EROWID: Albert Hofmann passed away at his home at 9am on Tuesday Apr 29, 2008 of a heart attack at the age of 102. He will be missed. Albert Hofmann was born in Baden, Switzerland in 1906. He graduated from the University of Zürich with a degree in chemistry in 1929 and went to work for Sandoz Pharmaceutical in Basel, Switzerland. With the laboratory goal of working towards isolation of the active principles of known medicinal plants, Hofmann worked with Mediterranean squill (Scilla maritima) for several years, before moving on to the study of Claviceps purpurea (ergot) and ergot alkaloids.Over […]
DEAR DOCTOR DEAN: This Is Getting Old, Fast
[Image via HUFFINGTON POST] Dear Doctor Dean, You and I go way back to Iowa 2002. Hell, I had a front row seat for The Scream, and then watched in slack-jawed horror as the media sliced you into a sound byte and fed you into the echo chamber and turned you into the Incredible Hulk. I am starting to get that bad feeling again, which is why I am writing to ask you a small favor: Make it stop. Who’s brilliant idea was it to park the campaign in PA for five weeks? That’s like parking Katrina over New Orleans […]
NPR FOR DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
RADIO TIMES Hour 1 It is being called the “silent tsunami” — rising food prices that are forcing more people around the world to go hungry. The skyrocketing prices on stables like rice, wheat, and corn have ignited riots around the globe. Experts says that this crisis could push 100 million people into poverty. Cornell University economist CHRIS BARRETT and OxFam America policy director GAWAIN KRIPKE discuss what is causing this food crisis and what can be done to stop it. Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3 Hour 2 In her new book Relentless Pursuit: A Year […]
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW: Westminster Ave.
[Photos by JUSTIN ROMAN] TEXT BY JEFF DEENEY The twisting network of back streets between the 5000 blocks of Westminster and Haverford Avenues in West Philly includes Hoopes, Ogden, Parrish, Funston, Reno and Farston; here you’ll find some of the city’s bleakest sights. Abandoned houses that are practically falling down and have been converted to drug establishments line each of these streets. At the heart of the neighborhood is dreary, mostly concrete park with decaying and graffiti-covered basketball courts called, “The Pit.” This is not a place to come joy riding: Last year there were three homicides, eight shootings and […]
THE ROOTS: Rising Up
Featuring Chrisett Michelle and Wale. On Letterman last night. [Hat tip to ROWDY YATES]
INSTA-REVIEW: My Morning Jacket Evil Urges
Now playing on Phawker Radio! Why? Just ‘cuz. BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT Did I miss the stunning rescue effort, in which My Morning Jacket singer Jim James was successfully lifted from a giant reverb tank? In past attempts at checking out this highly acclaimed Louisville, Kentucky band, I’ve been able to tune into the guitar interplay and loping rhythm section, but I’ve wondered what James was singing about from the depths of that reverb tank. On the band’s new album, Evil Urges, James is more or less front and center, at first goofing off in the sexy title track […]
NEW DAY RISING: Exit The Flim-Flam Men
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] INQUIRER: A week after losing his state Senate race, labor leader John J. Dougherty announced plans to step down tomorrow as chairman of the city Redevelopment Authority. His term was not slated to end until early next year. “I am resigning at this point in time because I believe I have accomplished all the goals I set for myself and have served the authority with distinction for eight productive years,” Dougherty, business manager of electricians union Local 98, wrote to Mayor Nutter in a letter he hand-delivered to City Hall early yesterday. In later interviews, Dougherty […]
THIS JUST IN: Baltimore, Rock City!
Bob Dylan, Iggy & the Stooges, Paramore, Chuck Berry, the Black Keys and Wilco have been added to third annual Virgin Mobile Festival which is set to take place on August 9th and 10th at the Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. Here is how the main stage lineups look now: (Friday Aug 9th) Bloc Party, Cat Power, Chuck Berry and the Silver Beats, Citizen Cope, Duffy, Foo Fighters, Gogol Bordello, Jack Johnson, KT Tunstall, Lupe Fiasco, the Offspring, Paramore, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, the Swell Season and Wilco. (Sat Aug 10th) The Black Keys, Andrew […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Hi-Def Of Print
BY CHRIS SATULLO INQUIRER COLUMNIST We’re living inside a Gutenberg moment. The advent of the Internet is a watershed in human history no less epochal than Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of movable type. Nowadays, the changes cascade far more rapidly than they did back when producing books stopped being the province of cloistered monks. It’s no wonder that, beneath such a cascade, so many feel drenched and disoriented. That the Internet is a big deal is not exactly breaking news. But a flurry of items in the New York Times’ Business Today put into high relief the scope of the changes […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
[Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA] FRESH AIR Love, violence, death and America have always been themes for Australian-born singer-composer Nick Cave — Murder Ballads and Abbatoir Blues are just two of his album titles — so he was perhaps a natural to compose the soundtrack for last year’s epically paranoid Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Cave also wrote the screenplay and soundtrack for the Australian epic The Proposition, which Roger Ebert described as “pitiless and uncompromising, so filled with pathos and disregarded innocence that it is a record of those things we pray to be […]
CINEMA: Requiem For A Jerk
CHAPTER 27 (2007, directed by J.P. Schaefer, 84 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Just when you think only the most crassly commercial equations account for what films get made, you’re stuck trying to explain the appearance of a new film on rock villain Mark David Chapman. Could any public figure be less of a box-office draw? Everyone’s least favorite “Fifth Beatle” Chapman was the mentally ill assassin who vacillated between thinking he was Holden Caulfield from J.D. Salinger’s Catcher In the Rye and John Lennon, a delusion that ended with Chapman shooting down the rock icon in front […]
ELECTORAL TSUNAMI: One Million New Dem Voters
WASHINGTON POST: The past seven states to hold primaries registered more than 1 million new Democratic voters; Republican numbers mainly ebbed or stagnated. North Carolina and Indiana, which will hold their presidential primaries on May 6, are reporting a swell of new Democrats that triples the surge in registrations before the 2004 primary. The contest between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama has engaged enough new voters to change the political makeup of the country, experts say. The next several months — and the general election in November — will reveal the extent of the shift. Is it a […]