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In District of Columbia v. Heller, Justice Scalia, writing for a majority of the Supreme Court, identified self-defense as "the core lawful purpose" of the arms that the People are entitled to keep and bear in their individual capacities. The ruling thus vindicated an individual right view of the Second Amendment, but not the individual right for which many gun enthusiasts had long agitated. They had argued that the right to keep and bear arms may have been incidentally useful for self-defense but that its core purpose was insurrection.
Although I am on record as expressing doubt about the historical basis for any individual right view of the Second Amendment, I would say that there is better historical evidence for the insurrectionist view than for the self-defense view. Most prominent is Madison's Federalist No. 46. In the course of explaining why the People ought not to fear an overreaching federal government, Madison argues that the federal government will be reined in by the States if the former attempts to exceed its constitutional limits. He first calculates the maximum strength of the federal standing army at no more than 30,000. He then states:
To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.Now I don't think this passage establishes the individual insurrectionist view of the Second Amendment because it's clear that Madison is imagining state-organized resistance to the federal government, but it's at least possible to argue that in light of statements of this sort, the core purpose of the Second Amendment was to protect a right of individual firearm ownership so that firearms could be used by the people in their state militias when fighting against the national army. There's nothing nearly this specific in the Founding era documents with respect to a right to personal self-defense. The best that Justice Scalia can do in Heller is to cite state constitutional provisions from the period, most of which are clearly discussing the common defense, not individual self-defense.
To be sure, that absence of direct evidence doesn't prove Heller is wrong. The Court's main move is to say that it doesn't really matter what the main purpose of the Second Amendment was; its language includes a right to self-defense. I tend to think that this analysis is flawed, but I want to bracket that disagreement here. (I do think there was a common-law right to self-defense and that much of it should be understood as having been constitutionalized, but that's a story for another day.) Instead, I want to ask why the insurrectionist view of the Second Amendment--which is quite prominent in some of the writing of the scholars responsible for the modern resurrection of the Second Amendment--is invisible in Heller. (The word "insurrection" occurs twice in Justice Scalia's Heller opinion, and in both places he is talking about the value of an armed militia for suppressing insurrections.) The answer, I think, is that the insurrectionist view seems nuts to all of the Justices. Simply put, the idea that the Constitution would protect the right of the people, on their own initiative and acting contrary to or at least without any government authority, to take up arms for the purpose of revolution, appears to make the Constitution a suicide pact.
And yet recent events in Egypt have gotten me thinking that perhaps the Constitution is a suicide pact in just this way--and not simply via the Second Amendment but via the First Amendment as well. Thus, it may be useful to think hard about why exactly an outdoor rally is an effective means of making a point.
Partly it's a show of strength. When hundreds of thousands of people turn out for an anti-war, civil-rights, anti-tax, or other political rally, they demonstrate not only that there are a lot of people who hold their view but that there are a lot of people who hold their view intensely. Rallies and marches register preferences in ways that opinion polls do not.
But that's not all that they do. A peaceful rally or march is also a ritualized threat of something much more serious. Larry Kramer's The People Themselves describes how in both England and the colonies, "mobbing" was an accepted form of political activity, and though Kramer says that there were understood differences between mobbing and rioting, both involved violence. As Kramer notes, mobbing fell out of fashion very early in American constitutional history, as popular energy was channeled into parties, but it is not difficult to understand how the generation that had just fought the Revolutionary War would think it perfectly natural to protect a right of the people to gather out of doors, even if what begins as a peaceful rally eventually turns bloody.
Of course, the First Amendment, by its terms, only protects a "a right of the people peaceably to assemble," (emphasis added), and then only so that they may "petition the government for a redress of grievances." Once the people turn violent, or demand not that the existing government redress their grievances but that it succumb to immediate regime change, the government can respond with force. Thus, it cannot really be said that the First Amendment protects a right of insurrection.
But it may go quite a way in that direction in its practical effect. Because the government is forbidden from banning mass demonstrations so long as the demonstrations are peaceful, the police and military may be unable to put the lid back on a large demonstration that begins peacefully and turns violent. In a country with a long tradition of democracy, it's hard to imagine a truly mass movement turning violent in this way while retaining the support of the majority, but that's because it's so unnecessary: However flawed our democracy, the people can turn very unpopular leaders out of office at the ballot box; thus they needn't resort to the mob.
None of this bears directly on Egypt, where the people have no right of assembly, peaceable or otherwise. But there too, we can see the logic of critical mass at work. We still don't know how things will end in Egypt, but if Mubarak is forced from power, it may well be because he did not crack down immediately. Having not taken sufficiently brutal steps to prevent the people from more or less peaceably assembling, he will have left himself without the ability to stop them from using force or the threat of force to remove him. As a matter of international law, freedom of assembly may be a universal right, as President Obama observed, but as a matter of facts on the ground, it is hardly surprising that autocratic regimes generally do not recognize it. They can't afford to.
By contrast, a functioning democracy can afford to grant the people the right to assemble because they are not likely to turn into a mob, and if they do, the police and armed forces will remain loyal to the government, as the mob loses general public support. The First Amendment is not a suicide pact after all.


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subset: commoncrawl


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NEW YORK — Hannah Bronfman's latest project — an app called Beautified that launches today — is looking to become the uberapp of the beauty service world.
Created with cofounders Annie Evans and Peter Hananel, the platform serves as a way to book last-minute beauty appointments through a chosen list of salons and spas. Beautified counts John Barrett Salon, Warren-Tricomi, Caudalie, Shibui Spa and Tenoverten among the 40 partners where users can book services like haircuts, blowouts, manicures, pedicures, waxes, facials and massages.
The service is offered in New York City as of today, but the plan is to roll out editions in Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas and Chicago later this year.
"How many times have you been on a street corner and wanted a blowout?" Bronfman, also a DJ and an investor at Acme, asked. "People leave everything until the last minute, and beauty — for us — should be able to fit into your day, not your day being based around it."
The catch: Users can book appointments for that day only, and appointments for the following day aren't available for booking until 6 p.m. the previous day. Bronfman is clear that this isn't a discount or flash sale-based platform. Beautified will take a percentage of every booking.
"We don't believe in devaluing our partner brands. It's providing consumers with a convenience," she said.
Hananel, who worked in finance and retail before switching over to the Web business, agreed. He explained that this project is more focused on spa utilization, versus the discount angle.
"We are leveraging mobile and geolocation technology and all the latest and greatest bells and whistles to make this as easy as possible for users to discover and book beauty appointments," he said of the emphasis on utility. This technology, combined with the fact that many spas aren't operating to capacity, will help to alleviate "remnant inventory."
Evans, who previously worked in events and marketing for publications like Esquire and O, The Oprah Magazine, added that there is one service the app doesn't offer as an option: color.
"We extensively researched treatments that consumers book last minute (such as a manicure, blowout or brow wax) and focused on those rather than hair color, which is rarely something one decides on the fly. People are devoted to their colorists," Evans said.


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April 7th, 2008
9 things to stop worrying about right now. Because, you know, worrying will make your hair turn gray.
When most people experiment with recreational drugs, they are breaking the law. When well known research labs experiment with marijuana and LSD, they get published.
The new hi-tech racing swimsuits aren't what you'd call attractive, but they are helping swimmers set records. The LZR Racer was developed with help from NASA.
In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop. It's strange to see my life described so well in the New York Times.
The game is called You Have to Burn the Rope. The song at the end is your reward.
Cell Phone Bacteria. Half of you will start cleaning your cell phone after watching this. The other half should.
The origin of the Olympic torch relay. It's neither as old nor as benign as you might have thought.
A "truly tragic streetlamp". How the Eiffel Tower came to be.


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Score (99)
Quinta Brunson Just Made Emmys History With Her 'Abbott Elementary' Nominations
Quinta Brunson is making history as the first-ever Black woman to score three Emmy nominations in comedy categories in the same year. Her hit show "Abbott Elementary" is a mockumentary-style comedy following the trials and tribulations of a group of teachers. The show has been praised for its humor, heart and accurate portrayal of the challenges faced by public educators. With seven Emmy nominations in total, "Abbott Elementary" is a triumph for broadcast TV in a streaming-dominated year.
