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Earlier this month, a tweet from Slate political reporter Dave Weigel saying "Gov. Scott Walker just left ATR/Norquist Xmas Party" was the first news to most Wisconsin residents that their Governor was out of the state and attending a posh Tea Party hang with the Americans for Tax Reform bunch.
Under Wisconsin state law, the Governor can keep both official and personal calendars, as his predecessor, Democrat Jim Doyle did. But what is of particular note with regard to Walker are his claims that his opponents are using out-of-state money to fund their efforts against him when it turns out thatWalker is doing the same thing himself:
Nearly half of the $5.1 million raised by the embattled Republican governor since July 1 came from outside of Wisconsin. In all of 2010, when Walker won a hotly contested election that included a primary, just 8 percent of the more than $8 million he raised came from out of state.
Out-of-state donors accounted for $2.4 million of the amount in Walker's most recent report, or 47 percent of the total.
In all, Walker has raised $7.6 million in donations since he took office on Jan 3. Of these, $3.2 million, or about 42 percent, came from out of state.
"I've never seen any candidate — ever — get close to half their money from out of state," said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog. "I used to always be stunned when I saw a candidate for state office with 10 percent coming from out of state."
Walker seeks to frame the recall against him as "baseless" and being led by "big government union bosses," yet he is going from one conservative cocktail party to another begging for money to try to keep his job. That's where the question of his travel comes in. The Tea Party elite are kings of the 'do as I say, not as I do' approach. They are playing the same game they are trying to decry as unfair. HTRNews recently looked into Scott Walker's double calendar life:
Walker's administrative office maintains his official calendar, which includes meetings and trips to promote the state. It does not include trips the governor makes to fundraisers, nonofficial parties and other such political events.
The line separating such events, to most people, is nearly invisible. For example, the governor's trip on Nov. 10 to Phoenix to be the featured guest at the Goldwater Institute was on the official calendar. But Walker's trip to Orlando, Fla., for the Republican Governor's Conference at the end of November was not.
Officials with the Wisconsin Democratic Party said they have been forced to use mostly out-of-state websites, news stories and news releases to track the governor's travel, which has quietly taken him to California, Arizona, New York, Illinois, Iowa, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Walker's campaign staff said they do not discuss the governor's campaign schedule. His administrative staff said they are prohibited by law from doing so.
This situation is not unique to Wisconsin as other states have had issues in the past with the transparency, or lack thereof, of Governor travel:
In 2009, Virginia Republicans went after Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine for keeping secret his travel record. Kaine was also serving as head of the Democratic National Committee at the time, a job that took him out of state often.
"In the end, he had to disclose everything," Larry Sabato, a national political expert and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics said. "They always do. The bad publicity is worse than just letting people know where you're going."
Groups like the National Governors Association, the Council of State Governments and the National Conference of State Legislatures do not track rules regarding governor's travel.
But a survey of surrounding states shows a variety of approaches. Iowa's laws are not much different than Wisconsin's. But according to the state's Democratic Party, Republican Gov. Terry Branstad keeps a relatively transparent calendar.
Walker's funding revelations could add fuel to the fire that is the Wisconsin recall election. Traveling the country picking up support and donations is the job of a man running for President, not a man whose state is suffering from job losses month after month. Further,One Wisconsin Now suggests that Walker's out-of-state monies are being acquired from a small number of donors and that some are being illegally unreported:
"Scott Walker intends to win this election with huge donations from a nationwide cabal of corporate, anti-middle class extremists," said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. "No state candidate in the history of Wisconsin has gotten so much money from such a small number of wealthy donors."
Walker's report shows he amassed $4.87 million in individual contributions, 49 percent of which, or $2.39 million, came from out of state contributions. One Wisconsin Now analysis of his report shows:
**Massive concentration of high dollar donations: While Walker has more than 46,900 individual contributions, he raised $2,247,688 from those giving mega-donations of $1,000 and above. This top 1.3 percent of individual givers donated 46 percent of Walker's total itemized individual money. In fact, Walker has used the unlimited campaign finance restrictions on individual donations to amass $1,210,000 from a mere 41 contributors. This means 25 percent of Walker's individual money came from 0.00087 percent of his donors.
**Massive amounts of out of state money: Walker not only took nearly 50 percent of his individual money from out of state, his top four donors totaling $550,000, came from outside of Wisconsin. Of Walker's largest 655 contributions of $1,000 and above, 53 percent of the money from these contributions, or $1,196,600 is from outside of Wisconsin.
**Violations of reporting requirements: Walker failed to report employment information for $41,644 in 187 contributions above $100 in violation of campaign finance reporting laws. This does not include the unprecedented $154,781 in "unitemized contributions," which include no information. Walker was previously the subject of a Government Accountability Board complaint for failing to disclose the employment information for over $500,000 in 1,100 contributions in violation of the law.
This story, not unlike Walker's TV ad featuring a multi-millionaire touting the Governor's small business friendliness, shows who his few, true supporters are: wealthy donors and the Tea Party elite.
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Noshtalgia: Hunting the Elusive Kolache
A dearth of Czech bakeries in the area means a displaced Capitol Hill staffer is not alone in her excruciating longing
"Find me authentic kolache!" Shana Teehan, spokeswoman for Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, pleaded while we discussed my idea for a new, semi-regular food feature about reuniting displaced congressional staffers with the foods they miss most.
Teehan feasted on kolache, a Czech-born pastry, during her early years in Texas.
"I've never had a flavor I didn't like, whether it was a sweet, fruit-filled bun, or a savory option filled with sausage, cheese or peppers," she shared of her affinity for the flavor-filled dough balls.
A move to Alabama did nothing to diminish her habit, since Southern mainstay Shipley's Donuts dabbles in Tex-Czech delicacies as well.
But migrating here has proved excruciating. "Since moving to D.C., I've been sadly kolacheless," Teehan said.
Addie Broyles, food writer at the Austin American-Statesman, can understand that type of separation anxiety.
"Kolaches are absolutely a mainstream part of the Central Texas diet. Not quite up there with breakfast tacos, but many bakeries, even the non-Czech ones, carry them," she said of the proliferation of the grab-and-go snack. She ticked off a number of renowned Texas bakeries — The Czech Stop in West, Hruska's in Ellingeer, Weikel's in La Grange ("We Gotcha Kolache" is their tagline) — but admitted to knowing little about ex-pats developing pastry pipelines to other states.
Kolache Factory Vice President Dawn Nielsen, on the other hand, is well-versed in feeding the kolache-crazed masses. She said the Texas-based baking outfit has shipped its signature pastries to the farthest reaches of Alaska. "Some areas are so remote, overnight takes two days," Nielsen said.
She was unaware of any standing orders from Capitol Hill but dangled the hope Washingtonians might one day sample the goods. "We definitely have fans that cannot wait until we get there," she suggested.
But what to do in the meantime?
Ellicott City Via Houston
Our investigation led us to the Maryland suburbs, where we connected with Kolache Kreations co-founder Ileana Fernandez.
The native Houstonian said she moved to Maryland just less than a decade ago. And where once she could feed her pastry fix by popping into any one of her many go-to bakeries, Fernandez soon discovered she'd either have to make her own or learn to go without. "I wanted to buy them already made, but there was none to be found," she said of the initial culture shock.
Those hunger pangs eventually morphed into inspiration.
She and her husband opened their kolache-centric shop in October 2010 but were unable to crank out the promised goodies until a kitchen build-out was completed. But just knowing they were in the works was good enough for some people.
"We had customers coming in and pre- ordering them," she said.
Although she'd never worked in the hospitality industry before, Fernandez was confident that the area, with its inherently transient population, would provide an adequate customer base. "It's kind of neat that the locals have adopted us . . . and have made it their breakfast food," she said.
Fernandez said she produces around 75 kolaches — based on a family recipe she cribbed from a Czech in-law — each morning, Monday through Thursday. The baking escalates to 125 every Friday and rockets to 150 to 300 each Saturday and Sunday. She offers at least 16 different flavors per day, a roster that ranges from toothsome kielbasa- and cheddar-filled numbers to apricot- and prune-based treats.
When the mood strikes, she typically reaches for a cream cheese (she makes her own) pastry, or sausage, egg and cheddar bolstered by pickled jalapeno slices. She noted that customers tend to gravitate toward her strawberry-cream cheese creation as well as a breakfast sausage, egg and cheddar offering. Fernandez is still experimenting with seasonal varieties (she rolled out pumpkin-cream cheese kolache this past Thanksgiving) and affirmed that her boudin-packed pastries — forged from a liver-pork sausage imported directly from Louisiana — remain special-order-only.
Taste Test
We are pleased to report that Fernandez's cream cheese version (Teehan's self-described all-time favorite) is delightful. The ethereal dairy, sprinkled with cinnamon and smeared atop the semi-sweet roll, trumps your average Danish every day of the week.
A blueberry offering was even more enticing. The wide band of syrupy jelly bisects the thick but moderately fluffy roll, which also sports a thin sugar glaze.
Our sweet tooth sated, we moved into savory territory.
We devoured a breakfast banquet weaving together tender egg, slightly crispy bacon and bubbling cheddar cheese (Fernandez's default cheese; mushrooms, however, are partnered with melted Swiss) within a dulcet, cushiony roll. A kielbasa-filled offering delivered plenty of wood-smoked sausage, but we much preferred the spiciness of the jalapeno-sausage combo.
Our least favorite: the ho-hum mushroom and cheese. The roasted garlic sprinkled onto the bun was actually the best part. Adding egg into the mix, though, proved much more palatable.
Reality Czech
As the business has blossomed, Fernandez has met a whole new universe of kolache lovers — including South Dakotans, Chicagoans and Pennsylvanians — all eager to reminisce about their first time. Some of those encounters have bordered on confrontational, given that some folks have very distinct ideas about what constitutes authentic kolache.
Count Barbara Karpetova, cultural consular at the Embassy of the Czech Republic, among the strict constructionists.
"Did you say meat? Absolutely not. Kolache is a sweet thing," she declared of her native ceske kolace.
She listed the base ingredients as flour, sugar, butter, eggs and yeast, while traditional fillings include: cottage cheese with raisins, almonds and poppy paste, and plum marmalade.
"Kolache in the Czech tradition is a sweet pastry," she asserted. "There is never, ever any meat or vegetables in it."
According to Karpetova, knedliky, a Czech-style dumpling, can accommodate a much wider range of flavors, sweet or savory, a universe she said ranges from savory bacon or tangy sauerkraut-filled productions to pastry pockets bursting at the seams with frothy, warm whipped cream.
She said embassy staff must make kolaches if they ever crave them — a yearning that has at least twice benefited sweets-starved attendees at the annual Kids Euro Festival — because of the scarcity of the stuff.
"There is no such thing in American tradition," Karpetova said of the dearth of Czech bakeries here in D.C.
For the most part, Austin food blogger and Czech food ways scribe Dawn Orsak tends to agree with Karpetova.
According to her lifelong research, which began when Orsak first gobbled down the prune, apricot or poppy seed kolaches her nana would bake from scratch, "traditional" kolache fillings are restricted to fresh fruit, dried fruit, cream cheese, cottage cheese, poppy seed and nuts. The only outliers she has found would be cabbage — which she said Texans, over time, expanded to include sauerkraut — and sausage.
For now, Fernandez appears to have a monopoly in this area.
But that could change if Hill Country, a New York-based Texas-style barbecue chain with an outpost in Penn Quarter, ever decides to pluck the coveted pastry from its Hill Country Chicken carte.
"It's possible that kolaches might make an appearance on the HC Barbecue menu at some point," Hill Country owner Marc Glosserman hinted. "But we try not to duplicate menu items at restaurants."
Kolache Kreations: 10455 Frederick Road, Ellicott City, Md.; 410-988-3193; kolachekreations.com Got a long-lost repast you want found? Put our food sleuth on the case by nominating your most sorely missed meal(s) to email@example.com.
An earlier version of this article misstated the geographic origin of the barbecue restaurant Hill Country. The company is based in New York City.

