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By Elizabeth Chuck, msnbc.com

Race, gender and social status won't make or break success, but a quality education will.

At least that's the view of some big names in Hollywood, music and sports who took the time to participate in NBC's Education Nation summit.

Actress Cheryl Hines, musician John Legend and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell were among the celebrities, teachers and policy-makers attending the wide-ranging two-day event at 30 Rockefeller Plaza to advocate for improving the quality of education in America.

Hines and Goodell, who talked with NBC's Kate Snow, both spoke about involving community members in supporting student achievement.

"We have 180 million fans that watch football. That's great, but it comes with a lot of responsibility," Goodell said. He told msnbc.com he would love to see more football players follow in the footsteps of Randall McDaniel, who became a second-grade teacher after playing for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Buccaneers linebacker Derrick Brooks, who founded a charter school in 2007 that he became actively involved in following his retirement.

He also highlighted the role of exercise in learning, citing the NFL's new "Play 60" campaign, which encourages kids to do at least 60 minutes of activity daily.

"Our effort tells kids, 'You can do whatever you want as long as you're active,'" he said. The campaign was launched in response to studies showing children who get exercise perform better on exams and have higher attendance, he said.

To help children attain an hour of physical activity a day, the NFL works with local districts to finance P.E. teachers and equipment for schools that otherwise would have to eliminate gym classes.

"There's clearly a need to improve our education," said Goodell, a father of 9-year-old twins who attend public school. "We all have to do more."

More is exactly what "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star Cheryl Hines hopes her new show, "School Pride," will inspire viewers to do. The reality TV show, which premieres Oct. 15 on NBC, will visit different cities around the country and work with parents, students and teachers to fix schools in disrepair.

"They're scraping gum and cleaning toilets, believe it or not," Hines said. "We want a school that we're proud of; we don't want our teachers to have to teach in a classroom where rain is coming in."

Hines says "School Pride" offers a realistic view of how underfunded education is.

"It's inexcusable that we have schools that are falling apart; it sends a terrible message to the kids," Hines said. She said she had visited schools that had rats running across the classroom tiles, and history books so outdated they only covered events prior to 1974.

"Some of these schools, you drive by or you see the test scores, and you feel like nobody cares," she said. "But I truly don't think that's the case."

Later Tuesday, six-time Grammy Award winner John Legend from The Roots discussed work he's been doing with Harlem Village Academy, a top-performing charter school in New York.

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"Students are coming in in 4th grade reading at a 1st grade level, and graduating 8th grade with 100 percent proficiency," Legend told panel moderator Brian Williams of NBC. "What are the barriers to making all our schools that great?"

By Elizabeth Chuck, msnbc.com

Rachael Wise is one busy high school student. She's in the marching band, the Junior ROTC and plays on two sports teams – and next year she expects to be the first member of her family to ever graduate from high school.

The poised 17-year-old from Charlotte, N.C., who never forgets to add "ma'am" or "sir" to the end of her sentences, was in New York Monday for NBC's Education Nation summit on improving America's schools. She'll be speaking on a panel, along with educators and policymakers, on Tuesday during the weeklong event at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

Rachael is a living example of how a little help at school can go a long way. She was accepted into a program called Communities in Schools (CIS), a national dropout prevention program that targets at-risk kids, sometimes starting as early as elementary school, and helps them stay on track. She traveled to New York with CIS site coordinator Sophia Davis, who works in Rachael's high school.

"We get students who are in poverty-stricken neighborhoods that have some high-risk social factors that deter them from being motivated to stay in school," Davis said. She said foster children, teenage parents, students in low-income and single-parent households, as well as those who struggle with academics and attendance, are their target audience.

Rachael, one of nine children, wants one day to work in military intelligence. She's taken her SATs, and has a handful of colleges in mind that she'll be applying to. She and one of her younger brothers are currently living with their grandmother.

"My grandmother doesn't drive because she's legally blind, so before CIS, visiting a college campus wasn't even an option for me," she said. In fact, Rachael has had few opportunities for travel in general: Her trip to New York was the first time she'd flown.

Recently, Davis took a group of students to D.C. to tour Howard University and George Washington University.

Afterward, "We went to the White House, saw the Smithsonian," Davis said. "By showing them that there's something outside of their school, outside of their neighborhood, it motivates them to go beyond high school."

Founded in Georgia, the nonprofit organization serves more than 2 million young people around the country.

