Saving this dinosaur took a skeleton crew

The urgent message went well beyond Robert Painter's usual areas of legal expertise — personal injury, commercial disputes, medical malpractice.

In less than 48 hours, the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus bataar, a fierce cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex, would be up for auction.

"Sorry for the late notice," the email said. "Is there anything we can do to legally stop this?"

The president of Mongolia, whom Painter had met 10 years before at a public policy conference, was now asking the Houston lawyer to block the sale of a fossil that scientists believed had been looted from the Gobi Desert. The auction catalog described the specimen:

"The quality of the preservation is superb, with wonderful bone texture and delightfully mottled grayish bone color. In striking contrast are those deadly teeth, long and frightfully robust, in a warm woody brown color, the fearsome, bristling mouth and monstrous jaws leaving one in no doubt as to how the creature came to rule its food chain."

The sheer size and condition of the fossil seemed guaranteed to fetch a seven-figure price. When Painter read the email May 18, it was already 6:30 p.m. on a Friday. The auction was Sunday.

In the days that followed, Painter, a New York auctioneer, a Texas judge, federal prosecutors, the Mongolian president and a self-described "commercial paleontologist" would come together somewhat like the skeleton they were fighting for, disparate parts brought together through dogged effort and mysterious circumstances.

The fight would play out in federal courts in a case known as United States of America vs. One Tyrannosaurus Bataar Skeleton.

***

Since 1924, the Mongolian constitution has classified dinosaur fossils as "culturally significant," meaning they cannot be taken from the country without government permission. Over the years, the punishment for illegally keeping or smuggling dinosaur bones has varied from up to seven years in prison to 500 hours of forced labor or paying up to 500,000 tugriks, the Mongolian currency. (That's about $356.50.)

Cultural heritage is a sensitive subject for a people who, their history of Genghis Khan's empire-building notwithstanding, saw powerful, aggressive neighbors invade their lands repeatedly.

After advertising for the auction caught the attention of paleontologists worldwide, Mongolian officials and journalists quickly learned of the fossil with the "delightfully mottled grayish bone color."

"The dinosaur has the color of the Gobi sand," said Oyungerel Tsedevdamba, an advisor to Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj. "Such color is very particular and familiar to us and belongs to this country."

On May 18, as Tsedevdamba was preparing to leave her home in the Mongolian capital, Ulan Bator, for a meeting, her husband, a science enthusiast, pointed out a news report he'd found online: A Tyrannosaurus bataar was going to be auctioned in New York.

Auctioned fossils are usually too expensive for universities to buy, and private sellers typically don't provide enough details on how or where they got them. That leaves many of the bones in the hands of wealthy fossil buffs, or museums that look the other way.

"Technically, public institutions are neither ethically allowed to own poached specimens, nor are scientists supposed to publish on poached specimens," said Philip Currie, a University of Alberta paleontologist who studied the Gobi Desert region for 15 years. "In other words, they become scientifically useless."

The Tyrannosaurus bataar was 24 feet long, stood 8 feet high and weighed two tons. Still, the beast was only two-thirds grown when it died 70 million years ago.

Though it never grew into a 34-foot adult, the Tyrannosaurus thrived on the abundant prey attracted to the Nemegt Basin, then a lush river plain that straddled what is today the Gobi Desert on the Mongolia-China border. The carnivore's main competitors were its own kind.

The creature's jaw still carries bite marks, apparently inflicted by another Tyrannosaurus bataar.

These predators were "scrappy," Currie said. "They weren't overly playful."

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 15

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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Jodie Foster Kicks Open the Closet Door – What It Means for Gays in Hollywood

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Jodie Foster spoke frankly about her life as a lesbian Sunday night in a Golden Globes speech that thrust her into the center of the gay rights debate whether she likes it or not.

By deciding to address the subject of her sexuality in a spectacularly public setting, while also articulating a defense of personal privacy, she upended the casual way that other gay movie and music stars have been revealing their orientation in recent years.

They chose to nudge the closet door ajar by dropping the “g” word in interviews – like “The Big Bang Theory” star Jim Parsons – or by tweeting pictures of their significant others lounging on a couch, as “Kyle XY” actor Matt Dallas did last week.

But Foster made coming out a big deal again, shattering her glass closet, while never actually saying the words, “I’m gay.”

“When she decided to address her sexuality last night, however indirectly she did it, she was talking about gay rights at a critical moment,” Dustin Lance Black, the openly gay screenwriter behind “Milk,” said. “There is a case in that will be in front of the Supreme Court soon that will decide if gay and lesbian people will be allowed to marry. By coming out she sends a message to the country that we are everyone and everywhere. We’re your friends, your neighbors and we’re the people who have been entertaining you for the last 47 years.”