subset: commoncrawl


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Washington, D.C., February 26, 2008 (PAHO)—The Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare (MSPBS) of Paraguay has reported the confirmation of 16 cases of yellow fever (YF), including three deaths. Seven of these cases, young people who visited rural areas, are from the Department of San Pedro, and are related to the jungle cycle of the virus. The other nine confirmed cases, which include 3 deaths, are from San Lorenzo Municipality, outside of Asunción. Another 15 suspected cases are being investigated.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health is taking measures to contain the disease in affected areas, and more than 1 million people who live in or travel to these affected areas have been vaccinated. The Ministry of Health obtained two million doses of yellow fever vaccine from the International Coordinating Group on Provision of Vaccines of the World Health Organization. Brazil sent 850,000 doses and Peru sent 144,000 doses of vaccines, adding to the 300,000 Paraguay had in reserve.
To control yellow fever, which is transmitted through mosquitoes, the Ministry of Health has strengthened vector control in the urban area of San Lorenzo, where high indices of infestation of Aedes were found. Fumigation and spraying activities are being carried out with 17 heavy machines in the Central Department, giving priority to the neighborhoods of Laurelty and surroundings, and syndromic surveillance activities are being carried out.
A team of experts from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), with an epidemiologist, a clinical virologist, and advisers on immunization and emergency management, has been working in Paraguay since February15, and a laboratory expert from the Institute Evandro Chagas (IEC//Brazil) is supporting the national public health laboratory in the diagnosis of yellow fever.
The President of the Republic declared a state of national emergency on February 15, and United Nations Agencies committed U$20,000 to support monitoring vaccination coverage in the Central department and national communication actions. UNICEF made logistic arrangements for the transport to Paraguay of vaccines from WHO, and the Paraguayan Red Cross and the International Federation of the Red Cross are collaborating in communication and information plans for the community. Delegations of entomologists, epidemiologists, and laboratory workers from Cuba and Venezuela are in Paraguay to support in their areas of specialty. Municipal officials are promoting environmental sanitation with the support of the army and the police, and the Ministry of Education initiated the school year, planning vaccination and vector control actions in schools.
PAHO/WHO reported the situation on 31 January as provided for in the International Health Regulations, and collaborated in arrangements for the availability, transport, and delivery of vaccines from Brazil and Peru. Two million doses of vaccines from Sanofi-Pasteur, provided by the global mechanism of WHO, arrived Feb. 24.
A $50,000 dollar project is also being executed, contributed by the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance OFDA/USAID, with $20,000 more from the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECI), for logistical support for the vaccination campaign, including supplies, reagents, laboratory equipment and support for epidemiological surveillance. PAHO has prepared a new proposal of $170,000 dollars to serve needs not covered by other sources of support. Some 1,000 posters and 3, 000 fliers on clinical care guides for cases of yellow fever are being distributed in health centers in Asunción and in areas with risk of Yellow Fever.
Other needs identified to date include resources for operations research on enzootic foci, preparation and dissemination of educational material for health workers and the general population, and resources to strengthen diagnostic capability of the Central Laboratory with an expansion of the yellow fever virology laboratory and laboratory network. Other needs include strengthening dissemination of technical criteria, treatment and procedures for patient management, additional support for to the vaccination campaign with financial resources for operational aspects of the vaccination and inputs, monitoring of the coverage and of side effects in vaccinated, support for vector control measures, and to maintain the support for processing of clinical cases and epidemiological surveillance.
Yellow fever is a zoonosis of the tropical regions of South America and Africa, which occurs in two distinct epidemiologic cycles: jungle and urban. In the jungle cycle, the virus spreads among monkeys and humans, who may be infected when they enter the jungle and are bitten by mosquitoes infected with the yellow fever virus. Urban yellow fever has long been eradicated from the Americas, with the last cases occurring in Brazil in 1942.
In 2007 and the beginning of 2008, Brazil reported an intense and extensive epizootic of Jungle Yellow Fever in 6 states and in the past two months, 26 confirmed human cases were reported in Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, and the Federal District, with 13 deaths. The affected areas have high vaccination coverage, but as part of ongoing control measures, health authorities intensified vaccination for people living in or traveling to affected areas. In Argentina, authorities reported finding dead monkeys in Piñalito Park, province of Misiones, and yellow fever in one of the primates was confirmed. Despite high vaccination coverage of the area, authorities intensified vaccination activities for previously unimmunized individuals who reside in or go to the area.
The Pan American Health Organization is providing technical support to these countries through its country offices and headquarters, in accordance with the request of the countries.


