BY MIKE WALSH One complaint about Andy Reid and the Eagles during the Donovan McNabb era was that Reid never provided McNabb with the quality wide receivers needed to win a Super Bowl. That’s a legitimate complaint as Eagles fans and McNabb suffered through season after season with sub par receivers like Charles Johnson, Torrance Small, Todd Pinkston, James Thrash, Greg Lewis, L J Smith, Kevin Curtis, Freddie Mitchell, and Reggie Brown. Of course, 2004 was the exception when the Eagles signed Terrell Owens. Owens went on to have one of the best years for a wide receiver in Eagles […]
CHEECH & MAHJONG: Joan Rivers Gets High On TV
[via ABC NEWS]
HOT DOC: FBI Flyer Helps Baristas Smoke Out The Terrorists From The Caves Of Starbuckistan
[Click to enlarge] PUBLIC INTELLIGENCE: A flyer designed by the FBI and the Department of Justice to promote suspicious activity reporting in internet cafes lists basic tools used for online privacy as potential signs of terrorist activity. The document, part of a program called “Communities Against Terrorism”, lists the use of “anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address” as a sign that a person could be engaged in or supporting terrorist activity. The use of encryption is also listed as a suspicious activity along with steganography, the practice of using “software to hide encrypted data in digital photos” or […]
MEAT IS MURDER: You May Never Eat Pork Again
MOTHER JONES: The remarkable thing about Humane Society of the United States’ latest factory farm video exposé is how banal it is. No illegal acts like “downer” animals being forced down the kill line with fork lifts, or getting their brains bashed in with a pickax. What we have here is the everyday reality of pigs’ lives on a factory farm, without regulations flouted or spectacular violence committed. It is abuse routinized and regimented, honed into a profitable business model. The video looks at two aspects of the dirty business of raising thousands of pigs en masse in close quarters: […]
ARTSY: The Great Beyond
You might not know it from the recent media focus, but there are photographers living and working in South Philadelphia not named Zoe Strauss. One of them is Ted Adams, who just unveiled an overview of his work stretching back to the 80s at the Robin Rice Gallery in the West Village. The small exhibit is an overview of Adam’s photography, some pieces dating back to the 90s. These’s nothing digital in this exhibit. Adams shoots with a vintage Leica and Kodak Tri-X film. He also processes his own film and prints in the darkroom at his house. In fact, […]
NPR FOR THE DEF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR It’s no coincidence that Baratunde Thurston’s new memoir and satirical self-help book How to Be Black was slated for release on the first day of Black History Month. “I feel great about that,” Thurston tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “I think we have a moment every year in our country where everyone buys black stamps and thinks more explicitly about black people and blackness, so it was a perfect month to release a book on this subject.” Thurston, a stand-up comedian and The Onion‘s digital director, says that he doesn’t get as many gigs this month as one […]
Reason #359 Why Obama Is Just The Doorman At The Henhouse Of Public Policy, Letting In The Foxes
WASHINGTON POST: In 2009, President Obama appointed Michael Taylor as a senior adviser for the FDA. Consumer groups protested the appointment because Taylor had formerly served as a vice president for Monsanto, the controversial agricultural multinational at the forefront of genetically modified food. In recent days, a petition calling for the former Monsanto VP’s ouster is gaining steam. “President Obama, I oppose your appointment of Michael Taylor,” the petition on Signon.org reads. “Taylor is the same person who was Food Safety Czar at the FDA when genetically modified organisms were allowed into the U.S. food supply without undergoing a single […]
RIP: Don Cornelius, Soul Train Engineer, Dead At 75
NEW YORK TIMES: Don Cornelius, the producer and television host who created the dance show “Soul Train,” was found shot dead in his Los Angeles home early Wednesday morning in what appears to be a suicide, the Los Angeles Police Department and the county coroner’s office said. He was 75 years old. A person called the police from Mr. Cornelius’s house on Mulholland Drive in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood just before 4 a.m. and reported shots had been fired, a police spokesman, Chris No, said. When officers arrived, they were let into the house and found Mr. Cornelius lying lifeless […]
MYSTERIOUS WAYS: Bevilacqua Transferred To The Big Witness Protection Program In The Sky
[Artwork by JAY BEVENOUR] INQUIRER: Cardinal Anthony Joseph Bevilacqua, 88, whose 15 years as shepherd of the 1.5 million-member Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia was marked by both celebration and crisis, died in his sleep Tuesday night in his apartment at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood. After retiring in 2003, he left the cardinal’s residence on City Avenue for the apartment at the seminary and rarely appeared in public. Cardinal Bevilacqua was emblematic of the church to which he had devoted himself since age 14: progressive on some social-justice issues, staunchly orthodox on matters of doctrine and sexuality, and […]
TONITE: ‘Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky
BY ZIVIT SHLANK Guitarist, composer, educator and 2011 Guggenheim fellow David “Fuze” Fiuczynski is the quintessence of authentic artistry. The self-proclaimed “black, funky, German expressionist,” by his own admission, tried tirelessly to fit into pre-ordained boxes early on. However, he soon realized that the music he was pursuing, despite feeling the opposite, didn’t exactly have the widest appeal. No matter, that hasn’t stopped him and in fact, it further fuels and intensifies his fire. He moved to NYC post-collegiate in the early 90s, and went on to record and perform with countless artists across the musical spectrum including John Medeski, […]