Mat Helme is an amazing illustrator and the teacher behind the new Illustrator Foundations course on Treehouse. He’s always been a hard working designer, but it was a chance design contest that lead Mat to joining Treehouse, then creating the great series “Exercise Your Creative”, and pushing the boundaries of what can be accomplished through Illustrator.

In this video interview, Mat tells us about his past, his passions, and how he became a teacher at Treehouse. Enjoy!

The post Teacher Spotlight: Mat Helme appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

In his latest opinion column for the Baltimore Sun, UMBC political science professor Thomas F. Schaller takes on accusations surrounding the recent U.S. Department of Homeland Security purchase of large quantities of ammunition (up to 1.6 billion rounds in some reports)—including claims that the Obama administration is arming itself while simultaneously trying to disarm the citizenry through gun control legislation.

In researching the purchase, Schaller found:

It turns out the order is closer to 750 million rounds and covers a five-year period and the 70,000 federal officers who require firearm certification or retraining. That’s roughly 2,200 rounds per officer per year; recreational gun users often dispense several hundred rounds during a single firing range visit.

Schaller concludes that this “scandal” is more conspiracy than legitimate critique of government overreach. He suggests that gun advocates would benefit from ignoring such distractions and instead focusing on what he identifies as real examples of government abuse of power, or addressing the risks that can come with gun ownership.

With dozens of new features, Google’s social network is becoming more like a photo service and a news site.

Despite the 190 million people that Google says use its social network every month, Google Plus has always struggled to escape Facebook’s shadow and seem like a hopping social destination.

Did you know that art played a pivotal role in Poland’s 1989 Solidarity Movement?  Solidarity was a broad anti-bureaucratic, workers-rights movement in 1980s Poland that eventually became a powerful political force. In addition to publishing over 500 newspapers and broadcasting their message via pirate radio stations, the Solidarity movement used art, particularly posters, to communicate their revolutionary message,  and even created a new school of art—The Polish Poster School—along the way.  Special Collections has a treasure trove of hundreds of posters, handouts, and newspapers. There are copies of the iconic work of graphic designer Jerzy Janiszewski (who created a style of writing known as Solidaric)  as well as Tomasz Sarnecki’s well-known poster that features an image of Gary Cooper from the 1952 film “High Noon.”

View the finding aid for this collection, now available online, for more information about the Solidarity movement and the Solidarity materials held in the Library: http://aok2.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/Solidarity/index.php.

Want to come look at the records yourself? Contact Special Collections to set up an appointment at x52353 or speccoll@umbc.edu. We also hold open research hours on Monday through Friday, 1pm to 4pm, with additional hours from 4pm to 8pm Thursday nights.

This post was written by Theresa Donnelly