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Prof. S. Max Edelson presented one of the Eighth Biennial Virginia Garrett Lectures on the History of Cartography on October 5, 2012, at the University of Texas at Arlington. His talk, "Settling the Ceded Islands: Cartography and Colonization in the British West Indies, 1763-1786," describe how Great Britain took control over its new tropical islands–Dominica, St. Vincent, Grenada, and Tobago–after the Seven Years' War. Click here to launch the "Settling the Ceded Islands" site.
Category Archives: News
Max Edelson discusses the Catawba Deerskin Map (c. 1721) on "Backstory"
For more on the show, and how to listen, click here: http://backstoryradio.org/here-to-there-a-history-of-mapping/
To view the map, click this link, then click "add original map": http://www.viseyes.org/show/?id=69802
UVA Today on our MapScholar NEH grant
MapScholar wins NEH Digital Humanities Implementation Grant
MapScholar project receives 3-year NEH Grant to Help Scholars Publish Digital Map Collections
(July 27, 2012) — To understand how people in the past perceived geographic space, scholars have been drawn to maps as essential primary sources. Over the last thirty years, map history has undergone a revolution in interpretation as scholars have learned to analyze cartographic images as complex representations. Thanks to the Internet and the increasing availability of digitized maps scanned by libraries and archives, it is now possible to share this knowledge and these images with a much wider reading public. Two UVa digital humanities researchers have built an innovative web tool called MapScholar to make this possible, one that has just received substantial new grant support.
To develop MapScholar, a web-based tool for publishing interactive cartographic
collections, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded a three-year, $297,116 grant to S. Max Edelson, associate professor in the Corcoran Department of History, and Bill Ferster, a senior scientist at the Curry School of Education and SHANTI (Sciences, Humanities and Arts Network of Technological Initiatives).
The grant was awarded under NEH's Digital Humanities Implementation program, which seeks to expand on projects that were previously funded by the NEH. Before building MapScholar, both of the grant's principal investigators developed the ideas that made it possible with support from separate NEH Digital Humanities Start-up grants awarded in 2008. Edelson's start-up grant supported the Cartography of American Colonization Database (CACD) project, which explored the problem of how best to display digital historic maps. A 2010 Digital Innovation Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies helped Edelson continue this work. Ferster and Scot French, then at
the Virginia Center for Digital History (VCDH), used their NEH start-up grant to build HistoryBrowser (now called VisualEyes) a web-based authoring tool for creating web sites that weave together images, maps, charts, video, and data into interactive visualization (See www.viseyes.org).
These separate digital humanities projects came together in 2010, when Ferster and Edelson developed a prototype to MapScholar as part of the SHANTI cohort program designed to foster collaborations between UVa professors and digital humanities experts. MapScholar will draw heavily on SHANTI's new SHIVA initiative, which provides HTML5-based visualization tools for scholars and will be released this fall. (See www.viseyes.org/shiva).
Edelson is currently writing a book about eighteenth-century cartography that will be titled The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America before Independence (Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2014). Readers will be able to explore the full digital archive of more than 300 rare maps he has assembled to describe how Great Britain understood its new world colonies in the generation before the American Revolution.
About MapScholar
MapScholar is an interactive visualization tool for historic map collections. It offers an open-source portal that gives individual scholars the independent means of gathering high-resolution images, analyzing them in rich geospatial contexts, and using them to illustrate new interpretations in the history of cartography and related humanities fields.
MapScholar enhances traditional books and articles by making it possible–at no cost to publishers–to mount stunning web displays of map collections assembled from libraries around the world. MapScholar's key innovation is how it brings maps together-regardless of the archive in which they sit–for the purpose of generating new knowledge about human perceptions of geographic space.
MapScholar draws on the deep institutional resources for digital humanities development at the University of Virginia, particularly those at its dedicated humanities and social sciences technology units: SHANTI, IATH, and the Library's Scholars' Lab and Digital Media Lab. Based on a thoroughly distributed model of data generation and storage that depends on scholars as curators of their own information, this tool can be sustained at very low costs without major institutional investments in hardware, bandwidth, and dedicated software. It joins together data in industry-standard file formats with free and effective data serving sites such as Flickr and Google Docs to generate dynamic, on-the-fly visualizations.
For more information please contact:
S. Max Edelson
Bill Ferster
Backstory: Catawba Map (open link, then click 'add original map')
Defining Carolina
The New Map of Empire (draft site)
A large collections of more than 500 maps, plans, and charts of British North America and the West Indies. The final site will provide a full archive of images featured in S. Max Edelson, The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America before Independence (Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2014).


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11 Tasting Notes
I've had this tea for awhile, but hadn't gotten around to trying it until today. I'm afraid the spicy food I had for lunch is affecting my taste of the tea, but despite that, I like it, and look forward to trying it again. It is a very light tea, and I think it'd make a great tea to drink everyday.
180 °F / 82 °C 3 min, 0 sec


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Sightseeing and Day Tours
One of the best ways to explore and discover all that Southern Queensland has to offer is through sightseeing and day tours! iVenture Card provides loads of sightseeing options including bus tours and cruises. It also provides you with plenty of day tour options which are the perfect opportunity to relax and pack more sights into your day!


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Official list of key workers prioritised during school closures
- By Elaine Bird
- 20 March 2020
- North-West Norfolk
- Share:
The Department of Education has published a list of "key workers" whose children will be prioritised following school closures next week.
Other children who will be prioritised also include those who are "vulnerable" – defined as those supported by social care, with safeguarding and welfare needs, those on child protection plans, 'looked after' children, young carers, disabled children and those with EHC plans.
The full list of key workers are defined below:
Health and social care
This includes but is not limited to doctors, nurses, midwives, paramedics, social workers, care workers, and other frontline health and social care staff including volunteers; the support and specialist staff required to maintain the UK's health and social care sector; those working as part of the health and social care supply chain, including producers and distributers of medicines and medical and personal protective equipment.
Education and childcare
This includes nursery and teaching staff, social workers and those specialist education professionals who must remain active during the COVID-19 response to deliver this approach.
Key public services
This includes those essential to the running of the justice system, religious staff, charities and workers delivering key frontline services, those responsible for the management of the deceased, and journalists and broadcasters who are providing public service broadcasting.
Local and national government
This only includes those administrative occupations essential to the effective delivery of the COVID-19 response or delivering essential public services such as the payment of benefits, including in government agencies and arms length bodies.
Food and other necessary goods
This includes those involved in food production, processing, distribution, sale and delivery as well as those essential to the provision of other key goods (for example hygienic and veterinary medicines).
Public safety and national security
This includes police and support staff, Ministry of Defence civilians, contractor and armed forces personnel (those critical to the delivery of key defence and national security outputs and essential to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic), fire and rescue service employees (including support staff), National Crime Agency staff, those maintaining border security, prison and probation staff and other national security roles, including those overseas.
This includes those who will keep the air, water, road and rail passenger and freight transport modes operating during the COVID-19 response, including those working on transport systems through which supply chains pass.
Utilities, communication and financial services
This includes staff needed for essential financial services provision (including but not limited to workers in banks, building societies and financial market infrastructure), the oil, gas, electricity and water sectors (including sewerage), information technology and data infrastructure sector and primary industry supplies to continue during the COVID-19 response, as well as key staff working in the civil nuclear, chemicals, telecommunications (including but not limited to network operations, field engineering, call centre staff, IT and data infrastructure, 999 and 111 critical services), postal services and delivery, payments providers and waste disposal sectors.
If workers think they fall within the critical categories above they should confirm with their employer that, based on their business continuity arrangements, their specific role is necessary for the continuation of this essential public service.
If your school is closed then please contact your local authority, who will seek to redirect you to a local school in your area that your child, or children, can attend.


