Microsoft makes float for Rose Bowl parade

Today, tens of thousands of people in Pasadena, California got to see the 123rd annual Tournament of Roses Parade. The New Year's tradition features a number of spectacular floats that are made out of individual roses. The parade is also a fixture of television with several networks covering the parade live to millions of viewers in the US.

Today's edition of the Tournament of Roses Parade also included a float sponsored by Microsoft. The float took weeks to construct, as you can see from the time lapse video above this post. The float has over 100,000 roses placed on the structure. The float itself was made by volunteers who worked sometimes until 11 pm at night to put the float together.

The final result was seen on the roads of Pasadena today as a number of humans danced on the float, replicating the movements needed to play the games in the recent Xbox 360 exclusive game Kinect Sports Season Two. It was quite an interested display of flowers combined with the video game theme.

John Callaham

John began his journalism career writing for print newspapers but 11 years ago moved on to write mostly for online outlets, particularly PC gaming sites. He has worked for a variety of sites including Firing Squad and most recently AOL's Big Download web site.

Source: http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-makes-float-for-rose-bowl-parade

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Rupert Murdoch Stumbles in Twitter Debut

But is the account real? Some think not

(NEWSER) - Rupert Murdoch on Twitter? It seems unlikely, and many, including Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff , insist the account that popped up yesterday is fake. But none other than Twitter's own executive chairman, Jack Dorsey, tweeted last night: "With his own voice, in his own way, @RupertMurdoch is now on Twitter." The first tweet was posted 19 hours ago, and the account already has nearly 20,000 followers. It also has the blue and white "Verified Account" checkmark next to Murdoch's name. More?

Source: http://www.newser.com/story/136637/rupert-murdoch-stumbles-in-twitter-debut-deleting-tweet-on-british-holidays.html

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Man arrested in California arson probe - CNN.com

By the CNN Wire Staff

updated 11:04 PM EST, Mon January 2, 2012

54 fires over four days in Los Angeles

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

  • Authorities believe the suspect is a foreign national from Germany
  • Harry Burkhart, 24, was charged with one count of arson of an inhabited dwelling
  • He will likely face more charges as the investigation continues, the mayor says
  • The fires caused some $3 million in damages

Los Angeles (CNN) -- A 24-year-old man was charged Monday with arson in connection with a rash of car and building fires across the Los Angeles area, authorities said.

Harry Burkhart was charged with one count of arson of an inhabited dwelling and will likely face additional charges as the investigation moves forward, said Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Arson investigators counted 52 fires, most starting in parked cars, since Friday morning, but none since the man was was detained at 3 a.m. Monday, according to officials.

Burkhart is currently being held without bail.

"These were serious and potentially deadly crimes that needlessly endangered thousands of innocent lives," Villaraigosa told reporters. "These crimes will not be tolerated."

Burkhart is believed to a foreign national from Germany, according to Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck.

Authorities hope, and believe one arsonist acted alone, but will behave as though he did not until they know for sure, Beck said.

Burkhart's arrest came when a sheriff's deputy stopped a van near the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in Hollywood early Monday, said Los Angeles Fire Capt. Jaime Moore. The van matched the description of a vehicle believed related to some of the suspicious fires and the driver resembled a man seen in a surveillance video near the scene of one fire, he said.

The video showed a man who appears to be in his late 20s to mid-30s, with a ponytail, dark hair and a receding hairline.

No one was killed or seriously injured in the fires, though one firefighter and one civilian sustained minor injuries, said Los Angeles City Fire Chief Brian Cummings. Both he and the mayor estimated the fires caused some $3 million in damages.

Among the homes damaged was one that was once occupied by the Doors frontman Jim Morrison.

Eleven of the fires took place overnight, in the very early hours of Monday: nine within the city of Los Angeles and two in West Hollywood, fire department spokesman Cecco Secci said.

Cars were set on fire in Hollywood and Van Nuys, Moore said.

Los Angeles has not seen such a rash of fires since the city's riots in 1992.

CNN's Irving Last, Josh Levs, Drew Griffin, Stan Wilson and Casey Wian contributed to this report.

Source: http://cnn.com/2012/01/02/us/california-arson/index.html?hpt=hp_t3&imw=Y

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Baseball writers need guidance from Hall of Fame

One year. One measly year.

That?s all the time left before the three-player crash that proves once and for all how broken the Hall of Fame voting process has become.

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa are due on the Hall ballot for the first time next December. Barring direction from the Hall of Fame?s board of directors, 580-plus voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America again will be left to determine how to handle the legacies of players implicated in the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Was it OK to get some chemical help because so many players were doing it? Or does being a steroid guy disqualify you from membership, as voters are asked to consider the "integrity, sportsmanship, character" of candidates?

My take on the brokenness of the process is this: 581 voters, 581 standards.

It?s ridiculous to expect me and the other 580 who voted a year ago to sort this out. Many of my brethren disagree, but we hardly have the information we need for these calls. We don?t know who did and who did not use steroids, and we never will.