In addition to college tours, CIS holds monthly meetings for their students. Some meetings focus on the college application process – how to sign up for the SATs or ACTs, for example – while others, like CIS's "Dressing For Success Fashion Show" teaches students how to present themselves in professional settings.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's announcement Monday at NBC's Education Nation summit that city schools will receive a $36 million Teacher Incentive Fund grant from the U.S. Department of Education highlights an ongoing debate over merit pay for teachers.

The department is distributing a total of $442 million to schools and nonprofit organizations across the nation for development of merit pay programs for teachers and principals, in what will amount to a field test of performance-based pay in the classroom.

But Bloomberg's announcement comes just days after the release of a ground-breaking study by Vanderbilt University's National Center on Performance Incentives that is certain to heat up the debate over merit pay.

Billed as the first ever scientific study of performance pay ever conducted in the U.S., the Project on Incentives in Teaching (POINT) study conducted from 2007 through 2009 in Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools found that merit pay alone did not improve test scores.

But the study of nearly 300 middle-school math teachers did not test other types of incentives or support, such as professional development or guidance on instructional practices, leaving plenty of room for debate.

That means that the federal grants to school districts such as Wake County, N.C., and the New York City Department of Education, state education departments in Indiana, Tennessee, Ohio and Louisiana and private companies such as Uplift Education, which has five charter schools in Texas, can be expected to come under intense scrutiny as they are implemented.

Expect Education Secretary Arne Duncan to have something to say on that effort at his appearance this afternoon at Education Nation.

By Elizabeth Chuck, msnbc.com

Think watching movies all day rots your brain? Don’t worry, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is on it.

In addition to keeping the 15 million subscribers of his mail-order movie business happy, Hastings, an educational philanthropist, wants to get the word out about DreamBox Learning – an e-learning site that he acquired in April.

“It’s adaptive, so it learns what level the student is at, and helps students learn more,” Hastings told msnbc.com after participating in a panel on technological innovations at schools at NBC’s Education Nation summit, a weeklong look at education in America.

DreamBox is a web-based program that Hastings is hoping teachers and parents alike will use with students. “You don’t have to install anything. It’s an extraordinary site,” he said.

But as Hasting’s fellow panelists noted, using such learning tools in the classroom requires infrastructure that many schools lack.

“We need the computers, we need the wires,” said panelist Nancy Peretsman, Priceline.com director and a managing director at Allen & Co. LLC, a New York investment company. “We have to be able to make sure the infrastructure is in place.”

Said Milton Chen, executive director of the George Lewis Educational Foundation, “Everyone uses computers at work. Waitresses, mechanics – no one doesn’t use a computer. The only place we don’t see computers are in classrooms.”

Bringing technology into the classroom will complement, not replace, teachers, Peretsman said. “This is about helping teachers become more effective,” she said. “We have to do it in collaboration with the teachers.”

Noting that most of the current 57 million U.S. students are “digital natives” – kids who were born into a digital world – Hastings urged teachers to use their pupils’ innate technology skills to their advantage.

“Students can become teachers,” added Chen. “They can teach their teachers; they can teach each other.”

By Elizabeth Chuck, msnbc.com

Even though the heavy rain forced NBC to switch the location of Education Nation early Monday, it was a bright and rewarding morning for five students from Public School 399 in Brooklyn.

“We had to get here at 6, maybe 7 o’clock!” exclaimed fifth-grader Amanda Rodriguez in between bites of breakfast after they recited the Pledge of Allegiance on a stage outside of 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

Elizabeth Chuck, msnbc.com

A group of students from PS 399 gather at 30 Rock for the Education Nation summit.

The kids managed their parts in the NBC-sponsored gathering before a downpour forced much of the event to take place in various parts of the 30 Rock building.

While many public schools throughout the state of New York have been suffering from dips in test scores and attendance, PS 399 isn’t – which is one of the reasons Principal Marion Brown believes her students were selected to attend the education summit.

“This is our fourth year receiving an A rating,” Brown said. “Our progress actually went up this year; we’re considered one of the higher performing schools in the community.” As for attendance, anything below 97 percent is considered unusually low at PS 399.

With the majority of the 514 students coming from Caribbean countries and many of them having already attended a handful of schools, PS 399 puts a special emphasis on creating a family-feel, where students feel part of a community. The kindergarten through fifth-grade school also welcomes students from a homeless shelter two blocks away.

