This Week in History, Nov 30 - Dec 6

Nov 30, 1886
Mark Twain is born. Samuel Clemens, later known as Mark Twin, is born in Florida, Missouri, on this day in 1835. Clemens was apprenticed to a printer at age 13 and later worked for his older brother, who established the Hannibal Journal. In 1857, the Keokuk Daily Post commissioned him to write a series of comic travel letters, but after writing five he decided to become a steamboat captain instead. He signed on as a pilot's apprentice in 1857 and received his pilot's license in 1859, when he was 23. Clemens piloted boats for two years, until the Civil War halted steamboat traffic. During his time as a pilot, he picked up the term "Mark Twain," a boatman's call noting that the river was only two fathoms deep, the minimum depth for safe navigation. When Clemens returned to writing in 1861, working for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, he wrote a humorous travel letter signed by "Mark Twain" and continued to use the pseudonym for nearly 50 years. In 1864, he moved to San Francisco to work as a reporter. There, he wrote the story that made him famous: The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.

Arctic air will cause temperatures to drop across the northern Plains, which will bring snow to the Inter-mountain West.

An arctic front is forecast to plunge through the northern Plains and northern Rockies on Saturday bringing a drastic drop in temperatures across these areas with a burst of snow over much of the Inter-mountain Region. Arctic air will also filter into the Pacific Northwest bringing with it snow showers and subfreezing low temperatures.

While traveling recently throughout China and not having any access to Facebook, I began to realize the lack of benefit and importance that this free online service has to my daily life.

I think that it really is not only a waste of my time, but it is also not necessary to my well being and it is certainly not earning me any money for all the time I have already devoted to the site by loading content. On the contrary, this service is making money off me and hundreds of millions of other users worldwide. There are over 1 billion on Facebook. How can this company make money? Its easy to use a free service if I'm not paying for it. But the fact is the service is produced by me.

The reality here isn’t me receiving enjoyment in the form of a free temporary distraction created by a media company at great expense. This media company happens to be selling our eyeballs to their advertisers. Our accounts are contributing $$$ to Facebook each year.

We’re being sold and we never even knew we were up for grabs. Do you understand why Facebook’s stock value has doubled since its public offering, which some said was unjustifiably high. Advertising isn’t just a way for Facebook to earn a little bit of revenue in between hosting family photos and personal musings. It’s the very purpose of its existence.

BBC News - Social media told to simplify terms and conditions http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30234789

How many followers, tags, or likes do you need before you wake up? How many Facebook friends do you have? How many of them do you personally communicate with because you are interested in each other? How many of these do you think would visit your personal website to look at your photos, or read your original content?

If you are truly interested in earning money online, then start by choosing a domain, followed by launching your own website. Once this task is completed, start producing original content and posting it, so you too can also generate revenue from multiple advertisers. Please would you kindly try some of mine?

There are approximately 18K police departments with over half million armed cops in the US. How many police shootings are there each year? How may unarmed citizens have been killed? There is no data available.

As police shootings of unarmed citizens continue, criminal justice experts note that, while national research groups keep statistics on unprovoked shark attacks 53 in 2013, to the number of pigs living in the U.S. which is more than of 64K, there is no reliable data on how many people are shot by police officers every year.

Why Do People Riot? http://dlvr.it/7dwk5b