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Halloween highlights

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

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By Jessica Hunt

There’s no small number of Halloween-related events this year. Here are some of our favorites:

All Purpose Party at the Masquerade (Fri. Oct. 30)

Darkside Tours at Underground Atlanta

Fuggin Monster Jam at 2043 Cheshire Bridge Road

Halloweenus Wangdoodle at Dad’s Garage Theatre

Hand of Doom at 529

Moonshiner’s Ball at Twain’s Billiards and Tap

Netherworld Haunted House at the Georgia Antique Design Center

The Phantom of the Opera at Atlanta Symphony Hall

Scream on the Green at Centennial Olympic Park Georgia World Congress Center

Seven Deadly Showgirls at 7 Stages

The Silver Scream Spook Show at the Plaza Theatre

Stalking in a Winter Horror Land at CW Midtown Music Complex

Zombie Bash Block Party at Biltmore Ballroom, Cypress P&P and Halo Lounge

Zombieland Halloween Party at 10 Krog Street

See the whole shebang after the jump.

(Photo courtesy Dad’s Garage Theatre)

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Soapbox: Next mayor can’t slack on Atlanta’s sewer overhaul

Monday, October 26th, 2009
Sally Bethea

Sally Bethea

In addition to crime, finances and transportation, Atlanta’s next mayor has a sizable task on his or her to-do list: continue fixing the city’s antiquated sewer system. Sally Bethea, executive director of the Upper Chattachoochee Riverkeeper, reminds the candidates not to lose sight of the estimated $4.1 billion project.

Eight short years ago, Atlanta’s aging sewer system was a disgrace to its citizens and to the state of Georgia. It was also illegal.

When the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper sued the city of Atlanta in 1995 for violations of the Clean Water Act, hundreds of millions of gallons of untreated sewage were routinely dumped into our streams and the river.

Although a federal judge ruled that the city had to clean up its act, then Mayor Bill Campbell did little but stall, leaving it to the next mayor to solve the problem, even while the judge threatened a moratorium on new development because Atlanta did not have the sewage infrastructure to support such development.

(more…)

CL endorsements live chat

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Agree or disagree with our endorsement picks? Have a say in our endorsement live-chat with Mara, Scott and Thomas, today at 1:30 pm.

If the chat window doesn’t appear above, click Here

Straight Dope

Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

I’ve noticed a lot of my neighbors have built elevated gardening beds in their yards using wood that’s marked as treated with arsenic. Will the arsenic get into the vegetables and fruits these people are growing? If so, is that a health concern?
— Ray Charlton, Corvallis, Oregon

Hard to say. Were these vegetables and fruits they were actually planning to eat?

Manufacturers treat wood with arsenic for the same reason you don’t want it in food — it kills things, in this case the bacteria, fungi, and insects that would otherwise nibble on the wood. Although several wood treatments contain arsenic, the compound of greatest concern is chromated copper arsenate, or CCA, a trifecta of dangerous chemicals that at one time (like 1990) was used on almost all the pressure-treated lumber in the United States. Although CCA is supposed to stay put, small amounts can leach out when the wood is exposed to the elements. CCA-treated garden borders aren’t the only thing leaking arsenic into the environment; the same can happen with treated-wood mulch or chips, decking, and traffic sound barriers.

Continue reading Straight Dope

(illustration by Slug Signorino)

CL Video: Atlanta Mayoral candidate Duvwon Robinson

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

In the second of CL’s series of videos chronicling mayoral candidates you’ve probably never heard of, Duvwon Robinson, who grew up in notorious housing project Bowen Homes, talks about cleaning up the streets (literally) and using confiscated drug money to create jobs for the unemployed.

Straight Dope

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

I’ve seen pictures of Pangaea, the giant land mass that eventually separated into the continents we know today. But why were the continents smushed together like that in the first place? What made the land higher on that one side of the earth? Were there other continents we can no longer account for? Is it related to the asteroid that may or may not have smashed into Earth and helped form the moon?
— Chris D., Cranston, R.I.

Careful, bud. Thinking outside the box is great, but we don’t want to cross the border into the completely insane. That’s a chronic risk with continental drift, talk of which was a sure way to clear out your end of the bar at scientific conferences until the 1950s and which still inspires wacky theories. Asteroids don’t figure in any of those I’ve heard about — but wait till you get a load of the expanding earth.

