A lobbying group backed by Elliott Management's Paul Singer enlisted the American Agriculture Movement, the American Association of University Professors and the Cattle Producers of Washington, to lend heft to investors' efforts to recover defaulted Argentinean debt through political channels. One problem? The trade groups aren't really sure how their good names got associated with anything having to do with Argentina, as The Wall Street Journal reports.

Another strange one: A former employee of William Koch—billionaire brother to Charles and David—says his boss kidnapped him after he raised concerns over a plan to evade $200 million in taxes.

Caxton Associates is trimming management fees to 2.6 percent form 3. percent, and performance fees to 27.5 percent from 30 percent, according to The Journal. Macro funds such as Caxton often charge higher fees than the traditional two and twenty; Caxton follows macro funds Tudor Investment Corp and Graham Capital Management in adjusting fee structures.

High-frequency trading firms are said to be dialing back in the face of lower profits.

James Gorman, Wall Street revolutionary?

Activist investors Warren Lichtenstein and Tim Brog are squaring off over board seats at supply-chain company ModusLink, according to The New York Post.

There's plenty for world finance chiefs to fight over in a series of upcoming meetings. There's Greece, of course, plus Spain, Italy and assorted other eurozone economies. Also: a territorial dispute between China and Japan, not to mention U.S. lawmakers' refusal to deal with the coming fiscal cliff.

Thousands of anti-austerity protesters marched through Madrid, banging pots and pans, to protest austerity measures.

Send in the troops! The Swiss Army is preparing to mobilize in event that the European debt crisis turns violent.

The London Whale—still mysterious/fascinating as ever.

Though a bit more on the fantastical side, this clip shows Steve Jobs defeating Bill Gates in a light saber duel, taking the Darth Vader helmet from him, and then becoming the villain himself. It's this video that Andrew Leonard at Slate dissected when analyzing whether or not these Next Media Animation videos actually count as "news":

While the Steve Jobs clip does a decent job of covering a spring and summer's worth of Apple news — stolen iPhone prototypes, suicidal Chinese workers — it certainly doesn't fit under what we used to think of as "news." Steve Jobs isn't actually Darth Vader.

I think.

Next: "Chilean Miners Face Up to Life Underground"

Last week, with a rollout that included an endorsement from George Lucas and a letter from Larry Ellison, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett announced that dozens of billionaires had pledged to give away half their fortunes. The list, which included corporate raider Ron Perelman, mortgage billionaires Marion and Herbert Sandler, Citigroup architect Sandy Weill and the ex-Enron trader John Arnold, started a new episode in the old conversation about big money and God's work. Can the really rich be really good? Should they have to be?

The morning after the announcement, a soft-spoken CEO named Kerry Propper was sitting in the glassy Financial District office of his investment banking outfit, Chardan Capital Markets. A statue of a drooping Dalí clock sat next to a mini-bottle of kosher Champagne. "I have kind of a double life," he said. In his business world, he acquired one of the largest mortgage foreclosure processors in the country earlier this year. "Is that the bad guy? You tell me," he said. "If someone is borrowing money and they don't pay, and the bank decides it's all right, then the system will break, O.K.?"

Mr. Propper spends a lot of time thinking about very different systems. Around this autumn, a documentary that he's spent six years working on with Edet Belzberg, whose Children Underground was nominated for an Oscar, will be finished. Produced by Mr. Propper, who paid for most of it, and who traveled with Ms. Belzberg to Chad and Ethiopia to film, Watchers of the Sky tells the stories of the lawyer who coined the word "genocide," Raphael Lemkin, and his successors around the world.

"Kerry's been incredible," said Ms. Belzberg, who won a MacArthur "genius" grant in 2005. "I don't see it as a dichotomy, I see it as a person doing work."

As the film's editing moved along this year, Mr. Propper, 35, worked on finance projects like China Networks International Holdings, a TV advertising company he helped start. It's a joint venture with the Chinese State Administration for Radio, Film and Television, one of the main agencies responsible for government censorship, according to a Congressional report. "I believe, truly, that he's the kind of person moving forward with a very clear sense of his own morality, and trying to make choices that make sense," said Taylor Krauss, who filmed parts of the documentary, and who started the nonprofit Voices of Rwanda. "I think we all have our needs, and our vices, and our virtues."

