150 Boom Boxes and the Best Dance Party You've Never Been To

Finding the right place to stage a Decentralized Dance Party is more art than science. Which is why Gary Lachance is standing against a railing near San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, looking perplexed. It’s nearly midnight and he’s just beginning what will be an all-night search of the city, looking for locations to flood with revelers for tomorrow night’s mobile bash. He might be tired—he...

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Well: Getting the Right Addiction Treatment

“Treatment is not a prerequisite to surviving addiction.” This bold statement opens the treatment chapter in a helpful new book, “Now What? An Insider’s Guide to Addiction and Recovery,” by William Cope Moyers, a man who nonetheless needed “four intense treatment experiences over five years” before he broke free of alcohol and drugs.As the son of Judith and Bill Moyers, successful parents who watched...

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Media Decoder Blog: NPR Campaign Seeks the Quirky Listener

Are you a sky diving algebra teacher? A Sudoku-playing barista? NPR has a new ad campaign aimed at you.The pilot campaign, in four cities, is intended to bring new listeners to local public radio stations, and in turn NPR’s national programs, by matching a show to even the quirkiest interests.The three-month campaign, financed with a $750,000 grant from the Ford Foundation and developed by Baltimore...

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Cardinal Mahony used cemetery money to pay sex abuse settlement

Pressed to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars to settle clergy sex abuse lawsuits, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony turned...

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DC Comics Turns the Occupy Movement Into a Superhero Title

Eighteen months after the phrase first entered the collective public consciousness, the plight of the 99 percent is coming to mainstream superhero comics — via a new series from the second biggest publisher in the American comic industry, which just happens to be a subsidiary of a multi-national corporation that makes around $12 billion a year. Irony, anybody?In May, DC Comics will launch...

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For Families Struggling with Mental Illness, Carolyn Wolf Is a Guide in the Darkness

When a life starts to unravel, where do you turn for help? Melissa Klump began to slip in the eighth grade. She couldn’t focus in class, and in a moment of despair she swallowed 60 ibuprofen tablets. She was smart, pretty and ill: depression, attention deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, either bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder. In her 20s, after a more...

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Boeing 787 Completes Test Flight

A Boeing 787 test plane flew for more than two hours on Saturday to gather information about the problems with the batteries that led to a worldwide grounding of the new jets more than three weeks ago. The flight was the first since the Federal Aviation Administration gave Boeing permission on Thursday to conduct in-flight tests. Federal investigators and the company are trying to determine...

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A delicate new balancing act in senior healthcare

When Claire Gordon arrived at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, nurses knew she needed extra attention.She was 96, had heart disease...

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Fate of Historic Landsat Mission Hinges on Upcoming Launch

Since 1972 the Landsat mission has been monitoring natural and human-made changes to our planet. But the continuity of that scientifically precious dataset could be lost unless all goes according to plan on Monday, when the Landsat 8 satellite is scheduled to be launched into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Landsat 8 will take over for the hobbled 14-year old Landsat...

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In Nigeria, Polio Vaccine Workers Are Killed by Gunmen

At least nine polio immunization workers were shot to death in northern Nigeria on Friday by gunmen who attacked two clinics, officials said. The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio. Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of...

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