Continue reading the Straight Dope

(Illustration by Slug Signorino)

Straight Dope

Saturday, July 25th, 2009

Superman is able to use his super strength to squeeze coal into diamonds. Theoretically, if someone had unlimited strength in real life, would it be possible to do this?
— marcusbrute

You realize, Marcus, we’re talking about what (a) a fictional character of virtually unlimited powers (barring kryptonite-related issues) could, (b) if real, be (c) theoretically but (d) realistically expected to do. Even by the Straight Dope standards this takes us into a pretty abstruse realm. That’s probably why I got into a big argument on the subject with my assistant Una, who’s normally as tranquil as a September morn.

Admittedly, I started off behind the eight ball owing to my scandalously inadequate knowledge of artificial diamond making. I submitted that squeezing coal into diamonds was impossible. Somewhere I’d gotten the idea that fake diamonds were all made by a process known as chemical vapor deposition, and that CVD approximated how natural diamonds were made. CVD involved heat and pressure, but the main thing was you started out with a seed crystal you bathed in carbon-rich vapor and from this the diamond was basically grown. That was a far cry from the scenario in the comic books, where Superman grabbed a chunk of coal, squeezed, and voila, a diamond. For one thing, growing a diamond via CVD could take two or three days. Not to slight this achievement, but it wasn’t the kind of dramatic gesture that was going to thrill Lois Lane.

Continue reading Straight Dope

(Illustration by Slug Signorino)

Straight Dope

Saturday, July 18th, 2009

What’s the final word about Y2K? We were told this was a serious problem, and that huge dollars and man-hours were needed to head off trouble. Why didn’t the sky fall, as predicted? Were the dollars spent before January 1, 2000, well spent or not? The date change seemed seamless to a layman. Was this because we headed off most of the trouble before it happened, or because it wasn’t as serious as predicted?
— Paul Wheeler

One may inquire: Why am I answering this now? Because the question keeps coming in, and at some point you have to ask, if I don’t take it on, who will? So here’s the best answer you’re likely to get: 1) While the true extent of Y2K issues will never be known, what we do know suggests the problem was wildly exaggerated. In retrospect, it would have been smarter to focus resources on a few truly high-risk areas, wait till 1/1/2000 for everything else, and fix what broke. Looked at in that light, the money spent on remediation, estimated at between $100 billion and $600 billion, was mostly wasted. 2) That’s hindsight talking. To put things in perspective (I realize the argument cuts both ways) many now say the world as we know it is going to end due to global warming. You think the smart choice is to say “relax”?

Continue reading Straight Dope

(Illustration by Slug Signorino)

Straight Dope

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

There’s an old saw about God protecting drunks and fools. I’m particularly interested in the drunks part. Almost nightly, it seems, we hear on the news that a drunk driver killed one or more people in another car but the drunk survived, sometimes without injury. A family member suggested drunks are saved because they’ve passed out and are more relaxed, but I’m skeptical. Is it just the crashes where the drunk walks away after killing another that make the news?
— PLT, Indianapolis

If somebody’s going to walk away from a fatal car crash, you really want it not to be the inebriated loser who caused it. However, while all the facts aren’t in, there’s reason to think drunk drivers sometimes get a break they don’t deserve.

We’ll call what you’re describing the lucky-drunk hypothesis. Although it’s been floating around for a long time, scientists apparently first examined it seriously in a 1982 study of trauma victims treated at a Texas hospital (Ward et. al, American Journal of Surgery). Roughly a third of the 1,200 patients had been drinking.

Continue reading Straight Dope

(Illustration by Slug Signorino)

Time and Place: Puppet master

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

I met this man on July 1 on the corner of Northside and Martin Luther King Jr. drives. This is what he said.

“In 1976 I was sitting at the house one Saturday morning practicing over some songs and jokes, and I opened up my mouth and said, ‘Lord, if I deliver the word that you give me through that dummy there, man might take heed — because he don’t believe.’ And I know it is a true statement, but I thought, ‘Oh yeah I will do that later in life.’

“But 15 minutes after that, I got up and went out to the back door of the house. I had a lock on the garage gate, but I had lost the key. So I got a hatchet out of the garage and started beating down on the lock trying to knock it off the gate. That hatchet came off of that lock with my hand wrapped around that handle. I did not have no control over my hand at all. That hatchet came right off the handle towards my heart as fast as lightning and stopped within one inch of my heart and touched me softly. When that happened to me, I went down on my knees and said, ‘Oh my Lord, my God,’ and I remained there for five or six minutes. And then I got up and I looked at that hatchet laying on the ground and three things went through my mind.

