TOKYO (Reuters) - Author Tanis Rideout never hiked, hated the cold and at one time had barely heard of British climber George Mallory, who may have been one of the first men to make it to the top of Mount Everest before perishing on its slopes.

But an Everest-obsessed coworker at an outdoor equipment store introduced her to Mallory, the controversy about whether he summited the world's highest peak, and video footage from his 1920s expeditions, and she found it impossible to get him out of her head - until finally writing, years later, her debut novel, "Above all Things".

The book, which also tells the story of Mallory's wife Ruth as she waits for her husband and tends their children, was based partly on the couple's actual letters - including some found on Mallory's body in 1999, 75 years after his death.

Rideout spoke to Reuters about Mallory - famed for saying "because it's there" when asked why he wanted to climb Everest - her book, and Everest, the 8,850 meter (29,035 ft) peak conquered by Sir Edmund Hillary 60 years ago this May.

Q: What got you going on this book and Everest?

A: Everest was already something I really didn't get ... why would people do that? Then you sort of throw that colonial glamour onto it, for lack of a better word - them in their tweeds, massive backpacks and their crates of champagne. (I thought) okay, I need to know more about this. And as I started reading, I pretty quickly got taken away by Mallory in particular. Ridiculously good-looking, incredibly charismatic and moved in all the right circles, a last Renaissance man. The last and great British explorer of that era. I would joke with my friends about if it's possible to be in love with somebody who'd been dead for eighty years, I probably am.

Q: He was certainly very attractive, but your book of course features his wife as well. Was she in there from the start?

A: Ruth was always in the book. When I first started playing with it, I actually thought of telling the whole thing from her point of view but that became very limiting for obvious reasons really quickly. I studied a lot of women's studies and women writers at university, and women's history is important. People behind the scenes in history I think are getting much more of their due these days in fiction.

What interested me about the story as well was the myth-making of it, how we make these heroes. So to have Ruth's point of view was a way to disrupt the mythology around someone like George Mallory and to be able to see him as much more of a fully realized character and not just as an epic climber that did this incredibly brave and crazy thing.

Q: The sections with the climb: how did you imagine it?

A: I started doing a very, very little bit of climbing. I attempted my first ever somewhat substantial climb earlier this year, on holiday in Hawaii - my husband and I tried to summit Mauna Loa. I didn't quite make the top, I had my first experience of altitude sickness, it was terrible - but I had a bizarre moment where I was standing there and said, oh, I was writing about this for seven years, this is what it feels like. The cold's easy, I live in Canada, so the cold is always there. I read a ton, there are so many great books out there about high-altitude climbing, other peoples' stories and things that they imagine or hallucinate. That was what drew me to it originally, what happens to your body at these extremes, and where does your brain go under the circumstances.

Q: He's out having all these adventures, and there's Ruth at home. What was it like to go between these two characters?

A: I thought Ruth would be easier, at the beginning. We've all stayed home while somebody else, a friend or partner, has gone off to do something that seems so much more interesting than what we're doing, going through the routine of our lives. I thought that would be so easy to write because I knew what that felt like. But it took a lot longer to get into Ruth's head, partly because of the limits of the era and gender and class. How to balance that all, how to make her small, intimate emotional dramas be as big and important as an avalanche on Everest. It took a while...I read a lot of short stories, trying to almost make each of her sections a short story on its own. Her life needs to be as important as George's, because it is.

Q: How did you finally resolve the question of whether he summited or not?

A: Part of the reason I wanted to write the book was to puzzle out for myself what happened on that last climb....Personally, I think it depends on what day you ask me, whether he made it or not. On more romantic days I think he absolutely did, and on my more realistic days I think he probably didn't quite make it.

Q: What is it about Everest?

A: If only I knew. I just don't understand it and I think it's because I don't understand it that I put so much time into reading about it and learning about it. It still sounds utterly horrible. I would love to do the trek out to Base Camp and look at that mountain, but you could not pay me to ever even think about climbing it. It's a weird presence in our culture.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies)

Scores:

Highlanders - Tries: Shaun Treeby, Aaron Smith, Colin Slade; Coonversions: Slade (2) Penalties: Slade (2)

Sharks - Tries: Meyer Bosman (2), Lwazi Mvovo; Conversions: Patrick Lambie (2); Penalty: Lambie. (Compiled by Patrick Johnston; Editing by John O'Brien)

Obama will kick off the effort Thursday with a trip to Austin, Texas, the White House said. While in Texas, the president will visit a technical high school and meet with entrepreneurs. He'll also drop in on a tech company and talk with blue-collar workers.