The speech itself was fascinating, because it was raw, but also grudging. Some gay activists have long agitated for Foster to speak frankly about being a lesbian and at various points, her speech seemed to be a challenge to any group who would seek to exploit her celebrity for its own ends. My life belongs to me, she seemed to be saying.

“I hope you’re not disappointed that there won’t be a big coming-out speech tonight because I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago back in the Stone Age, in those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends and family and co-workers and then gradually, proudly to everyone who knew her, to everyone she actually met,” Foster said, as her two sons, Charles, 14, and Kit, 12, looked on from the audience. “But now I’m told, apparently that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance and a prime-time reality show.”

Foster turned 50 last November and her discomfort with addressing her orientation may have been entangled in a different era in which being openly gay was a barrier that prevented actors and actresses from getting A-list roles. Over the past half century, acceptance of gays and lesbians has accelerated dramatically.

In a Pew survey conducted last October, 49 percent of respondents favored gay marriage, up from 39 percent four years earlier.

This greater tolerance has left stars like Foster and to a lesser extent people like CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who acknowledged that he was gay last summer after years of internet speculation, in an awkward position.

“It catches people like Jodie Foster in a bind,” said Larry Gross, the author of “Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing” who is also vice dean at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism. “What happens to them is at a certain point the culture moved past them and they find themselves standing out there in a semi-opaque glass closet. Everybody in the world knew that she was gay and it was becoming an embarrassment.”

Foster tried to explain her hesitancy while accepting the Cecil B. DeMille career achievement award Sunday by saying that it was related to issues of personal privacy. She noted that she has been in the spotlight for half a century, but also implied that she was uncomfortable with the tabloid coverage of celebrities and their obsession to open their private lives to scrutiny in everything from prime time interviews to personal Twitter streams.

“If you had been a public figure from the time that you were a toddler, if you’d had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, then maybe you too might value privacy above all else,” she said. “Privacy. Some day, in the future, people will look back and remember how beautiful it once was.”

For the most part, the reaction among prominent members of the gay community has been positive, but there are some who insinuate that the relative safety in which Foster chose to address the issue had been fought and paid for by earlier generations of gay performers who opened up about their homosexuality at a time when their professional lives could have been snuffed out.

Wilson Cruz, the openly gay star of the 1990s drama “My So Called Life” and now a strategic giving officer at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said he was heartened by Foster’s remarks, but also conscious of her place in the history of the gay rights movement.

“I applaud anybody who opens up like that in a way that will effect million of people’s lives for the better,” he said. “One thing I did take umbrage with for personal reasons, is that I like to remember people who came out before it was safe. People like Harvey Fierstein, Ian McKellen and John Gielgud who risked their careers and their lives to do so.”

To that end, activists and public relations experts say that they do not anticipate Foster will be riding the main float at Gay Pride festivals anytime soon. Instead, they expect that after Sunday’s air-clearing, the actress will remain fiercely protective of her privacy – something she had done since John W. Hinckley Jr. said that he had tried to assassinate former President Ronald Reagan to impress her while she was still a college student.

“I don’t expect her to be the cover girl for gay and lesbian causes,” Howard Bragman, vice chairman of Reputation.com, and a publicist who has helped over a dozen actors with their coming out announcements, said. “She may show up to a few events, but I don’t think she will be that involved, and that’s fine.”

Bragman said that on the scale of coming out announcements, Foster’s ranked as a “duh.” Though she had never been explicit about her orientation, she hadn’t pretended to be a heterosexual. In fact, she had thanked her former partner Cydney Bernard as far back as 2007 at the Women in Entertainment Breakfast.

An industry awards gathering, though, is not the same thing as coming out on national television to an audience of 14.8 million viewers. Reaction to Foster’s statements erupted almost immediately on Twitter and on other social media sites, with some griping about her decision to couple her speech about her “modern family” with a plea for privacy.

To Bil Browning, a gay activist and the editor-in-chief of The Bilerico Project, that misses the point. Given Foster’s iconic roles in films like “The Silence of the Lambs,” not to mention her long-standing refusal to address the gay rumors, she had no choice but to command a global platform when the time came for her big reveal.

“Jodie Foster is somebody the gay community has always wanted to be an icon and she came out in a big way and now some people still aren’t satisfied,” Browning said. “Would they have been satisfied if she had just posted a picture of her girlfriend on Instagram? Given her status, I don’t think she would ever have been allowed to just come out casually.”

