Reports about East Coast meteor flood in, setting off a media scramble

An East Coast meteor put on a spectacular show on Friday. NBC's Michelle Franzen reports.

By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

A Friday night flash of light in the skies over the East Coast sparked a rash of meteor sighting reports, followed by a mad dash to track down photos and videos of the event.

The American Meteor Society logged more than 800 reports from a region ranging from ?North Carolina to Washington to New York to New England to Canada. Hundreds more registered their observations on Twitter. ?One Twitter user, known as @Married2TheNite, reported from New Jersey that he saw ? and heard?? the object pass by. "It was making almost a hissing noise as it flew brightly overhead," he wrote. "I saw it around 7:55 p.m. EDT."

That time frame meshed with the many other reports. Some witnesses said they saw flashes of green, red and blue as the object streaked past.

The reports were consistent with a fireball?? similar to the one that flashed over Russia on Feb. 15, but much, much smaller.

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"It's not an incredibly rare event, but it is very unusual to have that many people observe it, and also it was unusually bright," Ron Dantowitz, director of the Clay Center Observatory, told NBC station WHDH-TV?in Boston. "These types of meteors happen once or twice a year. The unusual thing is that it was so well observed not so long after sunset."

Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environmental Office told The Associated Press that the flash appeared to be "a fireball that moved roughly toward the southeast, going on visual reports."

"Judging from the brightness, we're dealing with something as bright as the full moon," Cooke said. "The thing is probably a yard across. We basically have (had) a boulder enter the atmosphere over the Northeast."

For a while, Twitter buzzed with tweets and retweets highlighting pictures that falsely purported to show the Friday night light ? but eventually, bona fide views surfaced. The paucity of honest-to-goodness meteor shots contrasted with the wealth of dashboard videos that came to light after last month's Russian meteor blast.

"The meteor has taught us one thing tonight," Cara Lynch tweeted, "the East Coast needs more dash cameras."?

One of the most widely distributed videos of Friday night's flash came from someone who didn't actually see it when it happened. "I wish I would have seen it for real," said Kim Fox, a first-grade teacher from Thurmont, Md.

This security camera footage, from Kim Fox of Thurmont, Md., shows the Friday night flash in the sky.

Fox told NBC News that she checked her security-camera system after hearing about the meteor. At around the time that news reports said the meteor was widely sighted, she saw a bright flash on one of the camera views. She took out her mobile phone, recorded a video of the video, and posted it to her Facebook page. From there, the video went viral on the Web and on TV newscasts.

"The phones have been ringing all night," Fox said.

Did you see the flash? Add your sighting report to the American Meteor Society's log, and tell me about it in the comment space below. Got pictures? Feel free to post them to the Cosmic Log Facebook page.

Update for 3:44 p.m. ET March 23: In one reference, I mistakenly placed Thurmont in New Jersey rather than Maryland. And it's WHDH, not WDHD. Sorry about that! Also, more video views of the flash have come in. Hopkins Automotive Group posted this flashy security camera video on its Facebook page. There's also this dashcam view from WUSA9 photojournalist Kurt Brooks.

More about meteors:

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Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's?Facebook page, following?@b0yle on Twitter?and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Sat Mar 23, 2013 12:09 AM EDT

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Acoustic specialist Artec is no more

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Acoustic designer Tateo Nakajima of Artec Consultants looks around the new concert hall at Place des Arts in Montreal during a tour June 14, 2011.

Photograph by: John Mahoney , The Gazette

Which one of these names is not like the other? Which one of these names just doesn?t belong?

The old Sesame Street jingle is a little easier to whistle than Schoenberg?s Chamber Symphony No. 2, which is what the Orchestre M?tropolitain will be performing as part of the penultimate concert of its 2013-14 season under the baton of Tateo Nakajima.

Yes, that Tateo Nakajima. The former partner of Artec Consultants, who was the executive in charge of matters acoustical for the Maison symphonique and available for hard-hat photo ops only a few short years ago.

Not many authorities on the subset of physics and engineering we call acoustics have a professional musical upbringing. Nakajima is an exception.

This Canadian graduate of the Royal Conservatory in Toronto was building a career as a conductor before meeting the late Russell Johnson, founder of Artec, at the Lucerne Concert Hall in 1999. Johnson, a man with his eye on posterity, saw his potential, and hired him in 2001.

Nakajima was already installed as chief acoustician of the Montreal project when it was announced in June 2006. Artec?s reputation was such that the Quebec government hired the firm even before putting out a call for architects and builders.

But Artec is no more. Less than three weeks ago, the New York company was absorbed into Arup, an engineering firm based in London. Among the not-so-artistic projects in the Arup dossier are the eternally under-consideration Second Avenue Subway in New York and Highway 30 here in Quebec. To say nothing of the Letsibogo Dam in Botswana.

These people are going to create performing-arts facilities? They already have. Indeed, the multinational powerhouse built the Sydney Opera House in 1973 and counts the Barbican Centre in London and the renovation of the Royal Opera House among engineering projects.

All the same, the disappearance of Artec, one of the world?s best-known acoustical and theatre consulting firm, leads to some sober second thought. As well as the inevitable question: What would Russell Johnson think?

?Russell?s driving desire was that his life?s work would continue to be celebrated and serve as a foundation for future generations of concert halls and opera houses,? Nakajima, 42, now an Arup employee, wrote in an email.

?I firmly believe that he would have appreciated that Artec and Arup share many fundamental approaches and beliefs, and that the combined practice will be better positioned to build on his work to create wonderful performance spaces for future generations.?

As for conducting, Nakajima is not quitting his new day job at Arup.

?I?m very pleased to have been invited by Yannick and the OM. While most of my time these days is focused on the design and planning of venues for the performing arts, I relish each opportunity I have to practise my original profession.

?I think it true that my background as a musician and conductor gives me a particularly appropriate background for working on acoustics and theatre design. Opportunities such as this reinforce and enhance my understanding of the needs of musicians and are therefore important for me as an acoustics and theatre designer as well.

?But most of all, I look forward to working with the musicians of the orchestra in performing some wonderful music in Montreal and the surrounding communities.?

Even in the let-us-be-reasonable age of labour relations, orchestra strikes are regular spectacles. There is a dandy underway in San Francisco.

San Francisco Symphony management has just cancelled an East Coast tour comprising two dates in Carnegie Hall and one each in the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and Kennedy Center in Washington.

None of the concerts will be rescheduled. Cancelling Carnegie Hall concerts ranks near the top of the bad karma scale. Think about blowing off lunch at Buckingham Palace. Or skipping that installation mass at the Vatican.

To judge by the media treatment in California, management people are in control of the message. The musicians, they say, rejected a ?cooling off period? that would have permitted the tour to go ahead as planned. Of course, the point of a strike is to withhold service, not to supply it selectively, but the optics for the musicians could hardly be worse.

The eye-popping salary proposals they have rejected should have a similar baleful effect. The last management offer would have raised the minimum to $145,979 with 10 weeks paid vacation and health care coverage. Increments of only one and two per cent, the musicians will say, but once you are into six figures, small percentages go a long way. At any rate, extra work would have lifted the de facto San Francisco minimum to more than $165,000. And a fair percentage of musicians make more than the minimum.

SFS music director Michael Tilson Thomas has attempted to stay above the fray, the traditional posture of a conductor during such disputes. Musicians generally respect that distance as well. But not this time. The local American Federation of Musicians president has drawn attention to MTT?s high salary ($2.4 million in 2010), the $11-million renovation of (awful) Davies Hall undertaken in 2011 and a $250,000 bonus paid to the SFS executive director as evidence that the orchestra has the wherewithal to pay the musicians more.

?The money?s there, it?s time to share,? ran the message on a poster carried by one of the picketers last week in front of Davies Hall. ?World-class orchestra, low-class management,? reads another.

Phew. OSM strikes are strawberry socials by comparison.

In case you are wondering, the OSM contract signed in 2011 runs until Aug. 31, 2014.

akaptainis@sympatico.ca

? Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

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Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/music/Arthur+Kaptainis+Acoustic+specialist+Artec+more/8138693/story.html

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Nigerian author Chinua Achebe dies at 82

Afp/getty Images / AFP - Getty Images file

Author Chinua Achebe outside his home at Ogidi, eastern Nigeria, in 1999.

By Eun Kyung Kim, TODAY contributor

Nigerian novelist and poet Chinua Achebe, whose 1958 novel ?Things Fall Apart? addressed colonialism on African society, has died.

His publisher, Penguin, confirmed his death, at age 82, according to Reuters, on Friday.

