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Hurricane Irene Path 2011

Hurricane Irene – Are You Prepared? Hurricane Irene 2011 – Home Power Generators – Call 603 234 3706 Hurricane Irene Boston – Home Power Generators – Call 603 234 3706 ghoff26 says: The Big One? “… 65million people are within warning zones with the Category 3 storm …” http://t.co/rSXawxy

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How did Libyan rebels take Tripoli with such apparent ease? It was thanks in part to men like Mahmoud Ben Jumaa, a senior member of Moammar Gadhafi’s personal security force and secret rebel agent, the Wall Street Journal reports. Since February, Ben Jumaa had been tipping resistance leaders in his…

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Fall Books: `Wimpy Kid,’ `Heroes Of Olympus’ Among Tops

NEW YORK — The books arriving this fall face a radically different market from just a year ago. The Borders chain is going out of business, shutting down hundreds of stores, and millions more e-book devices have been sold. Some publishers say e-books are now 20 percent of overall sales or higher, more than double from 2010. Even J.K. Rowling has gone digital, and will soon offer e-editions of the “Harry Potter” books through her Pottermore website. But the season’s biggest selling title may be available only the old-fashioned way. “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever,” the seventh of Jeff Kinney’s series about the trials of schoolboy Greg Heffley, arrives in November with an announced first printing of over 6 million copies and, so far, no plans for an e-book. The print run is greater than the combined totals for two other likely blockbusters: Rick Riordan’s “Heroes of Olympus” (3 million copies) and Christopher Paolini’s “Inheritance” (2.5 million), the fourth and final book of his “Inheritance” fantasy cycle. The “Wimpy Kid” series has more than 45 million copies in print and the new book has already reached the top 20 on Amazon.com. Independent sellers say customers have been pre-ordering “Cabin Fever” for months. “Those books fly off the shelves like candy,” says Becky Anderson, co-owner of the two Illinois-based Anderson’s Bookshops. “It’s great to see kids open the new books and immediately start laughing.” “They’re like the `Harry Potter’ books in that they appeal to kids who don’t necessarily love reading,” says Peter Glassman, owner of Books of Wonder in New York. “And when you do that, you reach a tremendous audience.” The e-revolution so far has been more for the old than for the young. Officials at Rowling’s American publisher, Scholastic Inc., and Kinney’s publisher, Abrams Books, both say e-sales for children’s titles are 5 percent or less of the total market, with at least some of those purchases by adults who like “The Hunger Games” and other works popular with kids. Glassman, who cites parents’ reluctance to let kids handle e-readers, says his business has been far more affected by physical books being purchased online than by electronic books. Michael Jacobs, president and CEO of Abrams, says he is still relying on physical outlets, from independent stores to school fairs to discount chains such as Target. He says Kinney and Abrams are thinking hard about releasing the “Wimpy Kid” series electronically, but that the vast majority of fans prefer paper. “The market is developing and growing for children’s e-books, but it doesn’t compare to the market for adult best-sellers,” says Jacobs, who also notes the distinctive design of the “Wimpy Kid” books, compact and heavily illustrated hardcovers. “The look and feel of the books means a lot to sales. I always think of this photo we have of about 15 or 16 boys, sitting on a floor with the books, after picking them up at a school fair.” Big sales are expected for several children’s releases, including Maurice Sendak’s “Bumble-Ardy,” the first book he has written and illustrated in decades, and the first two installments from a new “39 Clues” series. Brian Selznick has a new novel, “Wonderstruck,” and his award-winning “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” has