Bulletin Board

Heard the news? The Eagles are playing a big game in six days against the Dallas Cowboys. You would never know that by visiting the Eagles' locker room. Listen to the Eagles, and you would think these two unbeaten teams: Had no grudges to settle. Had the utmost of respect for each other. Were the best of buddies. Said quarterback Randall Cunningham: "I don't think we hate the Cowboys. I think the media builds it up as if we hate them. There's no reason for us to hate them.

When you disrespect these thick-necked NFL players of the '90s, many tipping the scales above 300 pounds, they can be awfully thin-skinned. Consider, for example, the smoldering Steelers. For most NFL teams, the prospect of beating the Broncos on Sunday at Three Rivers Stadium for the AFC championship - and half the participant passes to Super Bowl XXXII - would be motivation enough. But the Steelers also want to make Broncos coach Mike Shanahan eat his words. Those words have been clipped and copied and pinned to the Steelers' locker room bulletin board, the best parts marked in yellow highlighter.

Weather reports, real estate selling tips, and community news are among the subjects people in parts of the county will be able to dial in for, thanks to a new telephone bulletin board started by a local couple. Joan and Arthur Michelson have put together Town to Town, a free service that will allow callers to navigate a menu offering a wide variety of messages left by community groups and businesses. "It's very easy to use," Joan Michelson said of the system, which prompts users along the way. Each time a person calls 609-881-1539, three choices can be made.

Although computer terms such as cyberspace, sysop and BBS mean little to people who have never ventured onto the information superhighway, they are central to 15-year-old Matthew Payne's existence. At the age of 12, Payne started "Magic Bus," his own electronic bulletin board system (BBS), on a single computer line in his house. He named it after a song by the rock group The Who. Now it has grown to a 32-line system through which users can exchange electronic mail, "chat" on-line, participate in multi-player games, take part in discussion forums and obtain full access to other bulletin board systems and the Internet itself.

It may be up to a judge to decide whether the computer commentary on the County Seat electronic bulletin board is the work of investigative journalists, a bunch of old gossips, or some bitter politicians committing hit-and-runs on the information superhighway. In the year or so since the County Seat made its debut on local computers, contributors - in increasingly combative fashion - have poked fun at the district attorney, called some borough employees miscreants, issued calls to impeach Norristown's mayor, and accused a former councilman of accepting bribes.

Is Easter Monday a municipal holiday? How many members are on the Borough Council? Should I grab my umbrella? These are just a few of the questions that can be answered on Phoenixville's new Web page, which officials say they hope will cut down on phone calls and serve as a bulletin board for government notices. "Anything that we seem to get calls on, eventually we hope to get that information on the Web site," said Borough Manager Joseph Pantano. The prototype site has been posted as a link to the Phoenixville Area School District's site.

This Cherry Hill, with its namesake trees glowing white against manicured green grass encircling well-kept homes containing well-kept people, is no Bosnia. But when its school district, long perceived as a place that churned out white-bread kids ready for America's good life, took a stand on celebrating cultures and religions in its schools, it started its own little ethnic civil war. And so, in a year when the schools were rocked by a teachers' strike, a lousy budget and a superintendent's fine, perhaps nothing struck so much at the heart, and the soul, of this township as the school board's new religious and ethnic observances policy.

We are a culture of stuff, and sometimes it overwhelms - beds and bowling balls, candles and chairs. You want to streamline life and clear out closets, but there's always a catch: The item is too nice or useful to simply toss; you don't want to bother auctioning it on eBay; the charity to which you usually donate won't take everything. That's where Freecycle comes in. Just a year old, the online service is a bulletin board on which people can both list things they want to discard, and post requests of stuff they need.

At 5 a.m., you're startled out of a deep sleep by a realization: You don't know what the school is serving for lunch. You know your little darling is a picky eater, and you also know that you won't have time to pack a brown bag. Your child could starve. Most people in this situation face tossing and turning in their beds until business hours. But if you live in certain South Jersey towns, you can make one phone call and go back to sleep. The Community Bulletin Board, a 24-hour phone service, provides callers with information on about two-dozen topics, including school lunch menus, road closings, exercise advice, local businesses, municipal events and beauty tips.

Police Chief Eugene J. Titus and township community leaders are investigating whether they can zap a busy computer network based in the home of a 20-year-old resident. Titus and other officials learned about the computer operation in a letter received Monday from an anonymous homeowner identified only as "a concerned mother and homeowner. " The letter called attention to resident Anthony Maglietta's computer bulletin board operation, which was profiled in a front-page article published in The Inquirer on Feb. 21. The letter asked neighbors to help stop Maglietta from operating "a sex business out of his house right here in our neighborhood.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - Reality set in Thursday morning when Domonic Brown walked to the middle of the Phillies clubhouse and inspected the lineup card tacked to the bulletin board. Brown had been cleared to resume playing after a neck injury, but his name did not appear anywhere on the board. "Life goes on," Brown said Friday. Now his bags were packed for minor-league camp, a move guaranteed well before this day. Brown came to camp with the stated goal of making the team, but the odds were long.

