Yes, we're Folklife enthusiasts. Where else can you get a funnel cake, a hip-hop spitfest, a latin dance party, and a contest for liars, all in one place? We quoted Prince in the headline because we wouldn't be surprised if he showed up at Folklife this year. There is so much shit going on this weekend, and you don't have to drive all the way to the silly Gorge and pay through your nose......

As Sightline's Daily Score blog reports, Washington is going to become one of the toughest places in the world to inhale PBDEs, the fire retardant currently being given off by your consumer electronics and accumulating in your fatty tissue. Sez Clark Williams-Derry, The "penta" and "octa" formulations of PBDEs haven't been manufactured in North America for a while, but "deca" is still fairly common -- so this is genuinely big news. I doubt that......

Tuesday, January 9 >>> Fred Gianelli at Baltic Room. Fred Gianelli has worked under a number of pseudonyms over the years, first as part of Psychic TV, then later as Acid Didj, Giannelli, Deneuve, Mazdaratti, and most famously as The Kooky Scientist. He's weathered a few trends in the world of techno, gathering a reputation as a gearhead and quality producer. Will he feature a stripped down setup this time around, or will he......

Last night we happened to see King5's new drama The Senate Campaign Debates and, wow, they really got a great cast for this show. All our favorite characters are in there: There's the incumbent Democrat who did a good job talking about energy and Hanford, but stumbled a bit over her one joke. There's the Republican challenger who's convinced that his business acumen will directly translate to governing goodness and that a border fence is......

The Senate was asked to support the troops this morning via a defence spending bill that included money for soldiers in Iraq, Katrina aid and, of course, drilling for oil in the Alaskan wildlife refuge. Attaching ANWR drilling to a defence spending bill that must get passed was the brainchild of Senator Stevens of Alaska who has been trying to dig up the refuge for twenty years, a move that Senator John McCain called,......