Friday, December 30, 2011

Paul's surge may prompt a new look from GOP voters

Republican presidential candidate, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, speaks during a campaign stop in Dubuque, Iowa, Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Republican presidential candidate, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, speaks during a campaign stop in Dubuque, Iowa, Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Chris Noth, a Ron Paul supporter, holds up a sign outside Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's campaign stop in Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2011. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Traffic passes a campaign sign for Republican presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, at an instersection in Ankeny, Iowa Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2011. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

(AP) ? Ron Paul wants to legalize pot and shut down the Federal Reserve. He thinks the federal government has no authority to outlaw abortion, no business bombing Iran to keep it from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and no justification to print money unless it's backed up by gold bars.

And he might win the Iowa caucuses.

The closer the first votes of the 2012 presidential campaign get, the more competitive the Texas congressman appears to become. It's a moment his famously fervent supporters have longed for. Plenty of others are asking: What's Ron Paul about, again?

As in his two prior quixotic campaigns for president, Paul has toiled for months as a fringe candidate best known for staking out libertarian positions. As every other Republican candidate lined up to attack President Barack Obama's health care law and to promise tax cuts, Paul again demanded audits of the Federal Reserve and a return to the gold standard.

Leading in some state polls, Paul is getting a look from mainstream voters in Iowa, where the 76-year-old obstetrician has emerged as a serious contender in the Jan. 3 caucuses ? and in other early voting states, should he pull off a victory.

The sudden rush of attention to Paul's resume hasn't been kind. He's spent the past week disowning racist and homophobic screeds in newsletters he published decades ago, including one following the 1992 riots in Los Angeles that read, "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to collect their welfare checks three days after rioting began."

"Everybody knows I didn't write them and they're not my sentiments, so it's sort of politics as usual," Paul said during a recent Iowa campaign stop.

Paul returns to Iowa on Wednesday, giving his impressive grass-roots organization in the state a last chance to present, and perhaps defend, positions he's staked out over a long political career and reiterated during the 13 Republican debates held this year.

Paul has served a dozen terms in Congress as a Republican, but he espouses views that have made him the face of libertarianism in the U.S. He blames both Republicans and Democrats for running up the federal debt and opposes any U.S. military involvement overseas. He wants to bring home all troops from all U.S. bases abroad.

He vows to do away with five Cabinet-level departments ? Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Interior ? and repeal the amendment to the Constitution that created the federal income tax. He opposes federal flood insurance and farm subsidies and wants to remove marijuana from the federal list of controlled substances.

He says he'll cut $1 trillion out of the first budget he offers as president. He doesn't believe in a border fence but says illegal immigrants shouldn't get a free education in public schools.

He's reliably described by political pundits as non-establishment, quirky, unorthodox. During a Republican debate in Sioux City, Iowa, earlier this month, Paul defended his views and rejected the idea that they make him unelectable.

"The important thing is, the philosophy I'm talking about is the Constitution and freedom, and that brings people together," Paul said. "It brings independents in the fold and it brings Democrats over on some of these issues."

Paul doesn't always side with the most extreme conservative proposals. When it comes to Newt Gingrich's suggestion that judges could be hauled before Congress to explain their rulings, Paul joined other Republicans in dismissing the idea.

Paul's recent surge in Iowa isn't the first time the GOP establishment has been forced to pay attention to him. A fundraising blitz that netted $5 million in one day in 2008 led Republican operatives to weigh whether he was a bigger threat to siphon votes than previously thought.

Now he may be in his best position yet to do more than just steal votes.

"I see this philosophy as being very electable, because it's an American philosophy, it's the rule of law," Paul said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2011-12-28-Paul's%20Positions/id-5adf1782e82645a78e4a93fabd0a4c05

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NHL: Florida 5, Toronto 3

Published: Dec. 27, 2011 at 10:38 PM

SUNRISE, Fla., Dec. 27 (UPI) -- Bill Thomas' first goal of the season set off a big second period for Florida Tuesday that boosted the Panthers to a 5-3 win over Toronto.

Thomas' tally 2:30 into the middle frame gave Florida a 2-1 lead. It was followed 2 minutes later by Jason Garrison's goal on a Panthers power play.

Toronto's Mikhail Grabovski was whistled for slashing 59 seconds later and the Maple Leafs then took another penalty for having too many men on the ice.

Kris Versteeg made the Leafs pay with a 5-on-3 goal that put the Panthers up 4-1.

Erik Gudbranson scored and Jose Theodore turned aside 29-of-32 shots for first-place Florida, which broke a three-game skid.

Grabovski scored twice and Dion Phaneuf added a goal for the Maple Leafs.

James Reimer was lifted in the second period after allowing three goals on eight shots. Jonas Gustavsson entered and stopped 16-of-18 pucks the rest of the way.

