mike miliard

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Spreading Maine ideas

"Innovation is part of Maine's legacy and DNA." So says Adam Burk, executive director of TEDxDirigo, the independent group working to create a local TED conference for Mainers.
Talking TED
By DEIRDRE FULTON | August 26, 2011

Play ball!

Red Sox fans are well versed in the creation myths of the team’s Dominican stars.
Or, what’s in the Dominican water?
By MIKE MILIARD | April 30, 2010

Cowboy junkie

England in the mid-’80s, gray and depressed by Thatcherism and the Smiths, wasn’t a place folks typically dressed to the nines in ten-gallon hats, bolo ties, and Nudie shirts. But such were the sartorial choices made those days by the members of the Meko
In his paintings and music, Jon Langford resurrects and pays respect to a vanished American past
By MIKE MILIARD | April 09, 2010

The Phoenix cleans up at NENPA

Was 2009 a good year for newspapers?
Tooting Our Own Horn Dept.
By LANCE GOULD | February 12, 2010

Boston Phoenix wins 18 awards at 2010 New England Newspaper and Press Association Awards

For the second year in a row, a Boston Phoenix staff writer was named Journalist of the Year, and the Phoenix took home 18 awards...
By Carly Carioli | February 08, 2010

Obama's year two to-do's

This week marks the one-year anniversary of Barack Obama's inauguration. Can you believe it?
What Have You Done for Me Lately Dept.
By MIKE MILIARD | January 22, 2010

Harvard's breathable chocolate

Not long ago, Harvard engineer David Edwards was dining in Bordeaux with famed French molecular gastronomist Thierry Marx and colloidal chemist Jérôme Bibette. Suddenly, tucking into a plate of gourmet fare, Edwards — who specializes in aerosols — had w
Biomedical engineer David Edwards is experimenting with ways for us to inhale our food.
By MIKE MILIARD | January 22, 2010

Flynn-terrogation

In his powerful new memoir, The Ticking Is the Bomb (W.W. Norton), Scituate native Nick Flynn recounts a conversation he had with a man in Turkey.
Obsessed with the wrongs of Abu Ghraib, local author Nick Flynn traveled across the globe to meet its victims
By MIKE MILIARD | January 15, 2010

Dropping the ball

At last, the golden moment has arrived.
This past decade? Not so great. But the next, according to social critic James Howard Kunstler, will be much worse.
By MIKE MILIARD | January 08, 2010

Photos: Most popular slideshows of 2009

Our most popular slideshows from the last year: including Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Dale Bozzio's crazy cat house, and much more.
Don't blame us. You clicked on them!
By PHOENIX STAFF | December 25, 2009

Ten years of great sports

Moments after Adam Vinatieri's field goal split the uprights as the clock expired in the Louisiana Superdome on February 3, 2002, the streets of Boston were in bedlam. Drunk people dangled from trees and hung off lampposts. Motorists leaned on their ho
Boston's road from Loserville to Title Town
By MIKE MILIARD | December 25, 2009

Review: It's Complicated

It's complicated, and so are my feelings about Nancy Meyer's predictable and overlong boomer-bait rom-com.
Indeed it is
By MIKE MILIARD | December 25, 2009

Various Artists | Where the Action Is: Los Angeles Nuggets 1965 - 1968

More than three years in the making, the most recent installment of Rhino's legendary archival garage-rock series offers an amazingly comprehensive excavation of an absurdly fertile scene.
Rhino (2009)
By MIKE MILIARD | December 18, 2009

Tilting at Windows

Stallman — a legend in the programmer community for more than a quarter century — considers it his life's work to proselytize the free-software gospel, educating the lay people who'd otherwise assume that Microsoft or Apple are exclusively synonymous wit
Software 'Saint' Richard Stallman fights for computing freedom — and against corporate control
By MIKE MILIARD | December 18, 2009

Photos: Most popular articles of 2009

The stories you couldn't not read this year
The year in martyrs, mortuaries, chupacabras, and pot-peddling soccer moms
By PHOENIX STAFF | December 18, 2009

2009: The year in Phoenix blog posts

Our most popular blog posts from 2009
Michael Jackson, meteors, WBCN, and one very angry Obama
By PHOENIX STAFF | December 18, 2009