Achebe?s breakthrough novel focused on the clash between Western and traditional values. It told the story of colonialism for the first time from an African perspective, and?has sold more than 10 million copies and been translated into more than 50 languages.

Nelson Mandela has credited Achebe for bringing ?Africa to the rest of the world" and called him "the writer in whose company the prison walls came down.?

A spokeswoman for Penguin confirmed his death but had few other details. She said the family would be releasing a statement shortly.

Reuters contributed to this report.?

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China's new leader visits Russia on first foreign trip

By Thomas Grove

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Chinese leader Xi Jinping sent a signal to the United States and Europe on Friday by visiting Russia on his first foreign trip as president, underlining the importance of Beijing's growing alliance with Moscow.

The world's largest energy producer, Russia, and its biggest consumer, China, want particularly to bolster their clout as a financial and geopolitical counterweight to Washington, whose "Asia pivot" regional strategy worries Beijing.

Xi and President Vladimir Putin, who meet at 3:00 p.m. (1100 GMT), may preside over deals that would make Beijing Russia's top customer for oil, although they are not expected to sign a long-sought agreement on supplies of pipeline gas to China.

Just before Xi arrived with first lady Peng Liyuan, a $2 billion deal was announced by Russian and Chinese companies to develop coal resources in eastern Siberia, which underlined the countries' intentions.

Putin has said he wants to "catch the Chinese wind in our economic sail" and that desire will grow stronger if China overtakes the United States as the world's largest economy during Xi's 10-year term.

Perhaps symbolically, Xi's visit overshadowed a meeting between leaders of the Russian government and the European Union's Commission that was also taking place in Moscow.

Putin and Xi, less than a year apart in age, echoed one another in interviews before the visit, each saying the Chinese leader's choice of Moscow as his first destination was evidence of the "strategic partnership" between the nations.

A smiling Xi, 59, recalled that he read Russian literature in his younger days. Putin, 60, said Russian-Chinese relations were at "the best in their centuries-long history".

The two U.N. Security Council members' solidarity on important global issues has strengthened in recent years.

They have joined forces three times to block Western-backed measures on the conflict in Syria despite talk of grumbling in Beijing, and Russia has followed China's lead on North Korea - two issues likely to come up in Friday's talks.

They have negotiated alongside the West on Iran's nuclear program, but have watered down past sanctions in the Security Council and opposed new punitive measures as counterproductive.

Russia has added to Japan's woes over territorial disputes with Beijing by playing up its control of an archipelago claimed by Tokyo. Beijing and Moscow have also stood side-by-side in rejecting Western criticism of their record on human rights.

But the lockstep movement on the global stage has not translated into easy agreement on bilateral energy deals, underlining the limits that persist in the relationship.

NEW PRESIDENT, NEW IMPETUS

A huge business complex on the edge of Moscow, decorated with Chinese paintings and red silk armchairs, is the kind of enterprise Xi wants to nurture in Russia.

Just off the traffic-choked highway ringing Moscow, a jumble of Chinese and Russian firms, a 400-room hotel and conference venues sprawl over the 200 square km (77 square mile), $350 million Greenwood complex, which was built by a Beijing-controlled consortium with materials shipped from China.

Xi's presidency is seen as a chance to put new impetus into such projects and into ties with Russia as a whole, although Putin said this week that bilateral trade had more than doubled in five years and reached $87.5 billion in 2012.

But the trade volume is still about five times smaller than Russia's with the European Union, and also far smaller than China's trade with the United States.

The rising influence of China, with its proximity to Russia's sparsely populated eastern parts and nearly 10 times more people, has also given rise in Russia to worries that China may one day challenge Moscow's influence on its own territory.

Russia has created a separate ministry to channel resources to its far east, which complains of neglect and underfunding more than 20 years after the Soviet Union collapsed.

Defense analysts say Russian efforts to allocate military resources, including air defenses and nuclear submarines, to its eastern coast is an effort to counter China's rising military might - even as Russia sells weapons to its neighbor.

Like their populations, their economies are uneven. China's gross domestic product grew 7.8 percent last year, while Russia's growth was about 3.5 percent and was close to stagnating in February, with 0.1 percent year-on-year growth.

Xi and Putin are expected to attend a summit next week of the BRICS group of emerging market economies, another vehicle for their efforts to counter Western clout, and the Chinese leader will visit African nations Beijing is courting.

(Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-leader-meet-russias-putin-first-foreign-trip-000812374.html

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Barnes and Noble giving away Nook Simple Touch with every Nook HD+ purchase in limited promo

Americans love a good bargain -- especially, when it's a twofer. Barnes and Noble, arguably the only real competitor to Amazon's Kindle juggernaut, has just announced a promotion to get as many of its Nook readers into consumers' hands as possible. Starting March 24th and running until the end of the month, consumers that purchase the Nook HD+ online, in-store or at select big box retailers will also be given a free Nook Simple Touch. The limited promotion comes hot on the heels of rumors that B&N would start to de-emphasize hardware production for the Nook line in favor of its content services; a rumor the company publicly shot down. Still, there's no denying e-reader market share's been an uphill battle for B&N, even if the segment is seeing marginal year-over-year increases. Numbers aside, if you've been holding out on joining the digital reading fray because of cost, now's the time to make the switch.

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'Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop' wins strangest title of the year contest

The Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year is an award given yearly to the work with the most unusual moniker.

By Ben Frederick,?Contributor / March 22, 2013

'Goblinproofing' captured the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year.

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"Goblinproofing One's?Chicken Coop" by?Reginald Bakeley won the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year with 38% of reader votes. "Goblinproofing" beat out other nominees like "How Tea Cozies Changed the World" by Loani Prior?and "Was Hitler Ill?" by Henrik Eberle.

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Ben Frederick is a contributor to The Christian Science Monitor.

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The magazine The Bookseller and the Diagram Group, which supplies graphics and other information to publishers, have awarded the prize to oddly-named books since 1978. "Goblinproofing" will join previous winners such as "Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice," "Madam as Entrepreneur: Career Management in House Prostitution," and "Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way" in the halls of odd glory.?Entries that are intended to be funny or odd don't count.

The odd title book award, said prize administrator Philip Stone, is about celebrating names that grab the attention.

"Publishers and booksellers know only too well that a title can make all the difference to the sales of a book," Stone said in a statement when the shortlist of nominees were announced.

Stone pointed out that previous winner "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian"?has sold almost a million copies to date.

When the winner was announced today, Stone lauded the fact that publishers were still willing to release more unusual works.

"The kind of niche, off-beat publications that often appear on the Diagram Prize shortlist might not make their writers or publishers rich beyond their wildest dreams, but the fact writers still passionately write such works and publishers are still willing to invest in them is a marvellous thing that deserves to be celebrated," Stone said in a statement.

Clint Marsh, Bakeley's editor, told The Bookseller that his and Bakeley's "campaign against the fairy kingdom continues."

"Reginald and I take this as a clear sign that people have had enough of goblins in their chicken coops," Marsh said.

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Mobile Gear of the Month: Aegis Series by Trident | Inland Cellular

Mobile Gear of the Month: Aegis Series by Trident

Posted by Jon Robison | Thursday, March 21, 2013 | Android ???Product Review ???

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The Aegis Series by Trident Case features complete protection with a creative design to keep your smartphone safe and unharmed without compromising its advanced functionality. There is a silicone layer on the inside, in direct contact with your smartphone, and a hard polycarbonate shell on the outside. This design gives the case a unique look and feel while maintaining incredible protectiveness. Bonus: Screen Protector! This case comes with a scratch and smudge-resistant screen protector, keeping the screen safe without sacrificing responsiveness. The four corners of double-thick silicone insulate your smartphone with a unique shock-absorbing design. This case has a velvet touch and sleek look.

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Get yours today at your nearest Inland Cellular location!

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Jon Robison is the Moses Lake residential nerd. He started out in at a company just like Inland Cellular, Illinois Valley Cellular in Marseilles Illinois. At IVC Jon was a device engineer, he would do things like test phones, write software to phones, troubleshoot phone issues, as well as contribute to their Word Press blog. He went to school for Radio and Communication so cell phones and customer service are no stranger to him. When he's not playing on his phone or working Jon enjoys music and hanging out with his girlfriend Courtney and his recently adopted puppy Monroe (who we named from our favorite character on NBC's Grimm). Not a musician but a former DJ Jon appreciates music in all forms. His favorite Android App is Robin which is like Apple's Siri but in his opinion a lot more fun. Jon recently re located from Illinois to Moses Lake to work for Inland Cellular.

Source: http://www.inlandcellular.com/2013/03/21/mobile-gear-of-the-month-aegis-series-by-trident/

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