(Reuters) – Retailers were hoping for more shoppers like Shawn Elzia as the annual Black Friday bargain stampede marked the unofficial start of what is widely expected to be a middling holiday shopping season.

The Brooklyn, New York teacher, one of hundreds of thousands of shoppers jostling for deals around the country, said he ended up spending about 25 percent more than he planned, even while worrying about the state of the economy.

“I did not expect such deals,” the 33-year old said as he left a Macy’s store in Jersey City, New Jersey clutching bags full of clothing for himself and his family.

“It’s slashed down to the bones,” he said. “There were some great discounts if you showed up early.”

Deals are always part of the picture on the Friday after Thanksgiving. This year was notable for an earlier opening for some retailers and possibly for the one shopper using pepper spray to make sure she could get a popular video game system.

The early start by stores brought out younger shoppers such as Alina Ybarra, who spent the wee hours of the morning with her friends as they all looked for items for themselves.

“It’s really chaotic,” Ybarra, 17, said of her first Black Friday outing as she finished her shopping in Santa Monica, California. She said that she liked the deals at stores such as Gap Inc’s Old Navy and Urban Outfitters.

“It seems like a lot of teenagers were the primary shoppers, maybe because of the hour, but I think net-net it’s not really going to result in an incremental positive for retailers,” Ed Yruma, senior equity analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets, said after checking out crowds at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. He said shoppers were not carrying a lot of shopping bags……Read More

The ability to see through walls is no longer the stuff of science fiction, thanks to new radar technology developed at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. Much as humans and other animals see via waves of visible light that bounce off objects and then strike our eyes’ retinas, radar “sees” by sending out radio waves that bounce off targets and return to the radar’s receivers. But just as light can’t pass through solid objects in quantities large enough for the eye to detect, it’s hard to build radar that can penetrate walls well enough to show what’s happening behind. Now, Lincoln Lab researchers have built a system that can see through walls from some distance away, giving an instantaneous picture of the activity on the other side.

The researchers’ device is an unassuming array of antenna arranged into two rows — eight receiving elements on top, 13 transmitting ones below — and some computing equipment, all mounted onto a movable cart. But it has powerful implications for military operations, especially “urban combat situations,” says Gregory Charvat, technical staff at Lincoln Lab and the leader of the project.

Waves through walls

Walls, by definition, are solid, and that’s certainly true of the four- and eight-inch-thick concrete walls on which the researchers tested their system.

At first, their radar functions as any other: Transmitters emit waves of a certain frequency in the direction of the target. But in this case, each time the waves hit the wall, the concrete blocks more than 99 percent of them from passing through. And that’s only half the battle: Once the waves bounce off any targets, they must pass back through the wall to reach the radar’s receivers — and again, 99 percent don’t make it. By the time it hits the receivers, the signal is reduced to about 0.0025 percent of its original strength…….Learn More

About Ayn Rand

Though her chosen name would one day grace the covers of major literary works, Ayn Rand was born Alissa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia on February 2, 1905.

A vibrant young girl, she often fled from the morose world around her into the radiant, optimistic world of magazine fiction. At the age of eight, she began writing her own tales, and by nine, she decided to become a professional writer.

Fiction gave her a periodic repose from the frustration of living through the Russian Revolution, the first shots of which she witnessed from the balcony of her family’s apartment. Her father’s chemist shop was soon seized by the new communist government, and the Rosenbaums went from a comfortable existence to one of poverty and despair.

As a young woman she studied philosophy and history at the University of Leningrad, but soon realized her future would be dim if she remained in Russia. She began to focus on finding a way to move to America.

In 1926, at the age of twenty-one, Alissa Rosenbaum left Russia forever by obtaining a passport under the guise of visiting her relatives in Chicago. She arrived in New York with only fifty dollars in her pocket, but with passion in her eyes and a new name: Ayn Rand.

After a short stay in Chicago, she left for Hollywood to pursue a career in screenwriting. An auspicious encounter with Cecil B. DeMille enabled Rand to land work as a movie extra in his film King of Kings.

While on the set, she saw a man who took her breath away — and then lost sight of him. When she finally spotted him again on a public bus, she purposely tripped (!) him to ensure he wouldn’t get away. Soon afterwards, Frank O’Connor became her husband and the great love of her life.

Ayn Rand worked odd jobs for the next decade, struggling to master the English language and honing her skills as a writer. She published her first novel, We the Living, in 1936. The novel did not achieve great success, however, partly due to American intellectuals’ heightened infatuation, during this time, with communist Russia.

Though disappointed, Rand pressed on with her work. She began research for the novel that would make her famous: The Fountainhead. While working in an architect’s office to gather background information for the project, she also penned the novella Anthem, which she published first in England, in 1938, and then later in the United States……..Learn More

Ayn Rand’s novels have inspired generations of readers to live their lives with greater integrity, passion and joy. Nearly seventy years after her first novel was published, Rand’s fiction continues to stand out as a vivid and seldom-heard salute to the independent, creative spirit — to the rational, thinking mind — and to total competence in the realm of productive work.

We the Living

Ayn Rand began her formal career as a novelist with the publication of We the Living (1936). Set amidst the Bolshevik Revolution in St. Petersburg, Russia, this novel tells the story of Kira, a passionate young heroine who risks everything to pursue the future she desires — and save the man she loves.

