Biotown
Are you one of Rochester’s biotech-savvy citizens? Take a moment to answer this multiple-choice question and find out. Q: A “bio cluster” is __. a. Something you cough up when you have a chest cold b. The latest candy from Hershey’s, combining chocolate, caramel, and genetically modified “super-cashews” c. A group of biotechnology businesses…
Rock of ages
Author’s forward and disclaimer: Welcome to the first installment of our new, bi-weekly nightlife column, “Barfly on the wall.” As the name attempts to imply, I’ll be exploring bars and other gathering places (mostly bars) incognito. My intention isn’t to spy on people and expose their embarrassing nocturnal exploits to the public. That is,…
Wilmot’s tiny white flag
If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear it? Likewise, if a member of the Democratic minority in the County Legislature submits a resolution, does anybody read it? Answers: yes, lumberjacks and hikers; no, not really. A recent legislative referral submitted by Assistant Minority Leader Christopher Wilmot is a case in…
News Briefs 9.25.02
School days in court On September 17, the Greater Rochester Area Coalition for Education got one step closer to winning fairness for kids. The Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, agreed to hear what’s become known as the GRACE lawsuit. GRACE and its allies feel the state must adjust its funding policies, or…
Reader Feedback 9.25.02
Waiting Reflections on living through a year of September 11: For the first time in my life, I now understand how the intelligent, educated, cultured, sophisticated people of Germany fell for Hitler, and how they fell first for the rhetoric/metaphor of war and then blithely for a real war. As they say, let it never…
Lackawanna: terror of the unknown?
During World War I, Buffalo was gripped by what one authority (quoted by the late UB sociologist Ed Powell in his Design of Discord) called “a mounting and diffuse anxiety” over “German spies and plotters.” In July 1918, a Buffalo publication advised readers: “Do not wait until you catch someone putting a bomb under a…
Shooting down UFOs, stamping out Bigfoot
Paul Kurtz debunks urban legends and pop-culture myths
Mostly formulaic, but still a tasty treat
Yeah, we’ve seen it before: single, self-centered, career-minded woman acquires, through generally wacky means, somebody else’s sassy kid. Adult and child initially butt heads, but eventually help each other grow emotionally. When this premise is done with no thought, you get something like Bogus with Whoopi Goldberg and Haley Joel Osment. When it’s done right,…
The empire strikes first, again
Although it originates in a novel published a hundred years ago and has been translated to the cinema several times, most memorably in Zoltan Korda’s brilliant 1939 adaptation, the new version of The Four Feathers seems surprisingly — and, no doubt, accidentally — apposite at this moment in the 21st century. A motion picture in…