The trips come as Obama, less than four months into his second term, is facing increasing skepticism from political allies and foes alike that he still has the clout to get big things done before the 2014 midterm elections creep up and his ability to set the agenda diminishes. Those concerns have been compounded by a failed push on gun control and a similarly unsuccessful effort to avert automatic spending cuts that took effect in March. Obama traveled repeatedly outside Washington to rally Americans to urge Congress to act on both fronts, but with questionable results.

Progress on the economy provides one opportunity to promote something positive especially after a solid jobs report on Friday kicked the unemployment rate down a notch to 7.5 percent, a four-year low that offered hope that the U.S. economy is healthier than many had feared. Still, Republicans have criticized Obama over the past four years for announcing several times that he was pivoting back to an issue they say should have taken top billing all along.

"The economy is still Americans' top concern because the president's policies keep making it harder to create jobs," said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, pointing to energy, taxes and Obama's health care law. "Unfortunately, I doubt we'll hear much about any of those things during this road show."

Obama wants to ensure that his economic proposals don't get lost in the shuffle in the coming weeks as Congress goes to work on an immigration overhaul and the confirmation process for Obama's second-term Cabinet nominees, a White House official told reporters Sunday aboard Air Force One. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to preview trips that have not been officially announced.

Typically, when Obama touches down for the day in an American town, he delivers a speech and shakes a few hands before returning to Washington. But these one-day trips will see Obama make multiple stops at locations that can serve to highlight elements of his economic proposals, the official said, and will take place every few weeks starting Thursday with Austin.

Among the policies Obama plans to push in Austin and elsewhere are proposals, announced in February in his State of the Union address, to dramatically expand pre-kindergarten programs and raise the minimum wage to $9 per hour. Both of those face resistance from some lawmakers who say they are too expensive and could put a drag on the economy.

___

Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

Friday is a "sun day" of sorts for the 205 students at Bellingham Christian School, a small, private, nondenominational Christian school in Bellingham, Wash., about 90 miles north of Seattle.

"SCHOOL CANCELLED DUE TO GREAT WEATHER! WAHOOO!" the school's website announced Thursday night. "Yeah! It's a Sun Day today and everyone gets the day off from school."

Principal Bob Sampson said he wanted to give students some time to re-energize and enjoy the weather, adding that he wanted to re-create the excitement snow days get among the kids. He began teasing the possibility of giving the day off earlier in the week.

"In a world that's got a lot hard things going, it's fun to create a moment of joy," Sampson said.

The forecast for Western Washington calls for a weekend of sunshine, with highs hitting the low 80s in some parts of the region on Sunday.

The sun day was also made possible because there weren't any days off because of snow this school year.

"Kids just love the anticipation of sitting around see if school is canceled when it snows," he said. "You know, we haven't had any snow days, so I thought 'how fun would it be to create that anticipation for kids when it's nice out?'"

Sampson surveyed parents to make sure the day off wouldn't cause any hardships and floated the idea with the school board before canceling school, he said. The 22 staff members will also get the day off, he added.

Sampson and another staff member will be at the school bright and early, though, to welcome any students who didn't get the notice.

The principal asked students to take pictures of what they do on their sunny day off. He plans to show the pictures at an assembly Monday.

It's not the first time the school has given students the day off because of sunshine. The last time was two years ago.

Shriver, 57, will appear on various NBC networks, including CNBC, MSNBC and NBC Sports. Shriver left NBC in 2004 when she became the first lady of California, NBC said in a statement on Tuesday.

Shriver, the niece of slain U.S. President John F. Kennedy, filed for divorce from Schwarzenegger in 2011 after he publicly admitted to fathering a child with a housekeeper 14 years earlier.

"I look forward to shining a light on all areas of a woman's experience ... and exploring these issues in a way that brings the voices of men into these critically important conversations," Shriver said in a statement.

NBC will also broadcast "The Shriver Report," studies Shriver produced about women's issues that have including topics such as Alzheimer's disease.

NBC is owned by Comcast Corp.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Mohammad Zargham)

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Successful clients benefit from an approach that uses the Augmentext method to build a foundation of positive content about their company and a context-aware social media plan that synchronizes online efforts with events and traditional marketing activities.

To serve Augmentext clients, ArnoldIT’s staff of highly trained writers, researchers and editors produces a constant flow of articles on topics from within the client’s industry or area of expertise. Each article contains links and references to the client’s brand, product or people. Depending on the client’s needs, the content is published on a new website, posted on ArnoldIT’s popular business and technology websites, packaged for the client’s own blogs and social media channels, and injected into the global Internet indexes.

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With Arnold IT’s social media program, Augmentext content is integrated with selected social media tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Pinterest to enhance the client’s public image and profile.

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See the facts about Augmentext, how it works, and its success stories at .

About Stephen E. Arnold

Stephen E. Arnold is a technology and financial analyst with more than thirty years of experience. In addition to “Google: The Digital Gutenberg,” he is the author of more than 50 journal articles and a number of other books, including “Internet 2000” and the first three editions of the 600-page encyclopedia of search called “The Enterprise Search Report.” His newest studies of open source search are available from one of the global leaders in technology consulting, IDC, at . Visit Beyond Search atfor more information about an audio version of his 2013 Cebit lecture, andfor his free Augmentextinformation services: The Trend Point, EMRxNow, RxScriptMD, and Gourmet de Ville.

Ric ManningAugmentext502-228-1966

LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (Reuters) - Groups supporting the right to abortion filed suit on Tuesday challenging an Arkansas law that would ban most abortions after 12 weeks, seeking to block one of the nation's most restrictive abortion measures before it takes effect in July.

The Republican-controlled Arkansas legislature overrode Democratic Governor Mike Beebe's veto of the controversial measure in March. At the time, it was the most restrictive state abortion law in the nation.

Since then North Dakota lawmakers passed a law banning abortion as early as six weeks.

The Arkansas Human Heartbeat Protection Act would ban most abortions at about 12 weeks of pregnancy, once a fetal heartbeat can be detected by a standard ultrasound.

It includes exemptions for rape, incest, the life of the mother and major fetal conditions. Doctors who violate the law risk having their licenses revoked by the state Medical Board.

Eleven states including Arkansas already ban abortions at 20 weeks or later, according to Kate Bernyk, spokesman for The Center for Reproductive Rights.

Eight states enforce the bans: Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, Indiana, Alabama, Nebraska and North Carolina. Similar measures in Arizona, Georgia and Idaho have been blocked by the courts.

The Arkansas lawsuit, filed in federal court on Tuesday by the Center for Reproductive Rights, the national American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU's Arkansas chapter, asked for a temporary injunction against the law. It was filed on behalf of two Arkansas doctors who perform abortions.

"It's a clear violation of U.S. Court rulings, dating back 40 years," said Rita Sklar, director of the ACLU of Arkansas.

Aaron Sadler, spokesman for Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, said the state had been expecting the lawsuit.

"It is our responsibility to defend state law, and we will do so in this litigation," Sadler said.

Planned Parenthood, which is the nation's largest abortion provider and operates clinics in Arkansas, fought the measure.

"This restrictive ban on safe and legal abortion puts the health and safety of Arkansas women and their families at risk," said Jill June, chief executive of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland. "A woman may need an abortion for many different reasons, and she should be trusted to make her own personal private medical decisions."

Jerry Cox, president of Family Council of Arkansas, which opposes abortion, said he thinks the courts will allow the Arkansas measure to stand.

"If the state of Arkansas ends up spending public funds to defend a law that protects human life, that's an excellent use of our public dollars."

(Reporting by Suzi Parker; Editing by Greg McCune and Leslie Gevirtz)

(Reuters) - Lower oil prices bit into Chevron Corp'squarterly profit as did refinery downtime and higher operating costs in its home market, but the oil company's shares rose as the earnings topped expectations.

Analysts cited foreign currency gains that gave the company a particular boost in the quarter.

Chevron also announced this week an 11 percent increase in its dividend, making use of some of the $19 billion in cash accumulated to shoulder a near-$37 billion annual capital spending program, which has been inflated by natural gas projects in Australia.

"Chevron has significant financial flexibility to increase shareholders distribution, despite higher spending levels," Oppenhemier analyst Fadel Gheit said in a note.

First-quarter net income fell 4.5 percent to $6.18 billion, or $3.18 per share, from $6.47 billion, or $3.27 per share, a year earlier. Analysts, on average, expected $3.08 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The company produced 2.65 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, up from 2.63 million bpd a year earlier, though down from a particularly strong 2.67 million in the fourth quarter.

Achieving increased production from oil wells has been a struggle for Chevron and larger rival Exxon Mobil Corp , which reported a drop in first-quarter production on Thursday.