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Delightfully Lost: A New Kind of Wayfinding at Kew
Natasha Waterson and Mike Saunders, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, United Kingdom
In October 2010, Kew Gardens commissioned an in-depth study of visitors' motivations and information needs around its 300-acre site, with the express aim that it should guide the development of new mobile apps. The work involved over 1,500 visitor-tracking observations, 350 mini-interviews, 200 detailed exit interviews, and 85 fulfilment maps; and gave Kew an incredibly useful insight into its visitors' wants, needs, and resulting behaviours.
It turns out that most Kew visitors have social, emotional, and spiritual, rather than intellectual, motivations during their time here. They do not come hoping to find out more, and they don't want or need to know precisely where they are all the time. In fact, they love the sense of unguided exploration and the serendipitous discoveries they make at Kew—they want to become "delightfully lost."
This paper will explore how this perhaps counterintuitive idea—to help visitors become "delightfully lost"—has influenced mobile thinking at Kew. What impact has it had on mobile concept development, design, and marketing? It will then ask whether this principle might reasonably apply in other outdoor visitor attractions, museums, and galleries, using existing case studies to draw out parallels and differences.
Finally this paper will look at the results of Kew's summative evaluation of its garden app—does quantitative and qualitative data suggest we achieved our aims? And what does this mean for future mobile developments across the gardens?
Keywords: mobile, audience research, apps, evaluation, botanic garden, science
1. Introduction
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew was founded in 1759 and is both a botanic garden open to the public and a scientific research organisation. Since 2003, it has also been a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in recognition of its historic landscapes and architectural gems, including the largest surviving Victorian glasshouse in the world.
Just like a museum or gallery, Kew has collections—in this case dried specimens, plant artefacts, and archive documents. But it also has a living collection—its plant collection. This is the largest and most comprehensive living plant collection in the world, containing representatives of more than one in eight of all flowering plant species. Many of these species are endangered in their natural habitats, and Kew is increasingly involved in their conservation through projects such as the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership.
Through this living collection, which is publically displayed in the botanic gardens at Kew and Wakehurst Place, we aim to inspire visitors and transform their understanding of plant diversity, conservation, and our scientists' research.
At Kew, this means helping people explore over 300 acres of outdoor space, three warm and wet glasshouses, and collections that may be above or below ground at any particular point in time! In the past, this has been a challenging, even prohibitive, environment in which to use digital technology. But mobile technologies, especially increasingly powerful visitor-owned devices, have opened up new opportunities at Kew for both wayfinding and interpretation.
To evaluate these opportunities, Kew has conducted a number of mobile trials over recent years, ranging from rented, GPS-enabled multimedia guides such as the "Kew Ranger" to experiments with visitors' own devices, including the "Moore on your mobile" audio-guide (http://www.kew.org/henry-moore/plan/audio-guide.shtml), and a dedicated research project called "Stories at Kew" in collaboration with the BBC as part of the European Union's "Participate" project.
Figure 1: Stories@Kew research project
Credit: BBC
Building on the need that had been demonstrated by these trials, Kew decided, in 2010, to develop a "permanent" mobile app. But even having conducted a range of trials, there were still some key outstanding questions that had not been answered: What were our visitors' motivations and information needs? How did they move around Kew? And, given that this was to be distributed solely on visitor-owned devices, which groups had significant smart-phone ownership?
2. Understanding motivations, needs, and behaviors
Having consolidated existing data and feedback, it was clear that visitors' motivations were complex and dependent on a wide range of factors, many of which were independent of demographic measures such as their age or where they lived. Therefore, their behaviors would not be most usefully grouped using a typical demographic segmentation. Instead, influencing factors might include whom they visited with, why they visited, how long they had for their visit, what special exhibitions were running, what time of the year it was, and—of course—whether it was raining or sunny.
To explore this further, Kew decided to conduct a motivation-led analysis of visitors to the gardens, with the aim of correlating their expectations, motivations, needs, and behaviors. This piece of work was commissioned from a specialist firm in the field of cultural visitor attractions, Morris Hargreaves McIntyre (MHM), which had developed motivational segmentations for other attractions. In particular, their brief was to look at:
- How visitors navigated Kew, and where they encountered problems;
- How visitors used entrances and wayfinding materials, both when they first arrived and during their visit;
- The perceived needs that Kew was not fulfilling in terms of wayfinding and orientation;
- How Kew could better help visitors navigate and discover what's on offer.
Visitors were recruited in the gardens, using screening questions to ensure that a representative sample was achieved. Research was conducted at carefully chosen sampling points around the garden. These included all of the entrance gates, major attractions and facilities, and significant route intersections around the gardens.
Figure 2: Sampling points of visitor-tracking observations across the gardens
The research included over 1,500 visitor-tracking observations, 350 mini-interviews, 200 detailed exit interviews, and 85 "fulfillment maps," which tracked an entire visit.
The output of the research confirmed that although a demographic breakdown could show us who was visiting the gardens, it often did not explain why visitors came or what they needed. For example, the same person might visit as a parent on one occasion and with a friend the next time. Their motivations and needs would be completely different during these two visits.
As part of the research, a motivational segmentation was developed using the responses to key questions. This divided visitors into ten groups, of which three groups accounted for 64 percent of all visitors (see also figure 3). These three groups are shown in the following table.
Motivational segment
Social Spacers (25%)
Repeat social visitors, over 35 years of age. Use facilities with family and friends. Likely to be members. Good knowledge of gardens.
Ease of access, parking, comfort, orientation, good facilities, fun / engaging tours and activities.
Sensualists (20%)
Retired or older audience. Use signage throughout site. Visiting to experience the beauty of nature.
Unobtrusive signage, succinct interpretation, peace and quiet.
Leisure Families (19%)
Socially motivated families of mixed ages. Come more than once a year with family. Little or no knowledge of subjects covered.
Child-friendly facilities and activities, different levels of service to meet diverse age needs, fun activities.
Table 1: Key motivational segments at Kew Gardens
Each segment has different reasons for coming to Kew and different expectations of their visit, each of which MHM suggested were characterized by one of four fundamental types of motivation: social, intellectual, emotional, or spiritual.
As is evident from the following chart, the three largest segments, and indeed the majority of the other segments fit, into either the social or emotional motivation groups.
Figure 3: Motivational audience segments at Kew Gardens
The high proportion of people visiting Kew for social or emotional reasons had some significant implications. In particular, an assumption that many people approached their visit to Kew with an intellectual motivation (i.e., expecting to learn) appeared to be very wide of the mark.
However, there was evidence that people learnt more during their visit than they expected to—when asked at the end of their visit whether they had improved their knowledge, people were 10 percent more likely to respond that they had, compared to their expectation at the beginning of the visit.
Also of critical importance was evidence that a large majority of visitors neither see the need to plan nor actually do any planning at the beginning of their visit. Only 33 percent of visitors did any planning at an entrance to Kew, whilst 67 percent walked straight into the gardens without consulting any wayfinding or literature.
3. Delightfully lost: the implications at Kew
The research provided several useful principles for development of a Kew app. First, it highlighted strong reasons to select particular target audiences based on a combination of their likelihood to own a smart phone, and their propensity to look for further information during their visit.
Secondly, it offered a number of design principles for the app experience:
- Orientation should not be prescriptive: Navigation prompts are generally required "just in time" rather than at the beginning of visits;
- Whilst motivations for visiting are predominantly to relax and enjoy Kew's landscape with friends and family, knowledge acquisition does happen when an interest is found;
- There are often unexpected outcomes of individuals' visits, and this "serendipity" is viewed positively by visitors.
Together, these three design principles provided a strong steer for the way in which a mobile app could enhance people's enjoyment of Kew, and in particular tap into their propensity to explore Kew without planning. The reasons that visitors do not want to plan initially seemed surprising, but are strongly supported by the emotional motivation of visitors. Not only do they not see the need to plan, but because their visit motivation is to escape and unwind from their structured lives, they actively reject the notion of being required to plan at Kew.
Because of the motivations of visitors to reject an imposed structure to their visit, and to focus on the joy of wandering through the landscape with their companions, the metaphor of "losing themselves in Kew" or becoming "delightfully lost" in the gardens was introduced.
On further examination, development of this idea appeared to have value not only as shorthand for a visitors' motivations, but also as an organizing principle for the development of the app. By reconsidering the app as a tool to help people lose themselves rather than to organize a structured visit, the design brief for the app focused on moments when the visitor needs something, rather than the app itself dictating the structure of the visit.
As it was further developed, this design principle appeared to work on a number of levels:
- It delivered the flexibility required to address the majority of visitor needs articulated in the research;
- It created a scalable model of interaction for visitors—the app could be equally successful if it was used once or twenty times during a visit, depending on the visitor's needs;
- It clearly echoed the majority of visitor motivations;
- It did not require people to spend large amounts of time looking at their phones to follow a route. Instead, they could enjoy the landscape, and their phone could become a set of tools to help them whenever and wherever they wanted to know more.
And in practice, it led to the following key app propositions being developed.
See today
An accessible set of images that capture the essence of what's at Kew today. These include user-generated content and could feature plants, seasonal highlights, or festivals.
