…in one word:

Imbiss.

…lately, Berlin’s fast-food scene has gone foodie. Imbisse (the singular form of the word is imbiss) with an epicurean twist are popping up all over this city, Western Europe’s most affordable capital, bringing fancy fast food to the masses.

I know it shouldn’t have taken a New York Times story for me to have blogged this. But, then again, I haven’t been to all the places mentioned in that story, so I need to get out and explore some more, I think.

For a vegetarian, the falafels at these stalls are to die for. I swear, the worst falafel I’ve had here in Berlin, would be the best falafel in the good ol’ U.S.of.A.

(Flickr photo: hararald; and Thanks Aaron.)

Just as I finished posting about how public radio (and all content producers, really) need to adapt to the web and really find new ways to use the technology, I listened to an OPB podcast from April Baer, the local Morning Edition host in Portland, Ore. Her Quicktake Northwest podcast is definitely moving in the right direction in terms of making the web and the ‘net a bigger part of the public radio landscape.

(As an aside, a good example of how not to force radio-web integration is the PRI-distributed show Open Source, which is too forced and heavy-handed in its blog segments.)

On Tuesday, Nov. 14, Quicktake Northwest directed listeners to a hilarious video about the current storm hitting Portland. It used the web as a compliment — not a supplement — to its programming. And, hopefully, successfully drove traffic the web without compromising the quality of the podcast.

Here’s that video Quicktake mentioned:

As a pure-blooded member of the news-first sect of public radio, I am more amused than anything else by the this story in the Washington Post about a supposedly-raging debate within the public broadcasting world over content. It comes down, basically, to news vs. music.

I am pretty sure there is no debate. The battle is over — and news has won.

Besides just personal interest, it also has to do with the whole idea and philosophy of public broadcasting and public radio. It is there to serve the public. And while the arts are important, I ruly believe that we need news from an outlet that isn’t a part of a major corporate parent.

In a similar vein, the blog Lost Remote, asked a good question recently: Where’s the public in public broadcasting online?

NPR has a legit claim to be the podcasting giant, but they got there by shovelling all things broadasted to mp3. Ask newspapers how well the shovelware is working. With their legacy, brand and affiliate structure, public radio should own all things audio online by providing a web 2.0 service-oriented podcasting and community site to allow “members like you” to sound off, rock out, jam on, and get your groove on. Thank you. You know your niche, it’s sound, now own it.

That debate — over how to adapt NPR and public broadcasting to the Internet world — is not over. Right now hour-long shows are just being dumped, wholesale, onto the web.

And the strongest and most important content, ATC and ME can’t be put in podcast format because of fears about pissing off stations. Think about it — if you are a station, you wouldn’t want NPR going around the current distribution method. Because the current distribution method is you. The middle man never wants to do away with the middle man, even if that’s what, in this case, listeners and producers want.

That would be hypocrisy, and President Bush’s claims last week that SecDef Rumsfeld would hold on until the the end of the President’s term.

And even Kathryn Jean Lopez, a stalwart conservative who seems to have truly believed that Rick Santorum was going to hold his PA senate seat until the results started coming in early last night (which Santorum — made famous on the left by columnist Dan Savage — lost by almost 20 points), pointed out the following:

I think I get what he was saying, but I wouldn’t think a reporter insane for interpreting some of the president’s remarks at this presser as I-sometimes-lie-to-reporters-during-campaigns.

Bush and the conservatives aren’t the only ones who do this. In fact, the Dems way be worse. But I think it should be outed more when a candidate politician outright lies in the days leading up to an election under the guise of “campaigning.”

So, here is the best opening 10 seconds to an ATC story I’ve ever heard. Good to hear unexpected humor on NPR — it happens too rarely, in my opinion.

As a radio journalist, particularly well-timed was the great set-up toss from the host, Melissa Block.

Plus the story itself is a good one!

The most underreported story from yesterday’s result:

Investigations.

Not the bogeyman of impeachment that Republicans kept talking about last week. But just governmental oversight by an interested party — something that has been severly lacking in a GOP-controlled Capitol.

Democrat Rep. Henry Waxman, from California, figures prominently in this, because he will (likely) chair the House Government Reform committee in a Democrat-controlled Congress. But you only see his name — or better yet, him — in a few places today, because people naturally want to talk about the first-woman ever as Speaker of the House. Or the super-close Senate races in Montana and, even moreso, in Virginia.

But as the lefty Drudge-wannabe Raw Story posted after the 2004 elections, Waxman already has a list of priorities,

The role of the White House in promoting misleading intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda; the responsibility of senior Administration officials for the abuses at Abu Ghraib; the role of the Vice President’s office in the award of Halliburton contracts; the role of the White House in withholding the Medicare cost estimates from Congress; the identity of the energy industry campaign contributors that met with the Vice President’s energy task force; the role of White House officials in leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent; the influence of industry lobbyists in writing EPA regulations; allegations of conflicts of interest at multiple federal agencies and the White House; and the role of Attorney General Ashcroft in illegal campaign finance activities.

They can’t win score more than ten points in a football game.

Their locker room couch spreads disease.

And to top it all off, they can’t even manage to cook!

Maybe they should have just surrended to the Cal chefs — those knives are dangerous, somebody could have gotten hurt!

When the Google-Youtube purchase went down, I criticized Google for the acquisition, thinking that when the site became part of a larger company, the lawsuits and copyright complaints would start crawling, en masse, from the woodwork.

And the scramble is happening. Even though the lawsuits haven’t start piling up yet — videos have been pulled much more quickly and frequently in recent days. Still, Google/Youtube is trying to work on how to legitimize.

But today, the college football blog EDSBS reminded me why I love Youtube, and why if the site can figure out a way to monetize and legitimize this stuff, it could be gold: