Science and Technology

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The Big Hurt: Vince Neil acts his age

Plus The Situation singled, Drake unsurpassed, Pete Doherty denied, Lou Reed exonerated
By the time you read this, the Situation will have his first single out on iTunes. Yeah, that the Situation.
By DAVID THORPE | June 22, 2010

Unholy contraptions

Tavares Strachan's rockets, plus 'The Boat Show' at Drive By, and 'Sensed, Unseen' at GASP
In Tavares Strachan's video The Rocket Launch (2009), two black men in white chemical suits load sugar cane into the back of a three-wheeled mini-truck, then drive down a palm-tree-lined road to a run-down building labeled Bahamas Aerospace and Sea Exploration Center.
By GREG COOK | June 23, 2010

The future of the unholy alliance

By JEFF INGLIS | June 23, 2010

Rain check

When bad weather strikes, just go indoors!
We have just the thing to cure your summer-vacation blues: Maine, from the inside.
By ANDREW STEINBEISER | June 16, 2010

Slideshow: Drainspotting in Japan

Remo Camerota's photographs of manhole covers in Japan, where 95% of municipalities take pride in their artistic drains.
A collection of artistic Japanese manhole covers
By REMO CAMEROTA | June 07, 2010

Endless inquiry

Ghostly shapes and images at 37-A Gallery
Mikael Kennedy’s portraits of his maunderings through the American landscape harness a transcendental concurrence of vastness and intimacy.
By ANNIE LARMON | June 09, 2010

The Big Hurt: The M.I.A. kertruffle

Plus Gallagher goes begging, Bieber gets erased, Abdul loses time
In an interview with Nylon magazine, M.I.A. offered a shocking revelation about the Web sites we use every day: "Google and Facebook were developed by the CIA, and when you're on there, you have to know that."
By DAVID THORPE | June 10, 2010

Review: Solitary Man

Let's just move on
By the fourth time Michael Douglas wakes up hungover and shirtless on a sour double bed, we get it: he's old.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 09, 2010

Secret desires

Who's going to win the election?
Everywhere I go, people keep asking me, “Who’s going to win the election?” Often, my answer depends on my mood (which ranges from bad to horrendous).
By AL DIAMON | June 02, 2010

White losers rejoice: Fletch celebrates 25 years

Thrill of the Chase Dept.
This holiday weekend marks the 25th anniversary of Fletch , the uneven but wildly enduring 1985 Chevy Chase comedy about a wisecracking reporter embroiled in a potboiler mystery.
By PETER HYMAN | June 03, 2010

Embedded

A casualty of war, and a fierce debate
Linda Bhatia gave her son’s Scout badges to his old pack and his 700 books to his alma mater, Brown University, but she will never let go of the things he had in his final days: his compass, the dimes in his pocket, his wallet, the watch he was probably wearing when a roadside bomb killed him in Afghanistan.
By ELIZABETH RAU | May 26, 2010

Privacy concerns make facebook the new bad guy

Networks
There was, for a time, a pretty clear moral hierarchy in the tech sector. Microsoft was the evil overlord, Apple the virtuous underling.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | May 26, 2010

Rotten Apple

Letters to the Boston editor, May 28, 2010
I appreciated your timely article on Apple’s evolution from underdog to corporate bully.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | May 26, 2010

Home sweet studio

The latest on DIY recording
Drums in the living room, control room in the foyer, and guitar amps isolated in separate corners of the dining room — this is the shape of the modern low-budget studio.
By JACK MILLS | May 27, 2010

My uncle, the astronaut

Found in Space
As NASA’s Space Shuttle program winds down to a close this November after 33 years and 134 launches, I was lucky enough to catch the 132nd launch this past Friday, which was also the final flight of Atlantis, one of three remaining operational orbiting vehicles in the fleet.
By CHRISTINE ATTURIO | May 19, 2010

Fortnight to fitness

Shaping up for the summer — in two exhausting weeks
If you’re reading this now, it may be too late. It’s the middle of May, and beach season is right around the corner.
By DEIRDRE FULTON | May 19, 2010

Where the wind blows

Letters to the Boston editor, May 21, 2010
Thank you for the first nonpartisan, fact-based article I have read regarding the Cape Cod wind-farm project.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | May 19, 2010

Patrick Lynch’s labor problem

Unions
For Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, candidate for governor, labor matters.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | May 19, 2010

Referendum questions

June Election
All Maine voters — whether you are registered as a member of a particular party or not — get to vote on five questions on June 8.
By JEFF INGLIS | May 19, 2010

Apple loses its cool

Once the underdog cult darling battling the evil empire, Apple is fighting an image problem — and critics, who say it’s betrayed the digital revolution
Sheez, they’re getting awfully touchy out in Cupertino.
By WEN STEPHENSON | May 14, 2010

Lee’s Store and Bakery

Another worthy source for one of Boston’s best budget sandwiches
I’ve long relied on Web sites like Chowhound and Yelp for tips on new restaurants.
By MC SLIM JB | May 14, 2010

Jocktail Party

NESN reaches out to rivals in a sports blogfest. Hugs all around.
This past Sunday night, behind Fenway Park, a subtle yet symbolic changing of the Boston sports-media guard occurred, giving unprecedented power to the people.
By CHRIS FARAONE | May 05, 2010

Facebook fracas

Clinton Hart has one too many friends; plus, a pack of ’Dawgs starts chasing the Ducks
Sooner or later, Facebook had to figure into the sports-crime scene. There are at least two cases now of pro football players getting arrested for assault in fights resulting from their wives looking at their Facebook friends lists.
By MATT TAIBBI | May 05, 2010

Tyme fer moore lernin’

Tee-Partee Lohjik
Much sport has been made of the hilariously misspelled signs created and proudly displayed at rallies by barely literate Tea Partiers.
By JEFF INGLIS | April 28, 2010

Is genius immortal?

Tech god Ray Kurzweil is a modern-day Edison. Now he's battling to stay alive — forever
No disrespect to the man who let there be electric light, but Ray Kurzweil is Thomas Alva Edison on steroids.
By CHRIS FARAONE | May 03, 2010

The way robots should be

Maine’s burgeoning automaton population
While Ray Kurzweil pursues the Nanotech Revolution, robotics researchers in Maine are chasing their own futuristic outcomes. Here’s what’s new on the local robot scene (didn’t know we had one of those, didja?).
By DEIRDRE FULTON | April 28, 2010

The Big Hurt: Dialing up Billboard’s Ringtones Chart

Who Charted?
We may scoff at the very idea of Billboard ’s ignominious Ringtones chart, but mobile phones are one of only three viable revenue channels musicians have left these days (the other two being commercial licensing and crooked charities).
By DAVID THORPE | April 26, 2010

Review: In Search of Memory

Mind-altering. Seriously.
Memory, like consciousness, eludes analysis. Nobel Prize–winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel, the subject of this subtly layered documentary by Petra Seeger, took the approach of reductionism to figure it out.
By PETER KEOUGH | April 21, 2010

Bully pulpit

Letters to the Boston editor, April 23, 2010
While I understand, appreciate, and respect the First Amendment and our right to speak freely, in the case of bullying, Harvey Silverglate makes a dangerous assumption that “civilized people, even teenagers can intuit the difference between protected speech and criminal harassment.”
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | April 21, 2010

Review: Life 2.0

A disturbing deconstruction of 21st-century culture
Jason Spingarn-Koff’s unsettling film explores the online game Second Life, in which players create avatars to live in a virtual world.
By PETER KEOUGH | April 14, 2010