Figure 4: See Today recommendations in the Kew Gardens app
Although prescriptive navigation (for example, following a route) was not popular, the ability to make decisions at key intersections is important if a decision to go somewhere specific has been made. But the map needed to be customizable so that the visitor could decide what it shows.
Figure 5: Map interfaces in the Kew Gardens app
Dig deeper
A set of tools to encourage people, wherever and whenever they find something of interest, to look for more that Kew has to offer.
Although all three sections of the app respond to the design ideas outlined above, the Dig Deeper section is the most interesting in illustrating the "delightfully lost" principle. It contains three individual tools that each contribute to the principle in different ways.
Firstly, the quick response (QR) code reader is a powerful trigger tool that allows the visitor to choose when and where they want to activate a greater depth of information. Around the gardens, people can scan QR codes on plant labels to activate detailed information about that species, or on interpretation panels, triggering images and video. As an initial experiment, there are over thirty codes in the Rock Garden, over eighty on trees across the site, and a selection in the Princess of Wales Conservatory, meaning that during a typical visit there will be many opportunities to use one. The aim in the future is to distribute the codes so that when someone discovers a point of interest, there is a QR code available to scan. The key is that it is individuals' point of interest that drives the interaction.
Figure 6: QR codes on garden plant labels, and the in-app screens they activate
Secondly, the augmented reality (AR) tool aims to surface information close to you as you move around the site. It is initially focused on Kew's trees, since these cover the whole site and are of particular interest to many visitors. Using the phone's camera, GPS, and compass, information about trees close by is superimposed onto the screen, surfacing content and information about trees that you can see around you.
Figure 7: Augmented reality in the Dig Deeper section of the Kew Gardens app
Finally, the app includes a collection tool, which curators (experts, historians, celebrities, and even visitors) can use to present groups of items to visitors. The theme for each collection can be led by geography, season, person, or even narrative.
Together, these tools offer myriad ways to engage with everything that Kew has to offer—all of them initiated and controlled by the user, and in response to the user's personal and contextual needs. They support visitors losing themselves physically within the landscape and virtually within Kew's massive collections.
App marketing and promotion
Because of the research evidence that most visitors do not make decisions about their visit at the entry gate, we decided to promote the app throughout the gardens as well as at the gates. We therefore designed a range of prompts at locations which have Wi-Fi coverage and are typically "pause" spots, such as cafes. Promotion of the app was also helped significantly at launch by being showcased in the "new and noteworthy" category by the App Store.
4. Has it worked, and what's next?
How has the Kew Gardens app been received by visitors, and has it achieved the aims for which we set out? To answer this question, we can look at the results of a summative evaluation study, our app logs, and comments on iTunes.
Summative evaluation
In autumn 2011, Kew commissioned a summative evaluation study to gain a qualitative insight into how visitors used the app at Kew—information that would not readily drop out of logs.
Qualitative research aims
We wanted to discover how visitors used the app, and whether it delivered on its "delightfully lost" premise. Our particular research aims were to find out:
- In what mode visitors used the app: Did they use it as a guide, or as a means to enhance sociable, meandering exploration?
- Whether the app facilitated unexpected discovery, and if it did whether it capitalised on these moments in any way; e.g. by prompting discussion or exploration of deeper app content. If it didn't, why not?
- Whether the app helped visitors include things in their visit that they wouldn't otherwise have done (e.g., Kew's hidden gems), and what happened next if it did. If it didn't, why not?
- Whether there are were any other changes to the app that users thought would make it more satisfying or useful to use.
- Whether use of the app has any effect on the users' likelihood to pay a return visit to the gardens.
Research methods
The research was conducted over a school holiday week, on weekdays, and at weekends. Study subjects were recruited from our main target audience groups for the app, namely:
- Leisure and learning families
- Sightseers.
We also included some "Social Spacers"—an audience segment made up of older repeat visitors. Both first time and repeat visitors, and members and non-members, were included in the sample. All were iPhone users who had downloaded the app and had used it in the gardens.
We ran two focus groups, one for each of the two primary audience segments, each consisting of six to eight participants. We also conducted six accompanied visits with a follow-up interview spread across all the indentified target-audience groups.
Research findings
Technology in natural surroundings
As an introduction to the research, we asked participants what they felt about both Kew and about their iPhone—with interesting results.
In association with Kew, common words were:
- Serene, beautiful, relaxing, tranquil, yearning
- Discovery, trees, learning
- Personal, family history, nostalgic, children.
In response to the phrase, "Oh iPhone..." participants' reactions really brought home the tension between technology and nature in a landscape such as Kew.
In many respects, participants felt their iPhone was an extension of themselves:
- "I can't live without you"
- "My right arm"
- "You keep me connected"
- "Someone close."
They were addicted, but not without misgivings:
- "I never wanted you, but..."
- "Addictive, like a drug"
- "Would be nice to be without you"
- "Stay at home when I'm on holiday"
- "You go to Kew to get away from the technology. It's a last bastion."
So while there was ambivalence about using technology in such beautiful natural surroundings, in Kew's case our participants were so hooked on their iPhones that given an app, they would certainly use it.
User experience for beginners and experts
Not all of our target audience groups were app experts, and our study showed that familiarity with the platform had a big impact on user experience.
Younger sightseers were more iPhone expert and typically gave the app a thorough workout to see just what it could do. They were more likely to try out and appreciate the AR and Flickr functionality.
Family visitors experimented more gradually and only used a small part of the app's capabilities. However, they were delighted with the information in the app and used it as a way to expand their experience in the gardens and provide a learning opportunity for their children.
There was also a relationship between visitors' existing knowledge of the gardens and their expertise with the platform. This had quite major impacts on user experience, as described in Figure 8 below.
Figure 8: The interplay between knowledge of Kew and familiarity with the iPhone, and its affect on user experience
The implications of this are that we need to find a balance between providing bells and whistles for confident users, while at the same time providing an easy-to-use core functionality for the less confident. It seems we are currently doing much better at the former, and have some work to do on the latter.
The behavioural implications of technical glitches
App users were generally very positive about the idea and intention of the Kew app. However, a significant number of our study participants experienced technical difficulties associated with the download routine for app updates—an essential process to give users the latest recommendations in a seasonally changing landscape. This seemed a particular problem if visitors quickly moved away from gate arrival points (where Wi-Fi was provided) and onto a 3G signal. We suspect this was compounded by a signal black spot adjacent to the popular Palm House. There was also a bug associated with the "locate me" button on the Google-powered map, which resulted in the blue dot disappearing for a few minutes if the app had been brought from background to foreground.
Visitors were very discouraged by these technical glitches, even when associated with network conditions. They expected and wanted the app to work all the time. However, they assumed that these troubles were temporary and would be put right by Kew—possibly a reflection of their trust in the Kew brand. Such technical difficulties made visitors spend less time on the app and give up earlier than they otherwise might have done.
How did visitors use the app?
We had set out to create an app that worked with visitors' existing behaviours: an app that wouldn't take away from the sense of being wonderfully lost in nature, but would allow visitors to discover more, make serendipitous discoveries, and then capitalise on them. Did we achieve these aims?
Overall, visitors identified four clear roles for the app:
- Planning advisor
- Tempter
- Expert companion
- Navigator.
Tempter and expert companion both fit with our original aims. Planning advisor is a bonus, but navigator runs slightly counter to our previous research. Could it be that given an app, visitors have certain expectations of it that override its context and place?
How did the app perform in each of these visitor-identified roles?
The app did particularly well in offering ideas for pre-planning and encouraging visitors away from their habitual routes. The "See today" photos and "Off the beaten track" map listings were popular.
This was especially the case for mothers with young children. Typical quotes included:
- "You can navigate and play and choose walks."
- "I can show them the badger sett which I rediscovered through the app."
- "It's a bravery thing for me. I stick to my path, my daughter heads for Climbers and Creepers. It's bravery to go off the beaten track."
- "I love the source of information there. Tap on the icon, where you are."
- "Look at what's on today. Do this bit for a couple of hours. Don't do it all in one go."
- "It gives you information on the plants. You're not crowding in with 200 other people."
- "You can start at a different gate. Come in at a different gate and rediscover a grove. It's beautiful."
- "You've got something in your hand ready for next time. It encourages you to do stuff, to prepare your visit and go to new places."
In the role of tempter, augmented reality was a powerful and enjoyable tool, but it was not yet accurate to an acceptable standard. This made correct tree identification difficult. We had known this might be an issue prior to release, but had very much wanted to experiment with the potential of AR, so had written text to provide identification tips. However, this was clearly not enough, and suggests that although AR is certainly something worth pursuing at Kew, we should do so in ways that better tolerate the technology's current limitations. Whether we can do this using Layar's SDK or require bespoke development remains to be seen.
In the role of "expert companion, the app successfully deepened and enriched the experience of everyone who used it. Visitors loved to learn and understand more about plants, history, buildings, and, in particular, trees. In this regard, they wanted even more than we had provided—they wanted an explanation for anything that caught their eye! They felt the app wasn't quite there yet on this front, but thought that this was the intent and enjoyed what was there.
This feedback clearly has implications for us—there's a lot to catch the eye at Kew; how can we produce enough content to provide that added value and satisfy every visitor? Is there a role for the amateur expert and user-generated content? How much do visitors really want the expert voice of Kew's horticulturalists and scientists? It's also worth noting that this finding is counter to our original research: given an iPhone app that tempts them, visitors become information hungry.
