This past Sunday, United States Secretary of State John Kerry departed for his overseas trip to Europe and the Middle East.

On Secretary Kerry’s agenda are close U.S. allies and partners: Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar

But WAIT. Isn’t he forgetting an important friend?  Israel…?

How can the US Secretary of State not visit Israel, our strongest democratic ally in the Middle East, on a diplomatic trip to Europe and the Middle East?!

Apparently, Secretary Kerry’s actions are in no way atypical.  In fact, only four of the last eleven presidents visited Israel during their time in office, two of which waited until their second term to do so. 

Harry Truman: no visit

Dwight Eisenhower: no visit

John Kennedy: no visit

Lyndon Johnson: no visit

Richard Nixon: sixth year of presidency

Gerald Ford: no visit

Jimmy Carter: third year of presidency

Ronald Reagan: no visit

George H.W. Bush: no visit

Bill Clinton: 4 visits—in the second, third, fourth and sixth years of his presidency

George W. Bush: 2 visits—in the eighth year of his presidency

(President Obama also did not visit Israel during his first term, but is set to voyage to the Promised Land this spring). 

Some argue that visiting Israel is not a pressing concern because of our strong ties.  US-Israeli trust and cooperation does not necessarily require our officials to meet face to face. 

Is our relationship with Britain not just as strong?  And France?  The US maintains a strong, if not just as strong, bond with either country as it does with Israel, and yet they are not forgotten on official diplomatic trips. 

Perhaps the United States’ priorities have changed.  After all, Former Secretary Hillary Clinton made her way to our close friend on her first overseas trip as Secretary of State. 

As President Barack Obama said during his first presidential campaign,

“[America] is a strong friend of Israel’s.

If you were friends with someone for 65 years, wouldn’t you at least say hello if you walked down their street?

Name:  Kate Hunsicker ’14
Majors: English and Dance
Scholarships: Alumni Association Scholarship (Legacy), Senatorial Scholarship, UMBC scholarship

Q: Why did you decide to attend UMBC?
A:  I decided to come to UMBC because this school was able to offer me everything that I wanted. I wanted a mid-sized campus, in-state and not too far from home, where I could major in both Dance and English. My dad, uncle, and older brother all went to UMBC, so I knew that it was a great school and that I would be happy in the community life here.

Q:  What has been the most amazing discovery you’ve made so far as a student here?
A:  The most amazing discovery that I have made at UMBC so far is the way that I’ve been able to extensively pursue both Dance and English at a school that is known for STEM. I have been able to balance both of my passions, and even go far beyond classroom learning for both of them. In dance, I have had many opportunities to perform since my first semester here, and have even been performing with Baltimore Dance Project (a professional faculty company) since my freshman year. I was also awarded the Summer Research award for dance from the department, and was able to study in New York for three weeks under Doug Varone and his dance company. In English, I was recommended to become a tutor and now I work in the UMBC Writing Center. Now, as an experienced tutor, I have been given the opportunity to become a Writing Fellow. I will be starting next semester and some fellow tutors and I will be assisting English 100 teachers and facilitating the writing lab sections of the Composition 100 classes. I am extremely excited about all of my opportunities and very happy that UMBC has allowed me to fulfill all of these things in both of my areas of interest.

Q:  Tell us about a class or club that has really opened your mind (and why)…
A:  In the beginning of my freshman year, I joined a club called Intervarsity. This is one of the many Christian groups on campus, and it has really opened my mind and been a good thing for me on campus. Intervarsity has given me a place of refuge and rest, the opportunity to grow spiritually at school with people my age, and has allowed me to meet many amazing, supportive people; some of whom have become my closest friends. For the past two years, it has also given me the opportunity to be a leader in a campus club, and has influenced my abilities to speak in front of people, to manage my time, and to care for others on our campus.

Q:  What do you hope to do after graduation, and why?
A:  After graduation, I am hoping to find a way to incorporate both dance and English into my life/career. I am interested in finding an editing position for a magazine or for some type of published work. If I find a full time job in such a position, I would still like to be performing for dance with a local company or maybe even in community theater, as I also love to sing and act. I am also interested in the idea of writing dance criticism as a way to combine both of my interests and even if that is not a full time pursuit, I could potentially do freelance dance writing while performing or working at another job.

Q:  How important is it to you as a student to get scholarship support?
A:  As a student, it is so important to get scholarship support. Everyone wants to be able to complete their education and pursue their dreams, but financial concerns are always looming regarding student loans and making payments. Receiving scholarships significantly eases the financial burden of the college student, and allows us to carry out our studies with less stress about money and loans.

Q:  What would you say to the alumni who contributed to your scholarship?
A:  I would very much like to thank the alumni who contributed to my scholarship. Their generosity has given me the opportunity to continue my studies with less financial stressors above my head. Their willingness to make such contributions is an indication of the wonderful opportunities that they themselves once had at UMBC, and I think it is amazing that they want to help current UMBC students have an experience at this school as beneficial as their own experience here.

How could I not link to this CSS trick saturated talk by Lea? Great follow up to the original.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

More CSS Secrets is a post from CSS-Tricks

For the larger promotional boxes in the design of Uniqlo.com, they use animated stripes that reveal on hover. It's kind of awesome, if you ask me. Perhaps because they wanted to share the awesome with as many different browsers as possible, they used an animated GIF to produce the effect. It's fairly small at 4K, but as we know around here, it is also another HTTP request. Let's reproduce the effect in a progressive enhancement style: less browser support but more efficient.

The HTML

We could do this with only the parent element, changing it's background to animated stripes on :hover. However, the stripes on Uniqlo fade in, they don't just instantly appear. Unfortunately for us, there is no such thing as background-opacity that we could transition to help us.