been adapted into a Martin Scorsese film due just before Thanksgiving. Author-filmmaker William Joyce starts his new “Guardians of Childhood” series with “The Man in the Moon.” Even Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and atheist who wrote the million-selling “The God Delusion,’” has completed a book for young people. He says “The Magic of Reality” is not a work about religion, but about the mysteries of the natural world. “I didn’t lard it up with whiz-bangs and gimmicks,” Dawkins says. “I suppose my vocabulary was slightly constricted compared to what I use for adults. But I’ve always had an audience in front of my mind when I’m writing anything.” For adult readers, booksellers say literary fiction looks especially strong, including two major debuts: Erin Morgenstern’s “The Night Circus” and Chad Harbach’s “The Art of Fielding.” Novels are also coming from Haruki Murakami, Michael Ondaatje, Roberto Bolano, Charles Frazier, William Kennedy, Russell Banks and Umberto Eco. Nine stories by Don DeLillo have been compiled for “The Angel Esmeralda.” Chris Schluep, senior editor of books at Amazon.com, is looking forward to Jeffrey Eugenides’ “The Marriage Plot,” his first novel since the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Middlesex.” A literary story about three well-read Ivy League seniors, “The Marriage Plot” is set mostly at Brown University, Eugenides’ alma mater, and features a student who shares the author’s Greek heritage. “This is the one I’m most personally excited by,” Schluep says. “To me, it seems more autobiographical than his previous books. I’ve really enjoyed reading him and now maybe we can see a little more of who Eugenides is.” New work is expected from John Grisham, Patricia Cornwell, Lee Child, Michael Connelly and the prolific James Patterson, an author for all seasons. A trio of crime novels builds on past work: Anthony Horowitz’s “The House of Silk,” an authorized Sherlock Holmes mystery; “Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues,” completed by Michael Brandman after Parker died last year; and the late Mickey Spillane’s “The Consummata,” finished by Max Allan Collins, a close friend. “He was my hero. When I sold my first novel (`Bait Money’) I was in college and sent the book to him. I got a very warm letter back, single- spaced, welcoming me to professional writing,” Collins says. “In the week before he passed (in 2006), Mickey specifically asked me to finish `Consummata.’ I really did get the torch passed to me, which is about the biggest honor I ever had.” Paolo Coelho, one of the world’s best-selling authors, has a new novel of physical and spiritual travel, “The Aleph.” But he is happy to remain home this fall, in Geneva, Switzerland, and spread the word through his millions of followers on Facebook and Twitter. “I know that a lot of newspapers have closed, but I’m not worried about finding space. I’ve become tired of repeating over and over the same questions, giving the same answers and I asked myself, `Is this adding something? Is this helping to promote the book?’ And I realized that, no, it was not helping. What really helps is to have the book in the bookstores and then word of mouth,” says Coelho, who has been blogging for several years. “I realized that blogging allowed me to have direct contact with my readers, which for a writer is a kind of blessing. So I went on Facebook and on Twitter and I started this conversation, and little by little the community started to grow. So when I release a book, I can have immediate feedback.” Two books will reveal the private thoughts of elusive public figures. Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” is the first authorized biography of the Apple leader who just announced that he was stepping down as CEO. “Jacqueline Kennedy” features interviews with the former first lady taped soon after her husband’s assassination. Stephen King’s “11/22/63″ is a time travel fantasy about a mission to save JFK. Joan Didion follows her classic study of grief for her husband, John Gregory Dunne, “The Year of Magical Thinking,” with “Blue Nights,” a memoir about aging and the death of daughter Quintana Roo. Film critic and cancer survivor Roger Ebert takes on real life, his own, in “Life Itself.” Diane Keaton remembers her mother in “Then Again.” Harry Belafonte’s “My Song” includes an intimate portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Some works are hard to categorize, even by the authors. Dava Sobel’s “A More Perfect Heaven” might be called a dramatic biography. It’s a review of the life of the astronomer Copernicus in which a conventional narrative is wrapped around an original play by the author. Ann Beattie, known for her minimalist short stories, has written “Mrs. Nixon.” The subject is Richard Nixon’s wife, Pat Nixon, but it’s not a biography, a work of fiction or creative nonfiction. “I hate the term `creative nonfiction,’” Beattie says. “I guess I would say that it’s fiction, but it’s not a novel and part of the time it’s journalism. Any time I’m writing fiction I let you know. I talk about what devices writers use to get inside the lives of their characters, like how writers use interior monologues. It’s a very self-conscious book about writing.” The fall will be relatively light on politics and presidents, although a pair of books will come from two of the highest officials in the George W. Bush administration: Dick Cheney’s “In My Time,” the most anticipated memoir from a former vice president in decades, and Condoleezza Rice’s “No Higher Honor,” which covers her years as national security adviser and secretary of state. “I think the Condi Rice book will be really good, and could be a counterpart to the Cheney memoir,” Isaacson says. “I loved that memoir she did about her parents (`Extraordinary Ordinary People’). Unlike a lot of memoir writers, she’s a great storyteller.” In “Tension City,” newsman Jim Lehrer reflects on presidential debates – some of which he moderated – from Kennedy-Nixon to Obama-McCain. Another book may revive interest in a president who hardly had the chance to serve. James Garfield, elected in 1880 and fatally wounded just months later, is the subject of Candace Millard’s “Destiny of the Republic.” Patricia Bostelman, vice president of marketing for Barnes & Noble Inc., thinks Millard’s book will be a hit. “Millard is very good at taking an event and telling a broader story,” she says, noting the subtitle’s reference to “Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President.” “It reminds me of `A Beautiful Mind’ and I think we’ll have the same kind of success with it.” Music memoirs are coming from Pearl Jam, Jermaine Jackson, Kenny Rogers and R. Kelly. Madonna fans might be interested in at least two books: “Le Freak,” by “Like a Virgin” producer Nile Rodgers (they were just good friends, he writes), and “I Want My MTV,” an oral history that has Madonna’s picture on the cover and an entire chapter on her rise to video superstar, but no comments from the singer herself. A Warner Bros. executive does remember a then-unknown Madonna barging into their offices on a skateboard and leaving a note on a product manager’s door: “Sorry I missed you, because I’m going to be a star.” Judy Collins has written “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes,” which reveals that a performer with an image far gentler than Madonna’s could have an equally wild private life. The title refers to the Stephen Stills song (“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”) that placed her in the pantheon of rock muses with Pattie Boyd (“Something,” “Wonderful Tonight”) and Jerry Hall (“Miss You”). “I felt I just had to give my book that title because the song was such a central part of my life, and Stephen’s,” says Collins, who avoided reading Boyd’s “Wonderful Tonight” and other memoirs about the 1960s and 1970s. “I didn’t want to be affected by someone else’s way of interpreting their lives. But one of the books I was excited about, and had some impact on me, was Steve Martin’s book about the club life (`Born Standing Up’). It’s a brilliant book and I felt strongly that kind of inside portrait about the music of the time.”

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Engadget NYC Reader Meetup recap

What can we say? It was an amazing night . We filled the joint to capacity, made about a million new friends, smashed an iPad 2 live on stage, and literally had so much stuff to give away that we ran out of time. The staff is still buzzing (and our ears still ringing) after a fantastic night in the City, and we’re hugely thankful for everyone who came out last night to party with us. And, of course, we’re hugely thankful to our sponsors that helped to make it possible, including Motorola, Get-a-Game, RIM, HTC, Samsung, and AT&T — who brought artist Matt Siren to create a little art live. We have a time-lapse video of that coming together after the break, along with footage of what happens when a set of in-line skates meet up with the display on an iPad 2 provided by uBreakiFix. Spoiler alert: it ain’t pretty. Gallery: Engadget Fall 2011 NYC Reader Meetup Continue reading Engadget NYC Reader Meetup recap Engadget NYC Reader Meetup recap originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Aug 2011 15:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

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New York Hurricane

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New York Hurricane

Hurricane Prep Center Hurricane Irene, 2011. Hurricane Irene 2011 Wireless Companies Urge Emergency Cell … Hurricane Irene, 2011 Stormpulse Hurricanes, severe weather . RobbieCrowell says: RT @ nytimes : FiveThirtyEight: New York Hurricane Could Be Multibillion Dollar Catastrophe http://t.co/wEmzqrz

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Hurricane Irene: States of Emergency Declared Across East Coast

From New York to the Carolinas, it’s all getting serious. The expected arrival of the nearly 600-mile-wide Hurricane Irene this weekend means that states of emergency have been declared across the East Coast. Evacuations have been ordered, with authorities warning of severe flooding. NewsFeed has put together a guide from the governors as to what

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Syria’s most acclaimed political cartoonist was severely beaten yesterday, not long after he published a cartoon that showed Bashar al-Assad hightailing it out of town with Moammar Gadhafi, the New York Times reports. Masked gunmen grabbed Ali Farzat off the streets of Damascus at about 4:30am, activists said. They…

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Women Pose Awkwardly in Public as Satire of Fashion Photography

In her performance piece “Poses,” Spanish artist Yolanda Dominguez created a witty satire of fashion photography by having women awkwardly hold exaggerated fashion poses in public places, much to the confusion of onlookers (video). “Poses” is a direct criticism of the absurd and artificial world of glamour and of fashion that magazines present. Specifically, the Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Laughing Squid Discovery Date : 25/08/2011 18:43 Number of articles : 3

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Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, condemns British education system

Schmidt criticises division between science and arts and says UK ‘should look back to glory days of Victorian era’ The chairman of Google has delivered a devastating critique of the UK’s education system and said the country had failed to capitalise on its record of innovation in science and engineering. Delivering the annual MacTaggart lecture in Edinburgh, Eric Schmidt criticised “a drift to the humanities” and attacked the emergence of two educational camps, each of which “denigrate the other. To use what I’m told is the local vernacular, you’re either a luvvy or a boffin,” he said. Schmidt also hit out at Lord Sugar, the Labour peer and star of the hit BBC programme The Apprentice, who recently claimed on the show that “engineers are no good at business”. “Really?” Schmidt said. “I don’t think we’ve done too badly.” Schmidt told the MediaGuardian Edinburgh international TV festival: “Over the past century the UK has stopped nurturing its polymaths. You need to bring art and science back together.” The technology veteran, who joined Google a decade ago to help founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin build the company, said Britain should look to the “glory days” of the Victorian era for reminders of how the two disciplines can work together. “It was a time when the same people wrote poetry and built bridges,” he said. “Lewis Carroll didn’t just write one of the classic fairytales of all time. He was also a mathematics tutor at Oxford. James Clerk Maxwell was described by Einstein as among the best physicists since Newton – but was also a published poet.” Schmidt’s comments echoed sentiments expressed by Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, who revealed he was stepping down this week. “The Macintosh turned out so well because the people working on it were musicians, artists, poets and historians – who also happened to be excellent computer scientists,” Jobs once told the New York Times. Schmidt paid tribute to Britain’s record of innovation, saying the UK had “invented computers in both concept and practice” before highlighting that the world’s first office computer “was built in 1951 by the Lyons chain of teashops”. However, he said the UK had failed to build industry-leading positions or successfully transfer ideas from the drawing board to the boardroom. “The UK is the home of so many media-related inventions. You invented photography. You invented TV,” he said. “Yet today, none of the world’s leading exponents in these fields are from UK.” He said British startups tended to sell out to overseas companies once they had reached a certain size, and that this trend needed to be reversed. “The UK does a great job of backing small firms and cottage industries, but there’s little point getting a thousand seeds to sprout if they are then left to wither or transplanted overseas. UK businesses need championing to help them grow into global powerhouses, without having to sell out to foreign-owned companies. If you don’t address this, then the UK will continue to be where inventions are born, but not bred for long-term success.” Schmidt said the country that invented the computer was “throwing away your great computer heritage” by failing to teach programming in schools. “I was flabbergasted to learn that today computer science isn’t even taught as standard in UK schools,” Schmidt said. “Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it’s made.” Barack Obama announced in June that the US would train an extra 10,000 engineers a year. “I hope that others will follow suit – the world needs more engineers. I saw the other day that on The Apprentice Alan Sugar said engineers are no good at business,” he said. “If the UK’s creative businesses want to thrive in the digital future, you need people who understand all facets of it integrated from the very beginning. Take a lead from the Victorians and ignore Lord Sugar: bring engineers into your company at all levels, including the top.” Schmidt also announced that Google TV, which allows users to search the internet on their TV sets, would be launched in Europe early next year, with the UK “among the top priorities”. The product is already available in America, although sales have been disappointing. Schmidt said Google TV did not threaten broadcasters and would enable them to experiment with new formats online. He defended the company’s contribution to the TV industry, pointing out that it had invested billions of dollars in IT infrastructure that media companies use. Google also announced it would fund a new course in online production and distribution at the National Film & Television School in London for three years. Eric Schmidt Google Education policy MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival 2011 MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival Digital media Television industry Computing James Robinson guardian.co.uk

