Don’t miss this weekend’s New York Times piece about the online love match made by a well-known law professor blogger, Ann Althouse, and a longtime commenter on her blog, Laurence Meade, who was smitten by her bon mots

After reading the rest of the story about how they met in digital comments and their relationship slowly moved to analog, it’s hard to imagine that people are going to hook up any other way but online in the future.

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Last Friday, BoomTown attended a packed-out book party at the Silicon Valley home of Gary and Laura Lauder in honor of globetrotting pundit Tom Friedman and his latest weighty tome: “Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–And How it Can Renew America.”

The New York Times columnist’s book is catnip for the smart set–including greentastic VC John Doerr–gathered under a swanky tent on a stunningly beautiful late afternoon, even though Friedman’s message was that these kinds of days were pretty much numbered for the human race.

Can Silicon Valley stop dopily Twittering and save the day?

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Last night, well-known Internet entrepreneur Marc Andreessen appeared on the “Charlie Rose” interview show, talking about the digital sector and unveiling the news that he is creating a new venture fund.

I had heard rumblings about Andreessen’s funding efforts earlier this week, with sources I talked to jokingly nicknaming it “Project A.”

Actually, Andreessen said the new firm is called Andreessen Horowitz (zzzz), because he is doing it with longtime investing partner Ben Horowitz.

“For the first time in my life, I am crossing over into the dark side,” said Andreessen.

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Who can resist an all-pork post yesterday in the New York Times about a recipe that has taken the Internet by, well, greasy storm?

The piece, by Damon Darlin, chronicles what started out as an Internet marketing scheme for a site called BBQAddicts.com, but that has turned into one of the more popular dishes online of late.

The dish? “Bacon Explosion.”

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Oh, a nice tiny surprise from Yahoo, as it reported its fourth-quarter results, which came in at 17 cents a share in adjusted earnings, compared to the 12 to 13 cents Wall Street was expecting.

“Despite the challenging economic environment, Yahoo! delivered adjusted operating cash flow above the midpoint of guidance for the fourth quarter,” said new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz in the company’s official release.

But let’s experience Bartz Live and Unplugged at the fourth-quarter earnings call, including a Q&A in which–the company noted at the top of the call–former Yahoo CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang might make an unexpected cameo appearance.

(He didn’t.)

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It wasn’t just Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer meeting in New York last week.

According to several sources close to the situation, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes rounded out the trio of chit-chatting execs, presumably gathered to discuss possible partnerships and other deals between and amongst the companies whose digital assets are among the largest on the Web.

Although the possibilities are numerous, exactly what Bostock, Ballmer and Bewkes–let’s call them the Busy B’s from here on out–were cooking up is unclear.

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Another day, another article about how social-networking advertising has a steep uphill ride to get to any kind of decent pinnacle of profitability. This time, it’s the New York Times’s Digital Domain columnist Randall Stross weighing in on the allegedly troubled experiments going on between Facebook and the world’s largest advertiser, Procter & Gamble. But the article represents the high-water mark of the Facebook-Is-Dead theme, which was, of course, preceded by the Facebook-Is-Immortal story. BoomTown did not buy the latter, but I certainly don’t accept the former either.

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Here’s Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s entire memo to the staff of the Internet giant about the layoffs, which took place today. There’s no need for translation, except to say–as Yang did–that it is the worst of times for any company. Except, as BoomTown previously reported, that there might be more to come, which a Yahoo spokesman told the New York Times. Here’s Yang’s whole memo.

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If BoomTown had known on my recent visit that the New York Times was trying to borrow money, using its spanking new building as collateral, I might have brought a big bag of greenbacks with me just to say I held a mortgage on the stunning edifice. No matter, as I got a most excellent free tour of the Renzo Piano-designed building at 40th Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan and lunch last week from the Times’s longtime and sharp tech reporter Saul Hansell, with whom I did a video interview about the state of the Web and more.

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Well, for sure, Microsoft execs were not doing high-fives after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said he was stepping down yesterday, as Yahoo execs reportedly did after the software giant abandoned its takeover bid for the Internet giant earlier this year.

Well, maybe some small and discreet ones.

And while Microsoft will not be making a renewed offer for the company now that Yang will be going, execs for the software giant were burning up the phone wires down to Silicon Valley yesterday trying to make sure it is well positioned to make the deal it does want: A sweeping search partnership with Yahoo to help battle Google.

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Happy days aren’t here again, it seems.

Still, I am not quite sure what to make of his big, happy smile on Seesmic founder Loïc Le Meur’s face, which went with a story in the New York Times about start-ups cutting costs.

In fact, the whole Seesmic crew is grinning awfully hard, putting a very game face on recent layoffs that cut the staff at the video blog service by more than a third.

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Today, the New York Times did a thumbsucker on the fight over the controversial advertising partnership that Yahoo and Google have struck that is opposed by Microsoft, some advertisers and, maybe soon, the Justice Department.

Thank goodness then for the liveliest part, which came when the Google and Microsoft talking heads squared off.

Just like the dudes pictured here! Schwiiiiing!

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With more critics piling onto the just-say-no-to-Yahoogle bandwagon–questioning the controversial ad deal for Yahoo to outsource some of its search ads to Google–sources said some top Google execs are now hightailing it to Washington, D.C., to smooth over any regulatory feathers the company might have ruffled with its aggressive, damn-the-torpedoes approach to pushing the deal forward.

Meanwhile, Yahoo creates a don’t-worry-jack digital ad council.

So why is BoomTown still worried?

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Yesterday, BoomTown took a rather strong stand against Google and its recent aggressive efforts to defend its outsourcing deal to sell some of Yahoo’s search ads.

Given that the pair have a more than 80 percent combined market share in the search business, I and many others–advertisers, publishers and state and federal regulators–are a bit nervous about further concentration of market power in one set of hands, even if they are such Googley hands.

But in the interest of fairness and because I like to argue with myself, here is a counterpoint with three key reasons why Google and Yahoo might hold firm in launching the partnership, which sources said is likely to start on Oct. 9.

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As usual before yet another big Apple event, the psychic friends network is in overdrive in anticipation of the iconic computer company’s “Let’s Rock” media gathering in San Francisco tomorrow.

At this point, I think Apple could announce a change in the color of its bathrooms at its Cupertino HQ and it would be mayhem among the Mac faithful.

But some of the focus is likely to be on its leader, Steve Jobs, whose gaunt appearance was the talk of Apple’s last event.

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