Each day starts out with an assembly where staff members announce birthdays and perfect attendance awards. Everyone sings the “Star-Spangled Banner,” the so-called black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and the school’s song, ‘The Greatest Love.”

If a student has experienced a hardship, that, too, is announced at the daily assembly.

“Last year we had a rough year,” said Performing Arts Specialist Deborah Kennedy Baker, another chaperone at the education summit. “We had a lot of deaths. The school as a whole would write letters to the child or staff person” who lost someone, and sends flowers or fruit baskets to hospitals if a family member were sick.

Today, the five 10 and 11-year-old representatives of PS 399 were all smiles. When asked what her favorite part of Education Nation has been so far, fifth-grader Allana Ragler said, “Eating and seeing all the people going on stage and talking and all the lights!”, which pretty much encompassed everything the kids had done and seen so far today.

Being chosen to participate in such a large event was particularly meaningful to these kids because of the big emphasis their curriculum puts on learning outside of the classroom, Kennedy Baker said.

“You don’t just wake up one day as an adult and say, ‘I know what I want to do.’ In addition to academics, we know students need to be able to show their creativity." The students are exposed to a wide variety of programs such as tap dance, robotics-building, violin, and more.

“We want them to feel that they are safe, they’re cared for, they’re nurtured, and most of all, they’re taught academics, the arts, and basic life skills,” Baker said.

Michael Johnson, one of two assistant principals at PS 399, has been with the school for three years.

“It’s above and beyond all the other schools I’ve worked at, and a lot of that has to do with the leadership of [Principal] Brown and her bringing the arts into the school,” he said.

As the kids finished their breakfasts, fifth-grader Akele Rodney was disappointed their field trip was over. “We gotta go back to school after this,” he said. But with some dance classes and rehearsals for their holiday show on today’s schedule, going back to PS 399 doesn’t sound so bad.

The Texas State Board of Education on Friday narrowly approved a resolution calling on publishers to correct a "pro-Islamic/anti-Christian bias" in history textbooks.

The 7-6 vote followed a spirited debate on the nonbinding resolution proposed by the board's conservative majority aiming to correct what Dave Welch, head of the Texas Pastor Council, testified amounted to "whitewashing" of some negative aspects of Islam in the texts.

"We're asking you to look at this very carefully," he told the board in testifying for the resolution. "… There are problems, there are imbalances."

But Kathy Miller, president of the liberal Texas Freedom Network, said afterward that the resolution was politically motivated.

"Board members rejected numerous opportunities today to pass a resolution that called on publishers to treat all religions with balance and accuracy in their textbooks," she said in a statement. "It is hard not to conclude that the members who voted for this resolution were solely interested in playing on fear and bigotry in order to pit Christians against Muslims."

It's not clear whether the resolution will prompt textbook publishers to make immediate changes to sections devoted to Christianity and Islam.

Texas wields considerable clout in the textbook publishing world as the largest "adoption state" in the U.S., where a central body approves public school textbooks rather than individual districts.

But as msnbc.com's Kari Huus reported earlier this week, "All board members will be up for election in 2012, and implementation of any new textbook standard would come only after that. Budgetary constraints may slow it down further. In the interim, there is discussion of requiring textbook companies to create supplements to address the new standards."

You can learn more about the resolution and the underlying debate in her story.

Photo by Lee MacMillan

A sign in South Bend, Indiana.

Sometimes, a thin letter can make a big difference.

So it was in South Bend, Ind., where a billboard celebrating the school system misspelled public, as in ‘public school.’

According to the South Bend Tribune, the error was spotted Saturday by a local resident while she sat in traffic.

By Monday, responsibility for the blooper was claimed by Blue Waters Group, which was working with the South Bend redevelopment commission.

“I feel terrible. It’s a mistake we made, and we’re guilty of it, and responsible for it, and we take full responsibility for the error,” Patrick Strickler, president of the Blue Waters Group, told the Tribune.

He noted that the typo was not the fault of the city or of the school system.

The sign, which rotated with other adverts in the billboard, was fixed by the end of the day.

Previously, on our Photoblog: Always chekc your spelling

By Kevin Tibbles, NBC News Correspondent

I am reporting to you from the top-secret confines of Chicago's first national Bed Bug Summit.

