UniLect Unelected as Computer Voting Method, Thanks to Local Voter
If Pennsylvania officials had listened to Sheila Green, the state would have fixed its electronic voting problem in Beaver and other local counties back in October. “When I first moved to Beaver, I was pretty much appalled to walk into my polling place and see a touch screen, and it’s not because I’m a…
Candidate Forums:Hoping For Ad Libs …
“I’ve been to several of these candidates’ forums,” says Don Patterson. “I need No-Doz. These things are like a movie, everything’s in place.” Scripted, that is. For the forum Patterson’s coordinating, sponsored by the New Pittsburgh Courier and the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation, he says he won’t be bending over backwards…
Political Activism:… Hoping Just for Ads
Grassroots activists sprouted like, well, weeds around last year’s presidential campaign. True, the election didn’t turn out the way many of them hoped. But that doesn’t mean the November 2 Project’s national get-out-the-vote push or local efforts including The Partisan Project (an anti-Bush postering campaign) didn’t make a difference. In the spirit of MoveOn.org’s do-it-yourself…
Iraq War: Notes from a Culture Warrior
Those hunting scapegoats for what’s gone wrong with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, says Akbar Ahmed, should look to their local post-secondary social-science departments. Ahmed, a leading authority on contemporary Islam, says the years American academia spent neglecting things such as the role of religion in traditional cultures left a void that after 9/11 was…
Social Security: AARP Recruits Young Before Fight Gets Old
“The last thing we need to do is let those golden nipple-sucking thieves of Wall Street at our Social Security money!” Kevin Gaughan proclaimed to a delighted audience of about 400 retires and well-groomed young professionals at Station Square on April 6. Gaughan wasn’t asked to share his thoughts when Dick Cheney…
Sonoma Grille
Location: 947 Penn Ave., Downtown. 412-697-1336 Hours: Sun.-Sat. 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Prices: Appetizers, $7-10; entrees, $12-23 Fare: Californian Atmosphere: Also Californian Liquor: Full bar, many wines It seemed obvious to us that a restaurant called Sonoma Grille must feature California food and wine. What was less obvious was exactly what we should expect from this…
Sahara
For treasure-hunter Dirk Pitt, the inland deserts of Africa are the very place you’d expect to find a long-lost Civil War ship. It’s not the brutal sun or the available tequila that brings on this delusion, but the discovery in Mali of a Confederate gold coin last seen aboard the CSS Ironclad Texas…
Style and Substance
With this year’s race for mayor of Pittsburgh, we finally have something the city hasn’t had in a while: a substantive discussion of issues and policy, proposed not by fringe candidates but by competent and articulate public officials. We finally have a political debate worth having. Too bad the damn election keeps getting…
Masculine Feminine
Needless to say, Jean-Luc Godard’s provocative-cum-pedantic 1966 sub-masterpiece Masculine Feminine doesn’t date very well. Maybe it’s ennui with the oldness of the French new wave, or maybe Godard really does just go on and on until he’s out of breath. But this story of four young Parisians, emerging from their solipsistic haze into…
Keeping the Wolves at Habay
Back at my old TV talk show, we used to call Shaler Republican state representative Jeff Habay “Haybay-take-a-walk-on-the-wild-side.” The joke was that the fresh-faced punk from the North Hills was the epitome of the bland leading the bland. He mouthed conservative Republican soundbites with the nondescript sincerity of a harmless true…
Film, Not Video
It happened, says Chris May, with stunning speed. Between its first shows in 2000 and its fifth anniversary, The International Experimental Cinema Exposition went from being one of many U.S. film festivals that accepted only works on celluloid to, Mays claims, the world’s lone film-only festival. It’s a worthy mission as…
The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood
Edward Jay Epstein’s detailed exposition of today’s movie industry, The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood, will cast the scales from the eyes of even the most romantic of film fans. It’s all about the money, honey — and in that regard, Epstein’s book is a fascinating, easy-to-digest…
The Pittsburgh Jewish-Israeli Film Festival
The 12th annual Pittsburgh Jewish-Israeli Film Festival highlighting feature films and documentaries representing Jewish experiences concludes Sun., April 17. All remaining films will screen at the SouthSide Works Cinema, on the South Side (412-381-7335). Additionally, there are two free lectures at the University of Pittsburgh. Tickets are $8 for adults, $7 for seniors…
What is it going to take for the government of this city to realize that we need more things for young people to do in Pittsburgh?
