* Vivek Wadhwa: Can Russia build a Silicon Valley?

* Joe Weisenthal: Nine ways gold is a religion masquerading as an asset class

* Morning Call: U.S. futures point higher on Basel III, London rises early, European shares extend gains and the Nikkei climbs 0.9%.

* Joseph Tartikoff: Death of the RSS reader

* Is Wall Street about to dump Blackberry for iPhone?

* Why Adam D’Angelo quit his job as CTO of Facebook and launched Quora

* How Goldman makes (and unmakes) its partners (good piece, although Felix Salmon points out that the same author wrote it a few years back for another pub).

* Will new lobbying rules change the nature of PE/VC contributions to political candidates? Probably not, since firms themselves rarely donate.

* Tweet of the Day: @farbood Advice for entrepreneurs raising money. Don’t act like a crazy-asshole. Stick with one or the other.

* Jeff Atwood: When it comes to running my startup, I take business advice from Better off Dead’s Charles de Mar.

* David Levy: M&A activity will be choppy:

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