BedBug University’s North American Summit 2010 isn't really a top secret; in fact, everybody and their dog is here – it’s even sold out. But the hotel it's being held in would appreciate us not identifying it. No duh!

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It used to be the only time Americans worried about getting bitten by bed bugs (they can drink three times their body weight in blood, in case you didn’t know) was when we were travelling abroad.

But these days because we have travelled abroad so much, the critters have hitched a ride stateside. The Empire State Building, a Niketown store, an Abercrombie & Fitch store, countless hotels, libraries, movie theaters, college dorms, even a military base have fallen prey to these insidious little critters.

So now we've gone bed bug bananas from coast to coast.

The summit’s web site promises that attendees will have “direct access to bed bug experts from both academia and industry in a neutral setting” and that they will learn about “the latest advancements on topics like heat treatments, fumigation, early detection tools, pesticides, novel products and more.”

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That means those who make a living sniffing and snuffing out bed bugs have all their latest wares on display.

Sniffing? Yes, there are bed bug sniffer dogs.

As for the snuffing? Well choose your weapon!

You can freeze ‘em with a cryonic zapper gun; or you can fry ‘em in the “Insect Inferno,” a high-temperature portable trailer. You can also encase your mattress in any number of plastic sealing "envelopes!"

“Instead of throwing your stuff away, let us heat treat in our trailer at 160 degrees and kill those suckers dead!” said Corey Westrum, co-owner of the Insect Inferno, promoting his weapon of choice to beat the bugs at the summit.

Beating the bed bug is big business! How big? Those in attendance say it's tripled in the last year. So why scratch? Fight back! Only I can't tell you where we are!

Kevin Tibbles, NBC News, Rosemont, Il. (Shhhhhh!)

Helpful links:
What you need to know about bed bugs
A real nightmare: Bed bugs biting all over U.S.

NBC News’ Kerry Sanders is covering the controversy around Rev. Terry Jones proposed Quran-burning in Gainesville, Fla., on the 9/11 anniversary. He interviewed Jones Wednesday and discussed the plan that President Barack Obama has condemned as “destructive.”

What the scene at the church? Is it all media? Or is there anyone else there?
This morning, I’d say about 90 percent of the people around the church were from the media. There was also a protest across the street from the church that some reporters were covering.

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But, I don’t want to discount the fact that there have also been representatives from the community who have made their way here. This morning a representative from the World Evangelical Alliance tried to deliver a letter to Rev. Terry Jones which he said represents the beliefs of more than 430 million evangelicals around the world. The letter was urging Jones, of the Dove World Outreach Center, to reconsider and not burn the Quran.

Their fear is that the evangelicals who go around the world and proselytize will be in danger. They fear that if they open a church in a country that is predominately Muslim, that the church may be targeted or that individuals may be singled out because they are Christian and could be injured or murdered.

So there is increasing levels of interest here, not just from those in U.S. military uniforms working in other parts of the world.

Have seen any supporters there?
There are a few church members who are here. If you are not sure who they are, you can recognize them pretty quickly because most of them are wearing side arms. They have pistols strapped to their waists. They are more inside the church then coming out. They are very nice. The doors of the church are all locked, but if you identify yourself, they will let you in to use their bathroom.

But they are not really speaking on behalf of the minister. Rather, they are just taking messages and shuttling them to him.

What about the followers of Pastor Jones? Have any of them come forward in favor, or not in favor, of the proposed Quran burning?
No. The only person who has come out speaking publicly about the pastor’s statement is the Associate Pastor, Wayne Sapp. He is in lock step with Jones and not saying anything different from him.

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Have any extra security measures been taken?
Across the street from the church, the Gainesville police department has installed a security camera atop of a telephone poll. It’s a pretty rural area, but now they are monitoring all the activity around the church back at the police department. And the police department has now established a protocol for anyone coming and going from the church. Anyone who drives down the street to the church has to stop their car and give their drivers license to a police officer who writes down the information, as well as the car’s license plate.

They are just building a data base of everyone who comes and goes in the event that something bad happens they want to know who was here.

What is the reaction in the larger city of Gainesville?
What I find interesting is that Gainesville, Fla., is well known in the state for the University of Florida and its football team. It might even be known for that to the rest of the nation. But to the rest of the world, Gainesville, Fla. was not on anyone’s map until this.

The folks in this town are really upset that they are known around the world now for just one thing: A preacher who wants to burn the Quran.

