It is pretty hard to be less popular than Congress these days… But the NSA is trying real hard to achieve that honor.

Case in point:

When Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont sent a letter to the NSA last Friday asking whether the agency spies on members of Congress, the agency’s response was less than comforting.

The agency assured Senator Sanders that “Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons.” 

Given revelations over the past year concerning the scope of the NSA’s dragnet surveillance and data collection practices, we at USDemocrazy would guess those “protections” don’t amount to much.

Check out Conor Friedersdorf’s piece in The Atlantic explaining just how disturbing this is.

Setting aside the danger of an executive agency abusing the power to spy on members of the legislature, this development just reminds us how expansive—and seemingly unchecked—the NSA’s powers have become.

Will Congress eventually reign in the NSA? Or is the surveillance state becoming too powerful to control?

Join UMBC as we strive to recycle more than ever! Last year we saw our recycling rates climb to an all time high: 40%! Let's beat not only our record, but other schools' too!

RecycleMania is a friendly 8 week long recycling national competition between colleges and universities! In the spirit of the competition, we ask that recycling fans help promote Recyclemania, so we can recycle more of our waste, and reduce the amount of waste we create!

Sustainability leaders and Facilities at ReSET (Retriever Recycling Team) have put together an amazing schedule of events, which can be found here!

Each week, right here, you can find out the latest current recycling and waste data! Find out how we rank, and and if we improve our rates from week to week!

Take a moment to learn all about what, how and why to recycle here at UMBC!


UMBC Recyclemania is supported by the Recycling Promo/Events Team, a partnership between Student Affairs and Facilities Management. For more information about ReSET or to join in this partnership, contact Donna Anderson at ext. 5-2283 or email recycle@umbc.edu

ReCet would be glad to bring recycling bins, displays, informational materials, activities and pledges to events throughout this period, and is looking for event cosponsors. Email sustainability@umbc.edu or recycle@umbc.edu if interested!

RSVP on Facebook

The MBUI Working Group has published two Working Group Notes.

• Introduction to Model-Based User Interfaces, as an introduction to Model-Based User Interfaces covering the benefits and shortcomings of the model-based approach, a collection of use cases, and terminology.
• MBUI – Glossary, a glossary of terms recurrent in the Model-based User Interfaces domain. It is intended to capture a common, coherent terminology for specifications of the MBUI Working Group and to provide a concise reference of domain terms for interested audience.

Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

First there were complaints over Apple’s skeuomorphic icons and their inherent cheesiness. Then there were objections to Apple’s redesigned iO7 — once again, for cheesiness. Now, a group of animation students from Kingston University have created a 3D model village of sorts, which pictures Apple apps coming to life in all of their skeuomorphic glory.

While Apple has learned that you can’t please all of the people all of the time, this newly produced video, titled Skew, scores its share of pleasing points. Using models built from fiberboard, card stock and paper, everything from the alarm clock to the newsstand app comes to kitschy life. Their video recalls to mind that real life isn’t slick or glitch-free, and that’s okay. Skeuomorphism may have, in large part, seen its day; but that doesn’t mean realism has to fall by the wayside. In fact, if this clever video is any indication, we haven’t seen the last of it yet.

Do you think skeuomorphic design is a thing of the past? Have you used it in your own work? Let us know in the comments.

21 Premium, Responsive, One-Page HTML5 Templates – only $19!

The CSS Working Group and the SVG Working Group have published a Last Call Working Draft of Compositing and Blending Level 1. Compositing describes how shapes of different elements are combined into a single image. Previous versions of SVG and CSS used Simple Alpha Compositing. In this model, each element is rendered into its own buffer and is then merged with its backdrop using the Porter Duff source-over operator. This specification defines a new compositing model that expands upon the Simple Alpha Compositing model by offering additional Porter Duff compositing operators; advanced blending modes which allow control of how colors mix in the areas where shapes overlap; and compositing groups. In addition, this specification defines CSS properties for blending and group isolation, and defines the ‘globalcompositeoperation’ as specified in HTML Canvas 2D Context, Level 2. Comments are welcome by 28 January 2014. Learn more about the Style Activity and the Graphics Activity.