Score (98)
50 Years Later, Lolita the Whale is Finally Going Home to Free Waters
Exciting news for animal lovers! Lolita, one of the oldest killer whales in captivity, will finally be returning to her home waters in the Pacific after more than 50 years. The Miami Seaquarium, where Lolita was being held, has signed an agreement with the non-profit group Friends of Lolita to relocate the orca to an ocean sanctuary in Washington state. The move is set to take place in the next 18 to 24 months with assistance from philanthropist Jim Irsay.
Score (94)
This 9-Year-Old is Going Viral for Sewing a Shirt For His Dad All By Himself
Nine-year-old Sam proudly presented his dad Aaron with a custom dress shirt—crafted by his own two hands! After taking sewing classes for over a year and honing the skill under great aunt Val's tutelage, this young tailor sewed up something special to show how much he loves his dad. Sam has made a pair of cat pajama pants for his brother, a dress for his cousin, scrunchies, a pillowcase, and now a shirt. Sam's father said that he and his wife encourage Sam to pursue his passion, and they are grateful to the local store where Sam hones his skills.
Score (99)
In Pictures: Scientists Have Spotted a New Galaxy Cluster Forming
ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile) has unveiled a cosmic surprise, discovering the formation of hot gas clouds in the birth of an ultra-distant galaxy cluster! Peeking out from its center is the Spiderweb Galaxy with its powerful supermassive black hole. By using ALMA's unparalleled resolution and sensitivity, researchers calculated 35 trillion times more mass than our sun, streaming into this universe-spanning "cosmic web". From now on it will be sculpting what will grow into an immense supercluster!
Score (98)
This Abandoned Train Station Has Transformed Into a Beautiful Hotel
Welcome to Canfranc Station - a luxurious hotel operated by the Barcelo Hotel Group and once an abandoned railway station! Against a snowy backdrop of the Pyrenees mountains, deep in Spain's Aragon Valley, stands this imposing yet beautiful building. The station opened grandly in 1928 with Spanish King & French President marking the occasion- but by 1970 it had closed its doors. Now, locals greet its reopening with enthusiasm as travelers come to soak up European rail history with panoramic mountain views & explore 100 years of fascinating past stories!
Score (99)
MLB The Show is Highlighting Historic Baseball Greats for the First Time
For the first time, MLB The Show is letting players step into a world of Black excellence! Eight legendary Negro League stars have been added to the 2023 version of the game- from Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson, to Buck O'Neil, Rube Foster & more. This multi-year partnership with Sony celebrates the history and heroes behind the league - bringing them alive in a way that'll wow gamers of all ages. Players can explore story mode videos about these greats - and enjoy gaming moments full of boldness & precision.
Score (99)
This Nashville Bookstore is Offering Solace to the Community After Tragedy
In the aftermath of a tragic school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, Parnassus Books, an independent bookstore owned by award-winning author Ann Patchett, opened its doors to the community to provide a safe space for grieving and healing. Patchett welcomed anyone who "didn't know what to do today" to come to the bookstore, hold a dog, and just "be with us." This gesture of kindness and support reminds us that we can all come together in times of tragedy to provide comfort and hope.
Score (96)
How One Club is Helping Thousands of Women Tackle Loneliness
Almost 20,000 women in London have found their new BFFs thanks to the awesome London Lonely Girls Club. It was founded by Holly Cooke five years ago. Despite moving to the capital and struggling to meet people, she Googled 'how to make friends in London,' but group meetups felt "intense and scary." Holly is not alone, as one in 12 Londoners is affected by severe loneliness, according to a report published in December. She created a club where everyone's welcome - all designed for all women longing for connection and belonging.
Score (98)
Researchers Have Found a Way to Produce Carbon-Negative Concrete
Concrete is having a makeover! Finnish materials researchers just found the perfect carbon-negative replacement for cement that they say captures more CO2 than it takes to produce. The magical ingredient? Slag from blast furnace smelting combined with bio-ash. In early experiments, it reduced the CO2 emissions of conventional concrete by 45% and lowering its carbon footprint to -60 kg/m3 by replacing Portland cement with slag This innovation could help to significantly reduce the carbon footprint of one of humanity's most widely-used building materials.
Score (96)
New "Smart" Bandages Could Monitor Wounds for Targeted Healing
Sometimes it can feel like pesky cuts, scrapes, and burns linger forever - but a new smart bandage developed at Caltech may provide the expert help needed to move healing along faster. With embedded electronics providing real-time updates and medication supply right on site, this breakthrough 'smart' tech is bringing hope of relief to chronic wounds. Wounds no longer have to take their time or cost healthcare systems so much money - these smart bandages are here with solutions!
Score (98)
Back From the Moon, Shaun the Sheep is Ready to Share What He Learnt About Space
Shaun the Sheep is back home in England to a hero's welcome! After completing his astronaut training, this 6-inch stop motion model embarked on an epic journey aboard NASA's Artemis 1 mission. From traveling 1.4 million miles and splashing down safely, Shaun will be honored with commemorative plaques & documents marking his flight of a lifetime! His celebratory post-flight tour starting soon has ESA recruits excited to join him at space centers across Europe where he'll help people grow their knowledge about exploration.


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This day in history: A look back at Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton duel in 1804
It was 215 years ago that longtime rivals Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton met for the final time in Weehawken, New Jersey for a duel that would go in the history books, and eventually make its way to the Broadway stage.
Both men were prominent political leaders of their day. At the time, Burr was the sitting Vice President and Hamilton had previously served as the first Secretary of the Treasury.
Burr had just made an unsuccessful bid to win New York's 1804 gubernatorial race, losing to Morgan Lewis. On the heels of his defeat, Burr challenged his rival to a duel as he felt Hamilton had publicly maligned his character.
At dawn on July 11, the two met on the banks of the Hudson River where Burr fatally shot Hamilton in the abdomen. The founding father died the next day.
Dramatized in the song "The World Was Wide Enough" from the 'Hamilton' musical, Burr sings about becoming a villain in Hamilton's history. Following the duel, Burr's political reputation never recovered. He spent time out west, before being tried and acquitted of treason. Burr spent time in Europe before eventually returning to New York to practice law.
The story of Alexander Hamilton was told in the highly successful Broadway musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda. It went on to win a 11 Tony Awards. Some credit the musical's success with stopping the effort to replace Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill.


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Photography Science
#Africa #birds #nature #nests
Massive Bird Nests Built on Telephone Poles in Southern Africa are Home to Multiple Species of Birds
No these aren't haystacks stuck in a phone pole. Visit the Kalahari Desert in the south of Africa and you're bound to run into a peculiar animal called the Sociable Weaver Bird. The birds are called "social" not just because they live in organized colonies, but because they build massive homes out of sticks, grass and cotton that are home to several other kinds birds. That's right, the nests are so large that birds of other species are welcome to setup shop, not the least of which is the South African pygmy falcon which lives exclusively inside the social weaver's nests that often accommodate over 100 birds at at time. Via the San Diego Zoo:
The sociable weaver's nest sees plenty of guests—a regular Kalahari Desert inn! The South African pygmy falcon Polihierax semitorquatus relies completely on the sociable weavers' nest for its own home, often nesting side by side with the sociable weavers. The pied barbet, familiar chat, red-headed finch, ashy tit, and rosy-faced lovebird often find comfort in the cozy nesting chambers, too. Vultures, owls, and eagles will roost on the nests' broad roof. Why are weavers willing to share the huge nest they worked so hard to make? More residents mean more eyes keeping a watch for danger. And the weavers often learn from the other birds where new sources of food can be found.
