EDITOR’S NOTE: The first in an occasional and recurring series about the perfect soundtrack for a good day sunshine. ALAN MCGEE: Their second album, Turn! Turn! Turn! continued to fine-tune the pop sensibility. Whenever I hear the title track it always sounds almost perversely economical, somehow too perfect. It seems to state, “This is as far as you can refine a pop song”, and “I can do this standing on my head”. It is hard to imagine a song more instantly engaging than Turn! Turn! Turn! It always rings like a bell through any background noise and conveys its sentiment […]

[Artwork and animation by MARK FIORE] REUTERS: Coca-Cola Co is dropping its membership in a conservative national advocacy group that supports “Stand Your Ground” laws such as the one being used as a defense in the Florida killing of an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin. The move by the world’s biggest soft drink maker comes as corporate America faces increased scrutiny from consumers and shareholder activists over lobbying and political spending. PepsiCo Inc ended its relationship with the group – the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) – in January. In a statement on Thursday, Coca-Cola made no direct mention of […]

[Artwork by CRYSTAL GONZALEZ] NEW YORK TIMES: My topic today is a pair of new scientific studies suggesting that poultry on factory farms are routinely fed caffeine, active ingredients of Tylenol and Benadryl, banned antibiotics and even arsenic. “We were kind of floored,” said Keeve E. Nachman, a co-author of both studies and a scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Center for a Livable Future.  “It’s unbelievable what we found.” He said that the researchers had intended to test only for antibiotics. But assays for other chemicals and pharmaceuticals didn’t cost extra, so researchers asked for those results as well. […]

NEW YORK TIMES: In an industrial section of south-central Nashville, stuck between a homeless shelter and some railroad tracks, sits a little primary-colored Lego-block of a building with a Tesla tower on top. The inside holds all manner of curiosities and wonders — secret passageways, trompe l’oeil floors, the mounted heads of various exotic ungulates (a bison, a giraffe, a Himalayan tahr) as well as a sign on the wall that says photography is prohibited. This is the home of Third Man Records: the headquarters of Jack White’s various musical enterprises, and the center of his carefully curated world. “When […]

NMA: Movie star Ryan Gosling saved British writer Laurie Penny from an oncoming car when she stepped out blindly into New York City traffic Tuesday. “Ryan Gosling grabbed me away from a taxi,” Penny tweeted that evening. She said she looked the wrong way before crossing the street because she is accustomed to traffic flowing in the opposite direction in London. Penny has apparently been inundated with press requests following the incident. She claims she is turning down interviews, choosing to instead address the hoopla via a Gawker blog post Wednesday. GAWKER: Everybody needs to calm down about Ryan Gosling […]

RELATED: Tinariwen was founded by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, who at age four witnessed the execution of his father (a Tuareg rebel) during a 1963 uprising in Mali. As a child he saw a western film in which a cowboy played a guitar. Ag Alhabib built his own guitar out of a tin can, a stick and bicycle brake wire. He started to play old Tuareg and modern Arabic pop tunes.[citation needed] Ag Alhabib first lived in refugee camps and later resided with other Tuareg exiles in Libya and Algeria. In the late 1970s Ag Alhabib joined with other musicians in […]

JON FOY, DIRECTOR, RESURRECT DEAD: While most people associate [Resurrect The Dead star] Justin Duerr with the Toynbee tiles, I’ve been a long-time admirer of Justin’s unmistakable style of art for many years before we shot the movie. It was all over West Philly on records, shirts, show flyers, and wheat-pastes, and despite this he’s been one of the city’s best kept secrets.With the movie’s wide release, I’m hoping it leads many more people to discover Justin’s talents.  The exhibit includes the largest collection of Justin’s work ever assembled in one place.  These two free screenings are intended to introduce […]

PHAWKER: Just to start off with, for the sake of readers that might not know anything about The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles please explain… JON FOY [pictured, below right]: Sure. Well, it’s a documentary about a mystery. It explores this sort of urban legend-esque type of phenomenon. Someone’s been laying these tiled messages, and they’re embedded in the street. They look like little plaques. They’ve got messages about resurrecting the dead. They’re sort of cryptic. They’ve been in the street for almost three decades, basically across the U.S. and South America. Nobody knows who does them – or why, […]

Grumman’s Greenhouse, Lenfest Plaza, PAFA, 7:01 PM Tue. by JEFF FUSCO ASSOCIATED PRESS: It was born as a military aircraft, enjoyed a second career as a firefighting plane and is settling into its golden years as a piece of public art after a close call with the scrap heap. “Grumman Greenhouse” is a decommissioned military plane that was being sold for scrap in Alabama when 27-year-old artist Jordan Griska purchased it with a more noble fate in mind. Its new home is next door to his alma mater, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in a new plaza it […]

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Interest in the newly released 1940 U.S. census is so great that the government website with the information was nearly paralyzed shortly after the records became available to the public for the first time. Miriam Kleiman, spokeswoman for the U.S. National Archives, told The Associated Press that the site registered more than 22 million hits in just four hours on Monday, from almost 2 million users. In a tweet posted after 5 p.m. on its official Twitter account, the archives said the website had received 37 million hits since the information was released at 9 a.m. Computer experts […]

PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE:  According to a recent report produced by the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, 87 percent of the department’s white firefighters believe that disciplinary decisions are biased by race; less than 30 percent of all firefighters think that hiring and promotions are done “without regard to race or ethnic background.” Numerous stories of unfair race-based treatment circulate through the city’s engine houses. There is the story about African-American Cory Nuble, who complained that a pair of black lieutenants harassed him for being too friendly with white firefighters. There is the story of Troy Gore, an African-American fire captain and Valiants […]