Machines

The music booms off the mirrored walls of the body mill, but the club members strapped into the white plastic Powercise machines are oblivious to the beat. They are hearing voices. With their ears pressed back between speakers and their eyes transfixed on a rising and falling light bar on a video screen overhead, members of the Living Well Fitness Center in North Dallas work out under the undivided attention of a new age of "humanoid" fitness machines - machines that tease, cajole and scold them into shape.

A move to ban most cigarette machines in the township has been given tentative approval by the Uwchlan Township Board of Supervisors. "Kids have enough temptation today," said Board Chairman C. Ward Braceland at a meeting Monday. "We don't want minors smoking. We don't want adults smoking, really. " He said that machines accessible to minors, such as those in stores, would be outlawed, although the ordinance would permit machines to stay in bars. The proposed ordinance, suggested by the American Lung Association, would need to be reviewed by the township's solicitor and advertised before going into effect.

By Reese Palley Unemployment is like the weather: Everyone complains about it, but no one seems able to do anything about it. Our present level of joblessness is being blamed on the recent recession, and, in attempting to climb out of that ditch, we concentrate on spending cuts, which simply means putting even more folk out of work. What we are discovering is that there is no deus ex machina that will miraculously re-create jobs that, due to the efficient workings of our capitalist system, are no longer there.

Xerox copiers flash the message "please wait" as they warm up. It's not uncommon to see this today, but it's a major departure from the past. Consider such familiar messages as: Right Turn Only, Close cover before striking, No Parking and Keep off the Grass. Never a please anywhere. Nor a thank you. Just orders: Call our toll-free number, Clip and save, Drive carefully, Mail early for Christmas and Do not touch. Helpful, yes. Pleasant? Not. However, there is now a new etiquette in direction-giving.

ATM machines are starting to attract the attention of burglars. Thieves struck three Drug Emporiums in four hours late Sunday and early yesterday, absconding with two ATM's and abandoning a third after a burglar alarm went off. Police said this was a "new and unusual" crime and turned it over to the Major Crimes Division. 'It's too early to tell if they're connected but if I were a betting man, I'd bet they were connected," said one detective, who asked not to be identified.

This weekend's antiquing activity features a grab bag of goods, ranging from objects from British royalty to teddy bears. At the Antique/Collectible Show & Sale at the Pennsylvania National Guard Armory in Northeast Philadelphia, the royal objects are among myriad offerings that include furniture, vintage clothing, classic arcade and gumball machines, jukebox literature, nostalgia items, china and jewelry. The $2.50 admission is good for both days. Children under 12 are admitted at no charge.

TRENTON - Voting-rights lawyers returned to a New Jersey appeals court Tuesday to ask the judges to force the state to replace paperless voting machines with a new system that they say would be less vulnerable to hacking and could be used for a recount. A lawyer for the state argued that a change would be too costly and that other styles of voting machines are vulnerable, too. The hearing was the latest chapter in a nine-year fight over the logistics of the way the state votes, frustrating activists who say New Jersey has fallen behind as most states have moved away from the type of machine still used in most of New Jersey.

Beginning late next year, some Philadelphians will be able to cash their paychecks at selected MAC machines - even if they have no funds at all in their accounts. It's all part of a new wrinkle for automatic teller machines that CoreStates Financial has been testing at its Newtown branch in Bucks County. The new MAC Icon Services machines work like this: Customers register their payroll checks at the bank for a certain amount. Then, when they receive their checks, they can take them to the MAC machine and withdraw either a portion or the entire amount to the exact penny.

David Brooks is justly prominent as a thinker and writer who has contributed new thought and new language - "red state/blue state" - to our public discourse. In a recent column, reprinted here, Brooks performs a breathtaking feat: He warms up with Rousseau, sprints madly down the aisles of history, vaults through the burning hoop of genetics, and does a cannonball into the (for him, inevitably tragic and dark) pool of human nature. It's a great column. I'm glad he wrote it. I wish more columnists walked in such precincts.

This was going to be a rant. Then I thought about it, which was a mistake. As any experienced ranter can tell you, thinking about it has the unfortunate tendency of turning a good, clean rant into a muddy quagmire of fine points, conditional sentences, and digressions as delicately balanced as a Swiss watch. Such was the case last month when California legalized self-driving cars in the Golden State. Cali joins Nevada in allowing Google and other manufacturers to test "autonomous" cars on its roads.

