A device that looks like a smartphone is making supermarket shoppers—and stores—happier. Perched on the handle of the shopping cart, it scans grocery items as the customer adds them to the cart. Shoppers like it because it helps avoid an interminable wait at the cashier. Retailers like it because the device encourages shoppers to buy more. With the system called Scan It—in use at about half of Ahold USA's Stop & Shop and Giant supermarkets in the Northeast—shoppers scan and bag their own groceries as they navigate the aisles, while a screen keeps a running total of their purchases. About a dozen times per shopping trip, the device lets out a "Ka-ching" as an electronic coupon appears on the screen. "Last week, right after I scanned coffee, I got a coupon for coffee creamer, which I needed," says Patty Emery, a Caldwell, N.J., dental assistant, who estimates she shaves 20 minutes off her weekly grocery shopping trip at Stop & Shop. "It is really cool." Stores have been under siege in recent years, not just from the rise of online shopping but also from the way mobile phones empower people to compare their store's prices, item by item, with a rival store nearby. Now, stores are fighting back with their own mobile technology. Shoppers who use the Scan It system spend about 10% more than the average customer, says Erik Keptner, Ahold's senior vice president for marketing and consumer insights. He attributes this to targeted coupons and the control consumers feel while using the Scan It . Ahold says dedicated self-checkout stations for Scan It users are becoming more common as the devices become more popular. In such cases, wait time, if any, would be short because customers have already done the time-consuming chore of scanning and packing up groceries. Retail experts predict that before long most of these mobile shopping gadgets will be supplanted by customers' own smartphones. Ahold is testing a way for customers to download Scan It software directly into their own iPhones and is exploring ways for customers to use smartphones to pay. Starbucks is already taking steps toward a digital-wallet model. Sam Stovall, a Dallas computer software consultant, bought a Starbucks gift card and entered its number into the Starbucks app on his iPhone. Each morning, after placing his order, he calls up the bar code on his phone and flashes it in front of a scanner. A second later his phone tells him how much is left on his card. "If it was up to me, I would pay for everything with my phone," Mr. Stovall says. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703421204576329253050637400.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_lifestyle

Where does the digital age leave the librarian? The answer: Even when a tool has been built to search this data, whether the tool was a card catalogue, the Dewey Decimal system, or a search tool like Google or Westlaw, you have always needed the expertise of a librarian to teach you and help you to use that tool effectively. These search skills can't be encoded fully into a tool. These skills, instead, are programmed into the librarians who oversee a collection. They come from the years of training and experience a librarian has moving through the very specialized knowledge of a law library. They come from the mind of a librarian. Editor's Note: After 38 years at the Law School, Law Library Director Margaret Leary will retire in July. Her book, Giving It All Away: The Story of William W. Cook & His Michigan Law Quadrangle, is scheduled to be published later this year. Leary will remain in an academic environment after her retirement; she has been accepted to the M.A. program in creative writing at Eastern Michigan University.
http://www.law.umich.edu/quadrangle/spring2011/specialfeatures/Pages/WhithertheLawLibrarian.aspx#5

Claims of connections between media piracy and narcotrafficking, arms smuggling, and other “hard” forms of organized crime have been part of enforcement discourse since the late 1990s, when the IFPI began to raise concerns about the transborder smuggling of pirated CDs. In 2003, the secretary general of Interpol, Ronald Noble, “sound[ed] the alarm that Intellectual Property Crime is becoming the preferred method of funding for a number of terrorist groups”. In 2008, the US attorney general, Michael Mukasey, declared that “criminal syndicates, and in some cases even terrorist groups, view IP crime as a lucrative business, and see it as a low-risk way to fund other activities”. In 2009, the RAND Corporation published what is to date the most exhaustive statement on this subject: a 150-page, MPAA-funded report on film piracy’s links to organized crime and terrorism. Commercial-scale piracy is illegal, and its clandestine production and supply chains invariably require organization. It meets, in this respect, a minimal definition of organized crime. http://piracy.ssrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Does-Crime-Pay.pdf