Gay activists and chroniclers of the movement say that the “coming out” process that has so bedeviled public figures like Foster may soon be an anachronism. As younger actors step into the spotlight, they will do so having grown up in a society that allows gays to serve openly in the military and is weighing the legality of permitting them to marry. The novelty of simply saying, “I’m gay,” could soon seem quaint.

“We’re on the verge of crossing or erasing what was an uncrossable line,” Gross said. “There’s a younger generation of actors, who have been out all their lives and can’t imagine the enforced rigmarole of going on fake dates and ducking questions about their sexuality, who are coming on the stage. Like the Berlin Wall, the barrier is crumbling in front of our eyes.”

Or as Foster herself said in her Golden Globes speech last night, “Change, you gotta love it.”

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Personal Best: Training Insights From Star Athletes

Of course elite athletes are naturally gifted. And of course they train hard and may have a phalanx of support staff — coaches, nutritionists, psychologists.

But they often have something else that gives them an edge: an insight, or even an epiphany, that vaults them from the middle of the pack to the podium.

I asked several star athletes about the single realization that made the difference for them. While every athlete’s tale is intensely personal, it turns out there are some common themes.

Stay Focused

Like many distance swimmers who spend endless hours in the pool, Natalie Coughlin, 30, used to daydream as she swam laps. She’d been a competitive swimmer for almost her entire life, and this was the way she — and many others — managed the boredom of practice.

But when she was in college, she realized that daydreaming was only a way to get in the miles; it was not allowing her to reach her potential. So she started to concentrate every moment of practice on what she was doing, staying focused and thinking about her technique.

“That’s when I really started improving,” she said. “The more I did it, the more success I had.”

In addition to her many victories, Ms. Coughlin won five medals in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, including a gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke.

Manage Your ‘Energy Pie’

In 1988, Steve Spence, then a 25-year-old self-coached distance runner, was admitted into the United States Long Distance Runner Olympic Development Program. It meant visiting David Martin, a physiologist at Georgia State University, several times a year for a battery of tests to measure Mr. Spence’s progress and to assess his diet.

During dinner at Dr. Martin’s favorite Chinese restaurant, he gave Mr. Spence some advice.

“There are always going to be runners who are faster than you,” he said. “There will always be runners more talented than you and runners who seem to be training harder than you. The key to beating them is to train harder and to learn how to most efficiently manage your energy pie.”

Energy pie? All the things that take time and energy — a job, hobbies, family, friends, and of course athletic training. “There is only so much room in the pie,” said Mr. Spence.

Dr. Martin’s advice was “a lecture on limiting distractions,” he added. “If I wanted to get to the next level, to be competitive on the world scene, I had to make running a priority.” So he quit graduate school and made running his profession. “I realized this is what I am doing for my job.”

It paid off. He came in third in the 1991 marathon world championships in Tokyo. He made the 1992 Olympic marathon team, coming in 12th in the race. Now he is head cross-country coach and assistant track coach at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. And he tells his teams to manage their energy pies.

Structure Your Training

Meredith Kessler was a natural athlete. In high school, she played field hockey and lacrosse. She was on the track team and the swimming team. She went to Syracuse University on a field hockey scholarship.

Then she began racing in Ironman triathlons, which require athletes to swim 2.4 miles, cycle 112 miles and then run a marathon (26.2 miles). Ms. Kessler loved it, but she was not winning any races. The former sports star was now in the middle of the pack.

But she also was working 60 hours a week at a San Francisco investment bank and trying to spend time with her husband and friends. Finally, six years ago, she asked Matt Dixon, a coach, if he could make her a better triathlete.

One thing that turned out to be crucial was to understand the principles of training. When she was coaching herself, Ms. Kessler did whatever she felt like, with no particular plan in mind. Mr. Dixon taught her that every workout has a purpose. One might focus on endurance, another on speed. And others, just as important, are for recovery.

“I had not won an Ironman until he put me on that structure,” said Ms. Kessler, 34. “That’s when I started winning.”

Another crucial change was to quit her job so she could devote herself to training. It took several years — she left banking only in April 2011 — but it made a huge difference. Now a professional athlete, with sponsors, she has won four Ironman championships and three 70.3 kilometer championships.

Ms. Kessler’s parents were mystified when she quit her job. She reminded them that they had always told her that it did not matter if she won. What mattered was that she did her best. She left the bank, she said, “to do my best.”

