LUNATIC FRINGE: Feds Raid Christian Apocolypto Militia; Local Man Arrested For YouTube Death Threats Against Congressman Eric Cantor

NEW YORK TIMES: Nine members of a Michigan-based Christian militia group have been indicted on sedition and weapons charges in connection with an alleged plot to murder law enforcement officers in hopes of setting off an anti-government uprising. In court filings unsealed Monday, the Justice Department accused the nine people of planning to kill an unidentified law enforcement officer, then plant improvised explosive devices of a type used by insurgents in Iraq to attack the funeral procession. Eight of the defendants were arrested over the weekend in raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. A ninth remained at large, the Justice […]

NewsPosted on:

FEAR & LOATHING: Two ‘Black Widow’ Suicide Bombers Kill 35 In The Moscow Underground

Mosco subway this morning  via TWITTER BBC: At least 35 people have been killed after two female suicide bombers blew themselves up on Moscow Metro trains in the morning rush hour, officials say. Twenty-three died in the first blast at 0756 (0356 GMT) as a train stood at the central Lubyanka station, beneath the offices of the FSB intelligence agency. About 40 minutes later, a second explosion ripped through a train at Park Kultury, leaving another 12 dead. No-one has said they carried out the worst attack in the capital since 2004. But the BBC’s Richard Galpin in the Russian […]

NewsPosted on:

INFINITE MESS: David Foster Wallace’s Archive

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY BY RITA BOOKE* Message boards and email lists devoted to David Foster Wallace, who became a literary it-boy with the publication of “Infinite Jest” in 1996, fell silent with his suicide in 2008 after an paralyzing bout of depression. Recent news has brought a bright spot to fans of the postmodern master: the University of Texas at Austin has acquired the entire DFW archive. Handwritten drafts of IJ, childhood poems, his personal book collection, it’s all there for us to (soon) see. For DFW’s devoted, the archive promises a thrilling look inside our hero’s beautiful mind, […]

NewsPosted on:

THINK TANK: The Evolution Will Be Digitized

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 […]

NewsPosted on:

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 […]

Cinema , NewsPosted on:

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 […]

News , SportsPosted on:

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 […]

Cinema , NewsPosted on:

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 […]

NewsPosted on:

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. […]

Cinema , NewsPosted on:

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 […]

NewsPosted on: