squidBits

[Frank Kermode] called the literary critic "a one-off". "He's probably the greatest literary conversationalist I've ever known - it wasn't just the lectures and the monographs and the books, it's the fact that just talking about a writer he'd say incredibly pithy, intelligent things which would prompt you to go and read them again," he said. "He knew he had exceptional gifts, but there was a modest manner about him. He knew he was smarter than everyone else, but he was this pipe-smoking, beguiling man who listened to what you had to say ... It's the wreath of pipe smoke, and the benign smile and wisdom, which I'm really going to miss."

For readers, e-books have meant a transformation not just of the reading experience, but of the book-buying tradition of strolling aisles, perusing covers and being able to hold books in their hands. Many publishers have been astounded by the pace of the e-book popularity and the threat to print book sales that it represents. If the number of brick-and-mortar stores drops, publishers fear that sales will go along with it. Some worry that large bookstores will go the way of the record stores that shut down when the music business went digital.

“The shift from the physical to the digital book can pick up some of the economic slack, but it can’t pick up the loss that is created when you don’t have the customers browsing the displays,” said Laurence J. Kirshbaum, a literary agent. “We need people going into stores and seeing a book they didn’t know existed and buying it.”

A 30-year-old Pacific Grove man suffering from hypothermia was rescued Tuesday after his fishing kayak began taking on water in the middle of Monterey Bay, officials said.

The unidentified man called 911 about 6:20 p.m. to report a leaky hull and that he had rolled three times, officials said. The man was unable to describe where he was, but after 20 minutes realized he could determine his location by reading coordinates from his iPhone's GPS system.

Gay rights activists have long sought to repeal the controversial 1993 law, which has seen thousands of Americans forced out of the armed services since it was brought in under President Bill Clinton.

Now that dream is almost certain to happen, after the powerful Senate armed services committee voted 16 to 12 in favour of an amendment that would pave the way for getting rid of the law.

Now that nearly every airline is charging baggage fees, travelers are motivated to pack as efficiently as possible. And who knows more about packing than professional flight crews? In interviews with a dozen flight attendants and pilots, one theme emerged: to pare down and still have everything needed at the destination, think strategically.

Until now, even in states in other circuits that have issued similar rulings, immigration authorities have generally used the more-lenient law and their discretion to approve such cases, rather than order deportation, immigration lawyers say. But the van Sander case shows that the outlook is dire for couples already in the pipeline for a green card, said Eric E. Olson, an immigration lawyer who has followed the issue closely.

“It’s crazy,” he said, adding that it might provoke a public outcry, because “it’s going to affect a lot of white people, too, not just brown people.”

Relying upon a PC is ipso facto not “post-PC”, and the challenge for Apple is that they’ve never demonstrated the sort of expertise needed to do this via the cloud. Over-the-air syncing, backup, and system updates need to be something that “just happens”.

‘NO CHANCE’

The big loser this week, though, was Microsoft. They’re simply not even part of the game. RIM looms large, as BlackBerrys continue to reign as the best-selling smartphones in the U.S. But Microsoft? They’ve got nothing. No interesting devices, weak sales, and a shrinking user base. Microsoft’s irrelevance is taken for granted.

Thierry Lalande, the museum's ancient scientific instruments curator, said that the pendulum's brass bob had been badly damaged in three places and could not be restored.

"It's not a loss, because the pendulum is still there, but it's a failure because we were unable to protect it," he said. The circumstances surrounding the accident have raised eyebrows in France.

The museum regularly hosts cocktail parties in the chapel that houses the pendulum, and Mr Lalande admitted that several alarming incidents had occurred over the past year. In May 2009, for example, a partygoer grabbed the 28kg instrument and swung it into a security barrier.

Simultaneously, a signal is transmitted to a neutron bomb-hardened server located deep within the Cheyenne Moutain Complex. It immediately archives all your individual photos, comments, messages, and items from your profile or anywhere else on Facebook.

For the first time, Microsoft will provide a free online version of Office that lets people store their documents on the Web rather than on their personal computers.

If all goes according to Microsoft’s plan, this technology, along with a host of other features, will persuade businesses and consumers to upgrade their Office software once again. “It is a remarkable moment,” said Stephen Elop, the president of Microsoft’s business software division, who will showcase Office 2010 on Wednesday at an event in New York.

Boycotts threatened or carried out over Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law could cost the Phoenix metropolitan area $90 million in hotel and convention business over five years, Mayor Phil Gordon said Tuesday.

The figure, which does not include incidental spending in restaurants and shops, was calculated after four organizations canceled conventions or conferences and a dozen others said they would abandon visits if the law was not repealed, he said.

Kindle users who highlight passages will now have a record of those highlights sent back to Amazon servers, where they will be compiled and sorted to help produce a new feature called "Popular Highlights."

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Amazon does not reveal preferences of individual users. Only passages highlighted by three or more users are included.