Roswell Daily Record
Vol. 122, No. 286 75¢ Daily / $1.25 Sunday
THE VOICE OF THE PECOS VALLEY
November 29, 2013
www.rdrnews.com
FRIDAY
T ha n ks gi v i ng e v e n t s sh ow ge n e ros it y a n d fellowship in Roswell TESS TOWNSEND RECORD STAFF WRITER Diners and volunteers trickle in and out of the front door of Veterans Memorial Hall on North Montana Avenue shortly after noon on Thanksgiving Day. About 200 sit inside the American Legion venue, munching on turkey, mashed potatoes, pies and other seasonal treats at the annual Free Thanksgiving Dinner organized for more than 20 years by Johnny Gonzales. Roswell resident Augustine Alvarado, 83, has attended the meal for the past three or four years “mostly for the fellowship,”
he said. “I get to see a lot of people that I haven’t seen for a long time,” he said. Free Thanksgiving at the legion is one of the most well-known and wellattended free meal events in Roswell on the day of giving thanks — but it isn’t the only one. Salvation Army annually delivers meals to lowincome families and the elderly and disabled. Sale Barn Cafe on North Garden Avenue has offered free Thanksgiving meals for the past five years. Valerie Sanchez, owner and manager of the cafe, started cooking dishes based on her grandmother’s recipes on Monday for the meal that started at 11
a.m. yesterday. “My favorite thing about doing it is I get to give back and I get to see the smile on people’s faces,” she said. Sanchez said the free meal started as a dream of hers when she was young and working as a dish washer in a restaurant. Sharing the dinner has become a tradition for her family. “This is how we do our own Thanksgiving — with our community,” she said. Her husband, aunt, uncle, three young daughters and a close friend joined the feast, in addition to new and returning
Mark Wilson Photo
Above: Prayers are bountiful during the Community Volunteer Program's Free Thanksgiving Dinner on Thanksgiving day at Veterans Memorial Hall American Legion Post #28. Left: Turkey and all the fixings are served during the Community Volunteer Program's Free Thanksgiving Dinner on Thanksgiving day.
See THANKSGIVING, Page A3
Retailers use tech to track consumers
Mark Wilson Photo
‘Gray Thursday’ not a day off for all
Susie and Dominic Lopez, of Rio Rancho, right, Patsy Hernandez, of Roswell, seated left, and Hope Leyva, of Albuquerque, get a head start on their Black Friday shopping, occupying the front of the line at Target, Thursday evening.
TESS TOWNSEND RECORD STAFF WRITER
Walmart, Target, Big Lots, Kmart, OfficeMax, Hastings, Sears, JCPenney, Bealls, IHOP, Golden Corral, Cattleman’s Steak House — What do these places have in common?
They, among others, were all open Thanksgiving Day in Roswell. Many stores and restaurants have stayed open on Thanksgiving for years. But with the advent of what national media has dubbed “Gray Thursday,” a greater number of retail
locations opened their doors or expanded hours the last Thursday of November, with some staying open overnight. Chain stores used the extra day of business to kick off the holiday season by pushing up sales, a great convenience for
shoppers seeking Turkey Day materials at the last minute and lower prices on goods.
The bottom line for employees of these locations was a little less con-
See GRAY, Page A3
WASHINGTON (AP) — Advances in technology have never made finding deals this holiday season so easy — or so creepy. Marketers and mobile app developers have developed creative new ways to help shoppers find what they want for less. But these inventive techniques also allow for more aggressive tracking of consumer behavior, whether buyers are on their work computer, a mobile device or standing in the grocery aisle. It also now includes the ability to connect that data together and with other personal information like income, zip code and when a person’s car insurance expires. The goal is to monitor consumers online and off to determine exactly what kind of buyer they might be and how much they’re willing to pay. Retailers say these techniques help customize shopping experiences and can lead to good deals for shoppers. Consumer advocates say aggressive tracking and profiling also opens the door to price discrimination, where companies might charge someone more online or deny them entirely based on their home price or how often
they visit a site. “You can’t have Christmas any more without big data and marketers,” said Jef f Chester, executive director at the Center for Digital Democracy. “You know that song where Santa knows when you’ve been sleeping? He knows when you’re awake? Believe me, that’s where he’s getting his information from.” Consumer tracking has long been a part of American consumerism. Retailers push shoppers to sign up for loyalty cards, register purchased items for warranty programs and note zip codes to feed their mailing lists. Online stores and advertising services employ browser “cookies,” the tiny bits of software code that can track a person’s movements across the Internet, to analyze shoppers and present them with relevant pop-up ads. More recently, marketers have developed increasingly sophisticated ways to combine offline and online data that creates detailed profiles of shoppers. They also are per fecting locationtracking technology as a means of attracting new customers and influencing shoppers as they wander through brick-and-mortar stores.
gerous and benign liquids. Magnetic resonance imaging, or MRIs, are used in hospitals to look at soft tissue for damage and disease. The LANL team found their earlier machine, called MagViz, was highly ef fective in deter mining whether the liquid in a soda can or a shampoo bottle, for instance, was something dangerous. Now “MagRay is essentially MagViz plus x-ray,” Espy said. “MagViz was extremely good at certain types of liquids, but had trouble with a few like complex mixtures.” The new machine measures the density of protons
and the activity of those protons to decipher the chemicals in the fluid. So it can distinguish between a bottle of white wine and a wine bottle that actually contains nitromethane for example, a clear liquid that could be used to make an explosive.
State’s jobless claims Nuke lab works on liquids scanner for airports center remains closed ALBUQUERQUE (AP) — New Mexico labor officials say the state’s unemployment insurance operations center will be closed Thanksgiving Day and Friday. Officials say the online system and automated toll-free phone options will still be available. Individuals can apply for unemployment insurance, certify for their weekly claim and check their claim status by logging in on the website Sun-
day through Friday from 4 a.m. to 7 p.m. The operations center will resume normal hours on Monday.
Officials say claimants might also see a delay in banking transactions for unemployment insurance debit cards and direct deposit payments because some banks and the U.S. Postal Service will be closed for the holiday.
HIGH 65 LOW 32
TODAY’S FORECAST
SANTA FE (AP) — Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory are working to perfect a technology that could eliminate the need for travelers to toss their liquids when they go through airport security. A lab team has combined magnetic resonance with low-power X-rays that together can better distinguish between harmless liquids and those that could be used to make explosives. The Santa Fe New Mexican reports the goal is to see what’s inside an unopened bottle. Lab physicist Michelle Espy leads the team that developed a device they call
• ORBAN S. WAGGONER • LISA COBOS
the MagRay. One day, the team’s work could mean airport security officers and travelers won’t have to worry about rules restricting personal care items to 3-ounce bottles all shoved into a single clear plastic bag. “No one wants to have the restrictions in place,” Espy said in a recent interview. The ban has been in place since an al-Qaida plot to sneak liquid explosives onto U.S.-bound planes was thwarted in 2006. The MagRay is the next breakthrough in a machine the LANL team developed in 2008 that used magnetic resonance imaging alone to distinguish between dan-
TODAY’S OBITUARIES PAGE A7
The team has tested the machine in the lab on everyday liquids and on a variety of substances on a Homeland Security Department “threat list.” The agency is helping finance the development.
Espy said the goal now is to make MagRay easy to use, small and fast.
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INDEX HOROSCOPES .........B3
OPINION .................A2
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WEATHER ..............A8
COMICS .................B4
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