“The first thing was, ‘Hey fool, this is the master.’ The second thing that went through my mind was, ‘If [God] wanted to take your life, [He] could have done it right there.’ The third thing was, ‘What you said in your house about delivering the word that I give you through that dummy, you get on it and don’t waste no more time.’

“God knows for a fact that the people of this nation have been told all of their life about Jesus, but 80 percent have denied his word and continue to live in sin. But his word has never been delivered through a dummy, so I am out here delivering the word of God through a dummy. I am out here every day. My dummy’s name is Sweet Pea Johnson. I have been doing this for 32 years. I am out here warning people about the coming of Jesus through a dummy.”

(Photo and interview by Joeff Davis)

Straight Dope

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

I recently read a speech by Noam Chomsky in which he says that during the Vietnam War, “soldiers were fragging officers.” I, a man too young to have served in that conflict, have heard this before but thought it was just a rumor. Can you shed some light on this dark matter?
— Tom, Chicago

I can, but frankly not much — and in my opinion, that’s a story all by itself.

Fragging — assaulting a superior officer using a fragmentation grenade or other explosive — was surprisingly common during the Vietnam War. The most reliable figure is 730 suspected incidents from 1969 through 1971, much higher than in U.S. wars before or since. Oddly, there’s no official count of fragging deaths; one unofficial source says 86, another 45.

Continue reading Straight Dope

(Illustration by Slug Signorino)

Atlanta Fourth of July events

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

By Sarah Bakhtiari

311, Ziggy Marley, the Expendables 311 headlines the Summer Unity Tour with Jamaican musician Ziggy Marley and reggae-punk band the Expendables. $20-$38.50. 6:30 p.m. Aaron’s Amphitheatre at Lakewood, 2002 Lakewood Way. 404-817-8700. www.ticketmaster.com.

4th of July Bash ’80s Style Dress ’80s for this Independence Day event with a dance floor. Bathing suits are also welcome for the poolside party. $15-$20. 7 p.m. DoubleTree Hotel Northlake, 4156 LaVista Road, Tucker. 678-608-8807.

4th of July Punk Rock Extravaganza Local punk-rock acts take over the Masquerade for shows in both Heaven and Hell. Who needs fireworks? 7 p.m. $8. 695 North Ave. 404-577-8178. www.masq.com.

All-American Celebration Family fun, patriotic sing-alongs and anthems, and a fiery post-concert blast! Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, conductor Bridget Reischl and the formidable U.S. Army Chorus perform. $21-$59. 8-10 p.m. Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, 2200 Encore Parkway. 404-733-5010. www.ticketmaster.com.

Alpharetta’s Summer Celebration Alpharetta Recreation & Parks Department will host a spectacular fireworks show with food, children’s activities & entertainment. 5 p.m. Wills Park, 11925 Wills Road, Alpharetta. 678-297-6140. www.awesomealpharetta.com.

Beer and BBQ for the Fourth Chow down on an all-American Fourth of July three-course dinner. Chef Kevin Gillespie will roast a whole hog using his personal Terminus City barbecue recipes. $35-$40. 5 p.m. Woodfire Grill, 1782 Cheshire Bridge Road. 404-347-9055. www.woodfiregrill.com.

Big 4th in Little 5 Groove to two stages, one indoors and one outdoors. Bands include James Hall, the Constellations, Batata Doce, the Jaguars, F’ing Heartbreaks, Death on Two Wheels, the Whiskey Gentry, the Weeks and El Cobra Negro. $5-$8. 4 p.m. Star Bar, 437 Moreland Ave. 404-681-9018. www.starbar.net.

(Photo by Flickr.com/Pixel Addict)

(more…)

Straight Dope

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond claims, “When NASA wanted to find some place on Earth resembling the surface of the Moon, so that our astronauts preparing for the first moon landing could practice in an environment similar to what they would encounter, NASA picked a formerly green area of Iceland that is now utterly barren.” This struck me as wrong. Growing up, I heard the slag fields around Sudbury, Ontario, helped get the lunar astronauts accustomed to the moon’s desolation. I’ve heard similar things about islands in the Canadian arctic and deserts in the American southwest. I can’t see NASA hauling astronauts around the world just to look at places without trees. I wonder if the real explanation is that the astronauts had to take geology lessons. True?
— CAMERON BARR, EDMONTON

You nailed it, friend. Most astronaut field trips were about geology, not getting used to a bleak hell unfit for life. For that they could have stayed in Houston.