The only role that the app did not perform well in was as a navigator. This was due to several issues, some of which were technical and others to do with the size of the device. In particular, the "blue dot" bug caused difficulties. Users also wanted compass functionality (which we have now implemented). Not many spotted the "customise" map option, which had been designed to avoid a clutter of markers. They also wanted an overview of the garden. In the future, we would like to find out more about this request, as the zoomed-out version of the map aims to provide this to some extent. It is clearly not sufficient in the eyes of visitors, however. We also suspect there is a form-factor issue at work here, which may not be resolvable on a hand-held device.
Finally, despite the map, visitors still got lost (in a bad way!) when moving from A to B. We don't know exactly why this was, although clearly the blue-dot bug had some effect. One hypothesis is that visitors need to see readily identifiable landmarks such as street names or buildings. Another is that visitors expect to be able to plot directions on a mobile map, as they can on native mapping applications. We had excluded this functionality from the app on the grounds of project aims and budget. In any case, we would have difficulty in providing either option at Kew—landmarks are often only visible when in close proximity, and although there are paths, we encourage visitors to walk across the grass and explore.
Does the app work socially?
The app worked socially for singles and couples and for mothers with young children, but the idea of social meandering with the app was not found, in practise. People preferred to use the app to decide where to go, put it down, and then consult it again when they wanted to know something. However, we are perfectly happy with this mode of use.
Does the app trigger repeat visits?
Our study found that the app is unlikely to trigger repeat visits in its own right, but it is highly likely to exert a positive force on the decision to visit; people are able to plan beforehand, see what's on, and find a new route to try.
App logs
While it's tricky to assess the qualitative aspects of app usage behaviour from logs, we can see if they corroborate our summative research.
Of the map icons, Kew's star attractions remained consistently at the top of our logs; namely the Palm House, Treetop Walkway, and Princess of Wales Conservatory. However, there were also some unexpected hits, which suggest that visitors are using the app to go off their normal routes and find new things. For example, Kew's ice house—a small, tucked-away, underground brick building that isn't even marked on Kew's paper map—has never been out of the top ten. Neither has our "badger sett"—sadly not an actual badger sett, but an underground play area for children that is at the far end of the garden, which is quite difficult to find. As both are family attractions, this seems to back up our summative evaluation findings. It also confirms that mothers with small children are a key app-user group for us.
Figure 9: Kew's ice house—an unexpected and hidden hit with users of the Kew Gardens app
Kew's formal plantings, such as our Cherry Walk and Azalea Garden, were also unexpectedly popular, out-of-the-way attractions. These are likely to appeal to gardening enthusiasts, which is interesting in the light of our original motivations study that suggested that there was a small group of intellectually motivated older visitors who had high smart-phone ownership—our "social spacers" segment.
In the future, we will also use our logs to determine which QR codes are most scanned, and the relative importance of QR and AR in getting visitors to detailed information.
Customer ratings on iTunes
Customer ratings and comments on iTunes broadly concur with our summative evaluation study and logs. Visitors are definitely not tolerant of bugs, download problems, or other technical glitches, wherever they stem from! However, they loved the AR and the fact the app was regularly updated with seasonal content.
Is "delightfully lost" a successful design principle for Kew?
Our evaluation to date shows that "delightfully lost" is a successful design principle for Kew, as demonstrated by the popularity of the app's augmented reality functionality, and reports that mother's were successfully using the map to try new paths through the gardens, even though it was not prescriptive on routes.
In many respects, though, we feel that the app so far doesn't take the possibilities of this idea far enough. Our original vision was hampered by difficulties in procurement—in our experience, the UK government's e-tendering portal actively discourages digital agencies from tendering for work. This leaves us with further work to do, but with an evaluation study that can now guide future work.
What's next?
Our number one priority is to improve the app experience for tentative iPhone users. This means it's critical that we iron out app bugs and improve download routines for app updates. Feedback on the map suggests we also need to make this easier to use, probably replicating iPhone native mapping functionality as much as we can.
For our iPhone-confident users, we need to provide fun, "wow" functionality. AR is worth further experimentation, possibly with a more playful feel.
5. Is any of this applicable elsewhere?
Knowledge of our visitors' motivations has certainly helped Kew design a better mobile app, but what of our learning could be applied elsewhere? To answer this question, it's helpful to look again at visitors' wants and needs. Are there any patterns across museums, galleries, and outdoor attractions such as zoos and heritage sites?
The first challenge here is that the visitor studies' literature describes motivational segments in a variety of ways. However, while the words vary (Moussouri, pers. comm., 2012;, Falk, 2010; Christidou, 2010; MHM, 2011; Packer and Ballantyne, 2002), some fairly consistent and common categories seem to apply. Adapted from Falk (2010):
- Emotional and spiritual – "food for the soul"
- Experience – "been there, done that"
- Intellectual – professional or hobby interest
- Facilitator – socially motivated, helping the visit of someone else in the group (e.g. child, friend on a visit)
- Exploration – curiosity-driven, open to new ideas, want something to grab their interest.
Falk (2010) proposes that visitors can be characterized by one or a combination of these motivations. He goes on to say that knowing the prevalence of motivational segments can helpfully suggest the types of experience museums and galleries need to provide in order to best satisfy their visitors' needs. This has been challenged on methodological grounds (Dawson and Jenson, 2011) but in our experience remains a useful model.
So what do we know about visitors' motivations at museums, galleries, and other visitor attractions in general? Packer and Ballantyne (2002) provide three case studies in comparison: a museum covering the natural environment and cultural history, an art gallery, and an aquarium. Significant differences were found between the motivations at the three sites. In particular, visitors to the aquarium rated social interaction and "restoration" (i.e., emotional and spiritual) goals more highly, and learning and "discovery" (i.e., exploration) goals less highly than museum and art gallery visitors.
This appears consistent with Kew's motivations study and also with a similar study carried out by MHM across Tate's sites (Kohler, pers. comm., 2012). At Tate, intellectual motivations are prevalent amongst a much greater proportion of visitors than they are at Kew. Moussouri (2012, pers. comm.) also suggests that motivations appear to cluster according to attraction type.
How does this compare with what museums are doing on mobile platforms? Tallon's (2011) and the American Association of Museums' (2011) surveys of mobile technology in museums show that the predominant form of mobile content in museums is still the audio tour, that the most common objective is to provide supplementary information, and that education departments have the most influence over content. However, as the above studies show, and as Goldman (2011) succinctly notes:
Information-seeking is one of only many potential uses of an individual's phone (compared to social utility, accessibility, status, etc.), and is not by any means the most common use (Wei and Lo, 2006). Thus visitors' perception of their phones does not immediately indicate the phone's usefulness as an interpretative device. Whether visitors are likely to use their phones for interpretation depends on their goals for their museum visit.
Kew's experience undoubtedly supports this position that visitors' motivations will vary and cluster according to attraction type, and that it is useful to design mobile experiences with these in mind. Information provision is not necessarily the most beneficial aim, and while play is another route, there are plenty of other motivations that we can tap into.
As for the question of whether "delightfully lost" might apply as an experience principle at other attractions, the evidence so far suggests it might be useful in outdoor parks, aquaria, and zoos, where planning and information-seeking are not the top priorities for visitors. However, this is said with the proviso that relevant comparative studies are relatively few to date. In the future, this may become easier—in the UK, at least—as the UK's national museums standardize their exit surveys and include questions that will segment audiences based on motivations (Kohler, pers. comm., 2012).
6. Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our two research agencies, Morris Hargreaves McIntyre and Susie Fisher Group, for conducting two extremely useful studies, our visitors for taking part in them, and our design and development agency Make it Clear and Make it Digital for responding to our findings. Particular thanks also to Theano Moussouri and Sabine Kohler for giving such helpful insights into their research.
7. References
American Association of Museums. (2011). 2011 Mobile Technology Survey. Last updated November 3, 2011. Consulted February 9, 2012. Available at: http://www.aam-us.org/upload/AAM_Mobile_Technology_Survey.pdf
Christidou, D. (2010). "Re-Introducing Visitors: Thoughts and Discussion on John Falk's Notion of Visitors' Identity-Related Visit Motivations." Papers from the Institute of Archaeology, 20, 111–122. Available at: http://pia-journal.co.uk/article/view/pia.344/59
Moussouri, T. (2012). Emails and telephone conversation regarding visitor motivations research. Personal communication. January 2012.
Kohler, S. (2012). Telephone conversation regarding visitor motivations research at Tate. Personal communication. February 2012.
Dawson, E., and E. Jensen. (2011). "Towards a 'contextual turn' in visitor studies: Evaluating visitor segmentation and identity-related motivations." Visitor Studies, 14(2), 127–140. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10645578.2011.608001
Falk, J. (2010). "Calling All Spiritual Pilgrims: Identity in the Museum Experience." Museum, January/February 2008. Available at: http://www.aam-us.org/pubs/mn/spiritual.cfm
Goldman, K.H. (2011). "Understanding Adoption of Mobile Technology in Museums." Last updated August 5, 2011. Consulted February 9, 2012. Available at: http://mobileappsformuseums.wordpress.com/
MHM (Morris Hargreaves McIntyre). (2010). Wayfinding, orientation and arrival modes at Kew Gardens. Unpublished report.
Packer, J., and R. Ballantyne. (2002). "Motivational Factors and the Visitor Experience: A Comparison of Three Sites." Curator: The Museum Journal, 45(3), 183–198. Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2151-6952.2002.tb00055.x/abstract
Tallon, L. (2011). Museums and Mobile Survey 2011. Last updated January 2011. Consulted February 9, 2012. Available at: http://www.museums-mobile.org/survey-2011/