You interviewed Pastor Jones yesterday, did you get any better sense of what his real goal is here? (Watch the full interview above)
At the end of the interview, I asked him whether he was getting his 15 minutes, and if there would be no reason for him to burn the Quran because he got his 15 minutes of fame?

He seemed to indicate to me that he was already starting to reconsider whether he was going to burn the Quran.

If this was an attempt at not just local, but international, publicity, he’s achieved that. I’m just not sure he’s fully recognized the lasting impact it may have around the world.

Newsweek: Extremists use Quran burnings as propaganda

NASA is helping out with tracking Earl's behavior by sending both its remotely operated Global Hawk aircraft and its DC-8 "flying laboratory" into and over the hurricane on Thursday.

Controlled by pilots at NASA's Dryden center in Edwards, Calif., Global Hawk was finishing up a 24-hour flight Thursday during which it took pictures of Earl from 60,000 feet. It flew repeated patterns over the storm while its suite of instruments took measurements.

"It turned out that Earl is a well behaved storm, with cloud tops generally well below flight altitude," said NASA's Bjorn Lambrigsten. "As a result, we have been able to make multiple passes straight across the eye, with several bulls-eyes."

"This has been a very good sortie so far, and the pilots are gaining experience and confidence with flying over a storm like this," he added.

The DC-8 crew went up for a second straight day, flying directly over the eye of the hurricane several times.

The NASA flights are in addition to flights by four aircraft operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation. All three groups are partners in a six-week campaign dubbed GRIP -- for Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes.

The U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday issued some updated data on coastal communities that could be impacted by Earl.

The big number: "26 million people in 68 counties, stretching from North Carolina to Maine, could face hurricane and tropical storm conditions within the next 48 hours."

Another interesting stat: 83 percent of housing units in Massachusetts' Barnstable County, where Cape Cod is located, were built before 1990. That could become important if Earl, as expected, spins close to the Cape Cod area. Older homes tend to be less resilient in storm conditions.

NBC's Washington affiliate, WRC, has set up a chat about Hurricane Earl with two of its forecasters.

Running from 4 p.m.-6:30 p.m ET today, the chat is happening at www.nbcwashington.com. Head over early to post questions in advance.

If Hurricane Earl stays on its projected track, the biggest problems will be from winds and from what meteorologists warn are rad-sounding but seriously deadly threats: rip currents and storm surges.

Along the East Coast, meteorologists add lifeguards are urging beachgoers to stay out of the water. If you choose to ignore them, they say, you're on your own if you go in above your knees.

In a hurricane advisory, the National Weather Service warns that "rip currents can become life threatening to anyone who enters the surf," adding that it's "highly recommended that if traveling to the beach, you stay out of the water entirely."

So what exactly are storm surges and rip currents?

When a hurricane skitters over the ocean, its winds pile water up higher than sea level. Eventually, this pile of water tumbles ashore a big, monstrous rush. That's a storm surge, and it can cause serious flooding and beach erosion.

The National Weather Service says a rip current, by contrast, defined by speed, not size.

They're caused when waves traveling from deep to shallow water break near the shoreline. That causes the water to swirl in a narrow, fast-moving "circulation cell."

Rip currents typically move at 1 to 2 feet per second, but speeds as high as 8 feet per second have been measured. "This is faster than an Olympic swimmer can sprint," the weather service says.

But both rip currents and storm surges are major hazards.

"A lot of people have no prior knowledge about how to survive in the ocean, so when you throw in a storm like this, it just becomes harder," Noah Rosenthal, a lifeguard supervisor for Lack's Beach Service, tells NBC station WMBF of Myrtle Beach, S.C., where waves as high as 9 feet are expected.

Although Earl has weakened to a Category 3 storm, it's still "a large and powerful hurricane," the National Hurricane Center warns.

At 2 p.m. ET, Earl was about 245 miles south of Cape Hatteras, N.C., and 720 miles south-southwest of Nantucket, Mass. It's moving north at 18 mph and packing 125-mph maximum sustained winds.

Hurricane warnings are in effect for:

• Bogue Inlet, N.C., northeastward to the North Carolina-Virginia border, including the Pamlico and Albemarle sounds.
• Westport, Mass., eastward around Cape Cod to Hull, including Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island.

Hurricane watches are in effect for:

• North of the North Carolina-Virginia border to Cape Henlopen, Del.
• Nova Scotia in Canada from Medway Harbour to Digby.