MR. PROPPER GREW up with his mother and stepfather in Albany. Around 10th grade, his dad, a businessman in California, sent him Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. "I couldn't put it down," he said. He started up a high-school investors club.

His father is Dr. Richard Propper, who runs a similarly named venture capital group, Chardan Capital, in California. Dr. Propper has fallen into trouble over the years. In the 1990s, he settled with the S.E.C. over disclosure problems, and in 2005 and 2007 he was sued for defrauding the Small Business Administration out of $32 million. He ended up with a fine. His son had to pay a small one, too.

"I take less risk," Mr. Propper said about his father. But the two have worked together on investments called special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. They're pools of money, raised from investors who don't know what they're investing in, that are used to buy up companies. Mr. Propper was doing film work in Chad in 2007 when an article on one of their SPACs, a crop-seed business called Origin Agritech, was published in Barron's, along with a summary of some of his father's past problems. "He was very, very upset," said Ms. Belzberg, who was there. "He left the trip early."

This year, his special-purpose deal for the foreclosure firm, called DJSP Enterprises, became official. A long Mother Jones piece this month called "Foreclosure Barons" was really a profile of David J. Stern, the head of the company: Mr. Stern has, in addition to sexual harassment charges against him, and a class-action case that accuses his firm of racketeering and fraud, a jet-propelled yacht called Misunderstood outside of his 16,000-square-foot mansion, the article says. He bought up his neighbor last year for $8 million, to tear the house down for a tennis court. "When people say, 'Oh my God, the economy is bad,' I'm like, 'Oh my God, it's great,' he told bankers at a Laguna conference in March, where Social Distortion played a private concert.

How does Mr. Propper feel about acquiring DJSP, a giant of foreclosures? "It only processes them," he corrected, just before a colleague stuck his head in. Exactly like Mr. Propper, he was wearing a crisp white shirt tucked into black pants held up with a silver-buckled black belt.

Mr. Propper went over to him and they started talking about business. "Twenty-five million," the young bald man said, rapping his fingers against the glass. They stepped outside. "High yield," one voice said. "Small deal," said the other.

Mr. Propper came back into the room and sat down again. "O.K., so," he said, clearing his voice. "I believe in efficient markets," he explained. "An efficient market needs certain things, and the main thing, I've learned, over many years, is a rule of law."

But what about his Chinese work? "If you're looking at the media space alone, you have to understand China's goals from their perspective," he said. "You have to work within that system."

ABOUT SEVEN YEARS ago, he read a book by the Harvard scholar Samantha Power, A Problem From Hell. It spoke to him, especially the early chapter about Lemkin. He sent the book to John Carr, a friend since high school, who had moved out to California. He's a screenwriter, and a producer on The Hills and The City, though he once wrote press releases for his friend's dad: "He's always on the make, always on the move, always finding the angles," Mr. Carr said about Dr. Propper. He was speaking while driving down Rodeo Drive, where he was getting pants altered at Brooks Brothers, though he drives a 1994 Accord: "I'm kind of," he said, "a contrarian."

For a while, the two friends thought about writing a feature film about Lemkin, and even drafted a treatment. One day, Mr. Carr was talking to his father's cousin, the 60 Minutes producer David Gelber, who turned out to know someone who wanted to make a documentary about Lemkin. It was Ms. Belzberg, who was connected with Mr. Propper.

"We kind of hit it off," he said.

Mr. Propper said the film has been a struggle, but only relatively: "I live in Tribeca, I go out to dinner when I want, I fly whenever I want, wherever I want. That's not struggle."

Additional money for the film has come from places like George Soros' Open Society Institute and Sundance. On Thursday, Mr. Propper and Ms. Belzberg met with David Einhorn's foundation to see about raising a final bit of money. "The stories of the people we're following are really incredible," she said, "and I hope people find them inspiring."

