Cambridge

Wicked Local Cambridge reports a man walking down the street on the morning of Sept. 11 got so annoyed at some guy urinating in the street that he up and punched him in the face, leaving him with "a tooth that was barely hanging to his front upper gum and bleeding."

Local theatre artist Danny Bryck performs his one-man documentary play "No Room for Wishing," chronicling the story of the occupation of Dewey Square, using the exact words of the people involved. Co-produced by Company One and Central Square Theater, playing at the Boston Center for the Arts this weekend and Central Square Theater 9/30-10/9.

Open Media Boston alerts us that the Boston Hummus Campaign continues to try to get the board of the Harvest Co-op to let members vote on whether to ban Israeli hummus.

MBTA Transit Police report arresting a man they say exposed himself and masturbated in full view of a female passenger on a Red Line train in July.

The woman snapped Peter O'Connor's photo and police say tips from the public based on that led them to O'Connor, whom they arrested today at the Braintree Red Line stop.

O'Connor, 55, of Braintree, will be arraigned in Cambridge District Court tomorrow on a charge of open and gross lewdness.

Innocent, etc.

And the future Masters of the Universe are not amused:

One sophomore, granted anonymity by The Crimson because she was afraid to be associated with a party that had been interrupted by police, was at the Delphic Saturday night when the police arrived. ... According to her, after word of the interruption spread, a few students shouted phrases like "fuck the police" and "it's the 5-0," a common slang for the police, while they made their way out the front door.

Nikki captured the painter at work on the Red Line, adds:

Amazing hand control with the bumps and stops.

H_Boston discovered somebody in Cambridge got a little frustrated with a pedestrian-crossing button.

Copyright H_Boston. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

Biking in Heels posits that differences in the way our traffic signals work for pedestrians explain why Bostonians dart every which way from every direction, while Cantabrigians are more thoughtful, even when jaywalking:

In Cambridge, the city has had a policy for a long time of concurrent walk signals, so pedestrians have a right of way every time the cars going parallel have a light, so there's never much of a wait. There are regularly spaced crosswalks in areas without closely spaced lights, and where those crosswalks are on high speed roads, there are lights with "on demand" buttons. The signalized crossings controlled by the city of Cambridge (for example the ones around Fresh Pond) operate almost immediately after pushing, with only 30 seconds or so of delay to safely slow and stop traffic. In most places, especially pedestrian dense areas, there are countdown timers too, so that the pedestrian knows exactly how long they have until the light will actually turn.

Tania Reppucci tweets:

Guy on the Red Line used a box cutter to cut and peel a lemon, then ate the lemon. The train smells nice though.

Major cheating scandal emerging at Harvard.

In 1995, the House of Compassion opened its doors taking in people living with HIV and AIDS to live in a welcoming home environment. The House now faces closure, with a looming 30,000 in debt threatening the homes of their ten residents. Find out more about the House of Compassion!

A Cambridge man was arraigned Friday on a wallet full of identity-theft charges related to the $66,000 worth of state benefits he allegedly reaped over the past 20 years by using an out-of-state resident's birth certificate and Social Security number.

The MBTA reports a potential bioterror germ attack alert system starts getting tested after the last train of the night on Wednesday at Davis, Porter and Harvard stations on the Red Line.

The Department of Homeland Security has installed monitors in the stations designed to detect the release of certain types of potentially lethal bacteria. To test the monitors, researchers will spray B. subtilis bacteria into the air at the stations. The bacteria is normally considered harmless - you can buy mass quantities of it as a nutritional supplement - and researchers say they'll render it even less risky by killing it first with gamma rays, the T says:

Mark Levy analyzes a Globe story that purports to find a growing "backlash" against tech development in the city, based largely on the fact that the Forest City project got defeated:

"The backlash has caught the notice of biotechnology leaders, who are asking whether the industry is still welcome in Cambridge," Robert Weisman wrote on Saturday.

This would indeed be an interesting story - if there were any examples in this story of biotechnology leaders asking that. There aren't.

A dead trolley at Reservoir, dead trains at Kendall and somewhere on the Ashmont line, signal and track problems on the Fitchburg Line and, oh, yeah, a freight-train derailment on the Haverhill line meant all sorts of fun for commuters this morning.

The maker of the ovens Julia Child liked to use yesterday sued the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronmy and the Culinary Arts to keep using the late chef's image in an online timeline about the company's history.

According to BSH Home Appliances - maker of Thermador ovens - it filed a preemptive suit in US District Court in Boston yesterday because the foundation was threatening to sue it over its use of some photos of Child and her kitchen, claiming copyright over any likenesses of the former Cambridge resident.

The MBTA reports an Attleboro woman and her son, almost 5, plunged to the tracks around 6 p.m. yesterday, and were taken to the hospital as a precaution, although they did not appear seriously hurt. According to the T, the woman told emergency responders she thought she could get onto the Alewife train in the station at the time from the southbound platform.

The action in the video starts around 0:30. It's the second time this year somebody wound up on Red Line tracks trying to get to a train on the other side of the station.

Cambridge and MIT Police report two recent early-morning holdups in the area of MIT and the Longfellow Bridge.

Sometime late on Aug. 17 or early on Aug. 18, a man walking in the area of MIT was surrounded by a large group of men and women who went through his pockets. One of them flashed a knife when the victim tried to get his passport back. The suspects were all described as being in their mid 20s and black.

Around 4 a.m. on Aug. 20, a man walking near the Longfellow was held up at gunpoint, by a dark-skinned Hispanic male, 20 to 25, between 5'8" and 5'10" and wearing a turquoise hoodie and yellow sneakers. The suspect ran across the bridge towards Boston.

Biking in Heels spots a Google bike in Kendall Square and chats to its rider about the company's fleet of bikes for its Kendall Square employees.

Cambridge Day reports Microsoft this weekend turned on a large plasma-screen sign, in a city where not everybody is enamored of such advertising.

"Terry Ragon was right when he said if we don't watch out our city will look like Las Vegas. It has begun," [Mark] Jaquith said, referring to the plasma display as "a monstrosity."

Ragon was the guy who spent several hundred thousand dollars of his own money fighting a proposal to let companies put their names atop their office buildings.

Ron Newman snapped a photo of the sign advertising the Dog Day Poetry Marathon at Outpost 186 in Inman Square.

Harvard University Police say a woman reported being raped around 11 p.m. on Tuesday at Kirkland and Oxford streets.

The woman, who initially reported the attack to Somerville Police, described the man as white, in his mid 20s, 5'6" with a thin build and dark, spikey hair. He wore dark pants.

The rape happened just four days after another woman reported being raped in Harvard Yard, by a man about the same height and age, but with a medium build.

ElCantabridgian captured the scene in Central Square this afternoon when a motorcycle cop pulled over a T bus for running a red light. Unlike last week in Kenmore Square, there was no mayhem this time.

Boston Restaurant Talk reports what's replacing the old Zing Pizza.

The MBTA evacuated Alewife, stopped the Red Line at Davis and brought in explosives-detection equipment this afternoon after workers discovered a suspicious package on a Red Line train.

MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo reports the device turned out to be "a ticketing device used by city of Cambridge parking-enforcement officers."

"Better safe than really sorry," Cambridge City Councilor Minka vanBeuzekom tweets.