Photographer Dillon Marsh has a lovely series of weaver bird nest photographs titled Assimilation that are well worth a look. (via neatorama)
#Africa #birds #nature #nests
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Founder and former CEO of Jamdat Mobile Mitch Lasky, now a partner at Benchmark Capital, is putting a $7 million vote of confidence behind a new game company, Riot Games, headed up by CEO Brandon Beck and president Mark Merrill. Making me feel like a total slouch, by the way, because at age 26 and 27 respectively, my age peers Beck and Merrill are heading up a multimillion-dollar company.
Lasky, Beck and Merrill unveiled the venture this morning, and announced they've accumulated some industry vets for their studio talent, with "core members" of Ultima Online, Dungeon Siege, Jak & Daxter, Heroes of Might & Magic, Neverwinter Nights 2, Sly Cooper and Total Annihilation's teams, among others.
You may, by now, be a little jaded at yet another announcement of a venture capital-funded online games startup, but when Kotaku talked to Lasky, Beck and Merrill yesterday, they had some things to tell us about how they plan to shake things up.
"I think what was refreshing from our point of view about their approach was both a real awareness of serving a particular consumer... serving an audience that is not the sort of moms and '15-54 year-olds' that the casual games companies are focusing on," said Lasky.
"They've got a very specific community that they're targeting that plays a certain kind of gameplay pattern very aggressively... there's focus on an almost core audience with their products."
Riot hasn't announced its first product yet, but CEO Beck gave us a few hints. "There's a fundamental appetite out there for online game experiences that are not your typical 'casual game'... that's richer than the typical casual game experience but not as deep or as time-intensive as some of the front-line MMOs that appeal to the core or mid-core gamer," he said.
When we asked the team to define the "certain kind of gameplay pattern" to which Lasky referred earlier, Beck was willing to elaborate a little on their target audience: "Online, competitive gamers," he said.
"There's a particular gameplay style and pattern that we're creating that is exciting, innovative, [focuses on] replayability, and from a philosophical perspective we want to create games... that are simple to learn but difficult to master, where the depth comes in from the amounts of rich content... and from emergent gameplay," said Beck.
For example, "Rather than being Half Life 2, we want to be Counter-Strike," he said.
Here's the full announcement:
Los Angeles-based Independent Developer-Publisher Names FirstMark's Rick Heitzmann
And Games Industry Veteran Mitch Lasky to Board
LOS ANGELES-July 10, 2008- Riot Games has secured a $7M round of funding from Benchmark Capital and FirstMark Capital to finance development of its first title. Riot's development is fueled by the passion of its founders, Brandon Beck, CEO, and Marc Merrill, President and Chief Marketing Officer. The two have brought together respected industry veterans, creating a leading edge development studio comprised of core members of the teams behind some of the industry's most popular titles, including Ultima Online, Dungeon Siege, Jak & Dexter, Heroes of Might & Magic, Neverwinter Nights 2, Sly Cooper, Total Annihilation and many more. The world-class team is already at work, building the company's soon-to-be announced title on Riot's robust technology platform.
Riot's board of directors welcomes games industry veteran Mitch Lasky, a partner at Benchmark Capital, and Rick Heitzmann, a partner at FirstMark Capital. Lasky is the former founder & CEO of JAMDAT, former EVP of Online & Mobile at Electronic Arts and former head of Worldwide Studios for Activision. Heitzmann brings more than 10 years of entrepreneurship, operating and investing experience as an investor and board member of consumer technology emerging companies including Live Gamer, weplay and Clickable.
"The online game industry is ripe for new ways to bring products to market and new ways to acquire customers," said Mitch Lasky, partner at Benchmark Capital. "Riot's unique approach to building customer relationships and its innovative content strategy will make Riot an online publisher to watch."
Riot Games is the brainchild of Beck, 26, and Merrill, 27. Beck was formerly a consultant at leading global business and strategy consulting firm Bain & Company, where he specialized in media, entertainment and private equity; Merrill previously managed corporate marketing at Advanstar Communications, one of the largest business to business media companies in the US. The two founders bring to the company the unique combination of an authentic love for games and business savvy.
"Tremendous opportunities continue to emerge in the online games industry as distribution and business models evolve," said Brandon Beck, CEO, Riot Games. "As independent, direct-to-consumer developers with the vision of treating games as services, we are focused on delivering first-rate game experiences to highly targeted online audiences."
Riot's titles will combine premium online multiplayer session-based games with best-of-breed online services, powered by the company's own leading technology platform. Beck and Merrill plan for the Riot platform to provide robust community services that surpass the current industry standard in tools such as matchmaking, stat-tracking, ladders and more.
"Online gamers are not shy about asking for what they want," Marc Merrill, president and CMO, commented. "Riot is responding with a commitment to creating premium titles that focus on gameplay and replayability in order to build deep, ongoing relationships with gamer communities."
Riot Games will announce the details of their first title later this year.
About Benchmark Capital
Benchmark Capital, a leading venture capital firm, was founded in 1995 to help talented entrepreneurs with original ideas build successful technology companies. Benchmark's general partners take a team-oriented, labor-intensive approach to venture investing to deliver a superior level of service to the firm's portfolio companies. Benchmark's portfolio includes high-profile start-ups like Infinera, MySQL, OpenTable, Second Life, Tellme, Yelp, and Zillow, and franchise companies such as eBay, Juniper Networks and Red Hat. The firm manages nearly $2.8 billion in committed venture capital. For more information on Benchmark Capital, visit its website at www.benchmark.com.
About FirstMark Capital
Based in New York City, FirstMark Capital (formerly Pequot Ventures) has established itself as a venture leader with a strong, national reach over its twelve year history. FirstMark invests in companies that are creating new markets with innovative technology solutions or rethinking existing markets by applying a novel business model. With nearly $2 billion in capital commitments, FirstMark's team of investment and operations professionals have decades of real-world experience and leadership in core technology markets, making the firm uniquely qualified to offer industry insight, relationships and the operational expertise to build lasting businesses. Select historical investments include: Netgear, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTGR); First Advantage Corp. (NASDAQ: FADV); StubHub, Inc (Acquired by eBay, Inc.); Netegrity, Inc. (Acquired by CA Inc); Flarion, Inc. (Acquired by Qualcomm, Inc.); OutlookSoft Inc. (Acquired by SAP AG); Analex Corp. (Acquired by QinetiQ); Vallent (Acquired by IBM); Syndesis (Acquired by Subex) and Navic (Acquired by Microsoft). For more information, please visit www.firstmarkcap.com.
About Riot Games, Inc.
Riot Games, Inc. (www.riotgames.com) is an independent Los Angeles-based video game development company, funded privately and through leading venture capital firms Benchmark Capital and Firstmark Capital. The studio was established in 2006 to develop innovative online next-generation titles for consoles and the PC. Comprised of industry veterans with a shared passion for creating fun, innovative gameplay, the company is currently developing a cutting-edge game platform in conjunction with their first title, combining the best elements of the action role-playing and real-time strategy genres into a uniquely replayable and competitive multiplayer experience.


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Laurence Hobgood On Piano Jazz
Listen Now: Laurence Hobgood On Piano Jazz
Set List
- "One Version Of Happiness" (L. Hobgood)
- "Shirakumo No Michi" (L. Hobgood)
- "Sweet Moraine" (L. Hobgood)
- "Beyond Words" (L. Hobgood)*
- "Cumberland" (L. Hobgood)
- "In Your Own Sweet Way" (D. Brubeck)*
- "I'm Glad There Is You" (J. Dorsey, P. Madeira)
- * Duet
Pianist and 2010 Grammy winner Laurence Hobgood was born in Salisbury, N.C., and grew up in Texas and Illinois. He took up piano at age 6 and showed a knack for improvisation early on, playing his own versions of pieces by Bach and Chopin. In 1988, Hobgood relocated to Chicago, where he met an up-and-coming vocalist named Kurt Elling. Since the release of Elling's first record, Close Your Eyes, Hobgood has been an important part of the singer's success, serving as arranger, co-producer and music director for all of Elling's work.