As a graphic designer, Mike Dew is inspired by what he sees - especially while tooling around on the Internet. "I come across things that I want to cook, or stuff for my apartment, or things for work like type, design, architecture. " Now, it all gets tacked on his Pinterest page. Get ready to embrace the newest social media darling - because along with your Facebook wall, Twitter handle, and LinkedIn profile, now you must have a Pinterest page. That is, if you are the creative, visual type.

Price Berkley, 92, founder, editor, and longtime publisher of Theatrical Index, the weekly trade publication that has been consulted by anyone wanting to produce, finance, write about, or possibly avoid a Broadway show, died Sunday at his Manhattan home. Mr. Berkley founded Theatrical Index in 1964 with a typewriter, a stapler, and 16 subscribers. It retains its original, humble form: a slim sheaf secured at the top with staples. "People used to put it on a clipboard on their bulletin board, and they still do," said Steve Bebout, who succeeded Mr. Berkley as editor in chief after his retirement in 2007.

WASHINGTON - Seventy-two people have been charged with participating in an international child-pornography network that prosecutors say used an online bulletin board called Dreamboard to trade tens of thousands of images and videos of sexually abused children. Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said yesterday that a 20-month effort called Operation Delego targeted more than 600 Dreamboard members around the world for participating in the private, members-only Internet club created to promote pedophilia.

PolyMedix Inc., a Radnor biotechnology company, said today it had priced an offering of common stock and warrants that will raise about $18.6 million, after expenses, for use in the continued development of the company's two lead drugs. The sale included 25 million shares of stock priced at 80 cents per share and 25 million warrants with an exercise price of 80 cents per share, giving holders a chance to boost their profits if the stock price rises over the next five years. The company's shares fell 14 percent, or 11 cents, this morning to 68 cents on the over-the-counter bulletin board.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - At 8:22 a.m., Pete Mackanin removed the Phillies lineup from a bulletin board in the clubhouse. The bench coach took his Wite-Out pen and blotted out CASTILLO 4, which had been written second in the batting order. In a corner of the room, a new locker space cleared between Placido Polanco and Raul Ibanez contained two pairs of white-and-gray pants and two jerseys. They were untouched. Luis Castillo had a jersey number (3), but there was no sign Tuesday morning of the recently acquired second baseman, given a new but tenuous lease on his baseball life after becoming a symbol of everything gone wrong for the New York Mets.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - At 8:22 a.m., Pete Mackanin removed the Phillies lineup from a bulletin board in the clubhouse. The bench coach took his Wite-Out pen and blotted out CASTILLO 4, which had been written second in the batting order. In a corner of the room, a new locker space cleared between Placido Polanco and Raul Ibanez contained two pairs of white-and-gray pants and two jerseys. They were untouched. Luis Castillo had a jersey number (3), but there was no sign Tuesday morning of the recently acquired second baseman, given a new but tenuous lease on his baseball life after becoming a symbol of everything gone wrong for the New York Mets.

Trompe l'oeil illusionism goes back to antiquity, so its conventions are well established. Yet it has evolved from the straightforward visual trickery of the 19th-century variety to a more substantive imitative realism that can resonate emotionally and historically. This is the impression one takes away from the exhibition "Reality Check" at the Brandywine River Museum, which owns a substantial collection of earlier trompe-l'oeil painting (French for "fool the eye"). Through 45 works by 23 artists, "Reality Check" shows us how artists working today have extended and enriched what is usually thought of as little more than technical sleight-of-hand.

UniTek Global Services Inc., Blue Bell, said it will sell 6.25 million shares of common stock and seek to change its listing exchange to the Nasdaq Global Market from the over-the-counter bulletin board. The engineering and construction management services company also said it would impose a 1-28 reverse stock split. UniTek shares are thinly traded, and the last trade was on Sept. 2 at $1.16. The reverse split would raise the share price by about 28 times. The company said it will price the stock sale after the split.

Harriet Ann Proctor Tyler, 92, formerly of Williamstown, a teacher in Philadelphia public schools for 34 years, died Monday at Hayes Manor in Philadelphia. Mrs. Tyler taught special education and industrial arts in Philadelphia public schools from 1948 until retiring in 1982. Her first assignment was at Madison School in Fishtown, and she spent most of her career at Douglas High School in Port Richmond. A native of Norfolk, Va., she earned a bachelor's degree from Howard University in 1946.