Source: http://feeds.cbssports.com/click.phdo?i=d0c7ed11d68011db8fa5d81ec149c61d
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Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Washington's Holt, two others fired following Alamo Bowl shootout
Monday, January 2, 2012
Inhofe pays New Year's visit to Okla. Guard troops
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) ? The ability of the Afghan National Army to effectively control and secure Afghanistan has improved dramatically over the last year, U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe said Monday after returning from a visit with Oklahoma National Guard troops in Kuwait and Afghanistan.
Oklahoma's senior U.S. senator returned to Tulsa Monday after ringing in the new year in Afghanistan with troops from Oklahoma's 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, many of whom have been working to train soldiers with the Afghan National Army.
"(The ANA) are rapidly getting to the point where they can take care of their own security," Inhofe, R-Tulsa, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "They're now to the point where they can take care of their own needs.
"I feel that way, and that's what you'll hear from our soldiers over there."
Inhofe said he remains confident that most of the American troops in Afghanistan will be able to withdraw by 2014.
A member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Inhofe left Friday for Kuwait, where he met with some of the roughly 800 45th soldiers stationed there. He then arrived in Afghanistan on New Year's Eve and counted down to the new year with troops at Forward Operating Base Gamberi in eastern Afghanistan, near the country's border with Pakistan.
During his visit, Inhofe delivered cards and letters to the soldiers from students at Grove Valley Elementary School in Edmond.
He said most of the 2,200 Oklahoma National Guard troops in Afghanistan with whom he talked are remaining positive and upbeat, despite the loss of 14 Oklahoma National Guard soldiers who have been killed since they arrived in June.
"It's ironic ? the closer you get to the hostilities, the higher their spirits," Inhofe said.
Inhofe said he did hear complaints from some Oklahoma soldiers stationed at Ghazni, Afghanistan, that they were not receiving the same equipment as their regular Army counterparts.
"That's something I'm checking into now," Inhofe said. "And that's the reason it's necessary for members of the Armed Services Committee to go over there. That would never have come up at a hearing in Washington."
More than 3,000 soldiers with the 45th went to Kuwait and Afghanistan in June in what was the Oklahoma National Guard's largest deployment since the Korean War. They are scheduled to return to Oklahoma in the spring.
___
Sean Murphy can be reached at www.twitter.com/apseanmurphy
Source: http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?r5690260735
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Wikipedia raises $20 million from one million donors
Wikimedia Foundation
Another fundraising banner? No, this is a thank you note.
By Athima Chansanchai
If you use Wikipedia?? and please, don't try to tell us that you don't?? you probably noticed those annoying fundraising banners with personal messages from volunteers begging you to donate to keep the Internet-based community alive. Well, they're gone. You must have heeded those notes and dipped into your wallets, because the Wikimedia Foundation has announced it's hit its target: a record-breaking $20 million, from more than one million donors.
The foundation is the the nonprofit organization that hosts Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects (usch as Wikimedia Commons, Wikibooks and Wikitionary), and its executive director, Sue Gardner, posted the last of the banners we'll see in awhile (we hope) as a thank you note.
She hasn't put the grand total on the message she sent out to the community, but the foundation sent us a message this morning with more details:
It is the Wikimedia Foundation?s most successful campaign ever, continuing an unbroken streak in which donations have risen every year since the campaigns began in 2003.
Wikimedia websites serve more than 470 million people every month. It is the only major website supported not by advertising, but by donations from readers.
?Our model is working fantastically well,? said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. ?Ordinary people use Wikipedia and they like it, so they chip in some cash so it will continue to thrive. That maintains our independence and lets us focus solely on providing a useful public service. I am so grateful to our donors for making that possible. I promise them we will use their money carefully and well.??
Since 2008, the number of Wikimedia Foundation donors has increased ten-fold, and the total dollar amount raised in the campaign has risen to over $20 million from $4.5 million.
If you're wondering what they do with all that money, they told us it is going toward buying and installing "servers and other hardware, to develop new site functionality,?expand mobile services, provide legal defense for the projects, and support the large global community of Wikimedia volunteers."
And who were all those people who were pleading for your money? They were volunteers editors culled from the many countries that contribute to WIkipedia, ranging in age from 18 to 76. (Not like there aren't a lot to choose from, with over 100,000 volunteers.) About 100 volunteers translated the banners, which reached hundreds of millions.?