Take Risks

Helen Goodroad began competing as a figure skater when she was in fourth grade. Her dream was to be in the Olympics. She was athletic and graceful, but she did not really look like a figure skater. Ms. Goodroad grew to be 5 feet 11 inches.

“I was probably twice the size of any competitor,” she said. “I had to have custom-made skates starting when I was 10 years old.”

One day, when Helen was 17, a coach asked her to try a workout on an ergometer, a rowing machine. She was a natural — her power was phenomenal.

“He told me, ‘You could get a rowing scholarship to any school. You could go to the Olympics,’ ” said Ms. Goodroad. But that would mean giving up her dream, abandoning the sport she had devoted her life to and plunging into the unknown.

She decided to take the chance.

It was hard and she was terrified, but she got a rowing scholarship to Brown. In 1993, Ms. Goodroad was invited to train with the junior national team. Three years later, she made the under-23 national team, which won a world championship. (She rowed under her maiden name, Betancourt.)

It is so easy to stay in your comfort zone, Ms. Goodroad said. “But then you can get stale. You don’t go anywhere.” Leaving skating, leaving what she knew and loved, “helped me see that, ‘Wow, I could do a whole lot more than I ever thought I could.’ ”

Until this academic year, when she had a baby, Ms. Goodroad, who is 37, was a rowing coach at Princeton. She still runs to stay fit and plans to return to coaching.

The Other Guy Is Hurting Too

In 2006, when Brian Sell was racing in the United States Half Marathon Championships in Houston, he had a realization.

“I was neck-and-neck with two or three other guys with two miles to go,” he said. He started to doubt himself. What was he doing, struggling to keep up with men whose race times were better than his?

Suddenly, it came to him: Those other guys must be hurting as much as he was, or else they would not be staying with him — they would be pulling away.

“I made up my mind then to hang on, no matter what happened or how I was feeling,” said Mr. Sell. “Sure enough, in about half a mile, one guy dropped out and then another. I went on to win by 15 seconds or so, and every race since then, if a withering surge was thrown in, I made every effort to hang on to the guy surging.”

Mr. Sell made the 2008 Olympic marathon team and competed in the Beijing Olympics, where he came in 22nd. Now 33 years old, he is working as a scientist at Lancaster Laboratories in Pennsylvania.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 15, 2013

An earlier version of this post misstated the year in which Steve Spence competed in the Olympic marathon, finishing 12th. It was 1992, not 2004. It also misidentified the institution at which he is a coach. It is Shippensburg University, not Shippensburg College.

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DealBook: The Banker Who Put His Faith in Armstrong

When Lance Armstrong’s interview with Oprah Winfrey about his suspected use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs is broadcast on Thursday, an investment banker will most likely be watching it very carefully (and nervously): Thomas Weisel.

Mr. Weisel is a legend in finance and Silicon Valley. He was the banker behind Yahoo’s public offering and some of the biggest deals during the dot-com bubble. He famously sold the firm he ran, Montgomery Securities, for $1.2 billion in 1997. And he sold his next firm, Thomas Weisel Partners, for $300 million to Stifel Financial in 2010.

But it is Mr. Weisel’s extracurricular activity that connects him to the news of the moment: he was Mr. Armstrong’s biggest financial backer and the single individual most responsible for the money machine that propelled Mr. Armstrong’s career.

Depending on what Mr. Armstrong says in the interview about his purported doping, Mr. Weisel, who was a co-owner of the United States Postal Service Pro Cycling Team through a cycling management firm that he helped found called Tailwind Sports, could be subject along with his partners to lawsuits from corporate sponsors seeking millions of dollars. Already, there is a False Claims Act case contending that Mr. Armstrong and the team defrauded the Postal Service.

Perhaps more anxiety-producing is what Mr. Weisel may have known, or should have known, about a team that for years ran “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen,” according to the United States Anti-Doping Agency.

Its report last year did not name Mr. Weisel, but did say that Mr. Armstrong was assisted by a “small army of enablers, including doping doctors, drug smugglers, and others within and outside the sport and on his team.”

Mr. Armstrong is expected to admit to doping in an effort to persuade officials to lift his lifetime ban from Olympic sports. To do so, however, he would probably need to lay out in explicit detail how the program worked and implicate those who were part of it.

Mr. Weisel is currently not talking. When I called Mr. Weisel seeking a comment, his assistant told me: “He’s not commenting. And he’s not returning any calls.”

For a glimpse of the way Mr. Weisel thinks about performance-enhancing drugs in cycling, here’s what he had to say about the matter four years ago: “Handle the problem below the surface and keep the image of the sport clean,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “In the U.S. sports — baseball, basketball, football — most fans couldn’t care less.”

