Midday open thread

• A good year to work for Goldman Sachs.

  The Goldman Sachs Group reported today that it earned $9.34 billion this year, the most in Wall Street history, and that it would set aside $16.5 billion for salaries, bonuses and benefits for employees.

  That figure works out to an average of $622,000 for each employee, although the payouts will be far from uniform: the investment bankers at Goldman who arrange mergers and acquisitions or sell corporate stock to investors will receive much more, and support staff and other kinds of employees much less.

  In the company’s fourth fiscal quarter, which ended Nov. 24, profits increased 93 percent over the year before, to $3.16 billion, or $6.59 a share, exceeding the forecasts of most analysts.

• The blogosphere is a weird place. Truly. I've been in the middle of it for years, yet I couldn't begin to describe what it is, what it does, how it impacts people who live and breathe it. Like this. I had never heard of Leslie Harpold before, but I've just spent the last hour reading eulogies from bloggers all over the web. And I'm feeling her loss.
• Frozen beer tricks:

  if you take a really cold but still liquid beer out of the freezer and open it, the beer will freeze within seconds. The freezing trick also works if instead of opening the beer, you give the unopened bottle a sharp rap.

  With links to video of this phenomenon as well.

• The NBA player's union filed an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB regarding the new basketball. So the league is going back to the old ball.
• I like seeing HP execs freaking out that MacBooks are being seen in business settings. In the blogging world, even old Apple haters like Steve Gilliard are now Mac users. But in the business world? There's no doubt that Macs are the best option for anyone who lives and dies by his laptop, especially now that Macs can run Windows (for those who insist).
• Reid cleared of ethics charges stemming from that bullshit John Solomon piece claiming Reid unethically took free boxing tickets. Remember the one?

  The crux of Solomon's story was that Reid acted wrongly by accepting free boxing tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission. In particular, Solomon focused on a title bout in September 2004 that Reid and McCain both attended. "Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., insisted on paying $1,400 for the tickets he shared with Reid for a 2004 championship fight," Solomon wrote.

  But it turns out that it would have been illegal for Reid to reimburse the commission for the seats. That's because these weren't actually tickets - they were credentials with no face value given to V.I.P.'s. And according to the boxing promoter who awarded those credentials to Reid, it is illegal for the commission to accept payment for them [...]

  What's more, that same promoter says that in other cases where Reid and McCain received tickets that could be reimbursed, Reid paid. That's a key fact which, if true, was left out of Solomon's article.

  Solomon has been rewarded with a gig at the Washington Post.

• Are you a Star Wars fan?  Want to live on Tatooine?  Check this out. [added by Plutonium Page]
• Are you a Vermonter? Want to be made fun of by Sean Hannity, in the comfort of your own home state? Check this out. [Kagro X]