Despite rising online book sales and digital downloads and the Great Recession, bookstores in the Nashville area were profitable—right up until they closed. Even Davis-Kidd, locally owned until the Joseph-Beth Booksellers chain purchased it in 1997, had been solvent, undone not by the collapse of the local market but by the bankruptcy of the parent company. (The local Barnes & Noble, at the Opry Mills mall, was closed after a 2010 flood.) Nashville lost its bookstores not because people there had abandoned physical books and retailers. For the most part, it lost them remotely, at the corporate level. Nashville’s story is not unique. When Borders declared bankruptcy in February, more than 200 of its 400 outlets were still “highly profitable,” says its final chief executive officer, Mike Edwards. There’s no question that the book industry is in flux, with digital sales last year making up about $900 million of the $28 billion-a-year market and increasing fast. But a sizable portion of the book business is still taking place in actual stores. The one thing Borders did have going for it was its huge selection, yet even that wasn’t worth as much as the company thought. An average Borders superstore stocked around 140,000 titles at immense cost, but if a customer craves selection, no store can compete with the long tail of the Internet. Maybe more crucially for Borders, the assortment of titles that provided the key to its identity didn’t give it a competitive edge over Barnes & Noble. From 1999 onward, though, Borders was headed by six different CEOs, none of whom stayed long enough to make the company work. In 2008, Borders launched 14 “concept stores,” as part of what it called “a new shopping experience.” Customers were expected to travel to these massive stores to use download stations for books and music, which just isn’t how e-commerce works. In Nashville, retailers are springing up to fill the bookstore void. In November, Vanderbilt moved its university bookstore into the 27,000 square feet formerly occupied by Borders. Just a mile away, BookMan BookWoman, a used bookstore, has started stocking new titles, mostly New York Times bestsellers or books by local authors. Novelist and local resident Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder, will open a bookstore in Nashville in November. Called Parnassus, after the Greek mountain that is the mythological home of poetry and learning, Patchett’s store will be a 10th the size of the average Borders. “I want to do it brilliantly at 2,500 square feet,” she says, “not struggle in something the size of Macy’s.” Like many others in Nashville, she was waiting for someone to do something about the city’s bookstore drought.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-end-of-borders-and-the-future-of-books-11102011.html

Favignana is a wonderful Mediterranean island full of colours and traditions. It is the biggest one of the Egladi islands (the other ones are Levanzo, Marettimo, Formica and Maraone) being characterized by a level land where there is just a hill called S.Caterina and many natural marvels. Its sea is very clear, uncontaminated and full of fish while its coast is essentially rocky but also very accessible. All around this island you can find many beaches made up by thin sand that can be white or pink. Here the climate is mild characterized by a long summertime that starts in May and finishes in October. During the first part of May there is the traditional tuna fishing. This island takes its name from “Favonio” that is a hot wind coming from the west and its shape recalls which one of a butterfly. Its chalky soil has always allowed the tufa stones mining: this material, in fact, has been used to build many houses in Sicily and in North Africa.
http://www.goingthroughitaly.com/1223/favignana-the-butterfly-shaped-island/

Limestone refers to sedimentary rocks that contain a minimum of 50 percent of calcium carbonate in their composition. Minor components include clay, iron, feldspar, and quartz. Limestone is formed by the deposition of calcium carbonate suspended in the water or by the accumulation of shells and other fossilized materials. Limestone rock types include chalk, coquina, travertine, tufa, as well as oolitic and lithographic limestone.
http://www.ehow.com/info_8212230_limestone-rock-types.html