In the meantime, Mr. Propper's business is evolving. Late last year, he and his father were sued by investors in a $1.25 million deal for a Chinese firm called Huiheng Medical. Its CFO said on a conference call that the company was "spending substantial amounts of money paying bribes to officials in control of the Chinese hospitals," the suit
says. According to records, it was settled this year. "It was a non-event," Mr. Propper said.

Still, he's moving away from China. For a while, he was interested in creating SPACs in Pakistan. "I kind of got close with a bunch of people," he said. He had to move on after Pervez Musharraf's fall. "I'm looking at other areas; I'm looking at Russia," he said. He might start with real estate there. "Africa is one place that I'm learning from the movie may be a real opportunity, five years from now," he said. "I just don't know when it's going to be ready."

mabelson@observer.com

He is one of 40 super-rich people and families who, after peer pressure from Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates, recently pledged to give away more than half of their wealth to charity. The Journal says that many of these Mr. and Mrs. Moneybags (mostly Mr.), whose ranks include Michael Bloomberg and George Lucas, would have likely donated that sum away anyway, following their past giving trends, and that the Giving Pledge only makes their generosity public.

But Mr. Buffet pointed out the value of high-profile giving.

"If Carnegie and Rockefeller hadn't done what they'd done, there'd be less philanthropy in the United States today," he said.

Here's how the modern-day Rockefellers explain their generosity:

• "Our view is fairly simple," eBay founder Pierre Omidyar said. "We have more money than our family will ever need."

• "We want to leave our kids a different kind of inheritance, an example of at least trying to lead a worthy life," investor Tom Steyer said.

• "I believe the philanthropic contributions I'm now making are as much gifts to my children as they are to the recipient organizations," said Mr. Bloomberg, who has pledged "nearly all of my net worth."

• "When I was in high school, I felt like I was in a vacuum, biding time. I was curious, but bored," said Mr. Lucas, who has pledged "the majority of my wealth to improving education."

• "I don't measure success in numbers, but I consider my contributions of more than 1.3 billion dollars to various causes over the years to be one of my proudest accomplishments and the best investment I've ever made," Ted Turner said.

• "I know the meaning of enough," Blackstone co-founder Peter Peterson said, quoting Joseph Heller.

• Oracle CEO Larry Ellison blames Mr. Buffett. "Warren Buffett personally asked me to write this letter because he said I would be 'setting an example' and 'influencing others' to give," Mr. Ellison said. "I hope he's right."

It’s true that, under cap and trade, companies receive permits to pollute. But it’s also true that the permits gradually reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses they are allowed to emit.  For the record, it’s not just rich companies that get to buy permits to pollute, but clean companies that get to sell them. The idea is to get as much pollution reduction as possible at the least possible cost. There are two basic alternatives to cap and trade: 1. a simple cap—what is often called command and control regulation; or 2. a tax on carbon. By setting a cap or tax on pollution, you are still allowing it to take place—and so it is still “permission to legally pollute.” An out and out prohibition on carbon dioxide emissions is infeasible, since it would end economic life as we know it. Jon Stewart’s Daily Show would be taken off the air, since there would be no electricity to run our televisions. That would be a shame, since it’s my favorite TV show.

The problem of global warming is a complicated one, and it is only the most visible of the impacts of our growing technological capacity. Our economic and political lives are becoming more complicated and more difficult to manage. We benefit from these technological marvels, but we are more vulnerable as a result of them.  The growing complexity of economic life and financial transactions has been further complicated by the increased technical and scientific content of the goods and services provided by our post-industrial society. For example, the free market marvel of Henry Ford’s Model T has been replaced by today’s highly regulated automobile—a vehicle that includes pollution control technology, required safety equipment, and a range of computer controls and other technologies. Similarly, American farming has come a long way from “40 acres and a mule” to become a highly mechanized, computer-controlled agribusiness. 

Public policy requires an understanding of science and technology to be effective. Farming practices influence food safety, public health, and water supplies, and even generate ethical issues that stem from cloning and genetic engineering. Our public officials cannot regulate those activities in the public interest if they do not understand the science and technology upon which they are based. How can one create policy on “how clean is clean” at a toxic waste site—how far clean-up must proceed before it is complete—without some understanding of the transport, toxicity, and latency of the individual and interacting chemicals?

