New York’s currently: able to harbor a few million Richard Curtis fans

 Pentagon forbids French, German, Canadian, and Russian companies from touching $18.6 billion in reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

 Bow-tied Illinois senator Paul Simon dies at 75, a day after heart surgery.

 Seymour Hersh on new Special Forces in Iraq, the Pentagon leaders who love them, and the troubles found in trusting former enemies.

 Hundreds of articles in medical journals, signed by doctors or academics, are ghostwritten by agencies for big cash from drug-makers.

 Reputation of famed mountaineer Reinhold Messner threatened by 30-year-old stories about the death of his brother.

 Rumsfeld endorses our worries about troop rotations early next year.

 Fed paying Haliburton more than twice what others are paying to import Kurwaiti gasoline and other fuel.

 Give: Bread & Life.

 TMN’s Choire Sicha on the troubling wryness of the Believer staff.

 Only $1 for snowballs in Times Square.

 Corby Kummer with good advice on this year’s best cooking books, including our favorite, Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating.

 Holiday song for epidemiologists.

 Every person…at death has a weight loss of 21 grams, the weight of a nightingale. Some believe it is the weight of the departing soul. Not so. The cadaver loses control of sphincters and our fluids dribble out. Ed Koch reviews films.

 Grandma got run over by a big cow.

 Wondering whether art matters, when the FBI and Homeland Security Agency investigate Mark Lombardi’s drawings. (See older drawings.)

 Trailer for Marc Craste’s JoJo in the Stars.

 It’s that time of year again! Advent calendars, and pretend-kicking Santas.

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Still time! Still time! To celebrate Yule early with a piece of your log!