Perched on the Green Line
By adamg - 5/20/12 - 12:50 amZach Tucker spotted the Bird Man of the Green Line Saturday night.
Man shot in Dorchester
By adamg - 5/20/12 - 12:34 amBoston Police are investigating a shooting shortly after midnight on Homes Avenue between Topliff and Geneva.
Brian D'Amico reports several shots were fired at him before one hit.
Wedding fireworks
By adamg - 5/19/12 - 10:15 pmSomebody splurged for some nuptial explosions over the harbor tonight.
Via Lauren Siegert.
Car, cab collide, close Green Line
By adamg - 5/19/12 - 9:44 pmRobinite reports the two vehicles collided pretty much on top of the Green Line at Comm. Ave. and Allston Street around 9:30 p.m. That shut the inbound tracks; arriving emergency vehicles shut the outbound tracks as well.
Ed. question: Is that intersection cursed, or what?
Segway guy fails in bid for seat on local council
By adamg - 5/19/12 - 7:04 pmNorthEndWaterfront.com reports on today's election for seats on the North End Waterfront Council, an advisory group to city agencies and boards.
Good God, not another cupcake place in the Back Bay
By adamg - 5/19/12 - 6:47 pmMike the Mad Biologist is mad that his neighborhood is getting another damn cupcake outlet, when residents can't even buy a loaf of fresh bread.
Disoriented in East Boston
By adamg - 5/19/12 - 4:31 pmLisa S. photographed the remains of the Orient Heights stop on the Blue Line today. The T is bustituting this weekend as it renovates the station.
A made-for-TV lawsuit: MIT sues television makers over digital sets
By adamg - 5/19/12 - 4:12 pmMIT yesterday sued two TV makers for refusing to pay licensing fees on digital-television patents it was granted in the 1990s.
In lawsuits against Funai - which makes Philips, Magnavox, Sylvania, Emerson, Funai, and Symphonic products - and Vizio - MIT says it held four patents at the heart of American digital television and that it's owed licensing fees and penalties because the two companies refused to buy licenses for the technologies, unlike other makers of TVs and Blu-ray players.
MBTA Bingo, alpha edition
By adamg - 5/19/12 - 9:12 amDon't just sit/stand there vacantly staring at the clinical depression study ads anymore. Play MBTA Bingo!
That link will take you to an alpha version of the game. If you don't like the choices, hit reload for a new card. Needs some formatting work. This would be perfect for a mobile app, which, alas, is way beyond my abilities, but I should be able to at least get checkboxes on the items, so you can click when you see/hear/smell one of the items (or you could go old school and just print out a card before you go).
And let me know what things should be added to the card!
Drivers might want to avoid Mass. Ave. by Berklee this weekend
By adamg - 5/18/12 - 12:58 pmThe road will be narrowed to just one lane (and St. Germain will be shut completely) from 7 p.m. tonight through Sunday so that contractors can install a ginormous crane to help build that new Berklee building.
The BRA: No longer just for urban planning
By adamg - 5/18/12 - 12:54 pmHonor-roll student charged with gunning down man in Forest Hills pot deal
By adamg - 5/18/12 - 12:14 pmA Dorchester teen just weeks from graduation was ordered held without bail today on charges he murdered a Forest Hills man who had arranged to sell him a pound of pot.
Charles Reddicks, 18, was already out on $5,000 bail for a Dec. 11 drive-by shooting, in which he allegedly fired a bullet into the arm of another teen at Columbus Avenue and Douglas Park from the passenger seat of a moving car to settle an earlier beef, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.
Stare decided: Court rules just creeping somebody out not enough for a criminal conviction
By adamg - 5/18/12 - 11:07 amThe Supreme Judicial Court today overturned the criminal-harassment conviction of a Middleborough man who slowly drove his pickup in front of a woman's house every day for months as her kids were getting off the school bus, even after police asked him to knock it off and he agreed and then kept doing it.
Part of the state's evidence against James McDonald of Middleborough was that the woman reported he would stare at her or her neighbors as he prowled around. The court, however, said that a stare is not enough:
How the Facebook IPO could help the Boston Phoenix
By adamg - 5/18/12 - 7:52 amThe shrinking Phoenix Media Group still has one possible ace in the hole - a patent lawsuit against Facebook that, if successful, would give it ownership over one of the most fundamental parts of social networking.
At issue is a patent held by Phoenix subsidiary People2People on the concept of creating a personal page on a Web site.
Torch-wielding plumber sparks Fenway fire
By adamg - 5/18/12 - 7:25 amThe Boston Fire Department reports a fire at 125 Jersey St. did an estimated $100,000 in damage.
The department says the fire, reported shortly after 2 p.m., was caused by a plumber working on some pipes in the basement of the one-story block of stores. There were no injuries.
Oak Square community center to be dedicated today
By adamg - 5/18/12 - 7:04 amThe former Our Lady of the Presentation School, shut by the Archdiocese of Boston in 2005, hosts a celebration of its rebirth as the Presentation School Foundation Community Center, with a dedication at 3:30 p.m. followed by a party until 8 p.m.
The center now offers health screenings, daycare and preschool programs and community meeting space.
The archdiocese shut the school toward the end of the school year in 2005, locking out students and teachers - and locking in some goldfish in at least one classroom. Protest marches led to 16 months of negotiation and, finally, an agreement to sell the building to a newly formed foundation, which spent eight years raising funds and rehabbing the building. The city kicked in $400,000 for the work; Mayor Menino will be on hand today, as well Brighton resident and Secretary of State Bill Galvin.
Mourners recall Brookline man with a token of their esteem
By adamg - 5/18/12 - 7:00 amRetired Emerson College history professor John M. Coffee, Jr., died earlier this month, after a lifetime in the hobby of token collecting:
Councilor: BPS could build a brand-new school with all the money it wants to spend to move several schools around
By adamg - 5/17/12 - 8:19 pm
Jackson: Not happyA skeptical group of city councilors urged school officials today to reconsider a school-moving plan that would send a Mission Hill elementary school to Jamaica Plain. The full council could vote on the issue at its regular meeting next week.
At a hearing on the proposal today, City Councilor Tito Jackson (Roxbury) said the $19 million school BPS wants the city council to approve for loans - down from an earlier $21-million estimate - could be used to leverage additional state school construction money to simply build a brand-new school, reducing the number of students in 19th and early 20th-century buildings. State officials are currently sitting on payments for the renovation of Hyde Park High School, because BPS shut the school not long after renovating it.
"It really makes me angry that we've been given miserable choices amongst horrible options," Jackson said of the plan, in which Fenway High School would move to the Mission Hill K-8 building, the Boston Arts Academy would take over the Ipswich Street space it now shares with Fenway, the New Mission High School and Boston Community Leadership Academy would move to Hyde Park and a new Margarita Muniz Academy would move into the Agassiz School in JP along with Mission Hill.
Court rules with conviction: Tosses tougher OUI penalty against guy who'd had earlier case dismissed after admitting he would have been found guilty
By adamg - 5/17/12 - 5:31 pmThe Supreme Judicial Court ruled today a man improperly had his license suspended too long under the state's drunk-driving law because after the first time he was arrested, he didn't actually plead guilty to drunk driving.
Following a 1997 arrest, Paul Souza admitted to sufficient facts for a finding of guilty of OUI. Souza's 1997 case was continued without a finding and the charge against him dismissed after he completed an alcohol education program.



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