Source: http://pheed.upi.com/click.phdo?i=5f29eb36e40c5babf8d456655865d799

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Keen On? Kurt Andersen: Why Nothing Much Has Changed In The Last 20 Years (TCTV)

Screen Shot 2011-12-27 at 10.32.39 AMWe all know that not much happens in the week between Christmas and the New Year. But less well know is how little has happened culturally?in the last twenty years. Indeed, so little has happened in this time (except, of course, for all the all-important caveat of technological change), according to the writer and broadcaster Kurt Andersen, that we are still listening to the same music, watching the same sort of tv shows, wearing the same style of clothing, driving the same kind of cars and living in the same kind of homes as we were in late Eighties.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/qOcjr6sE2Rg/

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Thursday, December 29, 2011

Robot videojournalist uses cuteness to get vox pops

Imagine a cardboard version of Pixar's Wall-e character, but with added ?ber-cute human voice, and you've got a fair picture of Boxie, Alexander Reben's documentary-video-making robot.

Designed to wander the streets shooting video, the diminutive droid trundles up to people and asks them to tell it an interesting story.

Sounds crazy? Surprisingly, not entirely: a good few people did actually cooperate with Boxie ? enough to make a short movie ? though one malcontent dumped the robot in a trash can and a child tried to kidnap it.

"The idea was to create a robot that was interesting enough for people to engage with it and offer to help it, carrying it around and up and down stairs to show it things," says Reben, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab.

To win cooperation from the person in the street, cuteness is Boxie's stock-in-trade. In addition to being a squat, doe-eyed creature, it is also made of cardboard, a material Reben says people perceive as non-threatening, even friendly. When his team tried to build Boxie from white plastic, it looked scarily skull-like.

Nice doggie

Based on an off-the-shelf caterpillar-tracked chassis, the robot ? presented at the ACM Multimedia Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, in late November ? uses ultrasound sonar to detect walls. That keeps it straight and true while it trundles along sidewalks and corridors, and a body-heat sensor tells it when it's found a person ? though a large dog could fool it, Reben concedes.

It then sets to work with its not-very-hard-nosed interview technique. "Boxie has a script in which it asks people questions and asks them to pick it up and show it around an area like a lab or mall. To move on to the next series of questions, people are asked to press buttons on either side of it," says Reben.

Boxie would set off on its own at the beginning of the day and it would generally spend 6?hours or so collecting video ? limited more by the video recording time available than battery power. It would report its condition to the research team regularly, via whatever open Wi-Fi it could find, but not its position: location-sensing tech was dropped to save development time.

"That meant I'd have to go out and search for Boxie at the end of the day. Once I found it in the trash and another time an intern spotted a child trying to put it in its parents' car," he says.

Over a few days Boxie collected about 50 interviews, which the MIT team has edited down to a 5-minute documentary. Overall, Reben and colleague Joe Paradiso reckon robot-mediated story acquisition works: "A coherent movie was easily produced from the video clips captured, proving that their content and organisation were viable for story-making," they say in their conference paper.

Don't be annoying

Chris Melhuish, director of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK, says MIT was right to focus on perfecting Boxie's social acceptability. "As robots become everyday objects in our environment, the way they behave will become increasingly important. Future smart machines will need such social intelligence to interact naturally ? utilising appropriate gestures, body pose and non-verbal communication, for instance."

However, as any journalist on a vox-pop assignment soon finds out, people can be cranky ? and Boxie took its share of abuse from the public. Force sensors in the robot recorded that it had suffered violent shaking ? or been thrown to the ground ? a number of times. So the researchers have some advice for future builders of robotic reporters: "Try not to be annoying."

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1b55c179/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Carticle0Cdn213180Erobot0Evideojournalist0Euses0Ecuteness0Eto0Eget0Evox0Epops0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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3DS Sees Record Sales In Japan, Fueled By Mario Kart 7 And Super Mario 3D Land

01Nintendo is really lucky to own the Super Mario brand: after the bumpy, Mario-less launch of the 3DS in Japan back in February, big N is seeing record sales for its portable console. As predicted, sales in Japan for the 3DS crossed the four million unit mark before the end of the year, namely sometime between December 19 and 25. That's the week Nintendo sold 510,629 units 3DS systems, according to Japan's biggest video game magazine Famitsu [JP]. In total, the company has shifted 4,135,739 units in the country since the launch on February 26. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata earlier predicted the 3DS will find 4 million Japanese buyers sometimes in February next year.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/BPHBVnl0ez4/

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Nato troops killed by Afghan bomb

The Taliban said it carried out an attack in eastern Afghanistan which left three Nato service members dead

The Taliban said it carried out an attack in eastern Afghanistan which left three Nato service members dead

Three Nato service members have been killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan, the alliance said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the target was a US military convoy.

Nato said the deaths occurred on Tuesday, but provided no further details about the incident or the nationalities of the troops.

