NEWSDAY: If you want to see the full moon aglow in a dramatic range of colors — a shift that could be anything from bright orange to blood red to dark brown or dark gray — then look out your window starting at 8:43 p.m. Wednesday. Starting then and lasting for the next three hours and 26 minutes you’ll be able to watch the complete saga of the last visible total eclipse of the moon in North America until 2010, according to officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. FORECAST: Obscured By Clouds
FUN WITH TOURISTS: Ordinance Would Forbid Telling Gullible White Trash Things Like Ben Franklin Invented The Internet & Washington Kept Dinosaurs As Pets Etc.
BY NICK POWELL CITY HALL CORRESPONDENT In the interest of ensuring historic accuracy in the city’s burgeoning tourism industry, a long-threatened bill was finally brought before the Committee of Parks, Recreation & Cultural Affairs today that would amend a Philadelphia law and require all Philadelphia tour guides to be certified. The bill, sponsored by Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, was met with a very mixed reaction from those giving testimony and otherwise. * The bill itself, Brown said, will be implemented in two phases before being brought before the City Council. They will first test the certification requirement, including an application […]
MEDIA: The Witch Doctors Of Spin
HUFFINGTON POST: In dueling conference calls with reporters, the Obama campaign presented an electoral landscape that could prove all but impossible for Clinton to overcome. The Clinton camp responded with defiance, suggesting that Obama was not qualified for the position of commander-in-chief and stressing that they, in fact, were positioned to eke out a delegate victory. Obama’s campaign manager projected that his boss emerged from Tuesday’s elections in Wisconsin and Hawaii with a net gain of 18 pledged delegates, padding his overall lead over Clinton to 159. “In order for them to erode this pledged delegate lead,” he added, Clinton […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR That guilty feeling after a big meal might be about more than calories and cholesterol. New Yorker science and technology writer Michael Specter joins Fresh Air to explain how carbon emissions released during food production are having an impact on the environment. Calculating carbon output is a complex, if not counterintuitive, process, Specter says. In the February 25 issue, he writes about the difficulties of measuring carbon footprints in an article titled “Big Foot: In Measuring Carbon Emissions, it’s Easy to Confuse Morality and Science.” Specter was formerly The New York Times‘ Moscow bureau co-chief, and before that […]
THIS JUST IN: The Beast & The Dragon Adored, Again
Spoon has begun confirming cities and venues for its April 2008 victory lap of the United States. Confirmed dates as of press time are: Wed/Apr-02 Kansas City, KS @ Uptown *# Fri/Apr-04 Chicago, IL @ Vic Theatre *# Sat/Apr-05 Cincinnati, OH @ Bogarts *# Sun/Apr-06 Detroit. MI @ Emerald Theater *# Mon/Apr-07 Pittsburgh, PA @ Carnegie Music Hall *# Wed/Apr-09 New York, NY @ Terminal 5 Thu/Apr-10 Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory * Sat/Apr-12 Norfolk, VA @ Norva *# Mon/Apr-14 Atlanta, GA @ Centerstage *# Wed/Apr-16 Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ Revolution *# Fri/Apr-18 Nashville, TN @ Vanderbilt University (Rites of […]
TODAY I SAW: There Will Be Bloods
BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW the whitewashed statue of a saluting soldier on the corner of 61st and Grays Avenue (no, not Gray’s Ferry) in the Southwest. The statue is surrounded by protective, thigh-high black iron gating and red, white and blue-painted poles. The soldier is dressed in a World War II uniform and wearing a side cap; the statue itself is on a crumbling slab of concrete next to a tiny brown brick VFW Hall. There are a handful of obvious crack houses on tiny Glenmore Street, which runs parallel to Grays Avenue. You can tell they’re hit […]
Five Things You Should Know About THE SPICE GIRLS @ The Wachovia Center Last Night
1. The biggest difference between the Spice Girls circa ’98 and this time around is that the power dynamic has clearly shifted. Where Baby and Ginger were once clearly the most popular members of the group, last night the loudest screams came anytime Posh and Scary stepped out in front. For that you can thank David Beckham, Perez Hilton and “Dancing With The Stars.” 2. Speaking of Emma Bunton, I’m happy to report that she’s long since left behind the pigtails and baby doll-dresses matched with white knee-socks and heels. The same cannot be said of many young women in […]
CINEMA: The Ungrateful Dead
DIARY OF THE DEAD (2007, directed by George Romero, 95 minutes, U.S./Canada) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Before they can declare the New Wave of zombie films officially dead (no surprise they keep coming, they’re zombies after all) George Romero has decided to shamble in for another go around. With his fifth Dead film since his 1968 genre-sprouting classic Night of the Living Dead, Romero has scaled back his ambitions in order to maintain a control over production he hasn’t had since 1978’s Dawn of the Dead. With its limited budget, Romero has made Diary of the Dead more of […]
WISCONSIN SAID TO WASHINGTON: ‘Yes We Can’
WASHINGTON POST: Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) decisively defeated Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) in today’s Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary, scoring a ninth consecutive victory over the New York senator. Obama was also expected to win caucuses in Hawaii, the state in which he spent more than a decade of his youth. The Obama victory puts more pressure on Clinton, who now must win in Ohio and Texas on March 4 to sustain her campaign for the presidential nomination. On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) defeated former governor Mike Huckabee (Ark.) in the Wisconsin presidential primary. McCain’s convincing victory […]
PBS FOR THE BLIND: We See It Even When You’re Too Busy Watching American Idol
“Rules of Engagement” (PBS, 9 p.m.) examines the November, 2005 incident in Haditha that killed a Marine and 15 Iraqi civilians and has been called a massacre. First explained away as “insurgents” killed by an IED, further investigation revealed that the Iraqis died at the hands of U.S. forces, many in their homes. Eight Marines initially faced various criminal charges, but only four remain charged by military courts-martial, though none are facing murder charges. With the criminal trial of Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, who testified he told his team to “shoot first and ask questions later,” set to begin […]
TONITE: Here Come The Warm Spice MILFs
BY AMY Z. QUINN So here’s the thing. Ten years ago when my niece Deanna was but a sprout and the Spice Girls weren’t yet the Spice MILFs — hell, there wasn’t even a Posh n’ Becks yet — I managed to score a pair of tickets to their show at what is now the PNC Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ. Suffice to say, this permanently secured my position as Coolest Aunt Ever — or so I thought. A few days before the show, Ginger Spice abruptly quit the group, sending little girls worldwide, Deanna included, into paroxysms of grief. […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR It’s one of the oldest faith questions: If there’s an all-powerful and loving God, why do human beings suffer? In his latest book, religious studies professor Bart D. Ehrman wrestles with that question — and with the implications of the often-contradictory answers he finds. In God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer, Ehrman meditates upon how the Bible explains human suffering, why he finds the explanations unconvincing, and why he gave up on being a Christian. Ehrman, author of Misquoting Jesus and more than a dozen other books, chairs […]