While recently entering my favorite five new albums released in 2006 for the KEXP Top 90.3 countdown, I realized that the B-Side Records annual four-page best-of list extravaganza was likely out and on the shop’s counter. Indeed, Madison’s most jam-packed end-of-the-year list — its sixteenth edition — was ready for reading.
The State Street record store’s formula is relatively simple; every current employee and as many past employees as possible are solicited to submit their best-of-2006 list. There are no constricting guidelines, as the lists can be as short as nine albums to nearly as long as one hundred, not counting the supplementary songs and live shows that can listed as well. Then there’s always a guest, one person who is invited by B-Side to submit their favorites too. In the end, everything gets tallied up, and the four-page thicket of lists is condensed to their collected “favorite things,” with any album receiving three or more picks featured and framed.
Mobile Mansions Book
Douglas Kiester takes a fabulous look at Legacy RV’s.
Nothing Good Will Come of a Midwest / Airtran Merger….
AirTran Holdings is roughly a tenth the size of its main competitor, Delta Air Lines. So AirTran executives would seem unlikely cheerleaders of a potential merger that would make Delta 60 percent larger.
But the recent $8.5 billion takeover offer for Delta by US Airways has found a fan in Joseph B. Leonard, chief executive at AirTran, which, like Delta, flies routes across the Southeast from its hub in Atlanta.
“I’m rooting for it,” Mr. Leonard said yesterday in an interview, after announcing his own proposed takeover of Midwest Air, an airline based in Oak Creek, Ill., for $290 million.
Mr. Leonard may relish his role as underdog but that is not why he hopes the carriers merge — he just wants to see fewer jets in the sky. After all, US Airways’ proposed takeover would reduce the two airlines’ combined jet fleet about 10 percent.
20 Business Ideas & The VC’s with Cash
Michael Copeland & Susanna Hamner:
The result is this list of 20 tantalizing business ideas, ranging from a host of new websites and applications to next-generation power sources and a luxury housing development. This isn’t small-time thinking, either: These investors -which include some of Silicon Valley’s most successful VCs as well as serial entrepreneurs like Steve Case and Howard Schultz are backing their ideas with a collective $100 million in funding to the entrepreneurs who can get them off the ground.
Silicon Valley Math: Interesting Look at Yahoo’s Potential Deal with Facebook
Rumors about the possible acquisition of Facebook, usually with Yahoo as buyer, have been around for most of this year. Not that Yahoo or Facebook have asked for this attention, but the media is getting antsy. Robert Young put it best last week when he asked – Yahoo & Facebook: Deal or No Deal?. That is certainly the question of the fiscal quarter.
We know that Facebook has been pursued almost since the beginning of its existence. They narrowly avoided a $10 million acquisition by Friendster in mid 2004, just months before they took their first round of financing from Accel Partners. Former Friendster execs say that the deal was close to closing, but last minute negoations over control ultimately disrupted the deal. Since then, Facebook has certainly been approached by every major Internet company.
NASA Live Video Stream
Gibson on Writing a Book
I think it may actually get worse, each time! But I also suspect that that may be a paradoxical indicator of relative emotional health. If you’ve ever met anyone who’s writing a book that he or she is convinced is *very* good indeed, you’ll know what I mean. (Swift reading to his servants may be the perfect case in point.)
By the time I’m three-quarters through the writing of a novel, I’ve necessarily lost anything like perspective, and must rely on feedback from trusted daily readers to know whether or not I’ve completely driven the thing off the road. I suspect that the biggest part of the labor of writing, for me, has always consisted of bludgeoning the editorial super-ego into relative passivity, though no matter how thoroughly I’ve managed to stun it, it still manages to send messages to the effect that the work is really deeply pathetic, hideously flawed, and should be abandoned immediately. I tend to imagine that this is what writer’s block is really about, though in my case it’s remained only partionally symptomatic. I manage to ignore those messages, as painful as I still find them.
Congressional Staff Size & Salary Database
Lower Interest Rates on the Way? Bill Gross Says Yes.
He said that a clear hint from the Fed that rate cuts are on the way could set up further weakness in the dollar. “Once people start to believe that the Fed will have to cut interest rates in the next three to four months, the dollar’s decline is going to accelerate,” he said.
Over the course of 2007 the dollar could fall more than 5 percent against a basket of currencies, Gross said.
Financial markets have cut the chances of a Fed rate cut by March to about 25 percent after Friday’s stronger-than-expected November payrolls report, from over 80 percent following news of weak factory activity issued on Dec. 1. Futures fully reflect a rate cut to 5 percent by June.
Gross said that over time, the housing market downturn would exert more downward pressure on the overall U.S. jobs market and consumer spending, potentially pushing up the jobless rate.
It could be another one to two years before the effects of the housing bubble are unwound, he said.
24 Hour US Air Traffic Animation
This is a very interesting sight. It depicts flights across the U.S. in time-lapse over a couple of 24 hour periods.
It has already garnered nine awards:
#49 – Most Viewed (All Time) – Arts & Animation – All #39 – Most Viewed (All Time) – Arts & Animation – English #87 – Top Rated (All Time) – Arts & Animation – All #37 – Most Discussed (All Time) – Arts & Animation – All #27 – Most Discussed (All Time) – Arts & Animation – English #46 – Top Favorites (All Time) – Arts & Animation – All #39 – Top Favorites (All Time) – Arts & Animation – English #79 – Recently Featured – All #16 – Recently Featured – Arts & Animation – All