For starters, it’s going to take more young people voting. Last fall, there was a lot of talk about the increased participation of young voters in the presidential election. But the real test will come in this May’s primary. Off-year elections are when local governments are chosen, and turnout for younger…
DEAR FRANKIE
Director Shona Auerbach makes her feature debut with this gritty but sweet kitchen-sink drama set on the dirty industrial fringes of Glasgow, Scotland. Nine-year-old deaf Frankie (Jack McElhone), his struggling young mother, Lizzie (Emily Mortimer), and her cranky mum move from one cheap flat to another; Lizzie’s on the run from Frankie’s abusive dad. To…
How the West Wasn’t Won
In the back corner of the courtyard at the James Gallery stands a striped metal steed with a somewhat ridiculous turkey-like head. It’s called “Trojan Horse Study Number 2,” and it’s the creation of artist Rick Bach. It wouldn’t be in this quiet spot in the West End’s eight-block business district were it not for…
FEVER PITCH
n this romantic comedy, the Farrelly brothers examine whether true love can exist between a sweet, funny baseball nut (Jimmy Fallon), a winsome corporate workaholic (Drew Barrymore) and the Boston Red Sox. As with all romantic triangles, somebody has to get hurt — and by rights, the long-losing Sox should have taken the hit, enabling…
A Conversation with Laura Winter
A bi-lingual secretary by occupation, Laura Winter is the “garden lady” to the kids of the North Side. Winter is instrumental in the creation and maintenance of a children’s community garden in the Mexican War Streets; now that spring has arrived, the 25-by-100-foot lot on Monterey Street is being prepped for its sixth…
OSCAR SHORTS
Better late than never, here is your chance to screen seven of the animated and live-action shorts nominated for an Academy Award in 2004. The 100-minute program includes a humorous cartoon about a hungry gopher, and two shorts about boys caught up in armed conflicts (“Birthday Boy” from Korea and “Little Terrorist” from India). The…
STEAMBOY
Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira) directs this English-language anime set in Victorian London at the time of the Great Exhibition in 1851. A bright young lad named Ray (voice of Anna Paquin) intervenes in a struggle between his father and grandfather, inventors who are harnessing steam for practical use, chiefly in the form of a gigantic militaristic…
FRANKIE AND JOHNNY ARE MARRIED
A successful TV producer decides that staging a play will jump-start the career of his frustrated actress wife (Lisa Chess), as well as strengthen their relationship. His second mistake is to put on Terence McNally’s Frankie and Johnnie in the Clair de Lune, a play rife with emotional turbulence that only seems to inspire bad…
Beck
Aside from a recent admission in the New York Times magazine that he’s now a practicing Scientologist, do any true lovers of inspired music have rightful cause to dislike the junk-drawer surrealism of Beck Hanson? Tough to say. After all, whom else in the current pop-music cannon do we know with a résumé…
Ladysmith Black Mambazo with the English Chamber Orchestra
Musically distant from the township boogie of mbanqanga and the post-hip-hop mish-mash of kwaito (in the ’90s), Ladysmith Black Mambazo has been the Western-friendly face of South African music for two decades, since Paul Simon adopted the then-20-year-old group. The group’s singing style is called “isicathamiya” (“tip-toeing”), an apt description for its hushed,…
Kaos
His previous work has been schizophrenic, from Ghost Cauldron’s robotic thud, to Terranova’s weirdo-hop with the likes of Mike Ladd and ex-Slit Ari Up, to graffiti (he tagged the Berlin Wall) and modeling (Stussy). But now, under his own “name,” Kaos is simply multifaceted. On Hello Stranger, Kaos pulls off deep electro-house with…
