ASSOCIATED PRESS: A traffic reporter in a small plane put himself in the thick of a rush-hour tie-up when his aircraft had to make an emergency landing Monday on the New Jersey Turnpike. It was a little before 7 a.m., before the morning rush in the Philadelphia suburbs gets going, when a low oil pressure indicator came on in the Cessna owned by Wilmington, Del.-based Out of the Blue, Inc. The pilot, flying with traffic reporter Mike Lankford for Metro Networks, which was providing traffic reports for a number of TV and radio stations, put the plane down on the […]
China Winning The Clean Energy Race While America Bickers About The Validity of Climate Science
NEW YORK TIMES: TIANJIN, China — China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this yearChina has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants. These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the […]
The Whitewashing Of John Woo Is Now Complete
WASHINGTON POST: Bush administration lawyers who paved the way for sleep deprivation and waterboarding of terrorism suspects exercised poor judgment but will not be referred to authorities for possible sanctions, according to a forthcoming ethics report, a legal source confirmed. The work of John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, officials in the Bush Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, provided the basis for controversial interrogation strategies that critics likened to torture in the years after al-Qaeda’s 2001 terrorist strikes on American soil. The men and their OLC colleague, Steven G. Bradbury, became focal points of anger from Senate Democrats […]
GOODNIGHT BROOKIE: Number 40 Goes To Eagles Heaven
NEW YORK TIMES: Tom Brookshier, a star defensive back who helped lead the Philadelphia Eagles to the 1960 National Football League championship and later teamed with Pat Summerall as CBS’s No. 1 professional football broadcasting duo, died Friday at a hospital in the Philadelphia suburb of Wynnewood, Pa. Brookshier, who lived in West Conshohocken, Pa., was 78. The cause was cancer, said his wife, Barbara. When Brookshier, a native of Roswell, N.M., joined the Eagles in 1953 out of the University of Colorado, he was a 10th-round draft pick. Figuring he was likely to be cut, he decided to make […]
CINEMA: A Bold, Fresh Piece Of Shit-Talking
BY GREG ADOMAITIS If there is such a thing as a Fox News fanboys they showed up at the box office this weekend in full force for Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck. Their “Bold and Fresh” tour brought this unholy trinity of truth-y infotainment under one roof for five live dates and was streamed as a nationwide cinecast. The tour’s name is taken from O’Reilly’s latest book “A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity” and brings the two anchors together for two hours of moonbat-bashing and wingnut meme-spinning in the no spin zone. Their friendship began when Beck left CNN early […]
SAD: Rip Torn For Arrested For Breaking Into A Bank With A Loaded Revolver While Loaded
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Actor Rip Torn, 79, was arrested Friday night on charges of burglary and criminal trespassing after officials allegedly found him carrying a loaded revolver inside a bank in Salisbury, Conn., according to the Register Citizen newspaper. A police report published on TMZ.com states that Torn used “forced entry” to get inside the bank and was “highly intoxicated” when taken into custody. The actor is being held on a $100,000 cash bond and is set to appear in court on Feb. 1. A rep for Torn did not immediately respond to requests for comment. MORE NEW HAVEN REGISTER: Torn, a Salisbury resident, is […]
TONITE: The Tintinnabulation Of The Bells
Named after Edgar Allan Poe’s best poem not called “The Raven”, Bells Bells Bells are set to release A Ghost Could Live Here, a well-crafted follow-up ’07’s Throw Down Your Anchor, which brought them, if not quite riches and fame, then psych-folk darlings status. At least around my house, anyway. The album opens with the epic “Laika, An Astronaut”, which conjures the final thoughts of the doomed Russian astro-dog who braved space ‘50s, only to die in orbit. With its dreamy reverb and eerie organ chords, compliments of keyboard maven Kat Paffett, the song sounds like a cosmic funerary hymn […]
‘Legalize It’ Ballot Measure Gets 700,000 Signatures
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Proponents of an initiative to make California the first state to legalize marijuana have collected about 693,800 signatures, virtually guaranteeing that the measure will appear on a crowded November ballot. “This is a historic first step toward ending cannabis prohibition,” said Richard Lee, the measure’s main backer. Advocates, trailed by television cameras and photographers, dropped off petitions with elections officials in the state’s largest counties, including Los Angeles, where organizers said 143,105 voters signed. Lee, a successful Oakland marijuana entrepreneur, bankrolled a professional signature-gathering effort that circulated the petition in every county except Alpine, which only has […]
SIDEWALKING: Baby It’s Cold Outside
12:50 PM – 21 degrees – 9th Street by JEFF FUSCO
ARTSY: Physical Grafitti
[Artwork by SUE COE] PHILAGRAFIKA: Involving more than 300 artists at more than 80 venues throughout the city, Philagrafika 2010 will be one of the largest art events in the United States and the world’s most important print-related exposition. Prominent museums and cultural institutions across Philadelphia are participating in Philagrafika 2010, offering regional, national and international audiences the opportunity to see contemporary art that references printmaking in dynamic, unexpected ways and to experience the rich cultural life of the city in the process. The Philagrafika 2010 festival is the result of more than five years of planning by a group […]
THIS JUST IN: Facebook Is The New Fight Club
INQUIRER: A fistfight between two gangs of girls that had been organized on Facebook erupted in gunfire last night outside a Southwest Philadelphia High School, leaving two young men and a 17-year-old girl wounded, police said. The men, ages 19 and 22, were shot in the back and were reported in critical condition at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania this morning. The girl was treated at the hospital for a bullet wound to the buttock and released. Lt. John Walker of Southwest Detectives said about 40 people, most of them teenage girls, had gathered outside Bartram High School […]
MUST SEE TV: How To Report The News
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PHAWKER TAWK: How To Get To Carnegie Hall
The PRISM Quartet performs tonight at Art After 5 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, starting at 5:45 p.m. BY DAVE ALLEN The saxophone, that iconic American instrument, is perhaps more freighted with artistic significance here in Philadelphia, where John Coltrane spent formative years and where other formidable, if less iconic, reedmen have launched their careers. In the Germantown section of the city, not all that far from where Sun Ra’s legendary Arkestra set up shop and where Arkestra saxophonist Marshall Allen still lives and sometimes assembles the group, another musical summit — […]