The astronauts trained at lots of sites in the U.S. and around the world, at least a couple of which humans had turned into wildernesses. According to Diamond, “Since human settlement began, most of [Iceland's] original trees and vegetation have been destroyed, and about half of the original soils have eroded into the ocean. As a result … large areas … that were green at the time that Vikings landed are now lifeless brown desert.” Similarly, much of the area around Sudbury, Ontario, was a moonscape in the 1960s due to nickel smelting.

Continue reading Straight Dope

(Illustration by Slug Signorino)

Photo of the Day: Standing tall

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

He’s just stripping down at 97 Estoria after a few pitchers. Who can blame him? It’s hot as hell.

(Photo by Naomi Prindiville)

Photo of the day

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

Arthur Dublettle holds a sign this afternoon protesting the city turning off the water at Atlanta’s largest homeless shelter, on the corner of Peachtree and Pine streets.

The shelter has not made payments on their water bill for over two months, which has led county officials to threaten to close down the shelter. (This afternoon, a judge ruled that the water should be turned back on pending an appeal.)

“We can’t use the bathroom, showers or the drinking water,” says Dublettle, who lives and works at the shelter. He adds: “If they shut down the shelter, I will go and sleep in the park.”

See the story update below.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

News of the Weird

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

LEAD STORY: Terrorism Gets Pizzazz: A physical fitness video, purportedly made in April by a U.S.-based al-Qaida operative, gives workout tips to jihadists, urging that they “train as hard as possible” to inflict maximum damage on “the enemies of Allah,” according to an ABC News report. Exercises such as crawling long distances on hands and knees are demonstrated by people in flowing robes. The narrator discourages using gyms and fitness centers because of the “un-Islamic” music and “semi-naked” women. And a video released in May, purportedly from al-Qaida in Somalia, features an English-speaking rap singer making a recruitment pitch to U.S. and European youth, including such verses as: “Mortar by mortar/Shell by shell/Only going to stop/When I send them to hell.”

Continue reading News of the Weird.

The Straight Dope

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

My son just finished a three-month karate class. Last night he asked me if karate really would help someone defeat a larger, stronger opponent. I told him I honestly never heard of anyone using any martial art to win a fight outside of a movie. You would think here in New York, with so many muggings (at least at one time) and other violent crimes, there would be stories of people using martial arts to defend themselves. But all we got is Bernie Goetz, and he had a gun. So in all of recorded history, has a skinny black belt ever beaten up a beefy weightlifter? My son’s future athletic choices may depend on it.
— PATRICK CASTILLO, NEW YORK CITY

Well, I’d keep him off the steroids, if that’s what you’re asking. Also, common experience suggests that where big vs. small is concerned, you don’t necessarily want to bet the rent on Goliath. Granted, David wasn’t using karate, and there’s no question the introduction of firearms into the situation tends to skew the odds. Nonetheless, you do occasionally hear of martial arts adepts taking down attackers with their bare hands — including attackers with guns. For example:

Continue reading The Straight Dope.

(Illustration by Slug Signorino)

The Blotter

Friday, June 19th, 2009

CLOTHES ENCOUNTERS: A 24-year-old man wearing a dress allegedly shoplifted from a drugstore on Boulevard. According to a security guard, the man concealed a soap-and-body-wash set inside his bag. The security guard said he tried to stop the man – but he ran out of the drugstore, along with a woman. The guard said he hopped in his car and caught them about a block away – but the man passed his bag to the woman, and she disappeared between some houses. Apparently, the man took off his dress, threw a rock at the guard’s car, and ran into Zoo Atlanta. Eventually, police caught the man and took him to jail.

Continue reading this week’s Blotter.

(Illustration by Tray Butler)

Time and Place: Wallet stolen

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

“Food? Money? Hugs? Pictures? Ass Smacks?  Just ask for more,” is what the sign says.

Just ask for more? I don’t know if I can take any more than that green uni-thong.  When I took this picture I had been at Bonnaroo for three days and Phish was about to begin its Sunday set. I guess when you’ve lost everything you still have your dignity.

Government Mule was the best band I saw at Bonnaroo. They played an awesome set with a lot of older rock covers. I didn’t hear too many bands out there I did not like, although one metal band just sounded like noise. I can sometimes get into that.

I slept every night in the back of a Ford Expedition, a big truck. We were actually very comfortable because we had an inflatable mattress. We usually didn’t go to bed until 4 or 5 in the morning — then we woke up to one of our neighbors screaming “Bongeroo! Bongeroo!” at 9 or 10 in the morning. He had a cape on one of those mornings and was running around the campsite screaming. I assume he was drinking.

