Alabama

Martin Luther King’s 1956 tips for riding integrated buses, examining how design has helped an Alabama county, building instant cities in Accra and instant skyscrapers in Mumbai, and how two New York architects are tearing down the work of their former friends. It’s all this week in our favorite Urban Reads. “Do not deliberately sit…

This Abandoned House Unfolds Into a Theater For 100

This red-sided house, rotting on a quiet street of York, Alabama, was once a symbol of the town’s struggle with blight. But over the past two years, with the help of the citizens who invited him there, artist Matthew Mazzotta has disassembled the abandoned structure and rebuilt it—as a tiny home that unfolds into an…

Miss Alabama Approves of Illegal NSA Spying On All American Citizens

Listen to Miss Alabama (second-place Miss USA!) share her expertise on American Freedoms and why they needed to be erased with wholesale surveillance of phone calls and texts, so that she can feel more safe when going “to the movies” or “to the mall,” in Alabama. Donald Trump’s tacky annual television show always supplies plenty…

Is This That Thing You Lost In the Tornado? This Lady Found It.

After the surviving the tornado that ripped through Tuscaloosa, Birmingham and the rest of Alabama on Wednesday night, Patty Bullion began to notice random photos and documents washing up in her front yard. Figuring they belonged to somebody, she began posting them in a public Facebook group to see if anybody would claim them. They…

Alabama Nuclear Power Plant Gets KO’d by the Monster Tornado, But Shuts Down Safely

Alabama’s Brown’s Ferry nuclear plant, the second-largest in the US, lost power as a result of yesterday’s huge tornado that ripped through Tuscaloosa. Thankfully, it shut down as designed, averting a crisis like the one in Fukushima. [Reuters]

Idiot Uses Live WWII Grenade as Paperweight

Oh, boy. After running the plates of a suspicious vehicle and finding an outstanding arrest warrant, Birmingham police pulled over and searched the car in question. Inside the found a man, his lady friend, and a live grenade from WWII. He’s been using it, he says, as a paperweight. The bomb squad was called in,…

First-Ever Sex Toy Drive-Through Opens in Alabama

Pleasures, a sex toy store in Huntsville, Alabama (where sex toys are technically illegal), just opened the country’s first sex-toy drive-through service. I know what you’re thinking! “It’ll get so crowded!” Don’t worry—there are three lanes.

Clues and bombshells on Wolverine 2, Fringe, Superman, Teen Wolf and the Reno 911 crew’s space comedy!

Could Zack Snyder be casting an older Superman? Will the Ouija Board movie be a blockbuster adventure? Hellraiser gets two directors. Also: Harry Potter trailer, Caprica clips, Aronofsky’s Wolverine sequel hints, Hobbit progress, and clues on Teen Wolf and Trek. Superman: The Man Of Steel: We’ve all been told this reboot is about the early…

Green Lantern sequel gets a writer, more on the Transformers 3 kiss, and secrets of the USS Alabama revealed!

Warner Brothers has picked a familiar writer to pen the screenplay for Green Lantern 2. Do we know how Michael Bay’s Transformers saga will end? And a Reno 911 star tells all about their new science fiction starship comedy Alabama! Green Lantern 2: We reported yesterday that Warner Bros was moving ahead with the sequels,…

11-Year-Old Network Administrator Sorts Out Alabama School

Jon Penn isn’t your average 11-year-old school kid. No, Sir. In his spare time, mostly between classes, he manages the entire computing network for his school in Alabama. The network consists of sixty computers and Jon took up the role when the previous administrator upped and left, completely unannounced. Jon has since visited CompUSA and…

Latest Developing Area to Buy OLPC Laptops: Alabama

It’s fantastic to see that all of OLPC’s potential is being brought home to our own developing corner of the world, Alabama. Kids in grades 1-8 in Birmingham—15,000 of ’em—will receive XO laptops. Rumor has it Mississippi, Kentucky and West Virgina are also looking, and we can’t think of better places to send ’em. [AL.com,…