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Spain changes constitution to cap budget deficit

• Spanish socialists and People’s party rivals agree deficit limit • Limit to be set at 0.4% of GDP from 2020 Spanish politicians took a dramatic step to try to win back market confidence by agreeing on a reform of the country’s constitution to introduce a cap on future deficits. The socialist party (PSOE) of outgoing prime minister José Luis Zapatero and the conservative opposition People’s party (PP) said the cap would come into effect in 2020. The limit will be set at 0.4% and will effect all levels of Spain’s highly devolved administration, including the regional governments that run health and education. The move came at the end of a month that has seen Spain’s sovereign debt under severe pressure in the markets, amid fears that it might need a bailout similar to those of fellow eurozone nations Portugal, Greece or Ireland. It also came a week after Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy called for eurozone countries to establish legal limits on their deficits to integrate their economies. So far only Germany has such a cap. Spanish politicians claimed the measure was a step towards eurozone integration. “August has been a month of financial instability. Investors have lost confidence in the eurozone,” said Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, the PSOE candidate for prime minister in November’s general election. “We have to win back confidence and show we are solvent.” The PP, led by Mariano Rajoy, had been demanding such a measure for years. “We want to be amongst the countries in the vanguard of European economic policy,” said spokeswoman Soraya Saénz de Santamaría. With more than 90% of deputies between them, the two parties can push through constitutional change before parliament is dissolved on 27 September. Unlike Germany, Spain will not specify the size of the deficit cap in the constitution. According to the draft, the new clause will merely say a cap must be set by either the European Union or, in its absence, the Spanish parliament. The limit could also be broken at times of recession or national crisis. Germany’s constitution imposes a 0.35% cap by 2016. Spain’s 0.4% limit will be set initially by a separate law. Saénz de Santamaría claimed the agreement would force future governments to keep debt below an EU-set limit of 60% of GDP. However, Spain’s debt is expected to hit 65% of GDP this year, below the eurozone average and behind Germany, France, Britain and the US. The IMF recently estimated it would total around 75% of GDP by 2016. While the new measure is meant to calm markets, it will have no impact on Spain’s current deficit. Figures released on Friday show annual GDP growth slipped to 0.7% in the second quarter, making it difficult to reach the government’s predicted 1.3% for 2011. Zapatero surprised many in his party on Tuesday when he announced he and Rajoy had agreed to change the constitution. Opinion polls show the socialists trailing the PP. The socialist regional leader in Andalucia, José Antonio Griñán, called the change “a grave error”. Left-wing critics claimed it would lead to cuts in social spending. Only a rebellion by socialist deputies, however, could stop the measure going through. European debt crisis European banks Spain Europe José Luis Zapatero Giles Tremlett guardian.co.uk

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