text:
SHANGHAI – A Chinese magician is under attack by animal rights groups for his synchronized goldfish act!
A Chinese magician has sparked outrage from animal rights groups with a trick in which he gets goldfish to swim in sync, prompting China's state broadcaster to cancel an encore performance Thursday.
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But regional broadcaster Hunan Television, which has booked Fu to perform live for its own Lantern Festival special, said on its website Thursday he would perform the trick on the show and reveal the secret.


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Caliber: .45 Long Colt
Barrel Length: 20" Round Barrel
Stock: Walnut
Sights: Rear Ladder Sight, Blade Front Sight
Weight: 7.9 lbs
Overall Length: 36 3/4"
All items are factory new in box unless otherwise stated. Based on the information available to us, the above specifications describe this item to the best of our knowledge. For further information, please contact or visit the manufacturer's .
Guns International #: 101658237
Seller's Inventory #: RIF/S813.045
Guns International #: 101658237
Seller's Inventory #: RIF/S813.045


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A clinic 'family' rides out the storm relying on each other.
The close-knit staff at Scroggins Animal Hospital relied on each other through the deadly EF-5 tornado that hit Moore, Okla., May 20. From left, associate Alicia Gorczyca, DVM, veterinary assistant Molly Lynn, receptionist Dianne Bracelin and, at far right, veterinary assistant Sabrina Wright rode out the storm together in Wright's storm shelter. Owner Kristi Scroggins, DVM, second from right, had the day off the day of the storm and sheltered at her daughter's school in Moore. Photo courtesy of Scroggins Animal Hospital
They looked at the radar. Receptionist Dianne Bracelin decided she needed a cigarette.
The last client, a Moore, Okla., police officer, had just left Scroggins Animal Hospital. Associate veterinarian Alicia Gorczyca, DVM, called her daughter's daycare. Providers were moving the children into a safe room. Gorczyca told Sabrina Wright, a veterinary assistant, to leave—now. Her son Payton was nearby at a neighbor's in-home daycare.
Gorczyca and Molly Lynn, another assistant, followed Bracelin outside. "To the west of us I could see it," Gorczyca says. "The tornado and the debris cloud."
"We need to get the hell out of here," Bracelin recalls Gorczyca saying. "'We need to leave now.'" Following the instructions of clinic owner Kristi Scroggins, DVM, who had the day off but was keeping tabs on the staff by phone, they evacuated.
"We've never really had to rush out like that," Gorczyca says. But Dr. G, as staff members call her, managed to keep calm. She didn't rush. She didn't panic. She was methodical. She locked up the drug box, got her stethoscope and turned out the lights. "I was trying to stay calm and doing everything you do routine-wise. I should have had a little bit more sense of urgency."
There was no time to get to her daughter, Olivia, across town in daycare. All Gorczyca could do was pray she would be safe. They hadn't made shelter plans at the clinic. Gorczyca, Bracelin and Lynn didn't know where to go—they just knew they had to go now. They had to make a decision: Wright had a storm shelter.
"No sooner did we get there and get into the house," Bracelin says, than the tornado was on them. They dropped Payton into the small garage shelter as he cried for his mother, who was rushing from the house with last-minute items and the dogs. Once everyone was in the hole, they shut the lid and locked it.
They turned on the weather radio. Gorczyca handed Payton her iPhone. His focus turned to a "Little People" app Gorczyca had downloaded for her daughter.
"There it is. I hear it," Bracelin said of the tornado's muffled roar. They listened.
"It dawned on us that this was really happening," Gorczyca says.
The four women who sat huddled on the benches of Wright's shelter are part of an extremely tight work family. They care about each other. They go to movies together. Gorczyca, Lynn and Wright even had babies at the same time—all three of their children are now nearing their second birthdays. They rely on each other.
"Molly was getting upset," Gorczyca says. "Already in my head I was doing some prayers. When Molly started breaking down we just started saying 'Hail Mary' over and over again. It gave her something else to focus on."
Bracelin says that's when the sound of six freight trains engulfed them. "You could feel, like, shaking too—the rumble," she says. The impact was unnerving.
"It's very loud and then the pressure changes. Your ears start popping," Gorczyca says. There was a moment of quiet—the eye of the storm—until it raged again. "And then that was it." Silence.
"Dianne was the first one wanting out," Gorczyca says. "It was getting hot and claustrophobic. 'I gotta get out, I gotta get out,'" she remembers Bracelin saying. They told Bracelin to wait and stayed crammed in the small six-person shelter—four adults, a toddler and two dogs (a Catahoula and a beagle cross)—for five more minutes.
"I was the first one to get out," Gorczyca says. "I realized we didn't have any power." She went through the garage to the kitchen. Broken glass and water covered the floor. The ceiling was dripping. "I got the front door open and walked outside," she says.
She first saw Lynn's and Wright's vehicles. "Molly's van was pretty much totaled," Gorczyca says. "Sabrina's car, the windows were intact, but it had a giant dent on the front part." Wright's house was damaged but standing. The next few houses were standing too, but that was it. "After that there was nothing. Everything was gone."
Gorczyca went back to the shelter as the rest were starting to climb out. She told Wright to prepare herself, Lynn too. Wright made her way through the house with Payton. Lynn started to cry.
They went outside and began to check on neighbors. "We started going door to door," Gorczyca says. "We could see a lady down the road. She was very distraught." The woman told them her neighbors were trapped.
They ran to a pile of rubble. Gorczyca says they could hear the people beneath—a mother and her children—yelling to get them out. "It was a garage shelter like we had been in, but their house had collapsed on them," Gorczyca says. She tried to move rafters from where they'd fallen, but they wouldn't budge. She couldn't move a thing. "There was nothing you could do," Gorczyca says. Suddenly a National Guardsman was there. He said he'd recover these people and instructed Gorczyca to keep checking on neighbors.
Lynn and Bracelin took Payton back to the house. Wright went to check on Payton's daycare. People now assembling in the streets were in shock, "almost like zombies clustered in groups," Gorczyca says. Then someone started to yell.
A woman didn't know where a neighbor was and couldn't get inside the neighbor's house. "I kicked a door in and we could see the dog was still attached to its leash attached to a sliding glass door," Gorczyca says. The glass was gone, but somehow the dog was fine. "He was sitting in the middle of the kitchen—I don't know how—wagging his tail, glass all around." She got the dog a bowl of water. The owner wasn't home. They kept moving.
Countless houses were just gone, making the neighborhood nearly unrecognizable to Wright. She saw her daycare provider's yellow car—it was upside down. "That whole side of the street was gone," Gorczyca says. They started jogging up the road when the full weight of the tornado's violence was before them.
"I saw someone doing CPR on an obviously deceased person," Gorczyca says. Gorczyca stopped and offered help. The woman trying to resuscitate her neighbor stopped. "'I know she's gone, but her husband is right over there and I can't stop,'" the woman said. Gorczyca found a sleeping bag in the rubble and laid it over the body. There was nothing more she could do.
Wright and Gorczyca started to walk back. Someone told them that although Wright's daycare provider's house had been destroyed, the provider and the children had made it out alive. Gorczyca needed to know her daughter was OK.
Back at Wright's house, Bracelin and Lynn tried to soothe Payton until his mother returned. He played with Bracelin's earrings. Amidst the destruction, Bracelin would point to the earrings and say, "Pretty." Payton would echo.
Gorczyca walked miles back to the clinic. Bracelin walked with her, winding her way home. The destruction was disorienting. There was no cell phone service. Gorczyca had no way of knowing if her daughter was safe. "She was worried sick about her," Bracelin says.
Gorczyca headed north on Eastern Avenue; she could see the damage. "There's no way the clinic is here," she thought. But somehow it was still standing. "It looked sandblasted," Gorczyca says. The tornado had missed it by a half-block.
She went in and checked on all the animals. Miraculously, all were fine. She tried to use her phone again.
Finally, Gorczyca got a call to go through. She heard the words she had been praying for. "My daughter was fine and everything was OK," she says. Her husband was on his way to pick Olivia up.
"When I found out she was safe, I tried to do what needed to be done here," Gorczyca says of the clinic. About that time Scroggins arrived. Everyone was accounted for. Everyone was safe. She too was amazed the clinic was still standing, although the power was out there too. They got the controlled drugs and vaccines out. They made sure all the animals had water. It was nearly 8 p.m.
Many roads were closed; the ones that weren't were clogged with traffic. Gorczyca's normally 30-minute commute took nearly three hours. She heard what had happened at Plaza Towers Elementary—that seven children were dead. Her daughter Olivia's daycare sat right behind that school. "The hardest part for me was my daughter had come so close to that," she says.
When Gorczyca got home, Olivia was still awake. "She was lying on the bed with my husband," Gorczyca says. "She didn't want to go to sleep because she was waiting for Mama."
More than a week after the storm, Gorczyca can hardly get the words out. "I grabbed her off the bed and held her and started crying," she says. She sobbed. Her husband reached up and took her hand. "I just couldn't believe that I was so lucky that I had her. I was just so thankful. I was so thankful for God to give me back my daughter."


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The US Administration recently shifted into high gear in its efforts to avert an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities by the end of the year. The flood of reports in the American media in recent weeks attests not only to the genuine US fear that Israel intends to realize its threats; moreover, it indicates that the Obama Administration has decided to take its gloves off.Some evidence for this comes from today's Ha'aretz:
Indeed, in recent weeks the Administration shifted from persuasion efforts vis-à-vis decision-makers and Israel's public opinion to a practical, targeted assassination of potential Israeli operations in Iran. This "surgical strike" is undertaken via reports in the American and British media, but the campaign's aims are fully operational: To make it more difficult for Israeli decision-makers to order the IDF to carry out a strike, and what's even graver, to erode the IDF's capacity to launch such strike with minimal casualties.
The first and most important American objective is to eliminate potential operational options available to the IDF and the State of Israel. I have no intention of detailing or even hinting to the options which the US government aims to eliminate by exposing them in the media. A large part of the reports stem from false information or disinformation, and there is no reason to reveal to the Iranians what's real and what isn't. However, it is blatantly clear that reports in the past week alone have caused Israel substantive diplomatic damage, and possibly even military and operational damage.
Another Administration objective is to convince the Israeli public that an Iran strike (including a US attack) will not achieve even the minimum required to justify it; that is, a delay of at least 3-5 years in Iran's nuclear program. A lengthy postponement would of course justify the suffering on Israel's home front, while a six-month delay – as argued by a US Congress report – does not justify the risks.
The six-month figure was meant for the Israeli public, so that it would press Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to avoid a strike, whose futility the Americans are trying to prove in every way possible. At the same time, the campaign aims to erode the validity of demands voiced by many members of Congress and Senate – both Democrats and Republicans - who criticize the American president's inaction.
The Congress report published Wednesday is maligned by several inaccuracies, in terms of both analysis and information. However, this makes no difference. The aim was to make headlines in the Israeli and Washington media, rather than an in-depth analysis, which isn't possible as Congress researchers in Washington do not have access to all the relevant information, fortunately.
The third objective of the recent publications is to scare the Israeli public via an apocalyptic account of possible retaliation by Iran and its "clients." This effort also aims to press Israeli decision-makers not to act (including the mention in the Congress report of the accurate fact that Israel's home front is not adequately prepared to sustain a blow.)
...The damage has to do with the revelation of secret information and assessments that would require an expensive, risky intelligence effort for the Iranians to acquire. Indeed, the Iranians already realize that the West and Israel possess plenty of up-to-date information on Iran's nuclear project, including centrifuge workshops in Tehran homes. The Ayatollah regime can also predict possible attack routes and methods by Israel and the US.
Any Iranian intelligence analyst who reads the latest US Congress report or the Foreign Policy report will find invaluable information there. The overwhelming majority of the information has already been published, yet instead of forcing the Iranians to piece together all the assessments themselves, the Congress report offers them everything in one place, including detailed analysis.
To sum up, the American publications caused the following damage:
- Iran now has a decent picture of what Israel's and America's intelligence communities know about Tehran's nuclear program and defense establishment, including its aerial defenses.
- The Iranians now know about the indications that would be perceived by Washington and Jerusalem as a "nuclear breakthrough". Hence, Iran can do a better job of concealment.
- The reports make it more difficult to utilize certain operational options. These options, even if not considered thus far, could have been used by the US in the future, should Iran not thwart them via diplomatic and military means.
Needless to say, this is not how one should be treating an ally, even if this is a relationship between a superpower and a satellite state.
According to a war simulation conducted by the U.S. Central Command, the Iranians could kill 200 Americans with a single missile response to an Israeli attack. An investigative committee would not spare any admiral or general, minister or president. The meaning of this U.S. scenario is that the blood of these 200 would be on Israel's hands.It does indeed sound like a deliberate US plan to use any means to stop an Israeli attack, including by "bribing" Israel with more missile defenses - whose effectiveness will be somewhat less than 100%, not the most comforting idea. (The Patriot missiles meant to dissuade an Israeli attack on Iraq in the beginning of the Gulf War were essentially useless.)
The moment the public dispute over whether to attack Iran is put in those terms, Israel has no real option to attack in contravention of American declarations and warnings.
Today's article in Foreign Policy from the not-very-reliable Mark Perry saying that Israel is going to use Azeri airfields in an Iranian strike might fit under this campaign as well.
(h/t Joel B)