The hardest part was running around because there are so many bands, but you also have to do a lot of waiting. Thursday night there was a torrential downpour, so later there was a ton of mud everywhere. There were certain areas where you could step that you would lose a shoe in the mud. Right now my shoes are next to the washing machine, but I think they will survive.

More Bonnaroo photos

(Photo and text by James Camp)

News of the Weird

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

LEAD STORY: Convicted Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, now serving a life sentence in the Florence, Colo., “Supermax” prison, filed a 39-page federal lawsuit in March alleging unconstitutional “cruel and unusual punishment” because the refined-food, low-fiber meals give him “chronic constipation [and] bleeding hemorrhoids.” He demanded fresh, raw vegetables and other high-fiber foods, necessary to “keep one’s body (i.e., God’s holy temple) in good health.” Nichols was joined in the lawsuit by fellow Supermax resident Eric Rudolph (the convicted abortion-clinic and Atlanta Olympics bomber), who claimed “gas and stomach cramps” and observed that “our bodies” are “sacred and should be treated as such.”

Continue reading News of the Weird.

The Straight Dope

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

Do bras keep breasts from sagging as you get older? I’ve heard reports that they do nothing at all.
— CURIOUS

Oh, bras probably do something. It’s just that nobody can agree on what it is. I won’t pretend to have the definitive answer, but here’s what we’ve established so far:

1) The medical term for breast sagging is breast ptosis. One often hears that “the French have a word for it,” “it” being any inscrutable aspect of daily life. If the French ever get stumped, however, ask a doctor.

Continue reading The Straight Dope.

(Illustration by Slug Signorino)

The Blotter

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

AFTER-SCHOOL SPECIAL: A mother’s kids didn’t return home from school one day. (They attend a local elementary school.) The mother said her kids weren’t at their school bus stop on Oak Street, so she started searching for them. She said she found her kids at another bus stop three blocks away. While she was there, she found a 6-year-old boy – and he said this isn’t his regular bus stop and he didn’t know where he was. The woman took the boy home and called 911, the elementary school and police. A school employee arrived and called the lost boy’s mother – and she quickly came to collect her son. According to the police officer’s report, the mothers told police “that this was not the first time this happened and that their kids have been dropped off several times at the wrong locations.”

Continue reading The Blotter.

(Illustration by Tray Butler)

The Straight Dope

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

How lethal are Tasers? I know there’s talk about police being Taser-happy and torturing people with these devices, but has anyone been Tasered to death?
— DUGIE C., CALGARY

News a little slow getting up to Calgary, Dugie? Lots of people have died after being Tasered — which is not to say they were necessarily Tasered to death. According to a widely publicized Amnesty International study last year, 334 people in the U.S. plus 25 more in Canada died between 2001 and 2008 after being zapped with a Taser by cops. The Taser’s defenders say it beats shooting people and reduces the risk of stray bullets injuring bystanders. Wrong argument, says AI. The Taser isn’t a replacement for guns but rather for billy clubs and such — for a lot of cops, it’s become the default method of subduing the unruly. OK, getting whupped upside the head in the old days wasn’t a pleasant experience, but at least it didn’t involve 50,000 volts.

Continue reading Straight Dope.

(Illustration by Slug Signorino)

News of the Weird

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

LEAD STORY: In April at a New York City gallery, the Australian performance artist Stelarc starred in a video of his surgery in which an ear is implanted into his left forearm (right now, just a prosthesis, but to which stem cells will be added), which will house an Internet-accessed, Bluetooth-capable microphone. “Post-evolutionary strategies” are required, Stelarc told the New York Times, because the current state of the body is obsolete. Other exhibits at the Corpus Extremus (LIFE+) exhibit included a genetically modified goat that produces super-strong spider’s silk. In an earlier project, Stelarc wired half his muscles to computers in Paris, Helsinki and Amsterdam, to understand a semi-controllable “split-body experience.” Stelarc’s self-appraisal: “[I'm] never in [my] comfort zone.”

Continue reading News of the Weird.

Henderson murder press conference

Friday, May 8th, 2009

CL staffers Scott Henry and Alejandro Leal covered the Atlanta Police Department’s John Henderson press conference on our Twitter feed.

Atlantans Together Against Crime’s Kyle Keyser also Twittered the press conference.

Atlanta Police say ballistics and DNA evidence led them to charge 17-year-old Jonathan Redding with Henderson’s murder.

CL’s servers are acting wonky, so check here AND our Twitter feed for updates as they become available.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)