Chevron is targeting 25 percent growth in output by 2017, and its much-delayed liquefied natural gas plant in Angola is a key new project this year. Chief Financial Officer Pat Yarrington said it would start up this quarter, and reach full capacity by year-end - contributing about 20,000 bpd for 2013.

"Obviously, that would just be a partial year contribution for us," she told analysts on a call. "It is worth about 60,000 barrels a day net to us when fully operational."

At the Frade field off the coast of Brazil, where Chevron had faced sanctions due to an oil leak, the company has approval to restart production at four wells. Ramp-up would be slow, however, and it would contribute only about 5,000 bpd this year, Yarrington said.

In the first quarter, Chevron's U.S. E&P earnings fell by about a quarter to $1.13 billion, with operating expenses higher and the average sale price for U.S. liquids down to $94 per barrel from $102 a year before.

Analysts at Simmons & Co said most of the outperformance for Chevron in the quarter was from its international operations.

U.S. downstream earnings, from refining and marketing, declined more than 70 percent, with refinery crude input falling by 350,000 barrels per day to 576,000 bpd due to planned work at a few of its refineries.

Chevron is trying to get its plant in Richmond, California, back to normal after a fire last August damaged its crude unit. The company said it reintroduced feedstock to the crude unit this week, and would bring it to full capacity in the coming days.

Chevron shares were up 1 percent at $119.51 in midday trading on Friday. The stock has gained about 10 percent so far this year, compared with a 2 percent rise for Exxon.

(Reporting by Braden Reddall in San Francisco, with additional reporting by Anna Driver in Houston; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick nand Steve Orlofsky)

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Looking for contrived, useless add-ons? The Galaxy S IV is the device for you, says Mossberg: 

If you’re a nut for lists of new features, love Samsung or crave an even bigger display, the Galaxy S 4 may be for you. It’s a good phone, just not a great one.

Not even the geeks are quite sure that's what they want out of a phone, :

While our geek senses keep tingling at the thought of so many market-topping specs contained within the same chassis, we also aren't overjoyed, per se, with excitement. The design doesn't feel fresh, especially not next to the HTC One, but we can't deny that it's an improvement over the GS3.

is certain it's not what he wants:

At the end of the day, it’d be foolish to think that the Galaxy S4 isn’t a top-notch phone. Where specs, performance and software innovation are concerned, the company is clearly making strides. But in playing with this phone for a while, adjusting to the new features, trying to make the most of them, and sometimes failing miserably, I keep returning to the idea of “Keep it simple, stupid.”

If all the swiping and eye recognition stuff appeals to you, know that those things only work in Android's "crummy" browser, :

But all that business of waving your hand or moving your eyes to scroll while reading — it only works in the crummy Android browser. It does not work in Chrome, where I do all of my browsing. It doesn’t work in Google Reader or Flipboard or Instapaper or the Kindle app, where so much reading happens. Looking away from the screen doesn’t pause a video in YouTube, only in the Samsung video player.

If you can get past that, however, this phone has a lot to offer, :

None of this takes away from the performance of the Galaxy S 4, though. It's an extremely solid phone, and it's going to be hard to go back to the S III after a week with this one. It feels great to hold, it's comfortable to use throughout the day, and it takes much better photos than its predecessor. The aluminum ring on its chassis makes the handset look more modern than its predecessors. The display doesn't hurt either—it's really something to look at. Samsung definitely has another hit on its hands.

Although, it's build is a bit chintzy, :

As long as you don't mind a bunch of plastic, you'll be perfectly happy with the Galaxy S4. 

Ultimately, though, if you're in the market for an Android phone,  you consider the HTC One:

The Galaxy S4 is fast and impressive, but it's also noisy and complex. The One is refined, quiet, comfortable, beautiful, and above all simply pleasant. I love using that phone, in a way I haven't experienced with anything since the iPhone 5. That's why, when my contract is up in June, I'll probably be casting my lot with HTC instead of Samsung.

... as does Mossberg:

I urge readers looking for a new Android smartphone to carefully consider the more polished-looking, and quite capable, , rather than defaulting to the latest Samsung.

... as does :

And the S4 is still made of plastic — lightweight and grippy, but not as classy as the iPhone’s glass or the HTC One’s metal.

... as does Kovach:

But is it the best phone? No. You're still much better off with the iPhone 5 or the HTC One if you like Android.

:

I just wish Samsung had put that same attention into the design of the physical phone. The HTC One and the iPhone 5 are simply better-designed and crafted pieces of hardware.