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DevExtreme v23.1 is now available.
Explore our newest features/capabilities and share your thoughts with us.
The Sankey chart visualizes the flow magnitude between value sets. Flow values are nodes, and the connections between nodes are links. The higher the flow magnitude, the wider the link is.
Each object of your data source should be a link between source and target nodes. For example, the following link connects the Spain and USA nodes and has a weight of 2:
{ source: 'Spain', target: 'USA', weight: 2 }
To bind Sankey to data fields, use the sourceField, targetField, and weightField properties.
Use the node and link objects to configure Sankey appearance. This demo specifies the width and padding properties for nodes and the colorMode property for links.
The tooltip content differs for nodes and links. When you hover over a node, the tooltip shows the node's title, and its incoming and outgoing weights. When you hover over a link, the tooltip shows the link's direction and weight.
To customize the tooltip content, use the customizeNodeTooltip and customizeLinkTooltip functions. In this demo, you can see an example of the customizeLinkTooltip function.


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40 S.Ct. 371
64 L.Ed. 638
Nos. 269 and 303.
Argued March 23, 1920.
Decided April 19, 1920.
Mr. Griffith R. Harsh, of Birmingham, Ala., for petitioner and plaintiff in error.
Messrs. E. J. Henning, of San Diego, Cal., and Ralph C. Putnam, of Aurora, Ill., for respondent and defendant in error.
[Argument of Counsel from page 412-413 intentionally omitted]
Mr. Justice HOLMES delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is an action of debt brought in Illinois upon a judgment recovered in Alabama. The defendant pleaded to the jurisdiction that the judgment was for negligently causing the death of the plaintiff's intestate in Alabama. The plaintiff demurred to the plea, setting up Article IV, sections 1 and 2 of the Constitution of the United States. A statute of Illinois provided that no action should be brought or prosecuted in that State for damages occasioned by death occurring in another State in consequence of wrongful conduct. The Supreme Court of Illinois held that as by the terms of the statute the original action could not have been brought there, the Illinois Courts had no jurisdiction of a suit upon the judgment. The Circuit Court of Kane County having ordered that the demurrer be quashed its judgment was affirmed. 285 Ill. 188, 120 N. E. 631, 4 A. L. R. 964.
In the Court below and in the argument before us reliance was placed upon Anglo-American Provision Co. v. Davis Provision Co., No. 1, 191 U. S. 373, 24 Sup. Ct. 92, 48 L. Ed. 225, and language in Wisconsin v. Pelican Insurance Co., 127 U. S. 265, 8 Sup. Ct. 1370, 32 L. Ed. 239, the former as showing that the clause requiring full faith and credit to be given to judgments of other State does not require a State to furnish a Court, and the latter as sanctioning an inquiry into the nature of the original cause of action in order to determine the jurisdiction of a court to enforce a foreign judgment founded upon it. But we are of opinion that the conclusion sought to be built upon these premises in the present case cannot be sustained.
Davis Provision Co. v. Anglo-American Provision Co. was a suit by a foreign corporation on a foreign judgment against a foreign corporation. The decision is sufficiently explained without more by the views about foreign corporations that had prevailed unquestioned since Bank of Augusta v. Earle, 13 Pet. 579, 589-591, 10 L. Ed. 274; cited 191 U. S. 375, 24 Sup. Ct. 92, 48 L. Ed. 225. Moreover no doubt there is truth in the proposition that the Constitution does not require the State to furnish a Court. But it also is true that there are limits to the power of exclusion and to the power to consider the nature of the cause of action before the foreign judgment based upon it is given effect.
In Fauntleroy v. Lum, 210 U. S. 230, 28 Sup. Ct. 641, 52 L. Ed. 1039, it was held that the Courts of Mississippi were bound to enforce a judgment rendered in Missouri upon a cause of action arising in Mississippi and illegal and void there. The policy of Mississippi was more actively contravened in that case than the policy of Illinois is in this. Therefore the fact that here the original cause of action could not have been maintained in Illinois is not an answer to a suit uo n the judgment. See Christmas v. Russell, 5 Wall. 290, 18 L. Ed. 475; Converse v. Hamilton, 224 U. S. 243, 32 Sup. Ct. 415, 56 L. Ed. 749, Ann. Cas. 1913D, 1292. But this being true, it is plain that a State cannot escape its constitutional obligations by the simple device of denying jurisdiction in such cases to Courts otherwise competent. The assumption that it could not do so was the basis of the decision in International Text Book Co. v. Pigg, 217 U. S. 91, 111, 112, 30 Sup. Ct. 481, 54 L. Ed. 678, 27 L. R. A. (N. S.) 493, 18 Ann. Cas. 1103, and the same principle was foreshadowed in General Oil Co. v. Crain, 209 U. S. 211, 216, 220, 228, 28 Sup. Ct. 475, 52 L. Ed. 754, and in Fauntleroy v. Lum, 210 U. S. 230, 235, 236, 28 Sup. Ct. 641, 52 L. Ed. 1039. See Keyser v. Lowell, 117 Feb. 400, 54 C. C. A. 574; Chambers v. Baltimore & Ohio R. R. Co., 207 U. S. 142, 148, 28 Sup. Ct. 34, 52 L. Ed. 143, and cases cited. Whether the Illinois statute should be construed as the Mississippi Act was construed in Fauntleroy v. Lum was for the Supreme Court of the State to decide, but read as that Court read it, it attempted to achieve a result that the Constitution of the United States forbade.
Some argument was based upon the fact that the statute of Alabama allowed an action to be maintained in a court of competent jurisdiction within the State 'and not elsewhere.' But when the cause of action is created the invalidity of attempts to limit the jurisdiction of other states to enforce it has been established by the decisions of this Court. Tennessee Coal, Iron & R. R. Co. v. George, 233 U. S. 354, 34 Sup. Ct. 587, 58 L. Ed. 997, L. R. A. 1916D, 685; Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. Sowers, 213 U. S. 55, 29 Sup. Ct. 397, 53 L. Ed. 695; and had these decisions been otherwise they would not have imported that a judgment rendered exactly as required by the Alabama statute was not to have the respect due to other judgments of a sister State.
As the judgment below upheld a statute that was invalid as construed the writ of error was the proper proceeding and the writ of certiorari must be dismissed.
Judgment reversed.


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Oh hi there, Kotaku. Welcome to the Wednesday night open thread!
For tonight's open thread, a single prompt, brought on by a great article over at Pajiba. What will happen to Game of Thrones, long-term?
Brian Byrd lays out a number of big challenges for the show, including the fact that "There's no way HBO can continue to fund Game of Thrones for another six-plus seasons." In fact, he puts the chances that that problem kills the series at 20%. The bigger potential problem? That George R.R. Martin takes too long to finish the books (or just doesn't finish them), and it kills the series.
Martin is not James Patterson, shitting out paint-by-numbers fiction twice a year. The dude writes like a tortoise on Ambien. After three books in a period of four years, Martin apparently decided, for whatever reason, to viciously and repeatedly sodomize the concept of deadlines. The gap between "Storm" and "Feast" was five years; "Feast" and "Dance" six. This pace becomes a problem when, say, a hugely popular television show is dependent on your source material to exist.
No release date currently exists for "The Winds of Winter," the sixth book in the series. All anyone knows is that some of the chapters are written and that in an April webcast Martin mentioned that the final two books will weigh in around 1500 pages … each.
I gotta agree, that's a real potential problem.
Before I turn you loose in the open thread, here are a few of my thoughts on the second season.
- Harrenhal
- The scenes between Arya and Tywin
- A lot of the changes they made to the books, actually
- Literally every single scene involving Tyrion
- How far they took Joffrey's villainy
- Cersei becoming a more interesting character
- The casting of Davos
- The casting in general, actually
Worried About:
- They're going to start losing non-readers
- They're going to sprawl too hard in the next season
- There will be significant pacing problems posed by rearranging the next three books to keep all the characters in play
- The big "reveal" in the final shot was, frankly, a bit disappointing
So that's just me! What do you think the future holds for Game of Thrones?
Feel free to chat about that, or whatever else. The Open Thread begins in 5… 4… 3…


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"Popping Color II" ©2017 Niki Gulley
SOLD • 24″ x 12″ textured oil painting
Just Sold! I wanted this piece to be uplifting and full of color and energy. Set beneath a colorful sky on a beautiful day in springtime with the poppies and wildflowers in full bloom, I hope all of your cares drift away while gazing into this cheerful scene.
In this vertical wildflower series, I've framed the paintings in espresso floater frames so that you can still see the textured oil paint continuing around the edges of the canvas. These poppies look great hung alone or in a grouping, too!
For more information on our Plein Air Painting and Photography Art Trek Workshops in Italy, please visit www.ArtTreks.org or e-mail Niki Gulley.