All we know is which guys have been implicated publicly, through positive tests (Manny Ramirez [stats] and Rafael Palmeiro), the Mitchell Report (Clemens) and reporting (Bonds, Mark McGwire). Then there are guys like Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz [stats] and Sosa, who are reported to have tested positive in 2003 survey testing, which was done under a since-violated guarantee of anonymity.

The whole thing is beyond a slippery slope. It?s an icy crevasse.

The one thing that is clear is that players with any link to performance-enhancing drugs aren?t currently welcome in Cooperstown. McGwire, the test case, has been on the ballot five years, never has received more than 23.7 percent of the vote and received 13 fewer votes in 2011 than in 2010.

While Jeff Bagwell never was linked to steroid use, he improved his body taking androstenedione when it was sold off the shelves at GNC and told ESPN in 2010 that he had "no problem" with a player juicing up. He received 41.7 percent as a first-timer and returns for his second year on the ballot in the voting that ends Sunday and will be released Jan. 9.

It?s impossible to know if that 42 percent rating is a reflection on his play - he?s a Hall of Famer in my book - or if he?s considered a steroid user, even if his only real tie is to androstenedione when it was sold over the counter.

My interpretation says guys who took advantage of baseball?s lack of testing to do as they pleased - Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Clemens, Rodriguez and Palmeiro, among others - disqualified themselves for the Hall because integrity is among the listed factors for voting. But I need some evidence. I don?t believe I can eliminate every brawny player on suspicion alone.

If the New York Times [NYT] had not reported Sosa was on the list of 104 players testing positive in 2003, I would have felt I had to vote for him even though he seemed as complicit as Bonds and McGwire. There has to be some standard of fairness, even if it allows a good cheat to beat the system.

Rather than reward some cheaters and sanction others, you can say _ as ESPN?s Buster Olney does - players should be judged only by what they have done on the field. But I can?t get there in my thinking when voting rules cite "integrity, sportsmanship, character ..."

Jane Forbes Clark, chairman of the Hall?s board, needs to take some ownership of the issue. The BBWAA serves at the Hall?s discretion. There has been discussion at recent BBWAA meetings about seeking clarification from the Hall, but a vote asking for help was rejected in 2010. That doesn?t mean voters don?t need help; it means many aren?t humble enough to ask for it.

Jeff Idelson, president of the Hall, cites the BBWAA?s stance in explaining why the Hall hasn?t entered the discussion.

(c)2011 the Chicago Tribune Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bostonherald/sports/baseball/other_mlb/~3/9ypXU2YUVVM/view.bg

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Egyptian Military Raids Foreign-Funded NGO Offices

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Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/30/144471272/egyptian-military-raids-foreign-funded-ngo-offices?ft=1&f=1004

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Is it time to overhaul the calendar? Here's the plan

Forget leap years, months with 28 days and your birthday falling on a different day of the week each year. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland say they have a better way to mark time: a new calendar in which every year is identical to the one before.

Their proposed calendar overhaul ? largely unprecedented in the 430 years since Pope Gregory XIII instituted the Gregorian calendar we still use today ? would divvy out months and weeks so that every calendar date would always fall on the same day of the week. New Year's Day would forever come on a Sunday. So would Christmas.

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"The calendar I'm advocating isn't nearly as accurate" as the Gregorian calendar, said Richard Henry, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins who has been pushing for calendar reform for years. "But it's far more convenient."

New versus old
The trouble with designing a nice, regular calendar is that each Earth year is 365.2422 days long, leaving extra snippets of time that don't fit nicely into a cycle of 24-hour days. If this time isn't somehow accounted for, the calendar "drifts" relative to the seasons, and the next thing you know, Christmas Day is coming after the spring thaw.

The Gregorian calendar deals with this by adding an extra day (Leap Day) to February about every four years, correcting for the seasonal drift. ?

"It's really incredible that in the Middle Ages, they were able to invent a new calendar that was so accurate," Henry told LiveScience. What bothers him about the Gregorian calendar, though, is the frustrating tendency for days of the week to jump around. Because 365 is not a multiple of seven, 7-day weeks don't fit evenly into the Gregorian calendar. That means that each year, dates shift over one day of the week (two during leap years).

"Everybody has to redo their calendars," Henry said. "For sports schedules, for schools, for every damn thing. It's completely unnecessary."

Under the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar (named after Henry and Steve Hanke, a Johns Hopkins economist who also advocates calendar overhaul), every date falls on the same day of the week ? forever.

The calendar follows a pattern of two 30-day months followed by one 31-day month. That means the old rhyme, "30 days hath September, April, June and November," would need to be revised to "31 days hath September, June, March and December."

To account for extra time, Hanke and Henry drop leap years and instead create a "leap week" at the end of December every five or six years. This extra week, dubbed "Xtr," would adjust for seasonal drift while keeping the 7-day cycle on track.

"The new calendar can be fairly often off as much as three days on the seasons, but looking out, could you tell?" Henry said. "Of course you couldn't tell."