For Mr. Weisel, the team and Mr. Armstrong were an all-consuming passion. He would go every year to the Tour de France and at times travel in the team’s pacer car, occasionally yelling instructions to Mr. Armstrong over the radio system. He rode the team’s bus, ate meals with them and ultimately celebrated each year’s victory. On the wall of his office in San Francisco, he displayed Mr. Armstrong’s yellow jerseys.

Always the consummate banker, Mr. Weisel even tried to help Mr. Armstrong raise funds to buy the Tour de France itself. (The effort never went anywhere.)

Mr. Weisel’s name has occasionally come up in connection with accusations of doping on the team.

The wife of the famed cyclist Greg LeMond, Kathy, reportedly testified under oath in a deposition in 2006 that she had been told by one of Mr. Armstrong’s mechanics that Mr. Weisel, along with Nike, paid $500,000 though a Swiss bank account to the honorary president of the International Cycling Union to silence a drug test Mr. Armstrong purportedly failed in 1999.

Nike has vehemently denied the contention. So far, Mr. Weisel has not commented publicly.

When Floyd Landis, one of Mr. Armstrong’s former teammates, tested positive in 2006, he denied using performance-enhancing drugs under pressure from Mr. Armstrong. Soon after, Mr. Weisel set up the Floyd Fairness Fund with some of Tailwind’s co-owners to help pay his legal bills. Mr. Landis later confessed to doping in 2010.

Mr. Weisel, a longtime athlete who was a champion speed skater as a teenager, became a cycling enthusiast in the 1980s and took up racing himself. Sports dominated his life: he often said that he liked to hire athletes to work for him at the bank because of their competitive instincts. He was also the chairman of the United States Ski Team Foundation. In 1987, while still working as a banker, he started Montgomery Sports, to begin his first cycling team. In the early 1990s the team was called Subaru-Montgomery; it later became Montgomery-Bell (Bell Sports was a client that he took public) and then was renamed for the Postal Service. (Yahoo, another client, was also a sponsor of the team.)

According to a biography of Mr. Weisel, “Capital Instincts: Life as an Entrepreneur, Financier and Athlete,” he invested more than $5 million in the early teams and lost money on the investment. Mr. Armstrong was one of Mr. Weisel’s early riders for the Subaru-Montgomery team. He later left the team to join the Motorola team. After his bout with cancer, Mr. Armstrong joined what was the Postal Service team in 1998.

Tyler Hamilton, another former teammate of Mr. Armstrong, told “60 Minutes” that the team was pushing performance-enhancing drugs on its cyclists long before Mr. Armstrong battled cancer and then in 1998 rejoined the team.

“I remember seeing some of the stronger guys in the team getting handed these white lunch bags,” Mr. Hamilton said on “60 minutes” about when he joined the team in 1995. “So finally I, you know, started puttin’ two and two together and you know, basically there were doping products in those white lunch bags.”

Given how widespread the doping now appears to have been on the Postal Service team based on testimony of 11 teammates, and charges against the team’s director and several of its doctors, you wonder how much due diligence its founding banker did on the most prominent deal of his career.

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'Les Miz,' 'Argo' win big at Golden Globes, but Jodie Foster is talk of show

Who needs an Oscar nomination anyway? Ben Affleck reigned over the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday night as “Argo” won for best dramatic film and for director.

It was a bit of vindication, perhaps, for Affleck being overlooked for an Oscar directing nomination for the film about a CIA plot to rescue Americans trapped in Iran in 1979-80.

Since he was snubbed by the movie academy last week, he has won the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for best director for the film as well.

PHOTOS: Golden Globes 2013 red carpet

The musical “Les Miserables” was the big film winner at the 70th annual awards, winning the marquee categories of best musical or comedy, lead actor for Hugh Jackman and supporting actress for Anne Hathaway.

Jackman’s win for playing Jean Valjean in the epic musical based on Victor Hugo's novel was seen as something as an upset, because Bradley Cooper was seen as a favorite for his role as a bipolar young man in the quirky romantic comedy “Silver Linings Playbook.” 

Daniel Day-Lewis won lead actor for playing the nation’s 16th president in “Lincoln.” Steven Spielberg’s historical epic went into the ceremony leading with seven nominations. Until Day-Lewis, the historical epic has been shut out.