The Taliban said the attack took place in Paktiya province, about 60 miles south of the capital, Kabul.

The latest deaths bring December's toll of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan to 23, with a total of 539 deaths so far this year.

The yearly tally is considerably lower than for 2010, when more than 700 troops died, but the number of wounded has remained high, dipping only slightly from last year's total of more than 5,000 service members.

Also on Tuesday, a community council leader in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province was shot dead by insurgents along with his 20-year-old son and two-year-old grandson, the governor's office said.

A statement from the office said the attack happened late in the evening, as council leader Adbdul Baqi was heading home from his office.

Source: http://news.uk.msn.com/world/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=160150597

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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Who Has Better Credit Quiz - Credit Score - Credit, Loans and Debt ...

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Source: http://www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans-debt/info-01-2012/who-has-better-credit-score-quiz.html

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Acquitted pastor's ex-wife dies years after attack (AP)

DALLAS ? Peggy Railey, the former wife of a Dallas minister who was acquitted at a sensational trial of trying to strangle her, has died in East Texas nearly 25 years after the attack that left her incapacitated.

Ron Gamel of the Tyler Memorial Funeral Home confirmed Railey's death but declined to release details Tuesday, citing a family request for privacy.

Railey, 63, never recovered from the savage choking assault at her Dallas-area home in April 1987 and remained in what doctors called a vegetative state. Walker Railey, her husband at the time of the attack, was once a rising star at Dallas' First United Methodist Church. He was acquitted in 1993 of attempted murder, though he acknowledged lying about his whereabouts the night of the attack to hide an affair.

Walker Railey, who has maintained his innocence, lost an $18 million civil judgment in his wife's attack but the award was later set aside as part of bankruptcy proceedings and a settlement between Railey and his former wife's family.

"I'm grateful that Peggy's medical struggles have finally come to an end," Walker Railey told The Associated Press in a brief telephone interview Tuesday. "She suffered a long time."

Peggy Railey had been staying at an undisclosed nursing home in Tyler, where she required 24-hour care, was fed through tubes, had no muscle control, was awake intermittently and made noises and cries. The Tyler Morning Telegraph first reported her death.

In the spring of 1987, Walker Railey was a dynamic and socially conscious senior minister at the 6,000-member First United Methodist Church. He had received threatening, racially charged letters and even wore a bulletproof vest to deliver the Easter Sunday sermon that would be his last at the church.

On the night of April 21, Peggy Railey was choked with a cord and left convulsing and near death on their garage floor. The couple's two children, Ryan, 5, and Megan, 2, were left inside, unharmed. Railey told police he discovered his wife about 12:40 a.m. when he returned from doing research at Southern Methodist University.

A little more than a week after the attack, Railey locked himself in a hospital suite and began to write. A security guard found him unconscious, empty pill bottles and a long, rambling note lying nearby. Police described it as a suicide note. In the letter, Railey wrote of a lifelong battle with the `'demon inside my soul" and said it had lured him into doing things he did not want to do. `'My demon has finally gotten the upper hand," he claimed.

He surrendered custody of his children to longtime friends and moved to California with his lover Lucy Papillon, a psychologist and the daughter of a Methodist bishop who, like Railey, once served as senior minister at First Methodist.

Dallas prosecutors didn't immediately bring criminal charges against Railey. In a civil judgment in 1988, however, a state district judge ruled that Railey `'intentionally, knowingly, maliciously, and brutally attempted to strangle his wife" and to cover up his actions with a `'false alibi."

More than four years later, Railey went on trial for attempted murder. Investigators developed evidence through his cell phone calls that he was not on the SMU campus but nearer his own home at a critical time the night of the attack. Evidence also showed the threatening notes were written on a church typewriter and Railey's DNA was on a licked envelope. A grand jury indicted him.

At his trial in San Antonio, prosecutors tried to show that Railey plotted to kill his wife so he would be free to marry Papillon, arguing that he knew a divorce would jeopardize his rise through the church hierarchy.

On the witness stand, Railey swore he wasn't covering up trying to kill his wife but had been trying to hide his affair.

"I was lying to my wife and creating an alibi to go see Lucy Papillon," Railey testified, and said the suicide note was him "confessing the guilt and the sense of betrayal I felt for not being there when my family needed me."

The jury acquitted him. `'It's like `Murder, She Wrote,' `' Railey told The Associated Press the night after the verdict. `'Everybody wants to solve it. Well, I want to solve it, too."

Railey's married his second wife, Donna, in 1998, less than two weeks after he signed final papers ending his marriage to Peggy Railey. She later died of liver failure.

___

Associated Press writers Michael Graczyk in Houston and Schuyler Dixon in Dallas contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obits/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111227/ap_on_re_us/us_obit_peggy_railey

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Dirty Jobs S09E03 Doomsday Seed Banker HDTV XviD-LMAO[ettv]

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