Tropical storm warnings are in effect for:

• Cape Fear to west of Bogue Inlet, N.C.
• North of the North Carolina-Virginia border to Sandy Hook, N.J., including Delaware Bay south of Slaughter Beach and the Chesapeake Bay south of New Point Comfort.
• The eastern part of Long Island, N.Y., from Fire Island Inlet to Port Jefferson Harbor.
• New Haven, Conn., to west of Westport, Mass., including Block Island.

Tropical storm watches are in effect for:

• North of Hull, Mass., to Eastport, Maine.
• The coast of Long Island west of Fire Island Inlet and Port Jefferson Harbor.
• Nova Scotia from Ecum Secum to Medway Harbour and from Digby to Fort Lawrence.
• New Brunswick from just west of Fort Lawrence westward to the U.S.-Canada border.

White House press secretary took a moment during his daily news briefing, which was otherwise dominated by news of the oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico and the Middle East peace negotiations, to mention that President Barack Obama is "closely monitoring and aggressively preparing for the storm."

The president got an update on Earl from Adm. Craig Fugate, head of the Federal Emergency Management Administration, last night and is expected to get another update later today, Gibbs said.

The Weather Channel passes along its latest Earl forecast:

Thank goodness this "monster" will pass just east of the U.S. coast.

There should be some power outages and even scattered wind damage over parts of eastern North Carolina and the Del-Mar-VA peninsula. Earl could easily hold on as a cat 2 storm by the time it makes it to New England by late Friday. Power outages and some wind damage likely over parts of southeastern Massachusetts and the Islands. Earl should pass just southeast of Nantucket Island, but any deviation slightly westward could make conditions much worse in these areas.

New York City should be on the outer fringe of the storm with some rain and occasional wind gusts Friday afternoon and evening. It could be a little worse around Boston Friday evening with bands of heavy rain and 20-30 mph winds (with higher gusts) possible. Atlantic Canada will have to deal with Earl this weekend!

Bulletin from Reuters:

Earl weakens to category three hurricane as it approaches North Carolina coast - National Hurricane Center

Say "hurricane" and "Gulf Coast" is more likely to come to mind than the "East Coast." Earl has obviously altered that way of thinking for now, but what's not as obvious are the distinct differences between the two regions when it comes to storm impacts. We're talking differences in shoreline topography, population, infrastructure and even storm speeds.

Frank Lepore, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and prior to that a National Hurricane Center spokesman, has seen it from both ends: the forecasting and then the impacts. And it's very clear in his mind how distinct the coasts are.

• Topography
"The Gulf of Mexico generally has a very long sloping bottom," Lepore notes. And that makes for a stronger surge when a storm pushes water ashore. During Katrina, he adds, parts of Mississippi saw a 20-foot surge of water.

The East Coast, on the other hand, generally is steeper, making it harder to push water onto land. Still, that doesn't mean a small surge can't do damage. North Carolina's Outer Banks, the area most vulnerable to Earl right now, regularly see 3- to 5-foot surges from small storm systems that overtop parts of the state highway running through the barrier islands.

• Population
The Gulf's population is around 15 million. Compare that to the Mid-Atlantic states at 57 million, and New England at 14 million.

Apart from the logistics of dealing with millions more people, there's the differences in "collective memory" among Gulf and East Coast populations, Lepore says. Gulf residents, more accustomed to hurricanes, "tend to remember" the danger when evacuations are ordered, he adds. "New England doesn't have that historical component." Indeed, the last hurricane was Bob back in 1991, when 18 people were killed.

• Infrastructure
Hundreds of oil rigs sit in the Gulf, and any threat triggers a well-practiced routine of production closures and crew evacuations, Lepore says.

The East Coast doesn't have that problem, but it does have lots of trees — think downed power lines and blocked roads. So even if most of the East Coast sees just tropical storm-force winds from Earl, Lepore says, "it doesn't take much to gum up the works."

• Storm speeds
Storms move faster at higher latitudes, Lepore notes, so that means the East Coast sees systems move through much faster than in the Gulf.

An East Coast storm typically "does not linger" because it's often racing along at 35 mph at northern latitudes, Lepore says. "It's not dropping a lot of rain" the farther north a storm goes and the faster it moves. Often it doesn't even hit land, instead moving along the coast offshore.