Hobgood has performed and recorded with artists including Lee Konitz, Jon Hendricks, Regina Carter, Stefon Harris, Christian McBride, John Pizzarelli, Terence Blanchard, Joe Lovano, Benny Maupin and Clark Terry, to name just a few. His project POEMJAZZ is an adventurous collaboration with Robert Pinsky, the only three-term U.S. Poet Laureate, and features Pinsky's energetic readings of his poems (with an emphasis on musical phrasing) coupled with Hobgood's improvised accompaniment — played live in the studio simultaneous with the poet's recitations.


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- Admissions
- Visit
- Tuition & Aid
- Academics
- Campus Life
- Athletics
- About
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The Department of Accounting, Finance, and Economics provides challenging coursework and exciting opportunities to students in the College of Business Administration. Students in Accounting, Finance, and Economics classes have opportunities to work on case studies, participate in internships, and travel to exciting destinations to enhance their study. Each May students and faculty travel to New York for the Financial Markets Seminar trip, and international trips to China and Europe are also popular options for students.
The Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics offers the following programs:
This department is comprised of 15 full-time instructional faculty members. Thirteen hold doctoral degrees and nine hold professional certifications in their areas of expertise. The faculty teach across all relevant areas of the disciplines and are actively engaged in academic research as well.
The department has a strong track record in placing its graduates in promising employment positions and advanced degree programs.


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The mourners followed the coffin of 15-year-old Grace McComas out of the church and into the morning sunlight of a beautiful Easter season. Christine McComas carried her child's stuffed toy in the crook of her arm. Grief made her look almost wistful.
As Grace's parents and her three sisters left the crowded St. Michael's Catholic Church in Mount Airy a year ago, they weren't thinking that their journey of grief would take them to Annapolis.
But the determination of that grief-stricken mother to tell her daughter's story — powered by a Ravens player, Maryland's first lady and a state legislator — resulted in "Grace's Law," which Gov. Martin O'Malley is scheduled to sign Thursday.
For almost a year, Grace's parents say, the Glenelg High School sophomore endured taunts, threats, obscenities and hate speech online. The new law makes that kind of electronic torment punishable by a fine and jail time. No longer do those messages have to land in the victim's email box to be considered harassment.
Reflecting on the past year, Christine McComas said, "I look back and it surprises me. I knew we would honor her and who we are as a family.
"Sometimes I am shocked and bewildered by the path our lives have taken."
Christine McComas, a horticulturalist with the University of Maryland Extension, and her husband, Dave, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, had tried to get the school system, the police, the courts — anybody — to make the cruel tweets stop. Grace didn't even have a Twitter account, yet friends told her what was going on.
"She counted on us to help her, and everyone failed her," said Christine. "Grace was wounded. She was in constant pain and fear. She wanted it to end."
On Easter morning, as the family gathered for breakfast and Easter treats, Grace slipped away, locked her bedroom door and ended her life.
"The helplessness and the hopelessness got to be too much," said Gina Santoro, who counseled Grace and spoke with the family's permission. "It was almost like she looked for a sliver of opportunity to slip away."
When Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice heard of Grace's death — the daughter of his assistant, Deb Poquette, was a teammate of Grace's younger sister Gloria — he tweeted his outrage to more than 600,000 followers.
For Rice, this was personal. His younger sister had been bullied and he could not fly immediately to her side to right things, and it ate at him. Rice would convene two anti-bullying rallies in Howard County, in May and in July, with the McComas family on stage with him.
"I knew I had to take advantage of this moment," said Christine McComas of the spotlight Rice cast on her daughter's death. "I was determined to make sure this didn't happen to someone else."
Maryland first lady Katie O'Malley sponsors an anti-bullying campaign and visits schools with a very simple message, "Be nice!" She picked up the newspaper that day last spring and read of Grace's death.
"I was dumbfounded," she said. "How could this have happened? How could we have failed another child?"
She invited the McComas family to Government House in Annapolis. A long, sad afternoon grew into an intimate dinner between the two families whose children are close in age.
Howard County Executive Ken Ulman met with the family — "a meeting I will never forget" — and the county police chief to search for a way to bring charges in Grace's death, as well as to address this invasive, amorphous bullying among school children.
But Maryland's law only permitted prosecution based on threatening correspondence sent directly to the victim.
Grace McComas was not on the mind of Baltimore County Del. Jon Cardin when he wrote a rough draft of legislation that might, if nothing else, bring some awareness to cyber-bullying. Kids were hurting kids, he said, and the teachers and parents had not a clue.
He reached out to the first lady and she said she had a family she wanted him to meet. And she pledged to do whatever she could to move the bill forward.
"That's when I called a friend, Michael Meyerson at the University of Baltimore Law School," said Cardin. "We had to make sure we did this right."
Meyerson worked to craft a bill that would respect the First Amendment protections of free speech while giving law enforcement a tool to use against anyone using electronic communication to threaten or inflict emotional distress on a minor.
This new focus — legislation that would give law enforcement and schools a tool and a deterrent — gave Grace's parents only a brief distraction from the unalterable fact of Grace's death.
"They were the only times of clear, focused thinking," said Christine McComas of working on testimony to support the bill. "Dave and I found we could keep it together and do what was needed publicly. But then we would spend an equal or greater amount of time afterward grieving.
"Even when the news was good, there was always the realization that our vivacious and sweet daughter is forever gone."
Grace's parents and her older sisters, Cara, a senior at Stevenson University, and Megan, a sophomore at Salisbury University, testified before the legislature, their voices breaking.
"I wish I wasn't here," Christine said to reporters after testifying. She read the tweets aloud, including the ones urging Grace to kill herself.
"It is gossip and hatred at the speed of electronic media," she said.
Cara, a nursing student, said that the first time she performed CPR, it was on her sister. "That never should have happened."
Afterward, the eyes of the family were red-rimmed and they looked exhausted by grief.
"The legislative process moves in fits and starts," said Christine McComas. And there were devastating low points, such as when one delegate said loudly, "It's the Internet! Just turn it off!"
The law passed the Maryland House and Senate unanimously, though it may still face court challenges. Cardin said it is almost unheard of for a social issue of this complexity to be addressed in one legislative season.
"Sen. [Allan] Kittleman [who sponsored the Senate version of the bill], arranged for Gloria and I to be on the Senate floor with him to witness the moment," said Christine. "It was momentous and bittersweet at the same time.
"I am hoping that in the future we will look back as a society and say this was the moment when we began to protect our children...and that goodness and kindness won."
Katie O'Malley now keeps a picture of Grace on her desk. "I hope this will help the family mend. Their grief has been so incredible."
Ulman, who had been so frustrated that there was nothing in the Maryland law that would allow the police to address the cyber-bullying, is pleased with the change.
"I am glad we have it," he said. "I am sorry that we need it."
Among the sisters, Megan thinks Grace would be confused that there needed to be a law, that it was not just part of human nature to be kind. "But I think she would be very happy that we didn't let her dying be in vain."
Gloria thinks the law is just the kind of thing her sister would have gotten done. "She was a person who if you give her an idea, she would run with it," said Gloria, who has grown to look just like her absent sister.
Christine, smiling, said she thinks Grace the teen-ager would have been mortified by all the attention. But she added, "I remember standing over her body and not knowing what I would do. That it just flowed into this is a wonderful feeling."
Grace's father, Dave, thinks she would "have loved this law.
"Grace was always looking out for other people. This law is in line with who she was."
Cara McComas delivered the eulogy that spring morning more than a year ago.
"There was a light about her that brightened everyone else's day," she said of her funny, tender-hearted sister, who once tried to save the life of a garden slug.
"Her death was a tragedy. But nothing about her was sad."


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Liberals often don't see the problems, and conservatives don't see the promise, of government.
The Protection, And Pursuit, Of Property
You hear it said that if men were angels we would not need government. But of course we do. We have to restrain the bad tendencies of human beings, and that includes keeping people from injuring each other economically.
Homo economus-economic man-is a very avaricious individual, a real allosaurus. If he could have it all, he would, and that would be at the expense of others. So government acts as a safeguard of our property.