We could use the ::before pseudo element instead and use opacity to fade the whole thing in and out, but the support for transitions on pseudo elements is just only starting to get OK.

Just this once, let's use an additional element to handle our special background:

<div class="product">
      <div class="product-hover"></div>
    
      <!-- all the product information and stuff -->
    </div>

The CSS

The .product will have some padding, which essentially reveals the big thick white border where the animated stripes will appear.

.product {
      background: white;
      padding: 20px;
      position: relative;
    }

Then if we absolutely position our .product-hover to each corner, the background of it will show up in that 20px padding around the product. By default, we'll make the opacity 0 so it's not seen.

.product-hover {
      position: absolute;
      top: 0;
      left: 0;
      right: 0;
      bottom: 0;
      opacity: 0;
    }

The Stripes

Now to create that "barber pole" animated stripe, we need to use a 45 degree linear gradient to create a repeatable square that ends up looking like stripes. Here's the code for that.

.product-hover {
      background-size: 30px 30px;
      background-image: linear-gradient(
        45deg, 
        rgba(black, 0.1)  25%, 
        transparent       25%, 
        transparent       50%, 
        rgba(black, 0.1)  50%, 
        rgba(black, 0.1)  75%, 
        transparent       75%, 
        transparent
      );  
    }

There are also some diagonal stripes available at Lea Verou's pattern gallery. The code is a bit lighter as well, but don't allow the background to be white or transparent.

Here's how the gradient works:

That's all standard CSS except the "black" in the RGBa value, that's made possible through Sass.

That 30px ✕ 30px block is perfectly repeatable and will fill the .product-hover with stripes.

Revealing the Stripes

It's an element onto itself, so it's very easy:

.product:hover .product-hover {
      opacity: 1;
    }

That's an instant-reveal though. To get the fade-in fade-out going, we set a CSS3 transition.

.product-hover {
      transition: opacity 0.3s ease;
    }

Animating the Stripes

We need animation here (as opposed to transition), since we want the stripes to animate indefinitely.

Moving the background-position around on the .product-hover will change where our little 30px ✕ 30px box begins, and thus appear to be moving like a barber pole.

@keyframes barberpole {
      from { background-position: 0 0; }
      to   { background-position: 60px 30px; }
    }

Then we set that animation on the element, having it move in a linear fashion (no easing) and repeat indefinitely:

.product-hover {
      animation: barberpole 0.5s linear infinite;
    }

Demo

And done! Demo on CodePen:

Check out this Pen!

Uniqlo Stripe Hovers is a post from CSS-Tricks

These start-ups could steal the spotlight at Austin's big tech show.

March brings South by Southwest Interactive, which means that some 25,000 entrepreneurs, marketers, journalists, and engineers will make their annual pilgrimage to Austin. Because the conference draws so many tech types together under one roof--and because both Twitter and Foursquare took off at previous festivals--SXSW has become the go-to destination for tech start-ups looking to make it big.

But conference buzz doesn't always lead to instant success. For instance, Highlight, a mobile app that lets you connect with people nearby, was one of the most hyped start-ups at SXSW last year. It failed to attract a large following after the event.

In other words, predicting the winners of SXSW is more art than science, but we'll hazard a few guesses. Here are four of the coolest start-ups heading south this year:

Leap Motion
Leap Motion might just have the must-see product demo at SXSW this year. The start-up developed a device, about the size of a flash drive, that lets you control your computer with hand gestures. Think Minority Report meets the Xbox Kinect--only cheaper, smaller, and more precise. The $70 controller--available for presale online--can track finger movements to up to one-hundredth of a millimeter. The San Francisco company, which launched in 2010, raised about $30 million in January, bringing its total funding to about $45 million. The company will begin shipping its first sensor in March--lining up nicely with SXSW.

Where to go: Leap Motion co-founder David Holz is set to speak at the Austin Convention Center on March 9. It's the featured session in that time slot, so get there early if you want a good seat.

Memoto
Memoto may be one of the most curious start-ups at SXSW this year. The Swedish company created a tiny "life-logging" camera, designed to be worn all day, every day to document the wearer's experiences. The device, which clips to a shirt collar or a lapel, takes two geotagged photos a minute. The photos can then be uploaded to a computer via a USB cable for sharing online. Memoto was one of 48 companies selected as finalists for this year's SXSW Innovative Accelerator awards.

Where to go: Memoto's CEO, Martin Källström, and his co-founders will demonstrate the product on March 11 at the SXSW Startup Village (a.k.a. the fourth floor of the Hilton across the street from the conference).

Eevzdrop
Eevzdrop is a bit like Instagram, but for sharing audio. The app lets users record a sound bite; add a location, text, and a photo; and share it with friends. Rommel Paraiso, CEO and co-founder of the Chicago-based company, is hoping to gain real traction among music bloggers and reviewers at the music portion of the festival.

Where to go: Check out Eevzdrop at the Startup Village, or email Paraiso for a private demo: rommel@eevzdrop.com.

OUYA
OUYA, a yet-to-be-launched video-game system, is expected to make its official debut at SXSW this year. An open-source competitor to Xbox and PlayStation, OUYA got its start on Kickstarter last year. Founder Julie Uhrman, a video-game industry veteran, reached her $950,000 funding goal in eight hours. The project fetched a total of $8.6 million, the second-highest amount ever raised on Kickstarter. Uhrman hired design guru Yves Behar, founder of fuseproject, to develop the console.

Where to go: Uhrman is a bound-to-be-talked-about keynote speaker. Catch her on March 11 at the Convention Center.

***

The SXSW Launching Pad

Twitter: It took off at SXSW 2007. Tweets tripled to 60,000 a day.

Foursquare: It launched at SXSW 2009. Months later, it had 60,000 users and $1.4 million in funding.