Along the Gulf, on the other hand, "it's gonna make landfall."

Weather Channel meteorologist Bill Karins says the latest projections show Earl coming closest to Cape Hatteras, N.C., and the Virginia coastal cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach about 3 a.m. ET. Earl's a sprinter, though, so those projections will likely change several times today.

From there, Earl will track northeastward parallel with the Eastern Seaboard. Projections have it closest to Long Island, N.Y., and Nantucket Island, Mass., sometime around 6 p.m. ET tomorrow.

Even though the best guess right now is that the hurricane itself won't come ashore — meaning there won't be a lot of rain — Karins says Earl's weaker backside will still pack a powerful punch, with winds near 100 mph.

"There will be damage," he warns.

For the Northeast, Earl is the biggest hurricane threat since Bob blew through with 105-mph winds 19 years ago. So even though the weather right now is calm ahead of Earl's possible arrival this week, New Englanders are hard at work getting their emergency plans in place. Katie Davis of NBC station WJAR-TV in Providence, R.I., reports from New Bedford, Mass.:

Earl's huge size means hurricane-force winds and storm surges will be a problem even if, as forecasters predict, it doesn't make landfall in the U.S. and stays off the coast. Canada, on the other hand, is increasingly confident the storm will hit sparsely populated southern Nova Scotia on Saturday morning.

"Landfall of Earl may occur in vicinity of Western Nova Scotia to the Fundy coast of New Brunswick early Saturday morning," Environment Canada reported Thursday. "The details of the public impacts will be assessed further later today and tonight."

N.C. Highway 12 runs along the Outer Banks, providing the key access route back to the mainland. But early Thursday, the state Higway Patrol closed a stretch just north of Oregon Inlet to all southbound traffic heading toward Cape Hatteras. Northbound traffic is still coming out, NBC's Terry Pickard reports, but that closure means no one can get back into Cape Hatteras for now.

By Elizabeth Chuck, msnbc.com

The mood on Twitter matches the weather today: Stormy.

A quick search for some keywords we're not allowed to print here (read: "Hurricane Earl" and any curse word you can think of) returns a plethora of tweets as the Category 4 storm heads toward the Eastern Seaboard. Earl's ruining weddings. Earl's ruining birthdays. Earl's even ruining one woman's news-reading experience: "Got to love all those hurricane verbs the MSM [mainstream media] throws out: 'churning' 'barreling' 'bearing down' 'roars' 'swirling' 'rolls'," tweets @Laracchapman.

But as Earl roared – er, made its way – toward North Carolina's Outer Banks, twitterers also expressed concern for loved ones in the area, urging them to follow evacuation orders. As for the people who have to evacuate themselves: Well, let's just say many of them fall under the curse-laden tweets category.

Then there are the TV jokes. With all the twitterers who have decided to refer to the storm as "Hurricane My Name Is Earl," TBS must be appreciative for the publicity bump for the show's reruns: "If I was still in N.C. I'd be the idiot on the beaches of the Outer Banks with the boom box blaring the theme to 'My Name Is Earl,'" tweets @redneck_trash. And @unclekilroy makes this point, playing off the Southern, less-than-favorable attributes of the TV show's title character: "'My name is Earl. And I'm fixin to put a hurt on you!' Figures the hurricane striking the south has a redneck-esque name!"

"The Earl Cometh," tweets @whatman75 in this Twitpic.

Still others have fears unrelated to the hurricane: "OhMyGosh! I was watching 'My Name Is Earl' and a fly hit my eyebrow and I started freaking out," tweeted @HellosPerson last night. No follow-ups on the fly-eyebrow situation were tweeted, so we're still waiting with bated breath for an update.

As for news-you-can-use tweets, federal emergency administrator @CraigatFEMA is tweeting all things hurricane preparedness, from how to protect your boat to how to communicate vital information with friends and family ahead of the storm. Food safety specialist @benjaminchapman is sharing how to keep your kitchen stocked in the event of a power outage, and @RedCross is encouraging evacuees to register on their "safe and well website" and tweeting information about shelters, traffic information and feeding trucks.

Keep checking msnbc.com and our hurricane tracker for the latest on Hurricane Earl as it churns, barrels, bears down, rolls and swirls through the Atlantic.

Whew. Thanks for letting us get all of those hurricane verbs out of our mainstream-media system, @Laracchapman.