But we also want government to help us better our lot, to act as an economic catalyst. When I was the governor of Massachusetts, we used taxpayers' money to stimulate growth in biotech and telecommunications, two high-end industries that were tailor-made for the state because of all the universities. I was roundly criticized from the right for violating Republican dogma by trying to pick winners and losers. My retort was there was not a sufficient supply of capital in the market in those days, so government had a legitimate role in stepping in to address what I saw as a market failure.
Economic Justice
Government has a role as well in what is referred to as redistributive justice. This is as old as the Greeks. Redivision and redistribution of land was the rallying cry of peasants and the disenfranchised in ancient Greece, and it came to be not just land but property in the form of currency as the centuries went on. One context in which it came up in Massachusetts, as it has in New Jersey and Texas, and probably most states, is our system of financing public education.
The system that had grown up in most states is that wealthy districts with an affluent population can afford to spend a lot more on their public school systems than the poorer districts. I always thought that the huge disparities in local funding violated state constitutions, which guarantee citizens a quality education no matter where they live in the state. The New Jersey Supreme Court thought the same thing, as eventually the Massachusetts Supreme Court did too. But this was after we had already put in a statutory scheme of spreading the wealth around with a redistributive formula for financing education that went as far as was politically feasible: You have to get the votes in the Legislature. My Secretary of Education at the time was a woman, a native Cuban, who had been in the hills of Cuba with Fidel and Che in 1958. The joke around the statehouse was that this was the most Communist piece of legislation sponsored by a Republican administration in a long time.
Life, Liberty And The Pursuit Of Happiness
One of the functions of government is to act as a safeguard not just of property but of our liberties. Government is never so noble as when it is addressing wrongs. In the nineteenth century, slavery was the greatest wrong, and government never stood so tall as when it was redressing that wrong. Second-class citizenship for women was the scandal of the twentieth century, and our government, our society, is chipping away at that major imbalance in our society.
The courts are truly the least dangerous of the three branches of our government. It's hard to believe that sometimes when you read some Supreme Court cases; Justice Scalia's opinions read as though he took them straight down from the burning bush, and that just makes me nervous. But over the decades and over the centuries, the court's function has been essentially corrective, and in that sense I think that they are the least dangerous branch.
I think government has a major role to play in helping us with the pursuit of happiness. There are several such issues where I have departed radically from the Republican orthodoxy. One is the environment, or conservation, which is fundamental to human happiness. Natural resources are so vast that no single individual or business is going to protect them; they don't have an incentive to.
The creation of a Water Resources Authority to clean up the Boston harbor happened partly because of a suit I filed when I was US Attorney in 1983 against the State of Mass, saying this harbor is too damn dirty. That's one of the things I'm proudest of in my tenure as US Attorney. One of the things I'm least proud about is that I chickened out and never filed the suit against Ohio for public nuisance on account of the air blowing Northeast on the prevailing winds to Massachusetts. It is unlikely to have been approved in Washington, but it would have been interesting to try.
There's an alliance in the environmental area, and an appropriate one, between the government and the little guy. We absolutely have to restrain concentrations of wealth in industry from spoiling the situation for everybody. The legal constraint on this is the Takings Clause in the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution. There are a million cases on what constitutes the taking of private property. It's a matter of degree. In the Western part of this country, the property rights advocates think the government is riding roughshod over them. By and large I come down on the side of government assertiveness in that area.
Another area in which I depart from Republican orthodoxy is on workforce issues. I thought it was madness for the Republicans during the first Bush administration to be opposed to the Family Leave Act. This was just government enacting support for the way the workforce has changed.
Bringing Out The Angels, Bringing Us Together
I think of Lincoln's phrase about appealing to the better angels of our nature. It's healthy for government to be a kind of moral catalyst, using the bully pulpit of high office. I am not talking about organized religion or being preachy. I mean moral suasion. This is necessary these days Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that the desire to exclude other people from your circle and surround yourself with people just like yourself is a perfectly natural human phenomenon. In my book, that's why it has to be guarded against and restrained, because it is so natural. Government can contribute to a shared sense of purpose on the part of the citizenry; that's its highest and best application.
This is especially true in the international arena. My great and good friend Jesse Helms is an enormously exclusionary man; he wants to surround himself with people just like himself. A high ranking United Nations official told me a couple of years ago that Senator Helms had said to him, that the U.N.'s purpose was to sap the national fiber and resolve of the United States. It was almost a line out of Dr. Strangelove, about sapping the precious bodily fluids of the United States. Unlike Senator Helms, I think a proper role for government-and a major achievement-would be to contribute to a sense of community internationally.
A shared sense of purpose was always my credo when I was a manager in government, and it is my credo now when I am a manager in the private sector. There is nothing better to meld an organization and melt away divisions. Some have been very good at establishing this, some have been very bad. Bill Clinton is very good at it. Richard Nixon, I thought, was very bad. Franklin Roosevelt was probably the best ever.
There are areas where the government is not terribly helpful
Taxation As Theft, Social Security As A Bastion About To Fall
I don't agree with Proudhon who said that "All property is theft". I think coercive taxation is theft, and government has a moral duty to keep it to a minimum. This view fueled all my actions as governor in Massachusetts. Before my tenure, people didn't seem to think that citizens had a right to limit the size of their government. My slogan when I ran was that there is no such thing as government money, there is only taxpayer's money, and that cut pretty deep. I think the Republicans are dead right on the tax issue in Washington.
Managing from a distance, from Washington, is not a great role of government for a country this big and this disparate.
I don't understand the Democrats' approach to Social Security in this country, and I'm not alone. It's being chipped away at, and I think it's a bastion that's going to fall. It may not seem that way to some, but it didn't look that way when the conservatives took after the welfare system either. People said: "you don't understand, this is inevitable, this is the way it's been ever since 1935." That's not forever, and I think you will see the same kind of flip on Social Security.
Too Much Administering In Education, Health, Etc.
Micro managing anything is not a great role for government. An example of this is in education, the collective bargaining contracts for teachers. One of our daughters attended the local high school in Cambridge, Mass and when she was in the fifth grade, all the parents in the PTA said "we desperately need more science teachers." The reaction was: Love to help you guys out, but the next sixteen positions have to be filled by administrators. It turns out, more than fifty cents on the dollar in our public school system in the United States is spent on Administration. If you know of a private industry that spends more than fifty cents on the dollar on administration and is still making a profit, I would like to know what it is. Similarly, micromanagement of healthcare also has been a disaster, as have wage and price controls.
It's not good for government to tell people that the world owes them a living and that things are free. My predecessor, Governor Dukakis, used to like to tell a story that during his first administration, eyeglasses were free under Medicaid, and the consumption of eyeglasses in Massachusetts was six pairs per year for every man, woman, child and beast. Even animals were all wearing glasses. But then they put on a little co-pay, three dollars for a pair of eyeglasses, and the consumption dropped 86 percent. I am sure there is a lesson in there somewhere.
Government As Monopoly, And Privatization
In health care, education, and to some extent transportation-but less so, I think-government monopolies have proved to be a disaster. I was chairman of the National Privatization Council when I was Governor. I don't know that anyone else besides government is going to provide public transportation, but privatization is coming slowly even there. I think transportation and corrections are not the first two areas that I would go looking for massive change.
Sex And The Single Government
Managing people's sex lives is something that I don't think is a good role for government. I extend that to the abortion issue, I extend that to the so-called gay rights issue, I think this is a freedom principle and consistent with the analysis in the economic area as well.
Trade And Immigration
Opposing the free flow of goods or people is a bad idea. I worked with Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton on the North American Free Trade Agreement, and on immigration.
The Influence Of Money In Politics
We need a complete ban on soft money, which is sort of an enveloping problem, and a ceiling on the amount of money that can be spent on a given race. The problem is the Supreme Court case, Buckley v. Vallejo, which says that any limited like that is unconstitutional, because money is speech. But that's an issue that still divides the Supreme Court, and not along ideological lines. Justice Rehnquist dismisses as completely ridiculous the idea that money is speech. So, it's possible that Buckley will be overturned. If not, then the answer is to stigmatize people who come in and spend $35 million on a Senate seat.