PHOTOS: Nominees & winners | Red carpet

Jessica Chastain won for her role as a CIA operative who helps track down Osama bin Laden in “Zero Dark Thirty.” Earlier in the evening, Ben Affleck won a standing ovation, and a Golden Globe, for directing “Argo” — a bit of vindication, perhaps, for being overlooked for an Oscar nomination for the film about a CIA plot to rescue Americans trapped in Iran in 1980.

Since he was snubbed by the movie academy last week, he has won the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for best director for the film as well.

Affleck followed Jodie Foster, who took to the stage to give a ... retirement speech? A coming-out speech? It was hard to tell. She was receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement when she ramped up to confess that she was single ...  and seemed to sidestep directly addressing any questions about her sexual orientation.

Her acceptance speech at the 70th annual awards was also a rant in favor of privacy that brought many people to its feet. Foster noted that she has lived virtually her entire life in the public eye yet wanted to keep some things private. “I have given everything up there from the time I was 3 years old,” she said. “That is reality enough.” (Memo to Foster: Nothing will destroy an attempt at privacy like telling the world you want to keep your life private.)

PHOTOS: Golden Globes 2013 red carpet

She did thank her ex-partner and co-parent, Cydney Bernard, and suggested that she was embarking on Act 2 of her career. In some ways in sounded like a retirement speech. She seemed to say that from now on, she will only take projects that tap into her creativity.

Earlier in the evening, maverick filmmaker Quentin Tarantino was a surprise screenplay winner for “Django Unchained,” his controversial spaghetti Western set during the slavery era, beating out such favorites as the writers of “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Lincoln,” “Argo,” and “Silver Linings Playbook.”
“Wow, I wasn’t expecting this,” said an effusive Tarantino. “I'm happy to be surprised.”

Tarantino’s win meant one more loss for Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” which had gone into the ceremony leading with seven nominations. So far, the historical epic has been shut out.

Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway sang her way to a Golden Globe for supporting actress in a movie as the tragic Fantine in the musical “Les Miserables.”

With her pixie haircut and tasteful white gown, Hathaway was reminiscent of a young Audrey Hepburn, charming viewers as she thanked her co-stars, family and friends — and had a special thanks for Sally Field, nominated in the same category for “Lincoln.” She noted that Field forged a career that resisted typecasting — something Hathaway has struggled with as well. Field had played the Flying Nun on TV but went on to play Norma Rae and, more recently, Mary Todd Lincoln.

PHOTOS: Moments from the show

"Thank you for this lovely blunt object," Hathaway told the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn.  “I'll forever use it as a weapon against self-doubt.”

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 14

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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Christoph Waltz, Adele among early Golden Globe winners

BEVERLY HILLS (Reuters) – Austrian actor Christoph Waltz and Adele notched early wins at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, while “Lincoln” and Iran hostage thriller “Argo” were in a close race for the top honor, best movie drama.

Waltz carried off the Golden Globe for best supporting movie actor for his role as a dentist-turned-bounty hunter in Quentin Tarantino‘s quirky slavery Western “Django Unchained.”

“Let me gasp!” said Waltz. “It’s extraordinary … Quentin, my indebtedness and gratitude to you know no words.”

British Grammy-winning singer Adele, in her first major public appearance since giving birth in October, shared the trophy for performing and co-writing the best original song, “Skyfall,” for the James Bond movie of the same name.

Comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, hosting the Globes for the first time, got the ceremony off to a rollicking start with jokes about some of the top Hollywood stars in the audience, and impersonations of Johnny Depp and Julianne Moore.

Pointing out “Zero Dark Thirty” director Kathryn Bigelow at the glitzy dinner, Poehler said she had not been closely following the controversy over the torture scenes depicted in the thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

But, she added, “when it comes to torture, I trust the lady who spent three years married to James Cameron,” Poehler quipped, to roars from the audience. Bigelow is the former wife of Cameron, director of blockbusters “Avatar” and “Titanic.”

“Meryl Streep is not here. I hear she has the flu, and I’m told she is amazing in it,” Poehler joked about the esteemed actress.

The Golden Globes, handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, has become the entertainment industry’s second-biggest awards show after February’s Oscars, or Academy Awards.

But its influence on the Academy Awards has been somewhat sapped this year because Oscar nominations were announced three days ago, instead of a week after the Globes awards show.

TV HONORS FOR ‘HOMELAND’

Unlike the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes also honor television dramas and comedies.

On Sunday they chose Showtime terrorism thriller “Homeland” as best drama series, and the show’s Damian Lewis as best actor for his role as a Marine returning from Iraq who is turned by Muslim extremists.

HBO’s drama “Game Change” about Sarah Palin’s 2008 run for U.S. vice president won best TV film, while Moore won for her portrayal of the polarizing former Alaska governor.

