INQUIRER: The Mariner Project, as Sunoco Logistics Partners L.P. has dubbed it, calls for construction of a refrigerated terminal to store supercooled ethane at one of Sunoco’s existing facilities. Philadelphia, Marcus Hook, and Westville, Gloucester County, are possibilities. The deal between Sunoco Logistics and MarkWest Energy Partners L.P. addresses one of the issues nagging gas operators as production in the Marcellus Shale rapidly escalates: how to transport the growing volume of natural gas and its byproducts to market. Marcellus wells in northern Pennsylvania produce “dry gas,” mostly methane, that can be sold by pipeline directly to electrical generators or homeowners, […]
NO LIBS STRANGLER ALERT: Woman Found Dead
INQUIRER: Police are searching for information about the vicious murder of a 21-year-old woman who was found naked this morning in a vacant lot in Northern Liberties. Sabina Rose O’Donnell [pictured, left], who lived with her stepfather on the 1200 block of N. 4th Street, was found by a neighbor walking a dog shortly before 10 a.m., said Philadelphia Capt. Jim Clark. No official cause of death has been determined, but there were signs of blunt force trauma to her face and body, Clark said. She apparently also was strangled. Her body was in a vacant lot off North Orianna […]
WORTH REPEATING: Worst Case Scenario
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THE PEACE CORPS DIARIES: Letter From Paraguay
BY ST. JOHN BARNED SMITH The question I get asked the most by people back in the States is “So what do you do all day??” Just like everything else in Peace Corps, “it depends.” Since I finally arrived in site, I have been shuttling between families, living with each for a week or two, and then moving on. The idea is that I’ll integrate much faster into the community and meet a lot more people this way. Right now, I’m staying with the family of a man named Teofilo, who owns some cows and makes his living growing cash […]
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About The Ginormous Sinkhole In Guatemala City But You Didn’t Know A Geologist That You Could Ask
VANITY FAIR: It was like something out of M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs. A gaping, perfectly circular sinkhole appeared Sunday in Guatemala City, devouring a three-story building and killing at least one man in the process. The gargantuan cavity appears to be about 60 feet wide and 30 stories deep, according to National Geographic. If it wasn’t caused by aliens, how did the sinkhole form? Where did its insides go? And why the heck is it so round? We consulted David Bercovici and Mark Brandon, both professors of geology and geophysics at Yale University, to fill in the gaps in our […]
MIA Vs. Lynn Hirschberg, With Diplo In The Middle
THE ATLANTIC: Lynn Hirshberg’s cover profile of rapper M.I.A. in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine has provoked the kind of reaction normally reserved for a significant movie or album, and for good reason. The spectacular—and spectacularly nasty—takedown is full of repudiation by scorned lovers, French fries as means of character assassination, policy wonk soundbites, and first-world-third-world clash. But the piece’s reverberations really come from a question Hirschberg doesn’t pose or answer directly, but that has been a consistent animating theme in her best work. In an age of faked memoirs, staged reality programs, and self-reinvention as quasi-religion, do we […]
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE: The Nuclear Option?
CBS NEWS: Russian science editor Vladimir Lagowski has written a column in which he claims that the U.S.S.R. used nuclear devices to plug underground fissures several times with success – most of the time. The author cites one failure, where a 1972 gas blowout was not extinguished by a nuke. But at least it was only 4 kilotons. This peaceful use of nuclear detonations fell under the Soviet Union’s Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy program. The Russian Analytical Center for Non-Proliferation lists 67 underground nuclear explosions conducted by the U.S.S.R. in the interests of its national economy between 1965 […]
Dennis Hopper, Rebel Without A Pause, Dead At 74
NEW YORK TIMES: Dennis Hopper, whose portrayals of drug-addled, often deranged misfits in the landmark films “Easy Rider,” “Apocalypse Now” and “Blue Velvet” drew on his early out-of-control experiences as part of a new generation of Hollywood rebel, died Saturday at his home in Venice, Calif. He was 74. MORE LOS ANGELES TIMES: What went down behind those corrugated steel walls of Dennis Hopper’s Venice fortress as he lay dying at age 74? He was divorcing his fifth wife after 18 years together, obtaining an “emergency restraining order” to keep her at a 10-foot distance. They battled over his valuable […]
MY TUNES: Our Favorite Albums Of Right Now
LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening (2010 DFA/Virgin) Now that the decade of the 00’s is a closed set let me eulogize the collapse of the pop music industry. Reports at the decade’s start were that the music business would collapse and with 2010, seeing profits halved, tells us that’s what we’re hearing. It is the uncomfortable sound of history coming to a close, a decade without a new genre being born. Oh, there’s still some artful grab-baggery and musical slicing and dicing but the production of a number one hit pop hit from 2000 sounds depressingly similar to a […]
CINEMA: Bring Out Your Dead
SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD (2009, directed by George A Romero, 90 minutes, Canada ) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC It starts to become difficult to find employment when you’re a film director in your seventies and George Romero, the zombie Godfather of the Living Dead series knows it. He spent the lion’s share of the nineties spinning his wheels in Hollywood, going seven years without getting a film made so he’s making up for lost time, with this his third Dead film in five years. Although he made a string of fascinating non-zombie films over his career it seems that […]
GUILTY: Fake Pimp From ACORN Scam Gets Slap On The Dick For Tampering With Senator’s Phones
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Four conservative activists accused of trying to tamper with the phones in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) office pleaded guilty Wednesday to misdemeanor charges of entering federal property under false pretenses. James O’Keefe, 25, an activist already famous for his videotaped conversations with ACORN officials in several cities, was sentenced to three years probation, 100 hours of community service and a $1,500 fine. The FBI has said O’Keefe used his cellphone to try to capture video of two others who posed as telephone repairmen and asked to see the phones at Landrieu’s office in New Orleans. O’Keefe has said […]
SCRAPPLE NEWS: Piggie Of The Week
AP wrote a poem about BP’s cruel defilement of the Gulf of Mexico. With apologies to Dr. Seuss.