The economics of time
For Henry, the new calendar is worth it because of how much time and effort goes into revising the calendar each year. He first got into the idea of calendar reform while having to yet again update lecture dates and syllabi for his students. He quickly discovered that there were calendar-reform advocates with suggestions on how to do away with that problem, he said.

"My heart sank, and I thought, 'Oh my god, I don't want to get involved in calendar reform. It's the stupidest waste of time. It's hopeless,'" Henry said.

But he put the Hanke-Henry calendar online anyway, weathered a storm of publicity, and watched nothing come of it. This time, he said, he's hoping that the influence of Hanke, the economist, will spur real interest in change.

To Hanke, the need for a new calendar goes beyond the annoyance of out-of-date syllabi. Calculations for interest payments, for example, are complicated by the irregularity of months. Different financial entities deal with these irregularities differently, meaning that the amount of interest accrued depends not just on time, but on who did the calendar-related math. The Hanke-Henry calendar would do away with these irregularities, streamlining the process, Hanke and Henry wrote in the January 2012 issue of Globe Asia magazine.

The new calendar would also be more business-friendly, the researchers wrote. Meetings and holiday time off would be easier to schedule. Other businessmen's attempts at calendar reform, including one by Eastman Kodak founder George Eastman, failed because they didn't always maintain Sundays as weekends, disrupting the Sabbath for Christians. The Hanke-Henry calendar doesn't have that problem.

"The natural date for the introduction of these changes is 1 January 2012, because it is a Sunday in both the current Pope Gregory calendar and the simple, new calendar," the researchers wrote.

While that would not be enough time to update computers to the new calendar, he said, the target for complete technical adoption could be January 1, 2017, when the Gregorian year again begins on a Sunday.

From 2004: Pros and cons of the calendar remake

When's my birthday?
But no matter how simple Hanke and Henry's suggestion is, it faces high psychological barriers.

"My favorite reason it shouldn't be done is, 'But my birthday will always be on a Wednesday!'" Henry said. "Of course the answer to that is you can celebrate your birthday whenever you want."

Another problem: "To my extreme annoyance, my calendar contains four Friday the 13ths each year," Henry said. "Isn't that awful?"

Nonetheless, Henry has some hope for a simpler calendar. After all, he said, smoking has gone from completely acceptable to often banned in public, in just a few short decades. The federal government once managed to institute a nationwide speed limit of 55 miles per hour. And despite centuries of habit, no one says "Peking" anymore when they mean "Beijing."

"Real change is possible," Henry said.

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience ? and on Facebook.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45828666/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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New Year's Day to come early as Samoa leaps ahead (Reuters)

CANBERRA (Reuters) ? If you are reading this on Friday you cannot be in Samoa.

Friday, December 30, has been cut this year for the tiny South Pacific island nation as it ditched a time-zone alliance with the United States and moved its time zone 24 hours ahead to catch up with Asia, New Zealand and Australia.

On New Year's Eve, Samoa will have jumped to the west of the international dateline, which runs zig-zags through the Pacific Ocean and broadly follows the 180 degree line of longitude, in a move Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said would make it easier for Samoa to trade with key partners.

"No longer shall we have people ringing us up on Monday from New Zealand and Australia thinking it is Monday when we are closing our eyes and praying at churches. And vice versa on our Fridays when we ring up and already our contacts are holidaying on their Saturdays," he told Radio New Zealand on Friday.

"It will remove the enormous amount of confusion in our travel times for the Samoans and especially for the tourists who come to Samoa, who keep thinking of the New Zealand and Australian time zones."

Church bells will ring and carol services will herald the changeover time.

"I think the people are pretty calm about it, they are not expecting to have any major changes," said Samoa Observer newspaper editor Savea Sano Malifa.

To help win public support, the government declared employers must still pay workers for the missing Friday, although banks will not be allowed to charge interest for the lost day.

Countries are free to choose whether the dateline passes to the east or west, and Samoa's decision will mean all new maps will need to change.

The vast nation of China uses one national time zone while Australia is a mesh, particularly with summer daylight savings time that sees southern Adelaide city move from half an hour behind the eastern states to an hour in front of far northeastern Queensland.

But some tourism operators are worried Samoa will lose business by losing its position as the last place on earth to see the sunset each day, although it will now be one of the first places to see in each new day.

The nation's seventh Day Adventists are also divided over the change, and whether they should now observe the Sabbath on Saturday or Sunday.

The small former New Zealand dependency Tokelau, which has its administration in Samoa's capital Apia, is also changing datelines, while nearby American Samoa will continue to be on the other side of the dateline and will be a day behind.

Samoa, a country of about 180,000 people, used to be same time zone as New Zealand Australia but went back a day in 1892, celebrating July 4 twice and aligning itself with the United States.

The date change is not the first major change in Samoa in recent years. In 2009, the country switched to driving on the left hand side of the road from the right hand side, in line with New Zealand and Australia.

(Reporting by James Grubel; Additional reporting by Gyles Beckford in Wellington; Editing by Ed Lane)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/oddlyenough/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111230/od_nm/us_samoa_time

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