Bling heist at the Franklin Mills mall, smackdown at the Aramingo Diner. Sure sounds like March Madness.
JUNK SCI: The Birds, The Bees And Thoreau
BY ELIZABETH FIEND JUNK SCIENCE EDITOR I’ve been reading Wild Fruits, an unfinished, recently published manuscript by American naturalist Henry David Thoreau. The book is a combination of diary and essay, chronicling the ways Thoreau spent his days and what he learned during the final years of his brief life. With each page I get more jealous, wishing I too could spend my day stalking a bee to find its hive and to learn what type of flower the bee drinks nectar from and how that affects the flavor of the honey. Of all the things I love to do […]
Taking Some Of The Hurt Out Of The Hurt Locker
BY JEFF DEENEY Last week Municipal Court President Judge Marsha Neifield announced the official opening of Philadelphia’s Veterans Court. Veterans Court is a new problem-solving court along the lines of other initiatives like Drug Court, DUI Court and Mental Health Court. The problem solving court model is geared towards a specific population of non-violent offenders in the criminal justice system who can benefit from interventions other than incarceration, like drug and alcohol and mental health treatment. The public safety risk posed by the typical problem-solving court offender is low and the benefits of treatment are great, so these programs are […]
Harrisburg Kills Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment
COMMONWEALTH CONFIDENTIAL: For the third time in four years, lawmakers have defeated an attempt to advance legislation to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. This time the Republican-majority Senate Judiciary committee voted 8-6 to table a bill (SB 707), introduced by Sen. John Eichelberger (R., Blair) to amended the constitution to define marriage as being between a man and woman only. The vote came before a packed hearing room without any debate. Opponents called it a victory for gay rights. “I believe that Senate Bill 707 is the antithesis of what Pennsylvanians need and want, and I am happy that the majority […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Writer Michael Lewis is the author of Moneyball, Liar’s Poker, and The Blind Side, books with vastly different subjects but a common theme: Outsiders with innovative ideas who find astonishing success. Lewis’s newest book continues that narrative. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine chronicles the 2008 financial collapse through stories of the people who realized what was happening to the U.S. economy while it was happening — and then made vast fortunes by betting against the markets. “Everybody [on Wall Street] was working with the same set of facts about subprime mortgage lending — about how subprime […]
CONSPIRACY THEORY: Lady Gaga And The Illuminati
THE VIGILANT CITIZEN: Lady Gaga’s 9-minute video featuring Beyoncé is steeped in weirdness and shock value. Behind the strange aesthetic, however, lies a deeper meaning, another level of interpretation. The video refers to mind control and, more specifically, Monarch Programming, a covert technique profusely used in the entertainment industry. We’ll look at the occult meaning of the video “Telephone”. Just when I thought I’d written everything I had to write about Lady Gaga, Telephone comes out. An inevitable deluge of e-mails instantly followed, demanding an article about it. So I watched the video and, gosh darnit, the people who wrote […]
Fired Police Officer Cops To Teen Boy Solicitation
DAILY NEWS: A former Philadelphia police officer [not pictured, above] and military veteran arrested in December for trying to solicit teenage boys for sex has pleaded guilty without going to trial. Adrian Makuch, 49, during a routine pre-trail conference in Common Pleas Court on Thursday, pleaded guilty to a felony count of unlawful contact with a minor for the purpose of prostitution and to misdemeanor counts of luring a child into a motor vehicle and of patronizing prostitutes. The 21-year police veteran could face from seven to 14 years in prison when Judge Karen Shreeves-Johns sentences him June 16. She […]
SIDEWALKING: Empire State Of Mind
7th and 32nd NYC 9:15 AM by JEFF FUSCO
SPECIAL OPS GONE WILD: A Tale Of Two Massacres
NEW YORK TIMES: KABUL, Afghanistan — On Feb. 12 in a village near Gardez, in Paktia Province, Afghan police special forces paired with American Special Operations forces [NOT pictured, above] raided a house late at night looking for two Taliban suspects, and instead killed a local police chief and a district prosecutor when they came out, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, to investigate. Three women who came to their aid, according to interviews with family members and friends, were also killed; one was a pregnant mother of 10, the other a pregnant mother of 6. A press release from the International […]
COMCASTIC: 700 Level Swallowed By Evil Empire
INQUIRER: The Philly-centric sports blog The 700 Level and Comcast SportsNet and its CSNphilly.com are partners. As the blog announced this morning: The blog “will retain editorial independence, while tapping into the unique access, technology, and resources of Comcast SportsNet in Philadelphia.” “Plus, we get to call Philly sports gurus like Jim Salisbury, Tim Panaccio, and Ray Didinger co-workers. Ray Diddy!” This will be a boon for Enrico Campitelli of Media, who finished his MBA from George Washington University recently and had been running the site from home. Campitelli will become a Comcast employee, and in addition to the salary and Xfinity […]
EXPLAINER: The Idiot’s Guide To Obamacare
ASSOCIATED PRESS: It took lawmakers a year to shape President Barack Obama’s health care bill. If it finally passes Congress, it’ll take the better part of a decade to write the user manual for consumers and doctors, employers and insurance companies. Some health insurance consumer protections would go into place immediately, significant but limited in scope. The big expansion in coverage comes about four years from now, allowing more than 30 million people to sign up for insurance, with financial help from the government for most. Ripple effects continue well after Obama has to leave office in 2017, assuming he’s […]
RIP: Actor Peter Graves Dead At 83
NEW YORK TIMES: Peter Graves, the cool spymaster of television’s “Mission: Impossible” and the dignified host of the “Biography” series, who successfully spoofed his own gravitas in the “Airplane!” movie farces, died on Sunday. He was 83. He died of a heart attack at his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., said Fred Barman, his business manager. It was a testament to Mr. Graves’s earnest, unhammy ability to make fun of himself that after decades of playing square he-men and straitlaced authority figures, he was perhaps best known to younger audiences for a deadpan line in “Airplane!” (“Joey, do you like […]