NEW YORK TIMES: Natural gas companies have been placing enormous bets on the wells they are drilling, saying they will deliver big profits and provide a vast new source of energy for the United States. But the gas may not be as easy and cheap to extract from shale formations deep underground as the companies are saying, according to hundreds of industry e-mails and internal documents and an analysis of data from thousands of wells. In the e-mails, energy executives, industry lawyers, state geologists and market analysts voice skepticism about lofty forecasts and question whether companies are intentionally, and even […]
WIKILEAKS: Coming Soon To A Theater Near You
THE ATLANTIC: At latest count, at least four studios are working on at least five movies about the WikiLeaks story. And with Assange somewhat out of pocket while on house arrest, plenty of option deals are going to journalists who are covering the secretive organization. Guardian reporters David Leigh and Luke Harding sold rights to their book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy to DreamWorks Raffi Khatchadourian embedded with Assange for a New Yorker profile and sold rights to his HBO and the BBC which will release a documentary by Inside Job director and Oscar winner Charles Ferguson. Bill Keller sold his life rights to a production […]
HEAR YE: Nick Cave & Neko Case Duet On Cover The Zombies “She’s Not There” For True Blood
KCRW: This season, the 4th, is going to kick off with a bang. Not just watching the latest adventures of Sookie Stackhouse and all her supernatural friends but I am so very excited about the new version of The Zombies’ “She’s Not There” a new collaboration with Neko Case and Nick Cave. A little background. If you are a fan of True Blood you know that each episode is named after one of the songs that are in that episode. So it’s always exciting for me to crack open the script and see what the writer has in mind for […]
People Of Earth Push Back Against Jersey Shore Towns’ Efforts To Privitize The Ocean
ASSOCIATED PRESS: New Jerseyans have to put up with taxes, tolls, toxic waste and, occasionally, Snooki. So an occasional trip to the beach is all that keeps some folks here sane. Now officials in the nation’s most densely populated state are rewriting public beach access rules that could make it easier for well-to-do towns to keep out-of-towners off their beaches , and a sandstorm is brewing. The state says it had to act and give more local control over access after a court decision struck down more stringent rules that spelled out uniform standards for each shore town. The state […]
A Small Army Of Assholes Beats Up Onion Editor
DAILY NEWS: A WOMAN’S leg was broken and several other people were injured Saturday night when a large group of teens accosted pedestrians in Spring Garden, police and witnesses said.Philadelphia police responded to two reports of pedestrians being assaulted by a large group of young people along Broad Street about 9:30 p.m. One of those reports came from Emily Guendelsberger, 27, city editor for local arts and entertainment content for the Onion, the satirical newspaper and website. She was walking with seven friends on Green Street near Broad when they were accosted, she said. Guendelsberger, who remained hospitalized with a […]
SIDEWALKING: Mars Hotel Foxtrot
Wilco, Solid Sound Festival, 10:47 PM Saturday by JONATHAN VALANIA * WILCO + SARAH LEE GUTHRIE: California Stars RELATED: Guthrie was born in Massachusetts, USA, the youngest daughter of folksinger Arlo Guthrie and the granddaughter of Woody Guthrie. MORE
Ex-Marine Fireman, Inexplicably Suspended For Posing Shirtless In Charity Calendar, Commits Suicide
PHILLY.COM: John (Jack) Slivinski Jr., the Philadelphia firefighter who got in hot water by posing shirtless for a charity calendar, was found dead at his Lawndale home Saturday. Police and colleagues said the cause was suicide. Slivinski, 31, a former Marine who followed his father into the department, was praised Sunday as a gutsy firefighter who won a spot on the department’s elite rescue unit. MORE RELATED: Since joining the Philadelphia Police Department in 2003, Officer Deona Carter has been heralded by her supervisors as a “reliable” cop with “sound judgment.” The 29-year-old officer’s Internet fans also rave about her […]
THE COLONEL REMEMBERS: Peter Falk RIP
[Illustration by GREG JOENS] BY COLONEL TOM SHEEHY In the Spring of 1978, I was working for A&M Records in Boston. I was staying at the Copley Plaza Hotel, and as I was getting dressed, I decided not to wear my jacket that morning. I got on the elevator, and as it stopped on the floor below me, a man got on who looked very familiar, but what really caught my attention was his manner of dress. He was wearing a very heavy winter coat which suggested to me, the weather must have changed over night. I debated whether or […]
BOOKS: Q&A Wth Annie Jacobsen, Author Of Area 51
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Annie Jacobsen writes about national security for the Los Angeles Times’ Sunday Magazine. Recently, she published a fascinating and expansive history of Area 51, which is sort of the Land Of Oz for conspiracy theorists, UFOologists and national security buffs alike. According to Jacobsen, it is also the incubator and proving ground for most if not all of the gee-whiz top secret surveillance hardware, aircraft and weaponry deployed by the national security state and ground zero for more than 100 above and below ground nuclear bomb tests. But it is the final chapter of the book that […]
COMING ATTRACTION: Q&A With Annie Jacobsen, Author of Area 51: An Uncensored History Of America’s Top Secret Military Base
Among other things we ask her to clarify her jaw-dropping claims that the infamous UFO crash at Roswell was actually a Nazi-designed flying saucer piloted by children surgically disfigured to look like ETs, sent by Stalin to trigger mass hysteria in the U.S. a la War Of The Worlds. Look for it tomorrow on a Phawker near you!
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR What does it really mean for the brain to experience pleasure? That’s the question neuroscientist David Linden asks in his new book The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good. In it, he traces the origins of pleasure in the human brain and how and why we become addicted to certain food, chemicals and behaviors. Linden is a professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the chief editor of the Journal of Neurophysiology. When he spoke with Fresh Air‘s Terry […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Less Guns, More Butter
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Let’s be clear about a few things right from the start: 1) In matters concerning budget balancing and deficit reduction, America doesn’t have a “welfare” problem, it has a “warfare” problem; 2) With respect to solutions, one party concedes that all government expenditures must be on the table, the other says the same, but lies; 3) I’d love to argue these points with some really smart, fair-minded right-wingers, but that’s an oxymoron. Here are what any RATIONAL person would have to agree are some altogether indefensible U.S. “warfare” facts: A) America spends as much on its military as […]
BED, BARF AND BEYOND: 35 Pounds Of Vomit Found In Parking Lot Of Radnor Home Accents Store
NBC PHILADELPHIA: A 35-pound bag of human vomit was found in the parking lot of a Bed Bath and Beyond in Radnor – for the second time in a week. An employee of the Delaware County store found a big white bag containing a medical waste container full of vomit two Sundays in a row – May 29 and June 5, police say. The employee found the vomit-filled containers in the same spot each time: under a tree, 10 parking rows from the store entrance, police say. MORE