SLATE: This chart, digitized by the Library of Congress, depicts major battles, troop losses, skirmishes, and other events in the American Civil War. (Click HERE for a zoomable version, or visit the LOC’s website.) The “Scaife Synoptical Method,” advertised at the top of the timeline, aimed to fit as much information as possible into a single chart. Information on Arthur Hodgkin Scaife is scant, but the Comparative Synoptical Chart Company, apparently based in Toronto, also published his “Synoptical Charts” of the “Cuban Question,” English history, and the life of William Gladstone. In a 2010 New Atlantis review of historians […]

Artwork by CARRIE NEUMAYER One of the most popular public radio programs in the U.S., The Moth Radio Hour, will be broadcast by WXPN, the nationally-recognized leader in Triple A music and non-commercial radio service of the University of Pennsylvania, starting on Tuesday, September 17 at 10 pm ET. The Moth Radio Hour features the best in storytelling from “everyday raconteurs,” as cited in its 2011 Peabody Award, the highest honor in broadcasting. The radio program grew from the acclaimed non-for-profit organization The Moth, which is dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. Founded by poet and novelist George […]

RELATED: Created in collaboration with Chipotle Mexican Grill, “The Scarecrow” is an arcade-style adventure game for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and a companion animated short film. Both pieces depict a scarecrow’s journey to bring wholesome food back to the people by providing an alternative to the processed food that dominates his world. The film’s soundtrack is a re-interpretation of “Pure Imagination,” performed by Fiona Apple. The film is set in a dystopian fantasy world where all food production is controlled by a fictional industrial giant Crow Foods. Scarecrows have been displaced from their traditional role of protecting food and […]

“Zombie Morrissey” by TATTOOED BOY THE ATLANTIC: There’s a fishy report going around that Morrissey’s long-anticipated autobiography, reportedly due out in British stores on Monday, has been canceled due to an argument with Penguin at the 11th hour. Mind you, this is a book that hasn’t been promoted, can’t be found online, and something Penguin people had no idea about when asked about it earlier this year. Hence the fishiness.  “Although Morrissey’s Autobiography was set to be available throughout the UK on September 16th, a last-minute content disagreement between Penguin Books and Morrissey has caused the venture to collapse,” That’s […]

This is, as per usual with these guys, pretty friggin’ unhinged. But any song that can make the Ayatollah Khomeini dance like a man a tenth of his age is alright by me. Animal Collective does a two-night stand at Union Transfer on 10/27 and 10/28. The October 28th date, with Dan Deacon, is already sold out. Let the buyer be weird! RELATED: At turns disturbing, confusing, disgusting, hilarious, mesmerizing and stone cold beatific, Oddsac is perhaps best explained by clarifying what it is not: it is neither a rock documentary nor a concert film, nor is it the kind […]

  PHILLY POST: I would like to respond to yesterday’s post by fellow Philly Post-er Beth Capriotti wherein she rhetorically threw her hands up in the air in bewilderment and, with a discernible note of pride in her glib know-nothingness, declared that: Like rap music and twerking, [legalized pot is]  something else I have to live with that I just don’t understand. Beth, you are on your own with the twerking and rap enlightenment, except to say this: Twerking is just a modern version of dirty dancing, which has been around since at least Cleopatra’s day. As for hip-hop, I’m […]

FRESH AIR Women’s tennis champion Billie Jean King is best remembered for her 1973 exhibition match, known as “The Battle of the Sexes,” with self-proclaimed male chauvinist Bobby Riggs. But King also had a remarkable career, both as a tennis player and a trailblazer for women: She won a record 20 Wimbledon titles, six of them for singles, and she led an uprising of underpaid female players to demand fairer treatment and compensation in professional tennis. Those subjects, as well as King being painfully outed as gay in 1981, are the subjects of an American Masters documentary that aired this […]

Tickets go on sale tomorrow for Mazzy Star @ Union Transfer Nov. 22nd