Rand said We the Living was “as close to an autobiography as I will ever write,” and the novel itself is a bristling revelation of communism’s deleterious effects on the human spirit. It was later adapted for the screen in Italy, in 1942, as the two-part movie Noi Vivi and Addio, Kira. The original, luscious footage from this screen adaptation was recently restored and re-released by American producer Duncan Scott.

Anthem

Rand’s second oeuvre is a novella penned while she was doing research for The Fountainhead.

Set in the distant future, Anthem (1938) is the story of a collectivist society where the word “I” has been eradicated from the language, crushing the very notion of individualism.

One bright young scientist, however, sets himself free from this new form of slavery, and discovers the joy and pride of individualism — of the self. His brief, stark story is an apt prelude to the introduction of Howard Roark.

The Fountainhead

With its famous opening line, “Howard Roark laughed,” The Fountainhead (1943) follows the creative path of innovative architect Howard Roark as he struggles to make a career for himself in the midst of a mediocrity-laden architectural establishment. Roark’s consecration to his work, his dedication to his aesthetic values, and his unwavering belief in his own worth enable him to ultimately succeed in his creative mission.

The Fountainhead dramatizes the importance of independence, and extols the individual, creative man as the fountainhead of human progress.

Howard Roark’s struggle is amplified through his interaction with a host of colorful sub-characters, including the young architect Peter Keating, who is driven by a need to please others; the platinum-haired journalist Dominique Francon, who shares Roark’s basic values but not his belief in their real-world viability; the powerful newspaper magnate Gail Wynand, a man of superlative competence and productive power who uses his gifts to coddle and placate the lowest common denominator; and the novel’s arch-villain, arts reviewer Ellsworth Toohey, whose envious disdain for Roark rivals only his passionate desire to take over the world.

Atlas Shrugged

Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was Ayn Rand’s magnum opus. The novel’s heroine, railroad executive Dagny Taggart, is a driven businesswoman struggling to keep her railroad alive in a society increasingly overrun by government bureaucrats, and marked by the mysterious, progressive disappearance of the country’s great leaders — its scientists, artists, bankers, philosophers, and businessmen……Learn More

Main Homepage for Atlasphere.

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Hurricane Earl is is on it’s way up the Eastern Coast and sure is packing a punch. If all projections follow their due course, then it will be arriving and smashing into New York City at 8 P.M eastern time. No surprise here, since it has been a crummy summer anyway, so what difference would it make for Earl to land on shore right in the beginning of the long Labor Day weekend. Unless you are traveling a long distance and west you may avoid it, well, maybe. We’ll see and because of this misfortune I will take the opportunity to go over several helpful weather links that you can visit and in the process I will use this unfortunate hurricane Earl as an example.

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NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration):

First of all let’s take a look at the “Official” NOAA website here. No doubt about it, if you are interested in finding out all the details of Earl and any other type storm this is the ideal website but they should had made it simpler for the novice internet surfer. Instead they just dropped all the possible scientific links on the page there and leave it up to you to click on all of them to go further. Not very helpful at all unless you are scientifically interested. I like to search through these links provided but I need time to do so. By far it is the best of them all.

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The Weather Channel:

The Weather Channel is the most popular and with its own Cable TV channel to boot. The website updates very well and has great videos to see. They have a page with all the videos can be found. Very well organized and with plenty of employees reporting live. I like to checkout the local forecasts on this link before I leave the house. This website is very useful, entertaining and for all to visit.

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Weather Underground:

This website is loaded with information and sometimes provides the reader with information which you cannot find anywhere else. But it’s “too busy” as they say and means confusion. The web design is the problem and should be updated. Changing your design at least every two years is essential, especially the ones with many links on it. There are new and available forms to simplify the online surfing experience. One would think this great website would have taken advantage of them by now but they haven’t.

Other Interesting Websites:

1.(Great interactivity) Stormpulse

2. (Many maps and graphs) Hurricane Zone

3. (Detailed Information) FL Hurricane

4. (Good for Travel) AccuWeather

5. (Great Links and more Organized) WeatherBug

6. Learn About Hurricanes (Discovery Video):

Hurricanes gather their immense power from the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean. From there, evaporating seawater fuels their girth as they churn their way over land and sea, leaving death and destruction in their paths. Find out in depth how they form, how they’re forecasted and how they kill…. Watch Here

Do you like gadgets? Are you interested in devices that do crazy things and are rare to find? I am and I find myself sometimes looking through websites just for fun and entertainment. I am going to post some links here so just if anyone would be interested. These websites have several writers and devote plenty of time searching around for gadgets. Also, I have found that reading through comments on these websites can help you dig  up more useful links. So if anyone reading here knows of any other websites please post it below in the comment section. Enjoy!

These are the websites that you can look at:

Engadget is the most popular one but in my opinion, just too commercial.

Gizmodo is very popular but is more of a discussion board with plenty of information to search further, if you are interested in researching more on your own. You can learn quite a bit there but you will need time.

Slashgear is more like it, very well presented and great gadgets to see.

WalYou is not so popular but has great gadgets and very interesting articles also.

Kewl Gadget is pretty good and many people go there, pretty good stuff.

GizMag is very good, I like it, great stuff!

That’s about all that I could find. There’s a great website which tests almost all the gadgets out there it is named AlaTest .

Then you have the 007 spy-type of gadgets websites:

SpyGear4U is ok.

Here’s an interesting one, it deals with Spy Trees , Rocks and more.

Online Spy Shop is pretty interesting.

EyeSpyPro is excellent.

Talking about James Bond, dress to kill!

This is all I have right now but if I stumble into more websites I will update this page.

Remember this one?