If you gave, pat yourself on the back. You've done your part to keep the behemoth, with?over 20 million articles in 282 languages, in play. On January 15, Wikipedia celebrates its 11th anniversary
As if we could imagine life before it. (Just remember, it's a good starting place, but follow the footnotes!)
More stories:
Check out Technolog on?Facebook, and on Twitter, follow?Athima Chansanchai, who is also trying to keep her head above water in the?Google+?stream.
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Iowa leaders Romney, Paul leave stage to rivals (AP)
DES MOINES, Iowa ? The two leading Republican presidential candidates in Iowa left the stage to their rivals to make their final pitches to voters just three days before the state's Republican caucus.
Mitt Romney was to campaign in New Hampshire on Saturday while Ron Paul was taking time off in his home state of Texas. Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry all remained in Iowa, touring the state as they worked to win over the many still-undecided conservative voters.
Romney and Paul are absent, but they're poised to do well here. Both are leading in polls and have the money and organization to turn supporters out to caucus Tuesday night.
But with just days until voters begin to select the GOP nominee, the other candidates are still fighting in a volatile race that's seen candidate after candidate rise only to quickly fall. The same polls suggest large numbers of Iowa Republicans could change their minds before the first test of the 2012 campaign.
Santorum is the latest to draw intense interest. He has been rising in polls and drawing larger and larger crowds in recent days. The once resurgent Gingrich has fallen behind as negative ads have battered him on the airwaves and in mailboxes.
Bachmann's campaign has struggled. She's lost key staffers and some activists have urged her to drop out of the race. Perry, meanwhile, has spent millions on TV ads and is continuing a bus tour that consumed much of December.
Romney will return to Iowa later Saturday and will hold events in the western part of the state in areas he won when he first ran for president four years ago.
On Friday, he focused on Paul ? his closest rival in recent polling ? calling the Texas congressman out of step with most Republicans.
"I don't think Ron Paul represents the mainstream of Republican thought with regards to issues, particularly in foreign policy," Romney told Fox News.
Paul planned to spend the weekend out of Iowa. Campaigning Friday, he said he would have trouble voting for any of his Republican rivals if they won the nomination.
"They all are part of the status quo," he said.
Gingrich, now struggling, has said he wouldn't vote for Paul.
The usually combative former House speaker made headlines Friday when he broke down and wept as he talked about his mother's end-of-life illnesses.
"I do policy much easier than I do personal," Gingrich told an audience of women as he tried to regain his composure. The tears flowed as he responded to questions about his mother from a pollster and longtime political ally.
"My whole emphasis on brain science comes in directly from dealing with the real problems of real people," he said, his face distorting as he began to cry. "And so it's not a theory. It's, in fact, my mother."
Kathleen "Kit" Gingrich died in 2003. She was 77.
Whatever the impact of Gingrich's tears on the race for the White House, the video clip seemed destined to be played repeatedly on television and the Internet.
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Sunday, January 1, 2012
A Reason to Have Faith in Humanity: ThinkGeek Makes Christmas Bright For a Cancer Patient and His Wife
I'm In A Glass Case of Emotion
by Jamie Frevele | 3:58 pm, December 31st
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From Tashi?s blog:
??[W]e got some WONDERFUL holiday cheer from www.thinkgeek.com today. Apparently some of the ?worker monkeys? read my blog here and know how HUGE geeks Wash and I are (as if his name did not give it away). (Hi friends! You guys rock!) and wanted to do something for us- they did ?something? alright.
We got so many wonderful geeky things! New shirts! Chromosome towels! Adipose toys! Mad Scientist building blocks! Toys for my nephew! (he is going to LOVE his food-heavy machines and the jet plane bib, his dad is a pilot) We?re going to give the Neuron Plushie to Wash?s neurologist when we see her in about 2 weeks. (I bet she will laugh, she has such a sense of humor) I am keeping the Ebola plushie, I frakking admire filovirii, plus it?s cute. They also gave us the Blue Sun ?travel? poster SET, which I cannot gorram wait to frame and put up. Nathan Fillion?s giant head in our Serenity poster should be jealous. They also sent a treat for the furry legged ones in this house; a ?Cats Attack! Cityscape scratching post. I will have to get a video of Leto attacking it.?