In the movie category, “Lincoln,” Spielberg’s account of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s battle to end slavery, went into the evening with a leading seven nominations.

But it faces strong competition from “Argo,” and “Django Unchained,” which started the evening with five nominations.

“Zero Dark Thirty” and visually arresting shipwreck tale “Life of Pi” round out the best dramatic film contest.

The Golden Globes also hand out prizes for best comedy or musical, where the lavish screen version of hit stage musical “Les Miserables” is facing strong competition from comedy “Silver Linings Playbook.”

Jennifer Lawrence won the award for best actress in a comedy movie for her role as a young widow in “Silver Linings Playbook.”

“Les Miserables” stars Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway hoped to take home a Golden Globe later on Sunday.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Psychologist Who Studied Depression in Women, Dies at 53

Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, a psychologist and writer whose work helped explain why women are twice as prone to depression as men and why such low moods can be so hard to shake, died on Jan. 2 in New Haven. She was 53.

Andrew Sacks

Susan Nolen-Hoeksema at the University of Michigan in 2003. Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema's research showed that women were more prone to ruminate, or dwell on the sources of problems rather than solutions, more than men.

Her death followed heart surgery to correct a congenitally weak valve, said her husband, Richard Nolen-Hoeksema.

Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema, a professor at Yale University, began studying depression in the 1980s, a time of great excitement in psychiatry and psychology. New drugs like Prozac were entering the market; novel talking therapies were proving effective, too, particularly cognitive behavior therapy, in which people learn to defuse upsetting thoughts by questioning their basis.

Her studies, first in children and later in adults, exposed one of the most deceptively upsetting of these patterns: rumination, the natural instinct to dwell on the sources of problems rather than their possible solutions. Women were more prone to ruminate than men, the studies found, and in a landmark 1987 paper she argued that this difference accounted for the two-to-one ratio of depressed women to depressed men.

She later linked rumination to a variety of mood and behavior problems, including anxiety, eating disorders and substance abuse.

“The way I think she’d put it is that, when bad things happen, women brood — they’re cerebral, which can feed into the depression,” said Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who oversaw her doctoral work. “Men are more inclined to act, to do something, plan, beat someone up, play basketball.”

Dr. Seligman added, “She was the leading figure in sex differences in depression of her generation.”

Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema wrote several books about her research for general readers, including “Women Who Think Too Much: How to Break Free of Overthinking and Reclaim Your Life.” These books described why rumination could be so corrosive — it is deeply distracting; it tends to highlight negative memories — and how such thoughts could be alleviated.

Susan Kay Nolen was born on May 22, 1959, in Springfield, Ill., to John and Catherine Nolen. Her father ran a construction business, where her mother was the office manager; Susan was the eldest of three children.

She entered Illinois State University before transferring to Yale. She graduated summa cum laude in 1982 with a degree in psychology.

After earning a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, she joined the faculty at Stanford. She later moved to the University of Michigan, before returning to Yale in 2004.

Along the way she published scores of studies and a popular textbook. In 2003 she became the editor of the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, an influential journal.

Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema moved smoothly between academic work and articles and books for the general reader.

“I think part of what allowed her to move so easily between those two worlds was that she was an extremely clear thinker, and an extremely clear writer,” said Marcia K. Johnson, a psychology professor and colleague at Yale.

Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema lived in Bethany, Conn. In addition to her husband, a science writer, she is survived by a son, Michael; her brothers, Jeff and Steve; and her father, John.

“Over the past four decades women have experienced unprecedented growth in independence and opportunities,” Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema wrote in 2003, adding, “We have many reasons to be happy and confident.”

“Yet when there is any pause in our daily activities,” she continued, “many of us are flooded with worries, thoughts and emotions that swirl out of control, sucking our emotions and energy down, down, down. We are suffering from an epidemic of overthinking.”

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Wheels Blog: The Seventh-Generation Corvette Is Unveiled in Detroit

DETROIT — The Stingray is back, in name and in spirit.

At an invitation-only gathering hours before the North American International Auto Show was scheduled to open for press previews, General Motors introduced the 2014 Corvette, the seventh generation of Chevrolet’s hallmark sports car.

Underscoring the importance of this vehicle was Chevrolet’s revival of the long-dormant Stingray badge, a name it first used on a 1959 racecar built by G.M.’s design chief, Bill Mitchell. The hope for that original Stingray racecar was to beat Europe’s best, and G.M. still seems to be thinking along those lines.

According to G.M.’s president for North America, Mark Reuss, the latest Stingray is a potential worldbeater.

