Andy Kruse

[thedinnerpartydownload]

At our recent Holiday Frolic live show, Brad Neely (creator of Adult Swim’s “China, IL”) did a presentation of his favorite not-necessarily-heartwarming Christmas movies.

For more from that event, download our special bonus podcast.

[witsradio]

On the podcast this week - Colin Hanks channels his inner hockey player and Father John Misty asks ‘what is hockey?’

Plus raccoons!

[nprshopped-blog]

Brendan Francis Newnam & Rico Gagliano, The Dinner Party Download (Hazzard Co., GA, 1979)

[witsradio]

'Lady, You Shot Me', by Har Mar Superstar, performed live at the Fitzgerald Theater with John Munson and The Witnesses.

[aakruse]

Episode 39: David Cross with Har Mar Superstar

[newsweekscience]

Girls first Ski Jump (by UK2NZ2NC2UT)

[thecityofculture]

Faces of Real Estate

I have a deep respect for anyone who is willing to put their face on a bus stop bench knowing what people do to them. I thought it would be fun to do my own take on our local realtor advertisements. - Phil Jones

[americanpublicmedia]

"It is the destiny of Si Se Tango to follow Yo La Tengo around the world, stealing their glories and making love to their wives."

-Episode 32 of Wits: Paul F. Tompkins and Yo La Tengo 

[someofmybestfriends]

[liquidchroma]

Andy?!

[aakruse]

No.

[aakruse]

I worry that something has gone seriously wrong with the way we run companies. If you read the media coverage of our company, or of the technology industry in general, it’s always about the competition. The stories are written as if they are covering a sporting event. But it’s hard to find actual examples of really amazing things that happened solely due to competition. How exciting is it to come to work if the best you can do is trounce some other company that does roughly the same thing? That’s why most companies decay slowly over time. They tend to do approximately what they did before, with a few minor changes. It’s natural for people to want to work on things that they know aren’t going to fail. But incremental improvement is guaranteed to be obsolete over time.

Larry Page

[splendidtable]

Fluorescent Jello

A recipe from chef Stefan Gates:

This isn’t a cheat, and it’s not an optical illusion — these are simply gin and tonic jellos made by adding gelatin to G&T and leaving them to set. So why are they glowing that fantastic ghostly color? The answer is that quinine (the bitter flavoring in tonic water) glows under UV fluorescent light. If you want to serve this to kids or teetotallers, it works just as well without the gin.

[aakruse]

My review of Death Wish Coffee, the world's strongest coffee, with 200% more caffeine than anything else you've ever consumed

It was alright, I guess.

[mckaylaisnotimpressed]

[pilhofer]

Finding the Right Metric for News

The project our Knight-Mozilla fellow will help tackle was hatched in January during a bus ride to the Austin airport with news brainiac (and karaokaholic) Greg Linch. He had just written a terrific post on his blog, The Linchpen, about the need for more sophisticated metrics to measure the success or failure of journalism online. I’d been thinking about the same problem, but Greg crystalized the challenge and the opportunity perfectly.

In his words: “So, what if we measured journalism by its impact?”

It sounded to both of us to be an ideal project for someone to sink his or her teeth into. After all, the benchmarks we use now are so ill suited. They are the simplistic, one-dimensional metrics we all know: pageviews, time on site, uniques. We use them largely because they are there and because they are easy — even though we all know they’re a lousy way to measure impact.

Read More

[aakruse]

Hey, we're a radio program. So forgive us if one or two or three extra recording devices sometimes sneak into frame.

[aakruse]

[treedance]

The Art of Shooting the Olympics

CNN’s photo blog has a gallery of Donald Miralle’s Olympic photography.

A better place to view them though is on Miralle’s site.

[aakruse]