Ever growing use of software and wireless technology in modern cars exposes users to unknown risks to personal safety while driving, according to security technology company McAfee. In a new report on emerging risks in automotive system security, McAfee said that researchers have already demonstrated potential attacks on running cars such as opening doors and starting car engines by using text messages. The risk of losing control and privacy increases if hackers gain access to the cars physically, but malicious hacking could target drivers remotely as well, said the report. The report said that "researchers have showed that an attack can be mounted to track a vehicle and compromise passengers' privacy by tracking the RFID tags using powerful long-distance readers at around 40 meters." The report, 'Caution: Malware Ahead', published in conjunction with Wind River and ESCRYPT, examines the security of electrical systems that have become commonplace in today's cars. Modern cars have become ever more reliant on wireless systems such as Bluetooth and software to function. McAfee said that software is embedded in several car parts now including airbags, power seats, anti-lock braking systems, electronic stability controls, autonomous cruise controls, communication systems and in-vehicle communication.
http://security.cbronline.com/news/modern-cars-vulnerable-to-remote-malicious-attacks-mcafee-090911

Caution: Malware Ahead Read the 12-page report at:
http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/reports/rp-caution-malware-ahead.pdf

Thanksgiving recipes http://thanksgiving.food.com/
Number to Know 3: Number of places in the United States named after the holiday's traditional main course. Turkey, Texas, was the most populous in 2009, with 445 residents, followed by Turkey Creek, La., (362) and Turkey, N.C. (272). There are also nine townships around the country named Turkey, three in Kansas. – Census.gov
This Day in History Nov. 22, 1963: In Dallas, President John F. Kennedy is killed and Texas Gov. John B. Connally is seriously wounded by Lee Harvey Oswald.
http://www.eldoradotimes.com/newsnow/x1760399995/Morning-Minutes-Nov-22

In Chile's dry, hot, desert-like Atacama Region, a group of Smithsonian researchers are digging up whales. The fossil site, near the port city of Caldera in northern Chile, was discovered in late 2010 by a construction company expanding the Pan-American Highway. In a road cut, the workers discovered complete skeletons of baleen whales, says paleobiologist Nick Pyenson, the curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The company agreed to grant the site a brief reprieve, allowing Pyenson to coordinate a short-term excavation of the fossils. Since October, Pyenson and a team of researchers have made two trips to the site's late Miocene marine rocks, which contain a rich diversity of marine vertebrates. They are striving to learn how the site was formed and how the marine mammals died—a field known as taphonomy. The team has found more than 20 complete whale skeletons, and about 80 individual specimens, as well as other types of marine mammals.
Carolyn Gramling http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/11/researchers-rush-to-recover-whale.html

Learning to Live Without a Statistical Abstract: Thinking about Future Access to Government Information by James T. Shaw Twenty-four years ago, in 1987, I made a presentation called “Basic Ready Reference: Documents that a Reference Librarian Cannot Live Without” at a meeting of the Iowa Library Association Government Documents Round Table. My top recommendation was the Statistical Abstract of the United States, that annual compendium of data so familiar and indispensable to American librarians everywhere. Twelve years ago, in 1999, I made a similar presentation at the NLA/NEMA Annual Conference, and again the Statistical Abstract took its place as the preeminent resource. The title of my presentation [at the Nebraska Library Association annual conference, October 2011] “Learning to Live Without a Statistical Abstract,” signals that our gathering this morning is something of a memorial. The Statistical Abstract, born in 1878 and published annually thereafter, may well be dead, a victim of cuts to the U.S. Census Bureau contained in the House of Representatives’ 2012 Appropriations bill for Commerce, Justice, and Science. For librarians and researchers, the Statistical Abstract provides not only immediate access to data, it also provides valuable leads via the source notes. The Statistical Abstract includes both public and private sources. In the case of private sources, it gives you a glimpse of data that may reside behind a pay wall. The cryptic “unpublished data” gives a clue to when it is time to contact an agency directly. The 2011 Statistical Abstract includes 1,407 tables, which address an impressive range of topics related to government, the economy, business, politics, and social concerns. If it has been awhile since you have browsed through a Statistical Abstract, or if it is a resource new to you, then I think it would be well worth your time to become reacquainted or acquainted with it. http://www.llrx.com/features/futureaccessgovtinfo.htm