Government Is The People
Telling people that we know better is one of my least favorite exercises of government. Government is the people, so the government, by definition, can't know better than the people.
Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, now a private attorney for McDermott, Will and Emery based in New York, plans to re-enter public life in the future, perhaps running for governor of New York in 2006, though "I have lost any desire to be a United States Senator." This essay is adapted from a speech delivered at a breakfast forum sponsored by Citizens Union on June 21st.


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Another day, another opportunity to introduce you to our stellar students participating in the IIDA Student Charette at NeoCon!
Adrian Cardenas is a senior at the University of North Texas.
Adrian looks forward to specializing in hospitality design as according to him, "hospitality design has a sense of glamour, but is still technical and custom designed for the brand."
He draws inspiration from numerous outlets but notes that his favorite space is The Stoneleigh Boutique Hotel in Dallas. Adrian used the hotel for his senior project as he found the building was fascinating, beautiful and full of history. "this space is nostalgic and has a gorgeous historical ambiance."
Ymani Tannis is a senior at the Art Institute of Atlanta, and she knew she wanted to be an interior designer since she was a kid!
"When I was a child, I always played on the game SIMS simply to build and design their homes. For hours I would stay on the computer doing this, and because of this my mom told me I was destined to be an interior designer!"
Now that Ymani is older, she draws her inspiration from other sources. Her favorite source of inspiration is Frank Gehry. Although he is an architect, Ymani finds his designs for the exterior of buildings very artistic and sculptural.
Be sure to check out their work at the IIDA Student Charette on Tuesday, June 11th at booth space 7-2105. We look forward to seeing you there!


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Advanced Search
E-Textbooks | Q&A
Post-lawsuit, this alternative to established players is ready once again to push ahead in its goal of dismantling the textbook industry as we know it.
Boundless is aptly named. Where other dot-com start-ups might have crumpled up their virtual tents and disappeared in the face of a lawsuit filed by Pearson Education, Cengage Learning, and Macmillan Higher Education, Boundless co-founder and CEO Ariel Diaz continued the discussions for 18 months until he and his legal team reached an agreement with the plaintiffs that kept his firm in business.
The lawsuit accused Boundless of infringing on the publishers' copyrighted materials, as a blog analysis by educational technology consultant and former Cengage employee Michael Feldstein explained. The settlement, filed in mid-December 2013, had several outcomes, Feldstein said. First, Boundless would stop marketing its books as "Boundless versions" or "copies" of their textbooks. Second, the company would stop "aligning" its products to the ones it hopes to replace without permission and stop using the plaintiffs' book images in its own marketing materials without permission. And it would pay the plaintiffs $200,000 apiece.
The company, which launched in 2010, offers an alternative to traditional textbooks. It creates its textbooks from open content: public domain materials, such as United States government-created works or books that are out of copyright; open educational resources available from sources such as connexions that allow their materials to be used by others without fee, including commercially; and third-party independent Web sites that also use open licenses, such as Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia of Earth. The company uses subject experts to develop a broad outline for the textbook to determine the key topics to be covered and to pull the content together. Then "multiple experts" review "every single individual piece of content" before publication, said Diaz.
The textbooks — 500-plus at this point — are available free in digital form for 20 subjects, from accounting to writing. Those are covered under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, which lets anybody — including potential competitors — use the contents as they choose, as long as the new creation is distributed under the same kind of license.
Or Boundless hopes to persuade the college and university students who are downloading the freebie versions in large (but publicly unstated) numbers to their computers, tablets and smart phones to pay $20 for a "premium edition" that includes reminders, quizzes, flashcards, a note-taking ability and other digital features. The paid edition also includes a feature that's probably the most attractive one: Its content is aligned to the assigned textbook. For example, Pearson's World of Psychology, 7th Edition, sold for $219.60 by Pearson directly, has a $20 alternative from Boundless with content that matches up with the content in that pricier version.
Recently, Diaz spoke with Campus Technology about the settlement. During the interview he gives a brief tour of Boundless' new educator platform, introduced in December; and paints his vision for what the world of the textbook will look like five years from now.
Dian Schaffhauser: Isn't alignment part of what got you into trouble in the first place?
Ariel Diaz: I can give you the overview on the legal side. There are certain things that are a confidential part of the settlement. The quick history of the lawsuit centered around three copyright claims. From the start, we disagreed, and we fought the lawsuit from start to finish, which was a little over 18 months fighting. At the end of it, we settled with the publishers. We have a confidential settlement, and the nature of what we're doing is consistent with that settlement.
Schaffhauser: How much are students gravitating to paying you for textbooks?
Diaz: Our goal is to serve a large number of students. We actually see usage in an entire spectrum. The deepest usage we'll see is a student using Boundless as their primary content source for a course, whether it's their professor who assigns it to them or they've chosen to use it on their own. It's replacing their textbook with the $20 experience per semester. That's the deepest level of usage.
[Then we have] some people using it as a reference while they're doing their homework. They Google for a particular topic — we rank very well on Google for a lot of these academic and educational topics. They come to Boundless; they find us; they read something; they understand it; they finish their homework; and they're satisfied.
And we literally have everything in between. Somebody comes and reads an entire chapter or a little deeper. They may come and interact with some of the lightweight components in an individual setting. All along the way, our goal is to serve all of these opportunities.
Schaffhauser: How many students are downloading books and how many of those are paying you?
Diaz: We haven't broken out the channels or revenue metrics publicly. What we can say is we reach over 3 million students across all of our products. That includes premium, our apps, our Web site and third-party content delivery mechanisms like Kindle and iBooks.
Schaffhauser: How does the educator platform works?
Diaz: A little under a year and a half ago, we opened all of our content to Google to be able to access it without a registration or account. We did that late 2012. We noticed people really start to engage in that content. We started getting an organic inbound interest from educators about how they could more effectively use Boundless in their classes. We realized over time that this was a great compliment. We built this great content. We built this great platform for students to study from it. And now closing the loop by building an educator toolset was something that really started to make a lot of sense.
From that interest from educators we worked to develop our initial product, which we launched back in December.
It's truly focused on three key things:
Educators are already doing that. A typical syllabus will jump around chapters. Even within a chapter they may say, "Read chapter 5, section 1, but skip sections 2 and 3, and read section 4." Educators are already customizing it, but they're doing it in a generally analog way.
So the first step is the ability to customize a book for their course. The second step is then to be able to assign readings and quizzes to their students.
Because [we have an] all-in-one platform where the content and consumption happens, we can track all of that data, see how much time is being spent reading, which sections or subsections have been read, how they've answered the questions, and submitted them. So that is a feedback layer for the educators
Finally, for all of our content we [give] the ability to download PowerPoint slides. Because our content is openly licensed, that means our PowerPoint slides are also openly licensed. [Instructors] can download them, edit them, share them, create derivative works, and customize them. All of our downloads include the content bullets as well as images in high resolution, so they can create new templates. We include the questions if they want to use them interactively in class with something like a clicker.
We're working hard now to continue to create new tools and features for educators to make their lives more efficient. We'll be rolling those out over the course of this semester and heading into next semester.
Schaffhauser: Do you charge the faculty for their customization work?
Diaz: No. Everything is free for educators — the ability to access the book, customize it, assign it. Then it's a traditional model, like it would be in other higher ed textbooks. Once they've adopted it as a primary content source and replaced their traditional textbook, it's $20 per student.
That price point is incredibly reasonable. We have literally not had a single professor or student respond negatively at all to that price point.... That's the business model on the educator platform.
Schaffhauser: You study the textbook business. How much movement is there among faculty in moving to digital materials?
Diaz: There's quite a big variation among schools. The transition to digital has been pretty slow. I think that's primarily due to the restrictive prices. Digital products oftentimes are as expensive or more expensive than a used book. Students tend to go for the cheaper option, which is increasingly rentals of a physical product. A lot of these e-books or e-book platforms expire after three or six months. So you pay for digital goods, then you lose access to it over time. I think those have been some of the big challenges on the digital side.
