Friday, July 5, 2013

Logo


A logo is a perspicuous glyph or symbolic, identifying mark that conveys origin, identity, or ownership. The main function is to elicit recognition. The object of a logo is to act as a mnemonic device and identifier, to communicate a desired thought or feeling, and to generate a desired emotional response.  There are three basic types of logos:  (1) Iconic/Symbolic  Icons and symbols are compelling yet uncomplicated images that are emblematic of a particular company or product.  (2)  Logotype/Wordmark   A logotype, commonly known in the design industry as a "word mark", incorporates your company or brand name into a uniquely styled type font treatment.  (3) Combination Marks   Combination Marks are graphics with both text and a symbol/icon that signifies the brand image that you wish to project for your company or organization.  Concise text can complement an icon or symbol, providing supplemental clarity as to what your enterprise is all about.  See examples at:  http://www.logodesignsource.com/types.html 

“The National Park libraries,” says Nancy Hori, supervisory librarian at the National Park Service (NPS) Pacific West Regional Library in Seattle, “are in some of the most beautiful and sacred areas of the United States.  The remote locations, often in historical buildings without climate control, present many challenges for keeping materials safe and secure.”  As part of the NPS, they are government and public libraries, house special collections, and in many cases serve as museum libraries.  See information on five such libraries at:  http://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/article/greetings-america%E2%80%99s-national-park-libraries

June 20, 2013  The food stamp program is now formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  The name “food stamps” was dropped after the government replaced the paper stamps with a plastic Electronic Benefits Transfer card that is refilled every month.  Retailers that accept SNAP benefits must sell foods from the four staple food groups; the benefits cannot be used for beer, wine, liquor or tobacco products.   The most recent monthly USDA statistics show that the number of food stamp recipients has topped 47 million, an increase of nearly 70 percent since 2008.  The average monthly benefit for one person is $133.44, which is where the $4.50 a day figure comes from.   But note that the name of the program refers to “supplemental” assistance.  SNAP is not intended to be the only source of income for food.  According to the USDA, about 75 percent of SNAP participants use their own money, in addition to SNAP benefits, to buy food.  USDA data show that only 20 percent of SNAP participants have no income, while the rest either earn wages or receive government assistance.  (The SNAP benefits are reduced according to a formula that lowers the maximum benefit by 30 percent of net income; about 32 percent of households with children receive the maximum benefit.)  The data also show that SNAP recipients spend a larger share of their overall income on food than nonparticipants with a similar income.  Moreover, the maximum monthly benefits can quickly climb as the size of the household grows.  A family of four, for instance, could receive as much as $668 a month for food.  Indeed, households with children receive 71 percent of all SNAP benefits.  Judging from the lawmakers’ tweets, some are assuming the $4.50 means that just $1.50 can be spent per meal.  That certainly might be difficult with take-out food, but SNAP generally is intended to be used to buy food for home-cooked meals.  The USDA has created official food plans that represent what it describes as “a nutritious diet at four different cost levels.”  The maximum SNAP benefit is intended to cover nearly 114 percent of the “Thrifty plan,” the lowest-cost option, which for a family of four would cost between $551 and $632 a month.  The three other plans cost progressively more.  USDA also publishes an extensice list of recipes  http://recipefinder.nal.usda.gov/  that can be used to produce a healthy low-cost meal. A search for dishes costing $4.50 or less turned up 444 options, many of which were for eight or more servings.  Dishes costing less than $1.50 produced 116 results.  Glenn Kessler  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-snap-challenge-the-claim-that-food-stamp-recipients-get-by-on-450-a-day/2013/06/19/110f6b14-d925-11e2-a016-92547bf094cc_blog.html?hpid=z4 

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. 
What keeps you going isn't just some fine destination but the road you're on and the fact you know how to drive.  Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver

Animal Dreams was awarded the Pen/USA West Fiction Award and the Edward Abbey Award for Ecofiction, and it was named an American Library Association Notable Book, the Arizona Library Association Book of the Year, and a New York Times Notable Book.  Find links to essays and reviews at:  http://www.kpl.gov/reading-together/2008/book.aspx 

North America, the planet’s 3rd largest continent, includes 23 countries and dozens of possessions and territories.  It contains all Caribbean and Central America countries, Bermuda, Canada, Mexico, the United States of America, as well as Greenland--the world’s largest island.   Read more and see graphics at:  http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/na.htm

Hawaii is approximately 2,550 miles southwest of Los Angeles, in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean.  Politically it is part of the United States in North America, but geographically because of its isolated location it is not considered part of any continent.  http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/namera.htm 

In computing, a mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface.  Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons.  The trackball, a related pointing device, was invented by Tom Cranston, Fred Longstaff and Kenyon Taylor working on the Royal Canadian Navy's DATAR project in 1952.  It used a standard Canadian five-pin bowling ball.  It was not patented, as it was a secret military project.  Independently, Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) invented the first mouse prototype in 1963, with the assistance of his lead engineer Bill English.  They christened the device the mouse as early models had a cord attached to the rear part of the device looking like a tail and generally resembling the common mouse.  Engelbart never received any royalties for it, as his employer SRI held the patent, which ran out before it became widely used in personal computers.  The invention of the mouse was just a small part of Engelbart's much larger project, aimed at augmenting human intellect via the Augmentation Research Center.  The earliest known publication of the term mouse as a computer pointing device is in Bill English's 1965 publication "Computer-Aided Display Control".  The online Oxford Dictionaries entry for mouse states the plural for the small rodent is mice, while the plural for the small computer connected device is either mice or mouses.  The term mice was seen in print in "The Computer as a Communication Device", written by J. C. R. Licklider in 1968.  The fourth edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language endorses computer mice as the correct plural forms for computer mouse.  Some authors of technical documents may prefer either mouse devices or the more generic pointing devices.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_(computing) 

See a history in photos of Doug Engelbart's work at:  http://www.dougengelbart.org/history/pix.html 

Douglas C. Engelbart (born January 25, 1925 in Portland, Oregon and died July 2, 2013 in Atherton, California) read an article "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush in a library towards the end of World War II, and it set him on his life's work.  The idea of a pointing device that would roll on a desk occurred to him while attending a computer graphics conference in 1964.  In 1968 he set the computing world on fire when he demonstrated a mouse before more than a thousand computer scientists at a conference in San Francisco.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/technology/douglas-c-engelbart-inventor-of-the-computer-mouse-dies-at-88.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 

As We May Think, article by Vannevar Bush, The Atlantic, July 1, 1945

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