[courtesy of MARRIED TO THE SEA]
GITMO: Prosecutor Says Tribunals Were Show Trials
ASSOCIATED PRESS — An Army officer who played a key role in the “enemy combatant” hearings at Guantanamo Bay says tribunal members relied on vague and incomplete intelligence while being pressured to rule against detainees, often without any specific evidence. His affidavit, submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and released Friday, is the first criticism by a member of the military panels that determine whether detainees will continue to be held. Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a 26-year veteran of military intelligence who is an Army reserve officer and a California lawyer, said military prosecutors were provided with only “generic” material […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
PLEASE DON’T FEED: Panda Bear, First Unitarian Church, Last Night BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER The great advantage of our shiny white iPod-abetted Information Age, where the far-flung chaos of recorded music has been organized and arranged into the orderly feng sui of alphabetized and easily-accessed mp3s, is that innovative music-makers like Panda Bear can connect the dots and create unexpected and stunning constellations of sound that cross the once un-breach-able barriers or time, space and genre. I can think of no better explanation, barring something being in the water, for the way that Panda Bear’s Person Pitch combines […]
MEDIA: Great Moments In Advertising
We see no need to explain why.
NPR FOR THE DEF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
RADIO TIMES Why understanding a little economics can go a long way in understanding the business world. Ever wonder why Apple charges $150 more for a black version of their laptop? Turns out, when they came out with the black iPod, demand went through the roof, so later they released a black laptop at a premium cost. This story is included in the new book The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas. We’ll talk with the author ROBERT H. FRANK, a professor of economics and management at Cornell University. Frank is also the co-author with Ben Bernanke, […]
THE WHITE STRIPES: Love Is The Truth
A commercial for Coca-Cola that only aired in Australia and just once in the UK.
‘Internet Radio Day Of Silence’ Will Not Be Televised
WXPN will join the Internet Radio Day of Silence this coming Tuesday, June 26, to protest the raising of royalty rates for online radio streams scheduled to take effect in mid-July. The new rates will also be retroactive for 17 months and payment will become due to the SoundExchange collection organization under the terms of a recent Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) decision. The new rates could cost WXPN more than $100,000 annually; several times the annual funds raised by business support on the Internet streams. For its part, WXPN will silence the station’s four streams — XPN, Y Rock On […]
CINEMA: Love Is Blind
CRAZY LOVE (2007, directed by Dan Klores & Fisher Stevens, 92 minutes, U.S.) BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! (2006, directed by Guy Maddin, 95 minutes, U.S./Canada) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC When it comes to telling a melodramatic story through weathered old imagery, few recent films have done it better the new documentary Crazy Love. Rescuing a 50-year-old tale from ancient tabloids, this expensively-mounted doc tells the tumultuous saga of Burt and Linda, a Bronx couple whose romance crashed to a halt in 1957 when the jealous Burt hired men to throw lye into her face, after she dumped him to […]
MAILBAG: A Turtle Story With A Happy Ending
From the comments section: A couple weeks ago my husband and I were headed down Lincoln Drive when we saw a turtle in the middle of the road. For some reason I screamed out for my husband to stop and he actually stopped — in the middle of Lincoln Drive! So I got out and picked up this nasty, stinking turtle (wondering to myself why?, it’s not like I have a thing for turtles) and placed him on the side of the road. Five minutes later as we stopped at a light on Kelly Drive one of the cars that […]
DEATH OF A SAUSAGE KING: Bob Evans RIP
Bob Evans, whose quest for quality sausage to serve the truckers who filled his 12-stool, 24-hour-a-day steakhouse in southeast Ohio led to the creation of a restaurant chain that bears his name, died Thursday, Bob Evans Farms Inc. announced. He was 89. Evans complained that he could not get good sausage for the restaurant he started after World War II in Gallipolis in southeast Ohio. AP: Godspeed The Sausage King And All The Truckers Who Filled His 12-Stool
NOW BE HONEST: Is This Your Alligator?
An alligator’s afternoon sunbathing was rudely interrupted yesterday when animal control officers showed up along Pennypack Creek in Bryn Athyn. Today, the gator’s quarters are a bit more cramped — the bathtub of the boss of Warminster Township’s animal control officer, Craig Claycomb. Claycomb’s the one who netted the beast, which is black and brown and four to five feet long, according to Upper Moreland animal control officer Shawn Tarman. It was just sunning itself on the rocky shore “minding its own business … obviously a pet gone wrong,” she said. INQUIRER: Later Gator
KILLADELPHIA: 6 Dead Since You Went To Bed
[Click to activate] Thursday’s six slayings — three young men gunned down in North Philadelphia in the early hours; two people killed, one critically wounded, in Kensington in the afternoon; and an unidentified man shot to death about 10:30 p.m. in Southwest Philadelphia’s Kingsessing neighborhood – pushed the year’s homicide total to 195, compared with 177 at the same time last year, police said. [via THE INQUIRER]
HOT DOC: Dick Cheney, Confidential
This is a joke, of course. (I mean, come on, like Cat Stevens would take that job? That would never happen in real life. Never.) However, this letter from Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Of Representatives’ Oversight and Reform Committee, is no joke. Click here to download a PDF of the entire letter RELATED: WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and move the terror suspects there to military prisons elsewhere, The Associated Press has learned.