[Illustration by ALEX FINE] Journalist Maziar Bahari and Dr. Hamid Dabashi, Professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University, join the National Constitution Center for a conversation on the future of free press and free speech in Iran on Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 6:30pm at the National Constitution Center. Bahari was held in solitary confinement following Iran’s disputed elections in June 2009 for allegedly playing a role in a Western media effort to instigate unrest. He was released in October 2009, and is currently an international correspondent for Newsweek. The program is taking place in conjunction with the One Book, […]
NO SHIT, SHERLOCK: Brooklyn DA Clears ACORN
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Brooklyn prosecutors on Monday cleared ACORN of criminal wrongdoing after a four-month probe that began when undercover conservative activists filmed workers giving what appeared to be illegal advice on how to hide money. While the video by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles seemed to show three ACORN workers advising a prostitute how to hide ill-gotten gains, the unedited version was not as clear, according to a law enforcement source. “They edited the tape to meet their agenda,” said the source. “On Sept. 15, 2009, my office began an investigation into possible criminality […]
HAIR AND THERE: Is Pubic Hair The New Tonsils?
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Still, in Western countries, the “hairlessness norm” is gathering a lot of steam. Several recent studies reveal just how common shaving one’s nether regions has actually become. In a 2008 issue of Sex Roles , Flinders University psychologists Marika Tiggemann and Suzanna Hodgson, for example, found that more than three quarters (76 percent) of a sample of 235 female undergraduate students from Australia reported ever having removed their pubic hair. Sixty-one percent currently did so and half of this sample said that they routinely removed all traces of their pubic hair. The current trend for men appears to […]
THIS JUST IN: Acela Takes Another Life
INQUIRER: A man killed last night by a high speed Amtrak train in Delaware was identified today as a decorated Wilmington fire investigator who was on duty when he was fatally injured. It is not clear why Fire Department Inspector Brian P. Waynant Sr. was on the tracks when he was hit. The State Police said they were awaiting a report from the state Medical Examiner’s Office to ascertain the manner of death, that is whether it was accident, suicide or undetermined. Foul play is not suspected, police said. A statement issued by the city said only that Waynant, 45, […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR For the past four seasons, Chloe Sevigny has played Nicolette “Nicki” Grant on the HBO series Big Love. Nicki is the second of polygamist Bill Henrickson’s three wives — a modest woman suspicious of the outside world, while keeping several secrets of her own. Sevigny tells Terry Gross that she prepared for the role by immersing herself in the polygamist culture of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints — a polygamous offshoot of the Mormon church, or LDS. “I read as much literature as I could find … just trying to wrap my head […]
Vampire Weekend & Run DMC Headline Roots Picnic
BILLBOARD: Vampire Weekend will headline the third annual Roots Picnic, which will also feature a performance by the Philadelphia-based Roots plus two associated side projects from drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and rapper Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter. The event will be held June 5 at Philadelphia’s Festival Pier; tickets go on sale Friday (March 5) via LiveNation.com. Also on the bill are Clipse, Mayer Hawthorne, Nneka, the Very Best, Tuneyards, Das Racist, Bajah and the Dry Eye Crew and Pattern Is Movement. In addition, Questlove will play a set with fellow Philadelphia native DJ Jazzy Jeff, while Black Thought will perform […]
THE GRINCH WHO STOLE CONGRESS: Ex-Phils Pitcher Jim Bunning Is GOP’s Senator No #1
WASHINGTON POST: In his 17 years pitching in the big leagues, Jim Bunning was known for his graceful curveball, his rising slider and his sidearm fastball. Now 78 years old and about to retire from the Senate, the Republican of Kentucky is apparently down to only one pitch: the screwball. For four days, he has been on a one-man campaign to cut off unemployment benefits, kick the unemployed off of health insurance, cut Medicare payments to doctors, deny satellite TV to rural Americans, shut down federal flood insurance and highway projects, and furlough thousands of federal workers. Democrats can hardly […]
MUST SEE TV: Catch This While You Can
DESIGN OBSERVER: We learn to live with the encroachment of branding into daily life; like the weather, we just accept it as part of everyday living. But the more we become inured to the bludgeoning intrusiveness of commercial lapel-grabbing, the more the brand owners — and the designers who work for them — ramp up their efforts to attract our attention.A world colonized by brands is the theme of a new film by French designers and filmmakers H5. Logorama is a slick 17-minute-long animated movie that appears to lampoon both the Hollywood blockbuster — violent, crude and adrenalized — and the world […]
HISTORY OF VIOLENCE: Beaten, Bullet-Riddled Corpses Of Couple Dug Up In Camden Backyard
INQUIRER: On a Sunday afternoon just over a week ago, Muriah Ashley Huff bumped into two friends on the platform of NJ Transit’s River Line station in Palmyra. Huff, 18, longed to get her driving permit, and was bound for Camden to see her boyfriend, Mike, recalled Nicole Bass and Vivian Richardson. That was the last the two saw of the bubbly cosmetology student. Four days later, on Thursday, Huff’s beaten and strangled body was found buried in the backyard of a South Camden home, said the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office. The body of Michael Hawkins, who was dating Huff, […]
NEVER LEAVE A MAN BEHIND: Thieves Steal $50,000 Worth Of Jewelry, Leave Behind 4-Year-Old Son
INQUIRER: John Benson and Sheakia Stubbs wanted to look like legitimate shoppers last weekend when they walked into a South Street jewelry store they planned to rob, police said. They decided the best way to complete the ruse was to bring along their 4-year-old son. But with $50,000 in stolen rings stuffed into a shopping bag, and the store owner and an employee giving chase, police said, the couple abandoned their child to make their escape. When police caught up with the suspects at a Roosevelt Boulevard motel just after midnight, Benson and Stubbs didn’t seem too concerned about the […]
Brady Bunch Reunion Cancelled Over Gay Flap
THE ADVOCATE: A planned reunion of the cast of The Brady Bunch has been canceled due to animosity between Maureen McCormick and Eve Plumb, possibly relating to a rumor about a sexual relationship between the two actresses, reports RadarOnline. The six actors who played the Brady children in the iconic 1970s sitcom were scheduled to appear together Wednesday on the Today show, but plans for the televised reunion quickly fell apart when McCormick and Plumb each learned the other would be participating. Plumb reportedly still harbors resentment toward McCormick, suggesting she implied there was a slight lesbian relationship between the […]
THIS JUST IN: Pavement At The Mann Sept. 17th
After years of speculation, the most important American band of the Nineties is returning to the stage with the lineup of Mark Ibold, Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg, Stephen Malkmus, Bob Nastanovich and Steve West reuniting for dates around the world in 2010. Please be advised this tour is not a prelude to additional jaunts and/or a permanent reunion. Described in their own Wikipedia entry as having experienced “moderate commercial success,” Pavement’s catalog for the Matador, Domino, Drag City and Treble Kicker imprints has come to define in the eyes of many the blueprint for independent rock over the past generation. […]