RADIO TIMES Where do convicted sex offenders live after they’re paroled? Laws vary within the United States and the states themselves, and Miami-Dade County made news the last several years as its ordinance banned registered sex offenders at least 2,500 feet from children, pre-empting the Florida law of 1,000 feet. In 2007 news of paroled offenders making a temporary home without heat and indoor plumbing under the infamous Julia Tuttle Causeway started making headlines. This squalid colony has since been disbanded, leaving many of the former residents homeless and in legal limbo. Novelist RUSSELL BANKS, who lives part-time in Miami, […]
EARLY WORD: Dylanology
KELLY WRITER’S HOUSE: Nine Dylanists each talk about – and briefly play – one favorite Dylan song. It’s Thursday, October 20, at 6 PM, to help celebrate Dylan’s 70th birthday. We’ve got quite a line-up. Cecilia Corrigan on “Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat”; Anthony DeCurtis on “The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar”; Greg Djanikian on “Señor”; Al Filreis on “Series of Dreams”; John Giannotti on “Bob Dylan’s Dream”; Jessy Ginsberg on “Up to Me”; Alan Light on “Where Are You Tonight”; Ralph Rosen on “Idiot Wind”; Nina Wolpow on “Don’t Think Twice.” And Jessy Pepi Ginsberg will perform her […]
WORTH REPEATING: ‘Chart That’ll Get Obama Fired’
(Pam Tobey/Washington Post) EZRA KLEIN: I worry that some of you missed Sunday’s mammoth exploration of whether the economy could have been in a substantially different place today. If that’s the case, read it. As an enticement, here’s the graph from the piece, which updates the chart that the administration released as part of its sales job for the stimulus. Henry Blodget of Business Insider calls it “the chart that will get Obama fired.” MORE
NIGHT OF THE LONG BATONS: Cops Move On #OccupyBoston, #OccupyDallas & #OccupySeattle
Reports are coming in that the Boston Police Department — wielding night sticks and not afraid to use them — has arrested 100 protesters at #OccupyBoston and torn down and carted away one of the encampments. #OccupyBoston’s official media team Tweeted it live. You can follow it HERE. ASSOCIATED PRESS: Boston police have arrested more than 50 protesters from the Occupy Boston movement after they ignored warnings to move from a site near their official encampment. Police spokesman Jamie Kenneally said the arrests began about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday and were mostly for trespassing. The protesters, part of the national Occupy […]
KILLADELPHIA: Is The Police Department Cooking The Books On The City’s Annual Murder Rate?
[Photo via multi.lectical.net] GOP mayoral candidate Karen Brown made a startling accusation today on Radio Times, claiming the murder rate is in fact much higher than the figures cited by Mayor Nutter. Seizing on Nutter’s remarks during his inauguration that if he did not reduce the murder rate by at least 30% he should not be re-elected (in fact, he did call for a reduction of the murder rate by 30% to 50% in the next three to five years, but never said he shouldn’t be re-elected if he doesn’t) Brown claims that the Philadelphia Police Department has been using […]
ARTSY: The Architecture Of Madness
Asylum: Inside The World Of Closed State Mental Hosptials, a photographic exhibition of some of America’s most infamous mental health institutions, will haunt Drexel’s Leonard Pearlstein Gallery through October 29th. Photographer Christopher Payne’s outsized pictures, some of which have been blown up to be over a meter tall, pull back the curtain on the forbidding and largely hidden world of what used to be called ‘insane asylums.’ Still, appearances can be deceiving. “Once I got inside, they really weren’t that creepy,” Payne told Phawker. Once inside, Payne, who has a masters’ degree in architecture, explores the everyday use of rooms, […]
CLASS WARFARE: The Rich Don’t Get Parking Tickets
They just sit in the back of their limousines passing the Grey Poupon back and forth. No, the people who get parking tickets are the people that can least afford it — the poor and the working class. As such, we think it’s an unfair, onerous and regressive tax on the proverbial ‘little guy‘ — and as the Founding Fathers were fond of saying: Taxation without representation is tyranny! And what do we get for it? Best we can tell, an ever-growing fleet of shiny new PPA vehicles and money to fix up the city’s dilapidated school infrastructure a fancy […]
DOA: The Lonesome Crib Death Of Qwikster
[Artwork by FASTER PANDA KILL KILL] THE NETFLIX BLOG: It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs. This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster. While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes. We’re constantly improving our streaming selection. We’ve recently added hundreds of movies from Paramount, Sony, Universal, Fox, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, MGM and Miramax. Plus, in the last couple of weeks […]
INCOMING: Working For The Man
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] A former Apple employee from Philly remembers. Look for it tomorrow on a Phawker near you!
Liberty, The First Majority Hispanic Town In America
NPR: One place the Hispanic population is growing is in the overwhelmingly white state of Iowa. The latest census figures show the Hispanic population, while only 5 percent of the state, has almost doubled since 2000. And one small town — West Liberty — is the first in Iowa to have a majority Hispanic population. Downtown West Liberty, Iowa, is quintessentially Midwestern American, both quaint and historic, with brick buildings lining brick streets. A typical stroll involves walking past the bank, a renovated theater, a hair salon, restaurants and stores. West Liberty Mayor Chad Thomas says that unlike a lot […]
CINEMA: Et Tu Clooney?
THE IDES OF MARCH (2011, directed by George Clooney, 101 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC George Clooney has been quite public about his interest in politics and with 2006’s network news drama Good Night and Good Luck, he has already directed one of the best political films in the last decade. Sure, he directed the scoreless football comedy Leatherheads since then, but a full-on political drama from the actor/director sounds like a sure thing. Yet while The Ides of March, co-written by Clooney and his longtime collaborator Grant Heslov, is dependably diverting, it is also a sadly […]
THIS IS THE END: The Obama Justice Department Flips The Kill Switch On Medical Marijuana
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Federal prosecutors have launched a crackdown on pot dispensaries in California, warning the stores that they must shut down in 45 days or face criminal charges and confiscation of their property even if they are operating legally under the state’s 15-year-old medical marijuana law. In an escalation of the ongoing conflict between the U.S. government and the nation’s burgeoning medical marijuana industry, California’s s four U.S. attorneys sent letters Wednesday and Thursday notifying at least 16 pot shops or their landlords that they are violating federal drug laws, even though medical marijuana is legal in California. The attorneys […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Writer David Rakoff worries a lot: about Sept. 11, about cancer, about epidemics and fame and religious devotion — not to mention sex, money, his childhood and the value of therapy. The regular contributor to This American Life even worries about writing about himself, which he does in his latest collection of essays, Half Empty. “That was the big problem for me in terms of this book,” Rakoff says. “I’ve always bridled at the term ‘memoirist’ because I always wanted to be known for the quality of my writing as opposed to the particulars of my biography — […]