Piracy is a war-like act committed by non-state actors (private parties not affiliated with any government) against parties of a different nationality, or against vessels of their own nationality at sea, and especially acts of robbery and/or criminal violence at sea. The term can include acts committed on land, in the air, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against persons traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator (e.g. one passenger stealing from others on the same vessel). The term has been used to refer to raids across land borders by non-state agents. Piracy should be distinguished from privateering, which was authorized by their national authorities and therefore a legitimate form of war-like activity by non-state actors. This form of commerce raiding was outlawed by the Peace of Westphalia (1648) for signatories to those treaties. A 2011 report published by Geopolicity Inc called The Economics of Piracy, investigated the causes and consequences of international piracy, with a particular focus on piracy emanating from Somalia. The report asserts that piracy is an emerging market in its own right, valued at between US$4.9–8.3 billion in 2010 alone, and it establishes, for the first time, an economic model for assessing the costs and benefits of international piracy. The report states that the number of pirates could double by 2016, increasing by 400 each year. This is being fuelled by attractive financial incentives with Somali pirates earning up to US$79,000/year; equating to almost 150 times their country’s national average wage. Read about piracy from ancient to modern times at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Library Network has been named Federal Library/Information Center of the Year by the Library of Congress. The award recognizes outstanding, innovative, and sustained achievements during fiscal year 2010 by a federal library or information center. EPA’s library network is an essential information partner with EPA staff and the public to support transparency, decision making, environmental awareness, and protection of people’s health and the environment. In FY2010, EPA libraries worked together to digitize 7,500 agency publications, adding to the growing inventory of more than 45,000 digital documents available to the public at no cost. Serving as a point of contact for public inquiries, EPA libraries collectively addressed nearly 9,000 public reference questions and loaned more than 8,000 documents, saving taxpayers an estimated $266,000. The Federal Library and Information Centers Committee (FLICC) of the Library of Congress gives the award to both small libraries/information centers (with a staff of 10 or fewer federal and/or contract employees) and large libraries/information centers (with a staff of 11 or more). EPA’s National Library Network is named in the large category. http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/092e65193cf4f13e8525789300531ea0!OpenDocument For information on the EPA National Library network, see: http://www.epa.gov/libraries/

The Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely. It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose 2003 attempt to suppress photographs of her residence inadvertently generated further publicity. Similar attempts have been made, for example, in cease-and-desist letters, to suppress numbers, files and websites. Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks. Mike Masnick of Techdirt coined the term after the singer and actress, citing privacy violations, unsuccessfully sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for US$50 million in an attempt to have an aerial photograph of her mansion removed from the publicly available collection of 12,000 California coastline photographs. Adelman said that he was photographing beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the government sanctioned and commissioned California Coastal Records Project. As a result of the case, public knowledge of the picture increased substantially; more than 420,000 people visited the site over the following month. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

The prehistoric temples of Malta are unique in all the world. They are the oldest standing stone structures which remain to us from ancient times. The temples date from 4000 - 2500 BC. They are older than Stonehenge, older than the Pyramids. Excellently preserved, they were covered with soil from early times and ignored by the long march of history. They were rediscovered and carefully restored by European and native Maltese archaeologists beginning in the 19th century. The major temple complexes are designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Little is known about the people who built these megalithic temples. The original inhabitants of the Maltese Islands probably crossed over by sea from Sicily, which lies 58 miles to the north, sometime before 5000 BC. http://www.art-and-archaeology.com/malta/malta.html

The Maltese archipelago, situated in the Mediterranean Sea, consists of mainly three islands: Malta, Gozo and Comino. The archipelago is named after Malta which is the largest island of the group. Malta is the smallest country of the European Union in the centre of the Mediterranean and enjoys sunny weather nearly all the year. Influenced in history by many cultures, it has enjoyed its independence since 1964. The Republic of Malta consists of Malta and its smaller sister Gozo and the tiny island of Comino. http://www.seemalta.net/MalteseIslands.aspx

Comino, a small island set between the bigger islands of Malta and Gozo, owes its name to the wild fennel (cumin) which grows in this territory. http://www.malta-turismo.com/web/en/malta/comino_blue_lagoon.html

Easy pie crusts Mix 2 tbsp. melted butter with coconut/wheat germ/ crushed crackers/ground nuts/cookie crumbs

Over the last several years, the prospect that non-lawyers would be able to participate in the ownership of American law firms has emerged from the British Commonwealth. Australia already allows this and it will soon be permitted in England, where the 2007 Legal Services Act authorizing new alternative business structures for solicitor firms has cleared the way for such firms to list on the London Stock Exchange or Alternative Investment Market. Similar changes are happening in the U.S. already. A bill pending in the North Carolina Senate would allow 49-percent non-lawyer ownership. The District of Columbia already permits non-lawyer ownership to the extent of 25-percent interest in a firm, possibly because more large firms are employing non-lawyer lobbyists in Washington. The Washington Post recently called this an "uneasy marriage," because non-lawyer lobbyists can be treated like second-class citizens in law firms, not least because typically they are paid by retainer rather than the standard hourly rate. Allowing such professionals to have an ownership stake could change all that. The use of professional lobbyists illustrates how law firms have expanded and are now very large organizations. In order to grow, they need additional capital, which is best raised in the capital markets, not from individual partners of law firms. Capital market ownership means non-lawyer ownership. With large law firms looking more and more like their corporate clients, is it still a stretch to suggest that law firms should raise outside capital? http://www.legalnews.com/detroit/948079/