I’ve Got the Power? Maybe Not in Connecticut! [Updated]

From nbcconnecticut.com

This morning’s news isn’t bright for nearly 2.7 million power clusters in New England, and nearly 800,000 in Connecticut. They are without power as a result of last night’s winter snow storm. Connecticut’s powerless tally is worse than when Hurricane Irene struck the state in late August, leaving hundreds of thousands without power for days.

Updated (12:10 PM): Governor Malloy confirms that nearly 820,000 without power. Multiple cell towers down. Situation more complex than during Irene. Outage numbers continue to increase as snow melts off weighed down trees and they pop back up and knock into power lines. Governor won’t cancel Halloween. 

Connecticut’s Governor Dannel Malloy said the storms power outages are the worse the state’s ever experienced and told the state’s residents to prepare for “extensive and long-term power outages.” He also advised that some residents could be without power for up to a week.

Take a look at the local power outage maps from Connecticut Light & Power (CL&P) and United Illuminating (UI):

Sharing: Pro-gun group to demonstrate at Va. Tech

From The Roanoke Times:

Supporters of concealed carry on college campuses have scheduled an all-day demonstration for Nov. 17 at Virginia Tech, the university where in 2007, 33 students and faculty were killed in the worst school shooting in U.S. history.

Big Banks Rethink Debit Card Fees

From: Heather Stone/Chicago Tribune

A number of big banks are reconsidering charging customers a fee to have a debit card. This comes as many customers and non-customers cried foul when Bank of America (the nation’s second largest bank) announced it would begin charging customers $5 a month for the luxury of using their bank’s debit card. While BoA wasn’t alone, other big banks were toying with the charge, it seems the banker backlash heated up after the BoA announcement.

Sharing: If You’re Happy and You Know It, Must I Know, Too?

A New York Times article ponders the growing use of emoticons in professional communications communications from professionals. ;)

Graphic from New York Times

Students of digital communication see the emerging acceptance of whimsical signifiers as inevitable, if not always desirable. “They’re part of the degradation of writing skills — grammar, syntax, sentence structure, even penmanship — that come with digital technology,” said Bill Lancaster, a lecturer in communications at Northeastern University in Boston. “Certainly I understand the need for clarity. But language, used properly, is clear on its own.”

Are smiley faces creeping into your work emails and text messages to colleagues? :?

Ms. DiNardo joins the ranks of professionals who have found themselves on the receiving end of smileys, winks and LOL’s, as the emoticon has rather suddenly migrated from the e-mails and texts of teenagers (and perhaps the more frothy adults) to the correspondence of business people who pride themselves on their gravitas.

Read the full story: If You’re Happy and You Know It, Must I Know, Too?

Sharing: When Condi Met Gaddafi

Photo: Mahmud Turkia/AFP/Getty Images

The Daily Beast has a preview of Condoleezza Rice’s forthcoming memoir, in which she details recently killed Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s obsession with, what he called, his “darling black African woman.”

Of one encounter with her admirer, after a Ramadan dinner, Condi recalled:

At the end of dinner, Qaddafi told me that he’d made a videotape for me. Uh oh, I thought, what is this going to be? It was a quite innocent collection of photos of me with world leaders—President Bush, Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao, and so on—set to the music of a song called “Black Flower in the White House,” written for me by a Libyan composer. It was weird, but at least it wasn’t raunchy.

Gaddafi earlier said, of Rice, ”Leezza, Leezza, Leezza. … I love her very much.” He also had a “bound book of Condi-worship features full-page glossy photos and smaller snapshots.”

Got Student Loans? You’re Not Alone!

Source: Guide to College Life

USA Today recently dropped a headline bombshell. Student loans taken out last year topped $100 Billion last year (first time this has happened). In addition to that staggering number, a Federal Reserve report indicated that total outstanding student loans are about to exceed $1 Trillion. (That figure is higher than Americans, the credit society, owe in credit card debt.)

Students are borrowing twice what they did a decade ago after adjusting for inflation, the College Board reports. Total outstanding debt has doubled in the past five years — a sharp contrast to consumers reducing what’s owed on home loans and credit cards.

The amount of student loans has continued to increase as the cost of college education continues to skyrocket. But, one student warns, today’s lending with have long-lasting effects.

Yet another NPR flap?

Late last week some on the web were buzzing about what looked like the latest in a series of missteps by public radio powerhouse NPR. The latest controversy had nothing to do with muppets, instead the host of two shows syndicated on various NPR stations around the nation was in hot water for participating in an Occupy Wall Street event in Washington, D.C. Lisa Simeone, the voice of World of Opera and Soundprint was rumored to be fired for her attending/participating in the nation-wide protests.

Turns out, Simeone was fired from at least one of her gigs, with Soundprint. She still (kinda-sorta-maybe) has her ‘free-lance’ job at World of Opera. To which Simeone makes a valid point, at least in my mind:

“I don’t cover news. In none of the shows that I do, do I cover the news. What is NPR afraid I’ll do? Insert a seditious comment into a synopsis of ‘Madame Butterfly?’”

BRB POTUS

Avid texter pauses briefly to shake Obama's hand

“Randy Jackson”: Yo dog, Obama is here, about to meet him!

Texting Friend: Really?! Where u at?

“Randy Jackson”: I’m in Hampton dog!

Texting Friend: Serious yo?

“Randy Jackson”: No joke Barack is a few feet away.

Texting Friend: You really gonna meet him?

“Randy Jackson”: BRB prez is waiting, actin like he can’t wait for me to finish this text dog.

Watch the video here (CBS News)

He said/She did? So he started a newspaper & wrote about it

A student newspaper controversy is heating up at the University of Tennessee, according to a recent article from Insider Higher Ed.

Mustapha Moussa, a 40 year-old sophomore (journalism and electronic media), is editor-in-chief of the newly minted newspaper The Athenaeum News. The paper’s first two editions featured cover stories about an alleged affair between a student and professor at Tennessee. The female student has since married geography professor Henri Grissino-Mayer. The student, Brandi, is also the ex-wife of newspaper editor Moussa.

Moussa says he isn’t out for revenge, rather this journalist is out to expose a story that some have tried to keep hidden. He insists he’s just trying to do his due diligence as a journalist, according to Inside Higher Ed, and he suggests that “journalists are never popular.” His ex-wife’s attorney begs to differ, suggesting that the editor’s motives aren’t about journalistic excellence. All agree that Moussa maintains a First Amendment right to the freedom of speech , however Brandi’s attorney has said that Moussa’s journalism ethics might be skewed.

Sharing: 2001 anthrax attacks were a wake-up call, with efforts continuing today

 

Ottilie Lundgren

2001 anthrax attacks were a wake-up call, with efforts continuing today (video)- The New Haven Register – Serving New Haven, Connecticut.

The anthrax attacks of 2001 burst into our lives unexpectedly, changing the landscape of emergency and public health response in the weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The fear, anxiety and uncertainty that grew after 9/11 continued when bioterrorism in the form of a white powder threatened America in the last quarter of 2001.

Related: Danger Lurking in Your Mailbox