If you look at the general textbook decision process, there's a ton of pressure on all schools around the economic impact on students. Study after study shows that they're spending over $1,000 a year. They're often skipping buying textbooks for financial reasons, even though they know that puts them at a disadvantage. Because of that there is a lot of interest for affordable alternatives to the traditional textbook model.
The interesting thing is that for the product we offer, there's really no barrier to adopting it from an educator standpoint. We have quality that's vetted by experts and improved upon. We've got a tremendous reading and studying experience for students. We've got a rich administrator layer for educators.
If you think about the traditional open content world, over the last 10 or 15 years, open content and the open educational movement has really been focused on creating a lot of high quality content and it has largely succeeded. What we've done is getting it to that last mile — creating a product experience that educators can easily use without having to do a ton of work, to create their content and curriculum from scratch and then to be able to easily use it in class.
We've surveyed faculty members and interviewed a bunch of them. To most educators, open content means "If I can Google and get to it, it's free and open," which is not necessarily true. It may actually be copyrighted, given that's the default state for content. There is some level of education needed for educators around what open content means. Groups like Creative Commons are doing a lot of that education around what open licensing means. Obviously, with a product like ours, it's plug-and-play. We've done all that work.
Schaffhauser: What do you think the higher ed curriculum and textbook world will look like in, say, five years?
Diaz: That's about the timeframe I would use to get us to what we call the "post-textbook world." Textbooks have been the primary content containers for hundreds of years. For a long time the state of art in terms of technology was printing. It's no longer state of the art. It continues to dominate mainly due to the industry dynamics. The textbook publishing industry is an oligarchy. The top five publishers control 80 percent of the market. There is really very little innovation because of that oligarchic nature.
As a result it has been able to keep the Internet and types of innovation at bay that we've see in other industries like music, movies, newspapers, books. But I think keeping that at bay for a long time becomes increasingly harder.
In five years textbooks go away as a dominant metaphor, and you have much more modular, much smarter content, much better learning experiences, much more mobile focus. Content will be able to give educators feedback on what content students are looking at, what works for them, how they're doing on homework, whether they're doing their reading, and having a much smoother integration between what the students are doing and what the educators want the students to do.
Using the smart phone to study will become a much more common use case for study: Review these flashcards, answer these 10 questions....
That world is really exciting. You'll be able to have education be much more flexible, much more effective, much more enjoyable, and it's enabled by this modular, open content, plus great technology.
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North Fork Sol Duc Trail, Sol Duc Hot Springs Road, Olympic National Park, Washington
North Fork Sol Duc Trail - 12.1 miles
Sol Duc Hot Springs Road
|Round-Trip Length:
|12.1 miles (to second major ford)
|Start-End Elevation:
|1,527' - 2,472' (2,540' max elevation)
|Elevation Change:
|+945' net elevation gain (+1,754' total roundtrip elevation gain)
|Skill Level:
|Dogs Allowed:
|Bikes Allowed:
|Horses Allowed:
|Related Trails:
North Fork Sol Duc Trail - 12.1 Miles Round-Trip
The North Fork Sol Duc Trail is located 8.1 miles south of US 101 on Sol Duc Hot Springs Road in Olympic National Park. This minimally maintained but easy to follow trail fords the North Fork Sol Duc River and continues upstream through an archetypal old growth forest.
The challenging ford at .75 miles and a trail that goes nowhere in particular - it simply fades after 9 miles on an unmaintained route - keep crowds light on this highly compelling river trek.
Trail maintenance in the summer-fall of 2013 has greatly improved travel conditions leading to the North Fork Sol Duc backcountry shelter (9 miles). Potentially precarious fords notwithstanding, these improvements enable exploration of seldom seen backcountry areas.
Hikers will enjoy ancient forests, abundant wildlife and a remote setting on the North Fork Sol Duc Trail:
The trail climbs steadily through uniformly tall fir and hemlock to a crest (.5 miles : 1,804'), where it drops sharply through a gulch to the south bank of the river (.75 miles : 1,585').
A fork just before the bank leads (right) to a view of upstream rapids, but these are not passable; veer left to the cross point. The trail is not immediately visible on the far side, but apparent once over.
Study the river closely before entering. Once across, follow the bank upstream - a footpath will soon emerge. The trail enters a maple-studded bottomland and edges back to an open bank along the river (1.0 miles : 1,638'). Red columbine dot this level stretch on the water's edge.
The trail oscillates between the river and enveloping intervals of vine maple and brush (1.4 miles). It's faint and oft-obstructed, but intuitively followed with the river offering preeminent guidance.
At 1.75 miles (1,720') the trail climbs away from the river into a luxuriant old growth forest, where conditions improve along higher, drier slopes (2.0 miles : 1,805').
Immense fir and hemlock line the undulating, soft-surface trail. Well-spaced trees and a sparse understory create good viewing lanes for wildlife.
The forest floor is a spongy mat of moss, liverworts and decaying matter that facilitates off-trail exploration. Frequent river access points offer good views of the far bank.
The trail passes a backcountry campsite on the river (3.05 miles : 1,827') before switchbacks lead away and straighten out through towering rows of fir (3.5 miles : 1,885').
A faint path switchbacks up and left around a fallen log at 5.35 miles (2,325'), perhaps the only navigational curve ball in the upper forest (the trail lies just behind it but is veiled by debris).
Travel moderates back to a rapid on the river, a sensible turnaround point for day hikers (6.05 miles : 2,472'). This point marks the first of several consecutive, potentially challenging fords required to reach the backcountry shelter.
Interactive GPS Topo MapKey GPS Coordinates - DATUM WGS84
- N48 00.644 W123 54.670 — 0.0 miles : North Fork Sol Duc Trailhead
- N48 00.547 W123 53.629 — .75 miles : Reach river and ford
- N48 00.416 W123 53.458 — 1.0 miles : Uneven travel up river bank
- N48 00.222 W123 53.031 — 1.5 miles : Oscillating path between bank and forest
- N48 00.122 W123 52.399 — 2.0 miles : Edging higher into drier forest
- N48 00.059 W123 51.914 — 2.5 miles : Trail improves in forest over river
- N48 00.085 W123 51.351 — 3.05 miles : Backcountry campsite
- N48 00.169 W123 50.920 — 3.5 miles : Switchback away from river
- N48 00.401 W123 50.382 — 4.05 miles : Clearer trail through large fir forest
- N48 00.472 W123 49.948 — 4.5 miles : Cross creek
- N48 00.397 W123 49.276 — 5.0 miles : Undulating grade in tall forest
- N48 00.418 W123 48.818 — 5.35 miles : Switchback left around fallen tree
- N48 00.523 W123 48.561 — 5.5 miles : River comes back into view
- N48 00.804 W123 48.088 — 6.05 miles : Maintained trail ends at major ford
Worth Noting
- The river ford is swift and may not be passable through the spring, or after heavy rain. Expect thigh - lower chest high water, depending on season and point of cross. Dry bags and extra clothing are recommended.
- The trail is faint in many places, but generally - if not surprisingly - easy to follow. Still, vigilance is critical. Always take note of any departure point from the trail - it can be difficult to immediately reclaim.
- Anticipate several downed trees, branches, overgrown areas, and minor stream crossings along the way.
- The trail seamlessly forks north off the main river and up a major tributary just after the 5 mile mark. This point is difficult to see in the heavy forest through which you're passing at the time (see map for details).
Camping and Backpacking Information
- Permits are required for all overnight stays in Olympic National Park. Contact the Wilderness Information Center (360.565.3100) for backcountry camping reservations, permits, and trail conditions. Visit the WIC: 600 East Park Avenue, Port Angeles, WA 98362.
- Quotas and Reservations are in effect May 1 - September 30 for the Sol Duc - Seven Lakes Basin area. 50% of sites can be reserved in advance. The other 50% is available first come, first served from the WIC during business hours up to 24 hours in advance.
- Permits for quota areas must be picked up at the WIC, or a staffed ranger station during business hours.
