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Taking on payday loans

Commerce Dept.
State Representative Frank Ferri, owner of a Johnston bowling alley, has seen how the short-term, high-interest loans available at neighborhood payday loan shops can leave customers on a debt treadmill.

By: JOHN LARRABEE | February 08, 2012

Reel-to-reel: A long-lost Malcolm X speech recovered

History Dept.
I was born just two years before Spike Lee's 1992 biopic about Malcolm X and starting in kindergarten, I have faced the question in an almost endless loop: are you named after him?

By: MALCOLM BURNLEY | February 08, 2012

At the Hardware Hackathon: the Kegerator goes digital

Engineering Dept.
One team turns a glowing tube of epoxy into a prototype for the next generation of lava lamps. Another rewires a Home Depot doorbell to send tweets, rather than ring. A third team wants to use Xbox to create a virtual dance floor.

By: STEPHEN BEALE | February 01, 2012

The Providence Postcard Project: Love letters to a city

Missives
The Big Blue Bug is here.

By: PHILIP EIL | February 01, 2012

What physics can teach us about Wall Street

Speakers
Lisa Randall is one of the world's leading theoretical physicists.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | January 25, 2012

At StyleWeek: Mops, Marie Claire, and the Mayor

Scenes
Techno music is thumping through L'Apogee, the bar at the top of the Providence Biltmore.

By: PHILIP EIL | January 25, 2012

A throwback to the bombshell

Pretty Pictures
"Is this really my life?" LuLu Locks asks. "I'm waking up this morning to go play Barbie dress-up with grown women?"

By: PHILIP EIL | January 18, 2012

Smell and the evolution of disgust

The Senses
"Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will," Peter Süskind writes in his psychological thriller, Perfume (1985).

By: MAGGIE LANGE | January 18, 2012

Staring down Whitey Bulger

Mobsters
Jon Land's latest thriller begins in a South Boston basement where a man named John McIntyre has been handcuffed to a chair, slammed in the head with a chair leg, and strangled with a length of sailing rope.

By: PHILIP EIL | January 11, 2012

Local heroes at the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame

Honor Roll
Rick Bellaire, one of the chief organizers of the new Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame, had an early feel for the state's gifts to the national culture.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | January 11, 2012

Roger Williams gets his due

Founders
Roger Williams — the iconoclast who founded Rhode Island nearly 400 years ago with a radical call for religious tolerance — is held in high regard in these parts. But he is a little-known figure nationwide.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | January 04, 2012

In a Newport defeat, lessons for the 99%

The Public Square
The Battle of Queen Anne Square ended in a terrible rout for opponents of a private foundation's plan to renovate a charming, tiny park in downtown Newport.

By: BRIAN C. JONES | December 29, 2011

In 2012, election year intrigue awaits

Punditry Dept.
The new year is, of course, an election year. And while the presidential race will probably be less-than-dramatic in Rhode Island, there will be plenty of other intriguing fare for the political junkie.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | December 28, 2011

A Roger Williams professor tackles William F. Buckley Jr.

Thinkers
Conservative thinker William F. Buckley Jr. was, perhaps, America's most important 20th-century public intellectual.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | December 21, 2011

A perishing theatre gives way to a new one

The Stage
Living up to theoretician Gordon Craig's ideal of the "perishable" theatre as one nimble, flexible, and light on its feet, Providence's Perishable Theatre remained fresh for its 28-year shelf life; it shuttered this year because funding sources — not new ideas — had dried up.

By: CHRISTINA BEVILACQUA | December 23, 2011

Kafka, Radiohead, and the making of the modern doctor

The Art of Medicine
It was their worst nightmare. Or so Professor Arnold Weinstein told the class.

By: STEPHEN BEALE | December 14, 2011

The piano man lands on Point Street

Music Dept.
When Point Street Dueling Pianos opens its doors in the coming weeks, some patrons will recognize the bare brick walls and angled windows as the former home of the Hi-Hat — the respected, if slightly under-attended, jazz club that closed earlier this year.

By: PHILIP EIL | December 14, 2011

Uncertainty at WPRO

On the Air
Could Rhode Island's talk radio firmament be poised for a shakeup?

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | December 07, 2011

Joey gets to work

Labor Relations
Yes, Joey quit. But he's plenty busy now.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | December 07, 2011

Loughlin, returning from Iraq, faces a tough challenge

Political Science Dept.
John J. Loughlin II — Army Reservist, former state representative, and all-but-official Republican candidate for Congress — is due back in Rhode Island late this month after a seven-month deployment in Iraq. And he'll encounter a political scene quite different from the one he left behind in May.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | December 01, 2011