“Like the ’63 Sting Ray, the best Corvettes embodied performance leadership, delivering cutting-edge technologies, breathtaking design and awe-inspiring driving experiences,” Mr. Reuss said. “The all-new Corvette goes farther than ever, thanks to today’s advancements in design technology and engineering.”

The release of a new Corvette is always highly anticipated by auto enthusiasts; speculation about “C7″ — shorthand for the seventh generation — has run high. Would it get a twin-cam turbocharged powertrain? Would Chevy switch to an exotic midengine chassis?

In actuality, the 2014 model will again have a pushrod V-8 engine in its nose, driving the rear wheels. That conservative approach might be seen as a timid compromise from a company that has just begun to get back on solid financial footing. But the front-engine, rear-drive layout has long defined the Corvette, and this car, like its C6 predecessor, may well show its taillights to cars with specs that more closely conform to what is considered state of the art.

While automakers are quick to toss around the words “all new” to describe their latest offerings, however warmed over they might be, in this case the term is justified — the 2014 Corvette shares only two parts with its predecessor.

The C7 Corvette’s styling is in keeping with the brand’s persona, yet it projects a more aggressive image than previous generations. The clean front fascia is devoid of parking lights, and is energized by a sharp edge where it meets the hood, which is itself defined by a prominent bulge and more hard edges. The curve of the front fenders peaks at yet another edge that blends seamlessly into the body side at the A-pillar. The body’s flanks are defined by character lines that race back from vents behind the front wheel, not unlike those of previous Corvettes, but here those lines are more sharply drawn, with the upper line sweeping up and back to define the shape of the rear quarter panel. The lower character line projects from the body, forming a wing of sorts that flows out of the front fender and terminates at the rear of the door. The coupe’s roofline arcs smoothly to meet the rear spoiler, rather than terminating at the rear window, as in the C6. The individual rear taillights that have long been a part of Corvette design are now paired in a deep recess on each side. Four large exhaust pipes exit center-stage, rear.

The sheet-molded fiberglass body, with carbon-fiber hood and roof panels and carbon-nano composite underbody panels, is 37 pounds lighter than the C6’s body. It rides on a new aluminum frame that is 57 percent stiffer and 99 pounds lighter than the current model’s. The wheelbase is about one inch longer than that of the C6, and the track is almost an inch wider — changes said to provide a more stable feel at high speed.

Inside the cockpit, considerable effort was lavished on upgrading what has generally been considered a blighted zone. Optional carbon fiber trim and real aluminum combine with plastic in a wraparound configuration. The steering wheel, with a 14.1 inch diameter, is smaller than that of the previous model, and two seat choices are offered, with the competition sport version providing more side bolstering to hold occupants in place in spirited maneuvers. Indicative of the car’s purpose is the inclusion of a console-mounted steel grab bar for the passenger.

Under the hood, Chevrolet’s 6.2-liter small block V-8 — now in its fifth-generation design — produces an estimated 450 horsepower and 450 pound-feet of torque. At low speed, torque output exceeds that of the previous 6.2-liter engine by 50 pound-feet. The engine shares few parts with prior Corvette V-8s and is fitted with direct fuel injection that, in combination with other refinements, enables a high compression ratio of 11.5:1. Active Fuel Management, G.M.’s system for deactivating cylinders when they are not needed, lets the car cruise on four cylinders in some driving modes. Final fuel-economy numbers are not yet available.

Two transaxles will be offered: a 6-speed automatic with paddle-shift mode or a 7-speed manual with rev-matching capability — an electronic version of the heel-and-toe shifting techniques that competition drivers employ to enable smooth gear changes when negotiating twisty bits.

The Corvette driver will be able to select from among five driving modes: weather, Eco, Tour, Sport and Track; the default setting will be Tour. Changing modes alters 12 vehicle attributes, including throttle response, shift points, engagement of the limited-slip differential engagement, shock damping and more. Four-piston Brembo brakes provide stopping power, and electric power steering sets the course.

An optional Z51 performance package adds an electronic limited-slip differential that can continuously vary torque split between the rear wheels, dry-sump oiling, upgraded shock absorbers, a revised version of the automaker’s Magnetic Ride Control suspension-regulating system, close-ratio gears for the manual transmission, larger brake rotors and aerodynamic refinements that incorporate air-flow management for cooling of heat-stressed components.

Like its predecessor, the 2014 Corvette Stingray will be built at a G.M. plant in Bowling Green, Ky. The car is expected to arrive at dealerships in the third quarter of this year.

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