The names Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, and Thomas Edison are well known and are of a time when technology and the economy was simple enough for inventors to become “heroes” and even players in the national economy.  Today’s version of these innovators, like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, may not be “inventors,” but are technically sophisticated managers who depend on huge R & D machines to develop new products. They continue the 20th century practice that tied economic growth to technological innovation.

New products, made with new and more efficient production techniques, are constantly introduced and upgraded: autos, electricity and illumination, refrigeration, air conditioning, radio, telephones, black and white TV, color TV, digital TV, main frame computers, laptop computes, satellite communication, air travel, cell phones, Blackberries, the Internet, and computer software. Modern economic life is dominated by the development and introduction of new technologies.

Just as economic life is dominated by science and technology, public policy issues are increasingly shaped by scientific and technological developments as well. Understanding public policy requires increased levels of scientific literacy. For example (not an exhaustive list):

• National security: Arms, aircraft, submarines, ships, missiles, atomic weapons, and spy satellites are all subject to constant technological change and advancement. Modern warfare is dominated by the importance of new technology and the ability or inability to develop counter-measures to these new technologies.
• Health care. From immunizations to MRIs, health care and the associated calculation of costs and benefits are constantly changing due to the development of new drugs and technologies. Moreover, the effect of the use of non-medical technologies on human health requires both an understanding of those technologies and of their impact on human biology and chemistry. People are living longer and healthier lives as a result of medical technologies. These technologies are reshaping our economies, societies, and politics in profound ways that we are only beginning to understand.
• Environmental Protection and Sustainability. The entire range of human activity influences a web of biological relationships in our ecosystems that eventually lead back to humans and their health. We are learning more every day about the science of our planet, how it is changing due to human impacts and what we need to do to minimize our negative impact or “footprint.” We need to learn more about how to provide food, water, energy, and other resources based on the principles of reuse and sustainability.

Scientific and technical literacy is essential for understanding and governing the modern world. To maximize the benefits and reduce the costs of using new technologies, decision-makers must develop a more sophisticated understanding of the science of the new technologies they are selling or trying to regulate. For example, in the 1950s and 1960s, engineers knew that the toxic waste they were dumping the ground could kill people and ruin the environment, but the business leaders they worked for were largely ignorant of those scientific facts.  Most of the elected leaders responsible for the communities “hosting” these dumpsites did not even know they existed or, if they did, that they were dangerous. At the infamous Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York, the Hooker Chemical Company sold the land they dumped chemicals on to the local government for a dollar. The community then built a school on top of the site, with a playground directly over the dump. Eventually, the chemicals leached off the site, causing great harm to the local community. It is difficult to know how much it will cost us to clean up this nation’s toxic waste, but the job is far from over and the bill is probably over $100 billion. Ignorance was far from bliss. In the 21st century we need to do a better job of teaching our leaders to understand science and technology. 

In addition to understanding science, last year’s Wall Street meltdown should also convince us that we need our leaders to develop a deeper understanding of finance as well.  The media can play a role in increasing our scientific and economic literacy, or they can focus on death squads, the President’s birth certificate or cute word plays on “cap’n trade.” A cheap laugh is always better than a vicious lie, so I’ll keep tuning into The Daily Show—since even on the rare occasions that he is wrong, Jon Stewart always does his job and makes us laugh.