John J. Orlando, 92, of Broomall, founder and CEO of Arch Sewing Machine Co., a Philadelphia-based supplier of industrial sewing machines to the apparel trade, died Friday, April 19, of natural causes at home. Mr. Orlando, who loved the clothing industry, worked through Thursday. When he failed to show up for work Friday, police went to the house and found him sitting in his favorite chair with his hands folded, as if asleep, said his son Anthony J. "To have our dad working with you every day, it makes you closer than anyone can imagine.

No one denies that something went horribly wrong on the firing range. It was the Fourth of July, 2010, at Forward Operating Base Kunduz in Afghanistan. Army Pvt. Sean McMahon was testing a new M2 machine gun. When .50-caliber weapon jammed in automatic mode, McMahon removed the ammo and tried again. Still, it did not fire. His commanding officer asked McMahon to try single shot mode. As McMahon squeezed the trigger, the M2 exploded in his hands. The blast sent a shell casing ripping through his calf.

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. - Story lines are plentiful here at the Bridgeport Regional semifinal portion of the NCAA women's basketball tournament. There's the $10.8 million contract extension given by the University of Connecticut to its Hall of Fame coach Geno Auriemma, who grew up in Norristown and has guided the top-seeded Huskies (31-4) to seven national titles. No. 4 seed Maryland (26-7), the team UConn will face Saturday in the second game in the sold out Webster Bank Arena, took a new approach to the postseason by taking the Acela Express on Amtrak from College Park to the Terrapins' hotel in Stamford, 30 minutes south of here.

TRENTON - Voting-rights lawyers returned to a New Jersey appeals court Tuesday to ask the judges to force the state to replace paperless voting machines with a new system that they say would be less vulnerable to hacking and could be used for a recount. A lawyer for the state argued that a change would be too costly and that other styles of voting machines are vulnerable, too. The hearing was the latest chapter in a nine-year fight over the logistics of the way the state votes, frustrating activists who say New Jersey has fallen behind as most states have moved away from the type of machine still used in most of New Jersey.

The concept that unlocks the possibilities of time travel may remain obscure. But what we now know about time machines is that they take up a lot of space. One such specimen landed Monday morning in the lobby of the Kimmel Center as workers began assembling an enormous "interactive" time machine to be the centerpiece of the Kimmel's upcoming arts festival. With its time-travel theme, the 2013 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts will frame performances and other events with time-related exhibits and activities experienced in the 100-foot-long cylinder.

Tyson Chandler tied a franchise record with his third straight 20-rebound game, Carmelo Anthony scored 27 points, and the New York Knicks beat the visiting Detroit Pistons, 99-85, on Monday for their fifth consecutive victory. In a game that was decided early, Chandler played long enough to grab his 20th rebound midway through the fourth quarter. After grabbing 20 in victories on Friday and Saturday night, he became the first Knicks player since Hall of Famer Willis Reed in December 1969 to have 20 in three straight games.

MONTGOMERY County Commissioner Bruce Castor is mulling a challenge to Gov. Corbett in the 2014 Republican primary. Castor cites three reasons for thinking Corbett is vulnerable. * Corbett's role as state attorney general in the Penn State child- abuse scandal that sent former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky to prison is about to get a close review by a Democrat, Attorney General-elect Kathleen Kane. "It could get very uncomfortable for the governor in very short order," Castor said.

Each day, Internet users upload nearly half a billion photos to Facebook, add 60-plus hours of video per minute to YouTube, and post several hundred million messages on Twitter. I thought of this penchant for compulsive oversharing while watching the Bearded Ladies' intense, illuminating Marlene and the Machine , a cabaret that probes the boundaries between the chaos of uncontrolled emotion and the veneer of manufactured control. And who better to explore these themes than that icon of carefully constructed character, Marlene Dietrich (John Jarboe)

S ARAH VAN AKEN, 36, the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce's "Young Entrepreneur of the Year," owns s.v.a Holdings Corp., a women's-apparel business she started in 2005. Her company is housed in a building she acquired in 2009 on Sansom Street at 17th. Q: Tell me about your business. A: We have a garment factory; several clothing brands; SA VA, a retail store; and we wholesale that line and are now in 20 stores in the mid-Atlantic. We also design and manufacture uniforms for celebrity-chef restaurants and we private-label manufacture for other brands.

Stan Morantz, 69, of Warrington, a longtime Philadelphia business owner and inventor, died Saturday, Nov. 10, at Doylestown Hospital of complications from Lou Gehrig's disease. Morantz Ultrasonics, headquartered in Northeast Philadelphia, with an office in Las Vegas, and having $3 million in revenue annually, grew from his father's drapery business at 40th and Chestnut Streets. While working for his father, who used labor-intensive techniques to make draperies, he invented tools and processes to speed up manufacturing.