So, yeah, if you're going to get a new Android phone, consider the HTC One. 

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"There's a reason 'glasshole' came first — it's more intuitively obvious," linguist Ben Zimmer told The Atlantic Wire. Asshole is a much more common term than asswipe, asshat, or assface. Even as I type, the little red typo line appears under those other terms, but even my spellchecker is familiar with the a-word. Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg chronicled the rise of the term above the rest in his book . "Within a generation the asshole had become a basic notion of our everyday moral life, replacing older reproaches like phony, lout and heel with a single inclusive moral category," . First used as GI slang during World War II, the term became ubiquitous in just a few decades. "By 1970 it was found across the culture, in country and western songs, the movies of Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen,  the plays of Neil Simon, and the essays of Tom Wolfe," writes Nunburg. 

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Asswipe, on the other hand, didn't appear until 1953 in the Saul Bellow novel The Adventures of Augie March. "You little asswipe hoodlum!" wrote Bellow. And it still doesn't quite have the pervasiveness of asshole,  about people who have it as their unfortunate last name. ("Uh.. listen.. that's 'Os-wee-pay,'" Nicholas Cage says at the end of the skit.) That's perhaps because it's a wussy version of the word. "The endings '-wipe' and '-hat'  are just alternate ways of pronouncing 'asshole' when you can't say it," Nunberg, who teaches at the UC Berkeley School of Information. That also explains why glasshole and not glasshat took off.  "You can say 'glasshole' without violating the taboo on saying 'asshole,' so why go to '-hat' or '-wipe?'" he added. "Why be coy about it?" (Nunberg also points out that the same phenomenon happened with devotees of . People used to describe them as —not estwipes.)

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Further, there is a linguistic reason to chose glasshole: all the glass + ass profanity mixtures are what linguists call satisfying blends because they derive from two words whose sounds overlap,  which is an unsatisfying blend. All the Glass + wipe, hat, hole, etc work as these blends. But glasshole is more obvious than the others because it has been used in other blend compinations before. "'Asshole' has already generated other similar blends, notably 'Masshole' as an epithet for an inconsiderate Massachusetts driver," Zimmer explained.

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But, this most recent linguistic phenomenon isn't just about familiarity: Asshole so perfectly encapsulates what it means to be a Glass wearing freak. The a-hole term denotes a certain inauthenticity, as Nunberg explains in his book:

Inauthenticity is implicit whenever we speak of a 'sense of entitlement,' another phrase that entered the American idiom around the time asshole did. ... The connection is intrinsic to the idea of the asshole, who imagines that his role or status gives him privileges that aren’t really his to claim  

Glasshole fits right into that: There is nothing less "authentic" than someone with the cyborg-looking things on their faces.  (Trust me, I saw a guy with them sitting outside at a cafe: He looked different in a not-human kind of way.)

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But even more than that, the glasses bestow "status" and "privileges that aren't really to his claim." First of all, the technology is a status symbol in and of itself, since only a limited number of people "won" the the opportunity to buy the $1,500 devices. The first person to use the term loosely defined a glasshole as "that know-it-all guy you've always hated, only now he's got 4G and Google+ connected to his face." In other words, the type of person who would want to wear Glass is a know-it-all—who probably does not know it all—and now he or she has access to the Internet, thus making an otherwise entitled person that much more entitled. In another example, Schneier invoked the term to describe . Glass specifically gave this person "privileges" (ie. a database for cheating) that he did not deserve.  

There seems to be another reason, though, that people want to call Glass users a dirty name: the device is designed to allow even more of the kind of online interaction that has already reduced actual human social interaction. That's why Ryan Lawler employed the term over at TechCrunch earlier this year—he suggested glassholes would watch YouTubes while pretending to have conversations, which would clearly be rude. It turns out, however, that's not exactly what has happened. Rather, people  just zone out while wearing glass. There's even a name for it, . "People in the Valley have coined a term for the weird, half-conscious expression that Google Glass wearers get on their faces when they are concentrating on doing things with the tiny little screen inside their glasses," she writes. "They call it glassed out," she continues.

That behavior doesn't sound evil or anything. But it's potentially rude and mostly just distasteful because having a computer attached to our faces differs so much from social norms, as explainedand . Because of the need to explain the general weirdness that will emerge with the Glass wearing culture, I suspect, the glasshole derivatives, such as glasswipe and glasshat and glassface et. al might start to catch on, too. Plus, writers are going to need synonyms for all the jerks running around with Glass on their heads.