For some people, such gifts would warrant a thank you, and that would be enough. For us, though, a simple thank you does not cover it. Not only were we able to now ?present? gifts to each other, there was plenty to share with some of our family, friends, and even a ?cute? Neuron plushie that we will be giving to Wash?s Neuro-Oncologist. The material things that we received from ThinkGeek were wonderful. Far more than the actual items, though, is something that is truly priceless. Wash does not have many Christmases left, if any, and to be able to give and receive fun, quirky presents, to be able to spend Christmas without the cloud of brain cancer hovering over us, is something that we could not have expected and cannot possibly express sufficient gratitude for.
Someone at ThinkGeek had been reading Tashi?s blog and was following Wash?s story. Without so much as a whisper, the site?s PR department contacted Tashi and told her that ThinkGeek wanted to provide them some cheer for the holidays. What they got was not just material things ? they got a sign that there are people who will still do pure, unselfish good in the world for the sake of making some feel cared for. It?s nice to be reminded that some people ? even busy people ? can be that considerate, especially during the holidays.
We urge everyone to take a look at Tashi?s blog and keep up with these happy Browncoats. We also urge you to visit ThinkGeek, frequently.
(via Wired)
Source: http://www.themarysue.com/thinkgeek-plays-santa/
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cswanger: Since ios5, my #iPhone battery isn't worth crap anymore. I have to charge it at least once a day, sometimes twice. #fail
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Since ios5, my #iPhone battery isn't worth crap anymore. I have to charge it at least once a day, sometimes twice. #fail 
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NASA probe circling the moon on New Year's Eve (AP)
PASADENA, Calif. ? As planet Earth rang in the new year, a different kind of countdown was happening at the moon.
After a 3 1/2-month journey, a NASA spacecraft flew over the moon's south pole, fired its engine and dropped into orbit Saturday in the first of two back-to-back arrivals over the New Year's weekend.
Mission control at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted in cheers and applause after receiving confirmation that the probe was healthy and circling the moon. An engineer was seen on closed-circuit television blowing a noisemaker to herald the New Year's Eve arrival.
"Everything went just as we hoped. The burn was spot-on," chief scientist Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in a post-mission interview with The Associated Press.
The team toasted sparkling cider, but the celebration was brief. Despite the successful maneuver, the work was not over. Its twin still had to enter lunar orbit on New Year's Day.
The Grail probes ? short for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory ? have been cruising independently toward their destination since launching in September aboard the same rocket on a mission to measure lunar gravity.
Hours before revelers in Times Square watched the ball drop, Grail-A approached the moon and fired its engine for about 40 minutes to get captured into orbit. Deep space antennas in the California desert and Madrid tracked every move and fed real-time updates to ground controllers
About 270 family members and friends of the mission team descended on the NASA campus to watch the drama unfold on a live feed.
"This is great, a big relief," deputy project scientist Sami Asmar told the jubilant crowd.
Grail is the 110th mission to target the moon since the dawn of the Space Age including the six Apollo moon landings that put 12 astronauts on the surface. Despite the attention the moon has received, scientists don't know everything about Earth's nearest neighbor.
Why the moon is ever so slightly lopsided with the far side more mountainous than the side that always faces Earth remains a mystery. A theory put forth earlier this year suggested that Earth once had two moons that collided early in the solar system's history, producing the hummocky region.
Grail is expected to help researchers better understand why the moon is asymmetrical and how it formed by mapping the uneven lunar gravity field that will indicate what's below the surface.
Previous lunar missions have attempted to study the moon's gravity ? which is about one-sixth Earth's pull ? with mixed results. Grail is the first mission devoted to this goal.
Once in orbit, the near-identical spacecraft will spend the next two months refining their positions until they are just 34 miles above the surface and flying in formation. Data collection will begin in March.
The $496 million mission will be closely watched by schoolchildren. An effort by Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, will allow middle school students to use cameras aboard the probes to zoom in and pick out their favorite lunar spots to photograph.
Despite the latest focus on the moon, NASA won't be sending astronauts back anytime soon. The Obama administration last year nixed a lunar return in favor of landing humans on an asteroid and eventually Mars.
A jaunt to the moon is usually speedy. It took the Apollo astronauts three days to zip there aboard the powerful Saturn V rocket. Since NASA wanted to economize by launching on a small rocket, it took Grail a leisurely 3 1/2 months to make a roundabout trip.
NASA's last moonshot occurred in 2009 with the launch of a pair of spacecraft ? one that circled the moon and another that deliberately crashed into the surface and uncovered frozen water in one of the permanently shadowed lunar craters.
___
Online:
Mission: http://grail.nasa.gov
___
Follow Alicia Chang's coverage at http://www.twitter.com/SciWriAlicia
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