Controversy Erupts Over Ethnic Mapping

"If you're familiar with porcupines, they can cause an enormous amount of damage to a rural home," Jerry Feaser told me. "They literally chew through things."

Feaser works for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, which has lately been wrestling with porcupine trouble. State law lets homeowners kill animals that are causing damage to homes — provided the animals are caught in the act.

"The problem is that porcupines are nocturnal, and the [low] likelihood that someone is actually going to catch them in the act is an obstacle," Feaser told me.

If he's not at one of his 16 restaurants in New York, Las Vegas or Los Angeles, Mario Batali is easily found on TV these days.

One day he's making meatloaf with his co-host on the new daytime show The Chew. The next he's having a friendly cook-off with a rival celebrity chef on Good Morning America. Or traipsing through Europe for PBS, sporting his reddish ponytail, baggy shorts and not-so-fashionable clogs with celeb food enthusiast Gwyneth Paltrow.

While members of the Constitutional Convention were in Philadelphia back in 1787, many stopped by the D. Landreth Seed Company store to buy radishes, broccoli, and parsley, among other things. Landreth counted every American president from George Washington to Franklin D. Roosevelt as customers.

But despite it's historic significance, the country's oldest seed company has been struggling to survive.

"Murga attacks everything," says a Uruguayan choir director during our podcast of the week's best arts stories. Murga is a kind of choral music that sticks it to everyone during competitions that take place as part of Uruguay's Carnaval festivities. They're said to be the longest in the world — the party goes on for well over a month.

In criticizing a reporter's use of the term "nutcase" last week, I wrote that "political correctness can surely get out of hand," but not in this case. Readers and editors who responded widely agreed. The pushback came on another term: political correctness.

B-52’s with the Wild Crowd! can be seen Thursday, March 8th at 8:30 p.m.

Filmed in the B-52s’ hometown of Athens, Georgia, at a show that commemorated the 34th anniversary of the band’s first-ever live show on Valentine’s Day 1977, B-52’s with the Wild Crowd! delivers a sizzling performance that turned Athens’ Classic Center into a dancehall! The band delivered high-spirited versions of their
classics: “Love Shack,” “Rock Lobster,” “Give Me Back My Man,” “Funplex,” “Roam,” “Planet Claire,” and many more.