BY TIFFANY YOON The phrase ‘Deliberative Democracy’ implies that a democracy cannot function without its citizens having the information necessary to make daily life-changing decisions. These opportunities for the general public are found in electing representatives on every level of government and keeping those officials accountable. On Thursday, March 25th, Temple University Verizon Chair in Telecommunications, Dr. Jarice Hanson, along with doctoral student in Mass Media and Communications, Alina Hogea, held an idea-sharing session entitled Deliberative Democracy: The Internet and Civic Engagement, to open the discussion on how to keep democracy alive and well and how technology is changing the […]
CINEMA: Nowhere Man
GREENBERG (2010. directed by Noah Baumbach, 107 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Greenberg is a very funny new character study about an improbable man. Ben Stiller is ingeniously cast to bring to life Roger Greenberg, a man who seems to have found every experience in life so disappointing that his world has come to a halt. He washes up rootless in his old hometown of L.A. after living in New York City for years. While house-sitting for his brother’s family he reconnects with all the old friends he has alienated and starts a very unromantic romance with his […]
SPORTO: The State Of Our Union
BY MIKE WOLVERTON SPORTS GUY The Philadelphia Union began their official sporting existence last night, in the cold and rain, 2,800 miles from home. But for the traveling supporters that were there, it must have felt like a sunny day with a cool breeze. Professional soccer has finally arrived in Philadelphia — albeit by way of Seattle — and congratulations are in order to all that had a hand in making it happen. As it turns out, soccer in Philadelphia is a young man’s game. Literally. Philadelphia’s starting 11 included only two players over 25 years of age. The right […]
CINEMA: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
DAN DELUCA: If you’re a fan of the indomitable Canadian rocker – high-pitched voice, proto-grunge guitar, total immersion in the music – then you want to see Neil Young Trunk Show on the big screen, for sure. That’s because the concert film was shot in 2007 at two shows at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby – particularly great shows, even by Young’s no-holds-barred standards. Trunk Show takes a nearly opposite approach from the beautifully becalmed Heart of Gold, filmed in Nashville in 2005, a short time after Young had suffered a brain aneurysm. Heart of Gold had the feel […]
SCRAPPLE TV NEWS: Piggie Of The Week
This week, A.P Ticker calls out mainline dentist/Jersey Shore medical waste dumper Dr. Thomas W. McFarland Jr.
CLASSICAL GAS: Q&A W/ Brooklyn Rider
BY DAVE ALLEN Don’t let the name throw you – Brooklyn Rider isn’t an invading army from the Big Apple looking to dethrone our world champions and displace our native cultural treasures; two of the members even attended the Curtis Institute of Music in our fair city. BR is a string quartet that, like the Kronos (interviewed here in November and seen and heard later at the Kimmel Center), isn’t content with the two-violins-viola-and-a-cello mold. The group’s outside-the-box playing and thinking led to participation in the Silk Road Festival, a collection of Asian and Middle Eastern music curated by cellist […]
OBITUARY: Sneak Previews
BY JIM DOOLITTLE Mom’s Italian. 100%. And while she could have poured the over-exuberant passion that is the genetic cross my people bear into anything obvious – food, language, Catholicism, music, Sophia Loren – she opted at an early age to funnel my genetic disposition into her love for the cinema. We’d go every week, right after church, our reward for the penance that was 10AM mass. And without cable television, without a VCR, my cinematic cravings were only sated on the homefront via the weekly sit-down with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Fortunately, they were accessible via rabbit ears. […]
THE WISCONSIN INQUISITION: Pope On The Ropes
NEW YORK TIMES: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope and archbishop in Munich at the time, was copied on a memo that informed him that a priest, whom he had approved sending to therapy in 1980 to overcome pedophilia, would be returned to pastoral work within days of beginning psychiatric treatment. The priest was later convicted of molesting boys in another parish. MORE TIMES ONLINE: Pope Benedict XVI was drawn deeper yesterday into the clerical sex abuse scandal that has begun to overwhelm the Roman Catholic Church, when he was accused of personally failing to take action against a serial […]
SIDEWALKING: Doggone It
Germantown Ave and Lehigh, 2:26 PM by JEFF FUSCO
HOT DOC: Statehouse Dems Tell PA Attorney General To Back Off Anti-Health Care Reform Lawsuit
Senate and House Democrats respond to AG’s federal health care lawsuit HARRISBURG, March 24 – State Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Delaware/Montgomery, and state Rep. Tim Briggs, D-Montgomery, were joined today by colleagues from the House and Senate at a news conference to respond to Attorney General Tom Corbett’s federal health care lawsuit. During the news conference, the group of lawmakers urged Attorney General Corbett to cease and desist in his efforts to strike down the nation’s new health care reform law. In a letter to Corbett, Leach stated, “Certainly, reasonable minds can disagree on the merits of health care […]
BREAKING: The End Of ACORN Philadelphia
PW: Tuesday night the board of ACORN Pennsylvania voted to dissolve the Keystone state chapter of the embattled community-service organization and re-invent itself as Pennsylvania Communities Organizing For Change, according to Craig Robbins, the former Head Organizer for ACORN PA, who will now serve as executive director of the newly formed PCOC. The board’s decision came in the wake of an announcement Monday from ACORN’s national leadership that it was ceasing operations and that state chapters would be given the option of closing up shop or re-branding themselves as standalone statewide community-service organizations. MORE PREVIOUSLY: Why The Right Hates ACORN, […]
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 […]