This bus' next stop: doing good

Maybe you want to help others. Maybe you long to lend a hand. But you're not sure where and you're not sure how and you don't...

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Maker Mom Builds Cookie-Cutter Empire With 3-D Printers

Athey Moravetz is doing some tasty work with her 3-D printers. The video game designer has worked on PlayStation games like Resistance Retribution and Uncharted Golden Abyss. She's also a self-described "jack-of-all-trades," skilled with 3-D modeling tools like Maya, and knows how to design compelling characters with them. After having two children she decided to work from home, and in addition...

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Hundreds pay tribute to legendary Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar

ENCINITAS, California (Reuters) – Ravi Shankar‘s daughters, Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar, along with the wife of late Beatle George Harrison said their final goodbyes to the Indian sitar virtuoso on Thursday at a public memorial service in Encinitas, California.The legendary musician and composer, who helped introduce the sitar to the Western world through his collaboration with The Beatles, died...

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The Neediest Cases: The Daughter of a Sick Woman Falls Prey to a Craigslist Scam

Sitting side by side on their living room sofa, Patricia Morales and her daughter, Katherine, could be any mother-daughter duo. Both have dark hair, dark eyes and welcoming, infectious smiles. Librado Romero/The New York TimesPatricia Morales, 62, at home in the Bronx. Her treatment for ailments like rheumatoid arthritis and hepatitis C led to depression. ...

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As Shoppers Hop From Tablet to PC to Phone, Retailers Try to Adapt

Jim Wilson/The New York TimesShoppers often visit ModCloth, a Web site that sells women’s clothes, on their phones but return on a different kind of device to buy something, said Sarah Rose, a vice president at ModCloth. Ryan O’Neil, a Connecticut government employee, was in the market to buy a digital weather station this month. His wife researched options on their iPad, but even though she found...

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NRA calls for armed police officer in every school

WASHINGTON - The nation's largest gun-rights lobby called Friday for armed police officers to be posted in every American school...

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The Surprising Truth: Technology Is Aging in Reverse

We’re living in a Black Swan world, but what does this mean for the future of technology? The new book Antifragile argues that technologies, ideas, and theories – anything informational or cultural, as opposed to physical – age in reverse.We may be trained to think that the new is about to overcome the old, but that’s just an optical illusion. Because the failure rate of the new...

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Moroccan road film subverts Hollywood stereotypes

DUBAI (Reuters) – When director John Slattery first visited Morocco, the familiarity was jarring – and as removed from the images of an exotic Orient conjured up by Hollywood as possible.That dichotomy between the representation and the reality of Morocco drives Slattery‘s charming paean to a country he clearly loves and makes “Casablanca, Mon Amour” a thoughtful rejoinder to U.S. popular culture.Two...

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Op-Ed Contributor: Labs, Washed Away

BEDPAN ALLEY is the affectionate name given to a stretch of First Avenue in Manhattan that is packed with more hospitals than many cities possess. This stretch also happened to be right in the flood zone during Hurricane Sandy. Water damage and power failures closed down all three of the New York University teaching hospitals — Bellevue Hospital, Tisch Hospital and the Manhattan V.A. Two months later,...

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Fearful 'end of world' calls, emails flood NASA as Dec. 21 nears

If there's one government agency really looking forward to Dec. 22, it's NASA.The space agency said it has been flooded with...

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Spoiler Alert: First 3-D Printed Records Sound Awful

The needle drops and a series of high, repetitive whines come from the album. Then a crackling sound, and a muffled guitar riff. Finally, Kurt Cobain’s voice — audible, but distant and hollow, like he is singing in a tunnel with a scarf over his mouth.It’s about the worst version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” you could find. But it is awesome all the same for its totally unique medium. This...

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Thousands mourn U.S.-Mexican singer Jenni Rivera

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Thousands of mourners on Wednesday packed a Los Angeles theater to pay their final respects to Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera more than a week after her death in a plane crash.Rivera, 43, best known for her work in the Mexican folk Nortena and Banda genres, died after the small jet she was traveling in crashed in northern Mexico on December 9.Rivera’s family, dressed...

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Female Vaccination Workers, Essential in Pakistan, Become Prey

LAHORE, Pakistan — The front-line heroes of Pakistan’s war on polio are its volunteers: young women who tread fearlessly from door to door, in slums and highland villages, administering precious drops of vaccine to children in places where their immunization campaign is often viewed with suspicion. Now, those workers have become quarry. After militants stalked and killed eight of them over...

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F.T.C. Pushes Antitrust Inquiry Against Google Into January

WASHINGTON — Google was prepared to start the holidays early this week, by settling its antitrust dispute with federal regulators without a harsh punishment. But in shelving its inquiry until January, the Federal Trade Commission has put stronger penalties back on the bargaining table, people briefed on the investigation who were not authorized to speak publicly about it said Wednesday....

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Robert Bork, failed Supreme Court nominee, dies at age 85

Robert H. Bork, whose failed Supreme Court nomination in 1987 infuriated conservatives and politicized the confirmation process...

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Text Adventure: <cite>Zork</cite> Creators Honored With Pioneer Award

In the days before graphics, computer games had to entice players with nothing more than a well-turned phrase.Whether you prefer to call them “text adventures” or “interactive fiction,” games played with nothing but writing and verbal commands were a significant part of the early days of interactive entertainment. At the forefront of the medium were the designers of...

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“Best Funeral Ever” premiere delayed after Newtown school shootings

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Fans of death-centric reality TV will have to wait a little longer to dig into TLC‘s “Best Funeral Ever.”TLC has pushed back the premiere of the special to January 6 at 10/9c in light of the school shootings in Newtown, Conn. last week.“Best Funeral Ever” was initially scheduled to premiere on December 26 at 8/7c.“Best Funeral Ever” centers around the Golden Gate Funeral...

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Lawyer Says Ritual Circumcision Is Protected Activity

A lawyer for Orthodox Jewish groups asked a federal judge on Tuesday to throw out a New York City regulation requiring parents to sign a consent form before their infant sons undergo a form of Jewish ritual circumcision in which the circumciser uses his mouth to remove blood from the incision. The lawyer, Shay Dvoretzky, said the practice, which is prevalent in parts of the ultra-Orthodox...

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Newport Beach dock renters may withhold holiday love

Marcy Cook embraces the holiday season. The tell? Start with the teddy bears dressed as Santa. More than 1,500 stand sentry...

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Intellectual Ventures: Why the Patent System Needs Aggregators Like Us

The U.S. patent system borrowed from mainland Europe a concept that had evolved over hundreds of years: the “moral right” for inventors to protect their ideas. But America’s founders went even further – they also included the obligation for inventors to publish.This extra part of the deal was ingenious: It has been key to America’s history as a global leader in innovation.Because inventors...

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Florida man sentenced to 10 years in “hackerazzi” case

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A Florida man who pleaded guilty to hacking into the email accounts of celebrities to gain access to nude photos and private information was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a federal judge in Los Angeles on Monday.Former office clerk Christopher Chaney, 36, said before the trial that he hacked into the accounts of film star Scarlett Johansson and other celebrities because...

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Mind: A Misguided Focus on Mental Illness in Gun Control Debate

The gunman, Adam Lanza, 20, has been described as a loner who was intelligent and socially awkward. And while no official diagnosis has been made public, armchair diagnosticians have been quick to assert that keeping guns from getting into the hands of people with mental illness would help solve the problem of gun homicides. Arguing against stricter gun-control measures, Representative Mike...

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