoy, 'carrying on a North Korean passport under my name, was in fact detained in Mexico for pre-planned misbehavior, but due to indifference on the part of authorities was evicted from the jail and was unable to serve his intended purpose in our exit plan.' Uh huh. Although he claims to be an enemy of the state, McAfee says he will return to Belize once Sam is safe because 'I can do little in exile. My lifeline of information pertaining to the inner workings of the government depends on my physical presence.' We'll know more later today, supposedly, when Vice publishes its dispatch. (Update: 'A Vice reporter and a videographer have been traveling with John for the past three days documenting his entire journey,' a spokesperson confirms to Daily Intel. 'Vice has been in regular contact with the journalists, and in the coming hours VICE.com will release an update.')" (NYMag)

"Weekend overcast with a grey that looked like snow. Too warm; temp in the mid- to low-50s with a light rainfall Sunday.I barely strayed from home. Except for dinner on Friday night at Antonucci Café on 81st between Lex and Third, and Swifty’s on Saturday night. Saturday afternoon it was the 79th Street crosstown to Zabar's for the bread and freshly sliced Scotch smoked salmon, the Health bread, the carrot cake; a small slice of Port Salud, green tea (bags); Carr’s Whole Wheat Crackers. It is mainly the bread and the salmon that I go for every week. One quarter pound, each piece patiently and exquisitely sliced and gently placed on the wax paper and packed up neatly. The place was very crowded, but that’s the spirit of Zabar's. The sidewalks outside the place are crowded too. There are three tables of a bookseller who’s always got the Met’s Saturday opera broadcasting on his portable radio. He loves books and grand opera; you can see it." (NYSocialDiary)

"Our fave Miami blogger iamjohnnyboy.com has been tracking all of the latest gossip surrounding Art Basel Miami Beach 2012 and we asked him to pick his "Top 10 AB/MB Parties." Here's what he's looking forward to -- in no particular order: 1) Pin-up No.13 cocktail party honoring Philippe Malouin, with a performance by Lauren Devine at Yabu Pushelberg residence 2) Dior Homme and W magazine party to celebrate Bruce Weber's film "Can I Make the Music Fly?" at the Moore Building 3) Gagosian party celebrating Richard Prince's 'Lemon Fizz' collab with Arizona Ice Tea at Chez Andre 4) Inspiration Miami Beach Party hosted by amfAR, M.A.C, Josh Wood, and Interview magazine at Soho Beach House 5) Tumblr, Paddle 8 and Milk Studios party for "Moving the Still: A GIF Festival" at their Wynwood Space (318 NW 23rd Street)" (Papermag)

"Paris is Burning came to Union Square for a night at the inaugural W Love Hangover Ball in support of amfAR. Your Daily entered the cozy (translation: sardine-packed) cocktail premises, right outside the W Hotel's Union Square Great Room (aka voguing HQ for the eve) to the sounds of 'Heyyyy, queen!' and no less than three salutations of 'Grrrrl' being exchanged back and forth. Paying homage to the legendary Vogue balls of the eighties members from the houses of Xtravaganza, LaBeija, Mugler, Mizrahi, Balenciaga, Ninja and Prodigy worked it out in categories such as Vogue Fem, Runway, Male Magazine Face, and Sex Siren. Mickey Boardman, Fatima Robinson, Simon Doonan, Hector Xtravaganza, W's Edward Enninful, and even Fergie served up their own saucy acts as judges mostly giving votes of 9 or 10 to the dancers. The front row, which didn't throw any shade, included Stefano Tonchi, Wendy Williams, Isaac Mizrahi, Anne V., Zac Posen, Richard Chai, Anja Rubik, Anne V., Brian Mazza, Lorenzo Martone, Ana Matronic, Richie Rich, Josh Wood, and Bryan Boy. Kelly Osbourne hosted 'the freaks and geeks of New York,' with Ladyfag serving up her sassy feedback to the audience." (Fashionweekdaily)

"I first met Arianna (Huffington) when she was president of the Cambridge Union. She agreed to write a foreword to my book on the Greek colonels, a little deal arranged by my wonderful publisher and friend Tom Stacey. Arianna was ecstatic to do it. She considered me on a par with Aristophanes, Thucydides, and Herodotus, or so she is thought to have said to Tom. Then the Greek colonels collapsed, Taki became a nonperson in Greece for having served them, and Arianna decided to stick closer to someone such as the great Bernard Levin rather than (Taki) ....Having left me behind, Arianna went from strength to strength. She wrote a book on Callas that was reportedly edited too much by Levin, a man who had forgotten more about music than she ever was to learn. Under the advice of Lord Weidenfeld, another suitor, she moved to America and befriended people such as Barbara Walters ...After a brilliant marriage to a very rich Texan oilman who preferred boys to girls, Arianna got divorced, kept custody of her two semi-Texan heiresses, and started The Huffington Post. After a while she sold it for 315 million smackers. I tried to commit suicide when I read about it but was prevented from doing so by my daughter, who runs Taki’s Mag and has promised to sell it one day for 316 million greenbacks. How one sells something for 315 million dollars without paying the writers or breaking any news is a Greek mystery to me, but good luck to Arianna. They say there’s a sucker born every minute, and she found one in AOL, who bought her out but also kept her running things." (Taki)