…or my name ain’t Nathan Arizona!

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Investigators are trying to identify a white powder found inside a balloon at the downtown Philadelphia building that houses the historic Liberty Bell, a symbol of American independence. The Liberty Bell Center and part of a street next to it have been evacuated. A guard found the balloon inside the visitors entrance to the Liberty Bell Center on Thursday afternoon. FBI spokesman J.J. Klaver says testing is being done on the substance. He says it’s not explosive or radioactive but is what he calls a “biological substance.” Klaver says one type of biological substance is anthrax, an infectious […]

BY MAVIS LINNEMANN Like any child, I hated Brussels sprouts. Detested them. They emitted that bizarre sulfur odor, tasted like garbage and looked like something the dog had thrown up. Even as an adult, I thought there was no way in hell you could ever get me to eat another Brussel sprout. Enter my roommate, Laura. Armed with a fistful of bacon and a killer recipe, Laura proved to me that these tiny cabbages deserve a place in my cooking repertoire. Since then, I’ve convinced many other avowed Brussels sprout haters to give them another go-round, and I dare say […]

PW: Hangers-on aside, these were not the most ideal of recording conditions—the band hunkered down in a dank, sweaty basement for all-night sessions that were prone to power cuts and instruments detuning due to the oppressive humidity. They rarely saw daylight. You can hear it on the record as vocal tracks bleed into one another, the mix often muddy, Jagger frequently sounding as if he’s singing with a mouthful of molasses. And yet, out of chaos came a certain raffish, ragged glory, a triumphant last hurrah, before ennui, cynicism and nasty habits got the better of the band. Above all, […]

TECH CRUNCH: Tom Corbett,  current Attorney General of the state of Pennsylvania and Gubernatorial Candidate,  has subpoenaed Twitter  to appear as a Grand Jury witness to “testify and give evidence regarding alleged violations of the laws of Pennsylvania”. The subpoena orders Twitter to provide “any and all subscriber information” of the person(s) behind two accounts – @bfbarbie and @CasaBlancaPA – who have been anonymously criticizing the man on the popular micro-sharing service. MORE WIRED: Corbett is apparently treating his online critics as potential criminals, using his power as the state’s top law enforcement official to issue a grand jury subpoena. The subpoena does not state […]

RIOT ACT: Message To Garcia is a collection of Visqueen songs that represents a rock and roll epitaph to front woman Rachel Flotard’s father. After garnering countless fans, reviews, and playing shows with everyone from Guided By Voices, to Cheap Trick, Visqueen appeared to be on the verge of conquering the world. All of that changed when her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Their choice to be together for the duration of his illness would change her direction forever. Mr. George E. Flotard was a New York City steamfitter since the mid 1960’s. He fought and loved in Hell’s […]

INQUIRER: To survive in Philadelphia without food stamps or other government assistance, a family of four needs to make nearly $60,000 a year – a hard-to-fathom “sticker-shock” number that shows how expensive life has become. According to a study being released Thursday, two adults with one preschooler and one school-age child have to take in $59,501 a year to live on a bare-bones budget in the city. In 2008, the same family of four needed $53,611 to make it in Philadelphia. That’s the word from the Self-Sufficiency Standard for Pennsylvania, a highly respected University of Washington analysis that comes out […]

NPR: As computers and automated systems increasingly take the jobs humans once held, entire professions are now extinct. Click through the gallery to see examples of endangered professions, from milkman to telegrapher, and hear from people who once filled those oft-forgotten jobs. MORE