Ratatat was the first band to play the Guggenheim.

Ratatat / "Wildcat" (left-click)

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Husky Rescue played a live set for MPR.

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Saw TV on the Radio a couple weeks ago at Paradise, which according to openers Grizzly Bear was the smallest venue on the tour. As for the show, I'm not the biggest TVOTR fan, but I had to say the good songs sounded good and the ones I didn't care about I didn't care about. So I was glad I went...but don't need to see them again anytime soon.

TV On the Radio / "Wolf Like Me" (left-click, easily the best song on the album)

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The truth of about the freshman 15.

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How Sacha Baron Cohen cons people into talking to Borat.

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Business Week unearths the secret of BMW's success.

BMW derives much of its strength from an almost unparalleled labor harmony rooted in that long-ago pact. In 1972, years before the rest of Europe Inc. began to think about pay for performance, the company cut workers in on its profits. It set up a plan that distributes as much as one and a half months' extra pay at the end of the year, provided BMW meets financial targets. In return, the workforce is hyperflexible. When a plant is introducing new technology or needs a volume boost, it's not uncommon for workers from other BMW factories to move into temporary housing far from home for months and put in long hours on the line. Union bosses have made it easy for BMW to quickly adjust output to meet demand. Without paying overtime, the company can crank up production to as much as 140 hours a week or scale it back to as little as 60 hours. The system lets the company provide unprecedented job security, and no one at BMW can remember any layoffs -- ever. Since 2000, BMW has hired 12,000 new workers even as General Motors Corp. (GM ) and Ford Motor Co. (F ) have slashed tens of thousands of jobs.

That helps explain why landing a job at BMW is to many Germans what getting into Harvard is for American high school students. The company's human resources department receives more than 200,000 applications annually. Those who make it to an interview undergo elaborate day-long drills in teams that screen out big egos. For the lucky few who are hired, a Darwinian test of survival ensues. BMW promotes talented managers rapidly and provides little training along the way, forcing them to reach out to others to learn the ropes. With no one to coach them in a new job, managers are forced to stay humble and work closely with subordinates and their peers, minimizing traditional corporate turf battles. Anyone who wants to push an innovative new idea learns the key to success fast. "You can go into fighting mode or you can ask permission and get everyone to support you," says Stefan Krause, BMW's 44-year-old chief financial officer. "If you do it without building ties, you will be blocked."

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Things just keep getting worse for Kazakhstan:

The Kazakhstan central bank has misspelled the word “bank” on its new notes, officials said Wednesday.

The bank plans to put the misprinted notes — worth 2,000 tenge ($15) and 5,000-tenge — into circulation in November and then gradually withdraw them to correct the spelling.

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An extended interview with the Rapture.

Luke Jenner: I mean, for me, when I listen to Echoes, it just reminds me of being hung over everyday. The state of mind that I was personally in when I was writing that record was that I didn't like myself that much. Even the songs like "Open Up Your Heart" or "Love is All," things that are trying really hard to be overtly positive, don't come off exactly like that. They still have a real kind of twist to them. And this record was made in really good circumstances. I mean, I think part of what took us so long to make the second record was we didn't know how to be a band, really, to the level that we know how to be a band now. We had to tear everything down at the beginning when we first started writing songs. We had to operate under the old model, which was basically to argue your point at all costs until you win, which was how that last record was made. This time, we had to take a step back from that. We had a couple of false starts.