Mr. Caldecutt sports thin-framed spectacles and a sparse red beard and currently works as a publicist for Trylon SMR, a public relations firm that specializes in representing technology, media and telecommunications companies. He practically made a career out of testing and trying out new online communication systems, Web applications and trendy mobile phones. Like his fellow “early adopters”—the passionate Web nerds who try out the latest Internet tools and wacky gadgets—he has helped to shape our future with technology. We might think they are regular geeks, clamoring for beta invites publicized on blogs like TechCrunch and Mashable, itching to test out Internet platforms and programs while they’re still in the embryonic stage. But early adopters not only help spread the word about a new product—like a army of nerdy PR agents for the Internet—they also help develop it by offering feedback to its creators. They were the ones flashing their new iPhone long before it became the hottest tech toy on the market, and emailing Apple that the map function had inaccurate information. They bugged you to join Facebook ages before everyone from grandma to the president was signing up for it, and told its developers to make the “is” in status updates optional. “As soon as it becomes available, I’ll try it,” Mr. Caldecutt said. He has used hundreds of Web services you’ve probably never heard of, like Dodgeball, a mobile social networking software founded by two New York University students that will text your friends your exact location.

Yet more and more people in their teens, 20s and even 30s seem to be making early adoption a new, cheap hobby (most beta invites for Web products are free). “Some of the training wheels are off,” Mr. Caldecutt said. “There’s still a long way to go. [Some Web products] are complicated to use and, in many ways, they are very geeky. But among the younger, hip segment of the population, the bracket has gotten wider.” And they are communicating about these new Internet tools through social networking sites—Twittering away their complaints about Twitter—to help get the rest of us on the bandwagon.

Seth Godin, the best-selling author and self-described “agent of change” whose latest book is titled Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, is a kind of evangelist for early adopters. “Today the people who got made fun of in high school—they are the ones who matter so much. They’re the ones shaping new technology that diffuses to the masses,” he told The Observer in a phone interview from his Westchester County office. “The reason you need to care about early adopters, even if you aren’t one, is because this small group of people are going to change your world.”

Of course, there are all kinds of early adopters; Mr. Godin explained that you can find them in every industry, from environmentalists to fashion fetishists. “Women who read Vogue are early adopters,” he told The Observer. “They are the ones who wait in line at Bergdorf’s to buy the new Manolos. And those same women might be early adopters in that they bought cell phones at 6 years old.”

According to a theory called Diffusion of Innovations, formulated by Everett Rogers in his 1962 book of the same name, early adopters make up 13.5 percent of the population. “Diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system,” he wrote. Now that these social systems are online, and more young people are joining them, the word gets around a little faster than it did back in the ’60s, when we relied on newspapers and advertisers to tell us about the most exciting new innovations. No one has estimated what the percentage of population might be considered early adopters now, but it’s growing all the time.

“Because there are so many more online communities and social networking programs and everything, it’s probably a lot easier for a typical, mainstream, everyday technology user to know someone who is an early adopter,” said Whitney Hess, a user experience designer who helps companies make their product more friendly for the mainstream. “They’re hearing about the evolution of early products much more than they used to. Everyone wants to know about the latest and greatest.”

Internet companies pay attention to early adopters because they basically operate as free developers, helping to make their product better. Some early adopters will champion a shiny new Web product on their blog or Twitter accounts, only to abandon it and take the mainstream folks along with them. (Remember Friendster? Buh-bye!) So companies need to keep early adopters interested by staying relative and innovative—and maybe offering discounts or rebates once the product officially launches, too. (Think of when Steve Jobs offered a $200 refund to all those early adopters who bought the first, very expensive version of the iPhone.)

Ms. Hess is currently working for Boxee, the multimedia software with social networking features that has the early adopters in a frenzy. She has been interviewing Boxee users, from the 20-something, high-tech savants to moms in rural New York about why they use Boxee and how it can be tailored to suit wider audiences. “Mainstream users aren’t that different from early adopters in that they can be equally tech savvy,” Ms. Hess explained. “It’s a difference in patience, maybe, an interest in wading through the early flaws and kinks. Some people don’t have that level of tolerance or ability to commit that time.”

They may be a little nerdy, scheming behind their glowing screens, but we should all pay attention to these tech freaks who are shaping the goodies we’ll be wanting for Christmas next year. Bijan Sabet, general partner at early stage investment company Spark Capital in Boston, said that “the early adopter group drives everything.” His company has invested in products that excite early adopters, including Boxee and blogging platforms Twitter and Tumblr.