- There's a $5 registration fee per group, plus $2 per person (children under 15 excluded). If you don't have access to a WIC, or plan to arrive early or late, call the WIC to arrange your permit ahead of time. Self-registration trailheads have forms, permits, and submission boxes.
- Reservations may be made no more than 30 days in advance. Groups of 7-12 people must camp in designated group sites within quota areas.
- Camping is permitted only in designated sites within quota areas. Deviation from your permit itinerary is not allowed in quota areas, except in emergencies. In other areas, permits are not limited.
- Campsites are not individually assigned, but are available to permit holders on a first come, first served basis. Campfires are allowed below 3,500'.
- Food Storage and Bear Canisters: All food and scented items must be secured 24 hours a day. Park- approved bear canisters are required in the Sol Duc - Seven Lakes Basin, Royal Basin, and all along the coast. Other areas may require bear canisters at any time based on wildlife activity, or elevation (e.g. not enough tree cover to hang food safely).
Fishing Information
- A Washington State Fishing License is not required to fish in Olympic National Park except when fishing in the Pacific Ocean from shore. No license is required to harvest surf smelt.
- A Washington State catch record card is required to fish for salmon or steelhead and they must be accounted for as if caught in state waters. Fishing regulations are specific to site, species, and season. Contact the Park before setting out.
- Recreational fishing in freshwater areas of Olympic National Park is restricted to artificial lures with single, barbless hooks (exceptions may apply).
- The use of seines, traps, drugs, explosives, and nets (except to land a legally hooked fish or dip-net smelt) are prohibited.
Rules and Regulations
- There's a $15 fee to enter Olympic National Park ($30 annual pass).
- Pets are not permitted on trails. Pets are permitted in campgrounds and must be leashed at all times.
Directions to Trailhead
The North Fork Sol Duc Trailhead is located 8.1 miles south of US 101 on Sol Duc Hot Springs Road in Olympic National Park.
From Port Angeles, drive 28 miles west on US 101 to Sol Duc Hot Springs Road. Turn left (south) and drive 8.1 miles to trailhead parking on the right. The trail begins across the road.
Contact Information
Olympic National Park
600 East Park Avenue
Port Angeles, WA 98362-6798
Visitor Information: 360.565.3130
Road & Weather Hotline: 360.565.3131
Wilderness Information Center and Backcountry Permit Office (WIC)
Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center
Forks Information Station
360.374.7566 or 360.374.5877
Quinault Wilderness Information Office


text:
Missouri judge hears challenges to ballot measures
JEFFERSON CITY (AP) — With absentee voting already underway for the August election, a Missouri judge is considering whether to strike down the ballot summaries prepared for voters on proposed constitutional amendments addressing gun rights and transportation taxes.
Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem heard arguments yesterday on lawsuits claiming that the summaries prepared by the Republican-led General Assembly are insufficient because they don't mention some aspects of the measures. The lawsuit against the transportation sales tax also challenges the official financial summary, which says it would generate $480 million annually for the state and $54 million for local governments.
If Beetem rejects the ballot summaries, he could write new ones, which could invalidate any votes already cast under the current summaries. If he were to strike down the summaries without writing replacements, the measures could effectively be knocked off the ballot because the legislature is not in session to be able to approve new wording.
Attorneys representing groups in favor of the measures argued the court has no legal authority to issue orders now that absentee voting has begun. They said the lawsuits should be dismissed.
Beetem gave no timetable for when he will rule. But no matter Beetem's decision, the cases are likely to be appealed, extending the legal wrangling as the Aug. 5 election approaches.
One of the measures at issue is Constitutional Amendment 5. Its summary asks voters whether to amend the constitution "to include a declaration that the right to keep and bear arms is an unalienable right and that the state government is obligated to uphold that right?"
Among those challenging the summary are the prosecutors from the city of St. Louis and Jackson County, which includes Kansas City. Their attorneys argued yesterday that the summary omits important provisions, including that gun-control laws would be subject to strict legal scrutiny, and the measure deletes current constitutional wording allowing restrictions on concealed guns.
"It is a woefully insufficient title," attorney Heidi Doerhoff Vollet said.
Deputy Solicitor General Jeremiah Morgan, who defended the ballot summaries, said the reference to "unalienable" rights taps into common phrasing from the Declaration of Independence and encapsulates many of the measure's other provisions. "It communicates to the ordinary voter that this is important," Morgan said.
A separate lawsuit by the Missouri Association for Social Welfare challenges proposed Constitutional Amendment 7, which asks voters whether to impose a three-quarter-cent sales tax for transportation that would last for 10 years.
It contends the summary is insufficient because it omits various things, including that the state "use tax" also would be raised. The lawsuit also says the summary fails to put the tax increase in context by noting the current sales tax rate is 4.225 percent.
The challenge to the financial summary contends that lawmakers didn't have a comprehensive review of the effect on state and local revenues when they approved the total $534 million projection. It notes, among other things, that Gov. Jay Nixon's administration has projected a higher 10-year cost of $6.1 billion, and it asks the judge to order the state auditor to prepare a new financial summary.
The cases have some urgency because absentee ballots were to be available to Missouri voters beginning this past Tuesday.
In Cole County, where the court hearings were held, Clerk Marvin Register said his ballots did not arrive until yesterday. But by mid-afternoon yesterday, he said, two people already had cast absentee votes.


text:
System Optimization and PC Performance
She has passed away. Condolences to all her family and friends.
Last edited by MarkFink; 08-06-2020 at 05:52 AM.
Don't believe everything you think
Well shoot.... I had a feeling something was up. I sent her a couple of emails about meeting here.
May she RIP.
VDR Join Date: March 5th, 2002
Omg! Wondering where in the world she had been lately. Last I talked to her (PM) was back in early April. She said she and her brothers were fine; and they had just left for Daytona.
Wow, so sad!
RIP sweet Martha. <BigHug>
Security Planner (Bruce Schneier advisor)
Guide to Not Getting Hacked
Surveillance Self-Defense
Digital Security Low Hanging Fruit
DSaP for Human Rights Defenders
Oh no! That's so sad RIP
Ultimate Boot CD 5 Guide
Sorry to hear about this.
I left a message for her daughter in the above thread in case you all haven't seen it:
And then a day later a link to this thread.
Thanks Mark.
Ditto .... Might want to edit one of your posts over there and brag about how we've known here since 2002.
I'm a newbie member and can't edit but if they click the link to come here it's mentioned above in your post.
It's very, very sad news
thank you , i know she loved being apart of these pages it kept her going, for sure
this is marthas daughter terri , thank you all for careing so much for her, i could not seem to get in on this other then using her acct. i know she loved VD so much she was in this forum when she lived with me in texas and i heard all about you all,
Hello Terri, yes I remember her mentioning you. Hard to fathom that she's gone already. Sooo sad. Condolences.
I set up a small memoriam for Martha in the VRDR lounge and sent Terri a PM about it in the Pentax forum. I also sent Murf a PM @ VRDR to let him know about Martha.
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text:
NBC has given the go-ahead for a third season of its Who Do You Think You Are? reality series. The show follows celebrities as they travel far and wide to trace their ancestral roots. Celebrities that have taken part thus far include Sarah Jessica Parker, Emmitt Smith, Matthew Broderick, Brooke Shields, Susan Sarandon, Spike Lee, Vanessa L. Williams, Tim McGraw, Rosie O'Donnell, and Kim Cattrall. Lisa Kudrow is the executive producer and has also appeared on camera, traveling as far as Poland.
Who Do You Think You Are? started off season one with a 1.6 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 6.85 million viewers. By the end of the season, the ratings had fallen to a 1.2 in the demo and 5.21 million. Still, NBC opted to bring it back for another season.
Three episodes of season two have aired so far and have averaged a 1.3 rating and 6.6 million viewers. Those aren't great numbers but apparently good enough for a Friday night timeslot. There are five more episodes to go for season two which is expected to wrap in early April.
What do you think? Do you like the Who Do You Think You Are? series? Glad to see it renewed?
Image courtesy NBC.