Tech Support

"Lo! Men have become the tools of their tools." So wrote Henry David Thoreau, a long time ago, in Walden .
Stereo equipment is so passé. This year's unnecessarily awesome gadgets will stir coffee and turn T-shirts into guitars.
By MIKE MILIARD | December 11, 2009

Updike does death, R. Crumb does God, Vanity Fair does Proust

Trying to reach as broad a range of tastes and pocketbooks as possible, we this year scavenged everything from the front pages of the Onion to R. Crumb's genesis, to valedictory Updike. Stuff to read, stuff to look at, glossy pages and matte. Remember
Gift books to savor
By PHOENIX STAFF | December 11, 2009

Coffeenomics

In 50 states and 49 countries, the experience is the same: a placid sense of place, air suffused with the rich aromatics of fresh-brewed espresso. Customers dollop cream and sprinkle brown sugar into their drinks. Behind the counter, green-clad baristas
The meteoric rise and startling fall of Starbucks is emblematic of the contemporary American dream — just ask the history professor who's been to 425 branches
By MIKE MILIARD | December 11, 2009

Phoenix critic wins grant

It was announced earlier this week that Phoenix contributing writer Greg Cook's art blog, the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, has been awarded a $30,000 endowment from the Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program, whic
Cook gets to eat
By MIKE MILIARD | December 04, 2009

Over the coals

Not so fast, Mike!
Letters to the Boston editor, December 4, 2009
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | December 04, 2009

Glenn Beck's unhinged Sweater saga

Hello, America. A special Glenn Beck Program tonight: I'm speaking to you from somewhere in the North Pole, and let me tell you [adopts cartoonish yokel voice with rubbery exaggerated shiver] it is coooooooold up here.
Knit Twit Dept.
By MIKE MILIARD | November 27, 2009

We're killing the oceans

I meet world-renowned undersea photojournalist Brian Skerry at Legal Seafoods, across from the New England Aquarium, where he's the explorer in residence. He orders a chicken Caesar salad.
Is it too late to save the seas that sustain us?
By MIKE MILIARD | November 20, 2009

Revisiting the greatest Harvard-Yale game

It takes some doing to make Harvard look like an underdog in anything. But Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29 — Kevin Rafferty's 2008 movie (out now on DVD) and new book (released this past month) about the famous football rivalry — does just that.
Crimson Bowl Over Dept.
By MIKE MILIARD | November 20, 2009

Hoop nightmare

It wasn’t quite the world-shattering, where-were-you-when moment as the space shuttle Challenger exploding into cottony plumes earlier that year. But I still remember my naive and dazed disbelief upon hearing that basketball star Len Bias had died of a
Len Bias’s death was more than just a basketball tragedy.
By MIKE MILIARD | October 30, 2009

Monkey Business

Craig Cook remembers when friends tried to draw him out of a deep depression — by offering to get him a monkey.
Boston's an academic city, even for capuchins who attend Brighton's Monkey College, where they are trained to be live-in lifesavers for the disabled
By MIKE MILIARD | October 23, 2009

No alternative

“I got very tired of being called an ‘alternative journalist’ for so many years,” says former Phoenix reporter Al Giordano. “Alternative to what?"
Authentic Journalism Dept.
By MIKE MILIARD | October 16, 2009

Slideshow: Inside today's graphic novels

Images from graphic novels like World War 3 , Drunk , Asterios Polyp , and more.
An exclusive look into a collection of graphic novels
By PHOENIX STAFF | October 16, 2009

Lie of the land

In his new film, The Invention of Lying , Ricky Gervais plays Mark Bellison, a pudgy everyman who lives in Anytown in a utopian world where lies don't exist — until he tells one.
Lying liars, and the end of accountability
By MIKE MILIARD | October 09, 2009

It's hip to be icosahedral

Be they beer geeks, comic-book geeks, or music geeks, nowadays people flout their geekdom proudly, even wearing it like a badge.
In a new book, Ethan Gilsdorf tracks his global quest to visit the holiest nerd-world sites
By MIKE MILIARD | October 02, 2009

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