Mr. Sabet said early adopters can be a prickly group—attacking company owners with venomous emails and blog posts, criticizing their programs when they are in their earliest, most fragile stages. But some offer helpful advice, submit user-generated content and even develop additional applications to help show companies their product’s potential. Mr. Sabet brought up Jacob Bijani, a young graduate of the Art Institute of California in San Diego, who started building layout themes for Tumblr for free, just because he liked the blogging platform. Mr. Bijani’s work was so impressive that the company hired him as their new creative director last December.

He also mentioned a blog post written in March by New York–based venture capitalist Fred Wilson titled “Ten Things I’d Like FriendFeed to Do.” Mr. Wilson suggested some changes to the Web service, which aggregates photos, music and other content submitted by friends from other networking sites into a simple feed. He wanted photo thumbnails, playable mp3s and easier comment management. Bret Taylor, who co-founded FriendFeed along with three other former Google employees, wrote in the comments section of the post, “I agree with you on almost every single request,” and some of the changes were implemented soon thereafter.

Clearly, early adopters are important. But companies also have to worry about losing sight of the moms, pops and great aunts of the Internet world. We don’t all think like our geeky IT guy, so how do we get what we want out of these gadgets and Web sites? Can we be early adopters, too?

We can, but it’s still up to the industry to keep users—all of us—satisfied. “It’s really tough to take the company over that seemingly unsurmountable chasm and going to the other side,” said Ken Berger, president of LogX Technologies, who consults investors and entreprenuers in Web-based start-up companies. He put Bill Gates, former CEO of Microsoft, and Steve Jobs, current CEO of Apple, on the short list of company leaders who ushered early adopter products into the mainstream. They were successful because they had a two-pronged approach—they wooed the early adopters and kept them happy with inventive innovations while also appealing to the mainstream by making their products user-friendly for everyone (and pretty, too).

President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign team had a similar plan, using traditional campaign tactics like town hall speeches, handshaking and baby holding. But they also used Twitter, iPhone applications and their own social networking Web site to mobilize early adopters and spread support for Mr. Obama. He had the best of both worlds.

Still, Mr. Berger said, despite all the advancements, “the vast majority of people out there are afraid of the technology. It could just be too esoteric or too exotic for general use, but the majority of people push away at that.”

But what are we so afraid of?

Meghan Asha, 28, of Soho, an early adopter who blogs as a “geekette” under the NonSociety network (where Julia Allison also dispatches her dating advice), said signing on to new technology is essential to modern life. “It’s survival of the fittest, actually, we’re learning to change our brains,” she said, somewhat disturbingly, calling in from Las Vegas at the International Consumer Electronics Show, the gadget convention for tech fetishists. “People that haven’t been in this generation, who grew up with new technology all around them, they need to keep up.”

Let that be a warning call. And if it’s still too scary for you, at least start following your techie friend’s Twitter. How cool would it be to watch her shape the next TiVo?

greagan@observer.com

Perhaps realizing that the odd ads featuring Mr. Seinfeld and Mr. Gates shopping for shoes and moving in with a suburban family because they "need to get in touch with the people" were entirely ineffective—the self-deprecating ads seemed to drive the point of Microsoft being "out of touch" only further—the company has now summoned Deepak Chopra, actress Eva Longoria and musician Pharrell Williams for the new ads.

This new phase will reportedly directly respond to the "Mac vs. PC" ads by featuring an engineer who will resemble the "PC" character, played by author John Hodgman, in Apple's ads. (The image of an open casting for Mr. Hodgman look-alikes on its own sort of trumps any clever ad ideas Microsoft is bound to come up with.)

But Microsoft spokesman Tom Pilla denied that there was ever any misstep within the ad campaign, adding that the three ads featuring Mr. Seinfeld were always intended to be "teasers" for the larger campaign that is to come. Mr. Seinfeld was not dropped from the campaign, he insisted.

"The ads that feature Bill and Jerry have done exactly what they were designed to do," said Mr. Pilla. "Any suggestion otherwise is untrue."

