WIKIPEDIA: Middle Brother is an American rock band consisting of songwriters and musicians John J. McCauley III of Deer Tick, Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes, and Matt Vasquez of Delta Spirit. They played their first show at the 2010 the SXSW film conference and festival at the Ale House in Austin, Texas, where they performed under the moniker “MG&V” in an unannounced appearance. Middle Brother released their self-titled debut album March 1, 2011. MORE
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR The typical American uses 99 gallons of water a day for activities like washing clothes, bathing, toilet-flushing and cooking. But that amount doesn’t even come close to the amount of water used on a daily basis by electrical power plants. Each day, coal, nuclear and natural gas plants use about five times the amount of water used on a daily basis by all American households combined — including 250 gallons of water per American per day to generate our daily electricity usage. “So your flat-screen TV has a little hidden water spigot running to it,” says investigative reporter […]
EPA STUDY: Philly Drinking Water Has The Highest Level Of Iodine 131 From Japanese Nuke Disaster
FORBES: Drinking water from Philadelphia contained the highest levels of Iodine-131 from Japan yet detected by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to data released by EPA Saturday. The Philadelphia sample is below the EPA’s maximum contaminant level (MCL) for iodine-131. The EPA’s MCL for iodine-131 is 3 picoCuries per liter. Three drinking water samples collected in Philadelphia on April 4 contained Iodine-131, according to Saturday’s data release: A sample from the city’s Queen Lane Treatment Plant showed 2.2 picoCuries per liter—the highest concentration in EPA’s drinking water data so far. MORE RELATED: Every government agency involved in radiation monitoring—the EPA, […]
DON’T BOGART THAT KILOWATT: Pot Farming Burns Through $5 Billion Worth Of Energy Annually
STUDY: The emergent industry of indoor Cannabis production results in prodigious energy use, costs, and greenhouse-gas pollution. Large-scale industrialized and highly energy-intensive indoor cultivation of Cannabis is driven by criminalization, pursuit of security, and the desire for greater process control and yields. The practice occurs across the United States and in many other countries. The analysis performed in this study finds that indoor Cannabis production results in energy expenditures of $5 billion each year, with electricity use equivalent to that of 2 million average U.S. homes. This corresponds to 1% of national electricity consumption or 2% of that in households. […]
CONCERT REVIEW: TV On The Radio
[Photo byPIUMROSSA] BY PELLE GUNTHER Brooklyn’s experimental Afro-rockers TV On The Radio have always caught my fancy, with their fascinating mash-up of prog and indie-rock, all tied together by the raw vocals of Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe, and the six-string genius of Dave Sitek, but Friday night’s Electric Factory performance just didn’t quite make the grade. The band has great stage presence, and their songs are very solid, so it definitely had more to do with the actual performance, low energy level and a cloudy sound mix. As such, songs like the ever-popular “Staring at the Sun” didn’t have […]
CINEMA: The Horror, The Horror
The Ward (2010, directed by John Carpenter, 88 minutes,, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC John Carpenter, director of such genre classics as Halloween, Escape from New York, and the soon-to-be revamped The Thing, is the big guest at this year’s Cinefest. He’ll be receiving the Phantasmagoria Award at an event Monday night at the Troc, where he’ll be interviewed via Skype along with a screening of his 1986 cult favorite Big Trouble in Little China. Carpenter’s films aren’t strongly driven by any auteurist obsessions but he has directed a long run of genre films full of intelligence and original […]
Phawker Presents The 11th Installment Of BLOTTO
BY LANCE DOILY Although our inner circle has become desensitized to such things over the years, I can see how it could be considered odd to an outsider that Smitty still shits in the woods. I’m not gonna get on my high horse and say we’re all “indoor plumbing or die” folk, but even Dusty, origins as primitive as his, stopped shitting in the woods when he turned 23. Yet barring the times where a link would ease itself out during a drunken slumber, Smitty has remained true to himself for every last one of his 46 years on this […]
In The Event Of A Government Shutdown Over Defunding Planned Parenthood, The Liberty Bell Will Close But Taco Bell Will Stay Open — Coincidence?
PHILADELPHIA BUSINESS JOURNAL: Trips to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in Philadelphia, as well as to the 394 National Park service sites across the country, will be out if there is a federal government shutdown. MORE RELATED: With the government mere hours away from shutdown, the budget debate has centered around policy riders that GOP lawmakers insist must be included in any funding bill. The most controversial of those riders involves funding for Planned Parenthood, an organization that runs 800 community health centers across the nation. Congressional Republicans are seeking to defund the organization because it provides abortions, […]
SIDEWALKING: Walking Tall
The Kimmel Center, PIFA opening night reception, 6 PM Thursday by JEFF FUSCO
VOTING IRREGULARITY: 11,059 Votes For The GOP-Backed Wisconsin Supreme Court Candidate Suddenly Show Up, Two Days After The Election
HUFFINGTON POST: In a dramatic turn of events on Thursday, the Waukesha County clerk announced that the vote total announced for Tuesday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race had been mistaken — and that the corrected numbers changed the outcome of the entire election. There were 3,456 missing votes for Democratic-backed challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg and 11,059 for incumbent GOP-backed Justice David Prosser. Kloppenburg has previously been beating Prosser by just 200 votes of the roughly 1.5 million cast statewide. The new total puts Prosser on a significant path to victory, about 7,500 votes ahead of Kloppenburg. MORE PETER BARCA (D), WISCONSIN ASSEMBLY […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: About This Budget Bullsh*t
EDITOR’S NOTE: OK, admittedly it’s not a very original title, but it IS accurate. William C. Henry is better known to me as ‘Uncle Bill.’ He’s always been a man of strong opinions and a persuasive argument-maker, but I was a little surprised to learn — after re-connecting with him after a prolonged period of radio silence — that his current perspective so closely mirrors that of Phawker. Which is refreshing, to say the least, since most (white) people seem to turn into Fox News zombies when they get to be his age (early 70s, FYI). Not Uncle Bill. It […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
SUPERMAN-ISH: Man Rows 10 Miles, Then Rescues A Drowning Man From The Schuykill River
FOX 29: Two men jumped into the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia on Thursday and pulled two young men out of a sinking car during rush hour. One of the rescuers told Fox 29 what happened. Chris DeFelice was rowing a single skull in the river when he heard a screech of tires at 9:15 a.m. and sensed that there going to be an accident. DeFelice heard a crunch-like sound, and saw a car rolling backward in to the water near Kelly Drive. DeFelice quickly rowed to where the car was sticking out of the water, with its trunk upright and […]