Beginning today, Google will now personalize the search results of anyone who uses its search engine, regardless of whether they’ve opted-in to a previously existing personalization feature. Searchers will have the ability to opt-out completely, and there are various protections designed to safeguard privacy.
From Huffington Post: “The Most Amazing Libraries In The World
Times are changing for libraries everywhere. But even as many libraries build their digital collections and amp up their technological offerings, we thought we’d take a step back and show our appreciation for the beauty of many of these vast collections of books.
What if our beliefs were not what divided us, but what pulled us together?
Have A Little Faith begins with an unusual quest: an 82-year-old rabbi asks Mitch Albom to deliver his eulogy. Feeling unworthy, Albom asks to understand the man better by visiting him away from the pulpit, and over time is moved to learn how human the Man of Gad really is. Meanwhile, Albom becomes involved in helping a Detroit pastor, an ex-con who now preaches to the poor and homeless in a decaying church with a hole in its roof.
The last two years have been monstrously unpleasant for high-society journalist Gus Bailey. His propensity for gossip has finally gotten him into trouble-%11 million worth. His probles begin when he falls for a fake story from an unreliable source and repeats it on a radio program. As a result, Gus becomes embroiled in a nasty slander suit brought by Kyle Cramden, the powerful congressman he accuses of being involved in the mysteriously disappearance of a young women.
A month before her 38th birthday, Kinsey Millhone finds a young unemployed college dropout in her office. A news report about an old kidnapping case brings Michael Sutton to her door. He is sure he saw the killer burying the four-year-old girl’s body and he wants Millhone’s help in fining the grave and the killers. But Sutton isn’t as reliable as he seems and finding the truth is far from easy.
Iran is much closer to having operational nuclear weapons than the CIA believes, and Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has a plan. With twelve nuclear warheads mounted on twelve missiles, he will make Iran a martyr nation then he will lead the world’s Muslims in a holy war against the nonbelievers.
Cotton Malone-the former Justice Department operative from the Charlemagne Pursuit-wakes up one night to find his Copenhagen bookshop being broken into. The culprit is a former American Secret Service agent sent by Malone’s friend Henrik Thorvaldsen to enlist his help. Thorvaldsen has discovered the aristocrat responsible for the slaughter that killed his son. With a vow of revenge and the knowledge of a plot to manipulate the global economy, Thorvaldsen, and Malone set out for Paris.
I Need My Teachers To Learn was Written and Performed by Kevin Honeycutt and produced by Charlie Mahoney (who also played percussion, bass, and Piano). This has gone through many incarnations, but after hooking up some good mics and recording equipment, I think we have a keeper. This recording includes background vocals from the Turning Point Learning Center Choir, which is composed of our virtual and face-2-face students. http://kevinhoneycutt.org http://artsnacks.org https://tplcvirtualprogram.wikispaces…
In honor of J.D. Salinger, who died today at 91, HuffPost Books collected some of the best Salinger quotes.
You may want to share these Salinger quotes with loved ones as a tribute to the author, best known for “Catcher in the Rye”:
“Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
“Grand. There’s a word I really hate. It’s a phoney. I could puke every time I hear it”
“I hope to hell that when I do die somebody has the sense to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetary. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.”
“If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.”
“I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.”
When villagers in Westbury-sub-Mendip in Somerset, England, found out that British Telecom was sponsoring a contest for creative uses of the phone booths they were decommissioning, Janet Fisher suggested converting theirs to a book exchange kiosk. “We used to have a mobile library here which called once a week on a Monday,” she told BBC Somerset November 24, “but that ceased a few months ago, so it was missed and we’re all readers around here.” The kiosk sits in the Village Square, holds about 100 items, and is quite popular, as evidenced by this photo taken by Bob Dolby of the Parish Council. Users select books (or CDs and DVDs) they want and replace them with others brought from home.