The company, whose recent quarterly profit growth has been upstaged by Apple, is hoping that the 54-year-old comedian will help make Windows seem less stale and outdated. But the choice of Mr. Seinfeld--who is most associated with his eponymous, and quintessentially '90s, New York-based sitcom--has left more than a few industry observers scratching their heads, especially since Mr. Seinfeld will reportedly appear in ads with 52-year-old Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. After all, there is a reason Steve Jobs recruited Drew Barrymore's ex-hottie Justin Long to be the cool young Mac representative, and glasses-wearing author John Hodgman as the uncool PC, in the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads, rather than appearing in any ads himself.

The campaign was conceived by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, a Miami-based ad agency recently hired by Microsoft to redefine its image. The new ads are expected to premiere Sept. 4 and will use a variation of the slogan "Windows, Not Walls," according to several people close to the deal that the WSJ was able to reach off the record. Also considered for the ads were comedians Will Ferrell and Chris Rock.

Robert Passikoff, the president of the New York branding firm Brand Keys, said of Microsoft, "They are not seen as cool. Apple is cool. Can anyone even recall a Microsoft ad? No."

From the article:

At least they knew what they wanted.

“I’m delighted Bill and Melinda Gates are supporting one of the most important public health efforts of our time,” Bloomberg said in a public statement released prior to the event. The two just walked on stage here at the New York Times center on West 41st Street to discuss the initiative.

This announcement comes on the heels of a World Health Organization report about the widespread use of tobacco, which Bloomberg helped fund. He attended the release of the study back in February.

Politically, appearing with Gates - who founded Microsoft but is now retired - reinforces Bloomberg’s image as an active philanthropist, and makes him look less like a lame duck mayor whose presidential bid didn't happen, and whose interest in the governor's race waxes and wanes.

There are 11 television cameras behind me, I just spotted Deputy Mayor Patti Harris, and city Health Commissioner Tom Frieden is making the rounds. The place is full of reporters.

Yesterday, Barack Obama lost one of his better V.P. options when Jim Webb backed out of the running, apparently deciding that the rigorous vetting process and the intense scrutiny of a national campaign weren’t for him.

Around the same time, one of John McCain’s most intriguing options might also have removed herself – but not intentionally. That would be Carly Fiorina, whose nonchalant mentions of Viagra and birth control at a breakfast with reporters yesterday are reverberating in the blogosphere today, seemingly confirming the conventional wisdom that the ousted Hewlett Packard C.E.O. would simply be too risky an addition to the G.O.P.’s national ticket.

You can actually make a case that the bluntness she exhibited yesterday would actually help McCain and the G.O.P. – loosening up the party’s uptight image and simply drawing more attention to the ticket – but the conventional wisdom is probably still right: The circumstances of Fiorina’s departure from H.P. in 2005 alone would probably haunt her and McCain well into the fall if she were to join the ticket.

But if not Fiorina for McCain, then whom?

Obviously, if McCain wants to make a safe choice, he has plenty of options – chief among them, Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty. But as I (and others) have written, he would reap no meaningful benefit from taking a Pawlenty, who would strike most Americans as a generic politician. But doesn’t McCain, who is running uphill, need a V.P. pick that will spark some more interest than that?

Fiorina obviously fits the bill as an outside the box candidate, but her prospects seem to be fading. Bobby Jindal, the 37-year-old Louisiana governor and son of Indian immigrants, is another obvious option, but some regard him as too green – and also risky – just as Sarah Palin, the 41 44-year-old first-term governor of Alaska (two years removed from being the mayor of a town of 800 5,500 people) is also dismissed as too inexperienced. Bill Gates’ name was floated last week, but that couldn’t have been serious. He’s not even a Republican, is he?

The idea of picking an unconventional running-mate seems entirely consistent with McCain’s political instincts and style. But when I try to think of who he could realistically pick to fill this role, the only name that seems truly plausible to me is Joe Lieberman. Are there others out there? Am I forgetting someone?

CORRECTION: Palin, as it turns out, is 44 and not 41, and the town she served as Mayor, Wasilla, has about 5,500 people, not 800. Also, she left the mayor's office in 2002, and did not jump directly from Mayor to Governor in 2006.  No excuse for these errors.