A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Dec. 6

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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Grammys spread the love with 6 top nominees

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Grammy Awards celebrated the diversity of music as six different artists tied for lead nominee — Kanye West, Jay-Z, Frank Ocean, Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, Mumford & Sons and fun.

Auerbach received five nominations as a member of the Keys and also is up for producer of the year, earning a spot with the others at the top of the list as the Grammy’s primetime television special came to his hometown Wednesday night.

“We’re speechless,” Auerbach said in a statement to The Associated Press from Germany, where he’s on tour with drummer Patrick Carney.

The rockers little resemble any of the other acts at the top of the list. The nominations for Jay-Z and West, two of hip-hop’s most important figures, is a familiar refrain. Each has routinely been at or near the top of the nominations list for the last several years.

Indie pop band fun., a featured performer during the show, aired live from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on CBS, rode the success of its anthemic hit “We Are Young” featuring Janelle Monae to sweep of the major categories, earning nods for best new artist, song and record for “We Are Young” and album of the year for “Some Nights.” The band’s producer Jeff Bhasker is up for four nominations.

“When you call your band fun. with a period at the end of the sentence, you set a very high standard for yourself and for fun itself,” Taylor Swift, the concert’s co-host, said in introducing them. “Fortunately this band from New York has lived up to the name in the best possible way.”

R&B singer Ocean, whose mother was in attendance, made a bold social statement earlier this year when he noted he had a same-sex relationship in the liner notes of his new album “channel ORANGE,” and The Recording Academy rewarded him with the major nominations best new artist, record for “Thinkin Bout You” and album of the year.

And British folk-rock band Mumford & Sons, which made an auspicious debut in front of an international audience during the 2011 Grammys, is up for album of the year for “Babel,” one of 2012′s best-selling releases.

Miguel, who helped Ocean shake up the R&B world this year, and jazz great Chick Corea join the Keys with five nominations apiece. Nas and recording engineer Bob Ludwig join Bhasker at four apiece.

There were no major snubs. Most of 2012′s inescapable hits are represented in some way — Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” is up for record of the year and Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” garnered a song of the year nod. Drake, Rihanna and Nashville residents Swift, Kelly Clarkson, Jack White and best new artist nominee Hunter Hayes were among 16 nominees with three nods.

In many ways the nominations reflect a singles-driven year when no album rose to the level of acclaim as Adele’s “21″ or West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” which dominated the Grammys last February.

Rock, relegated to second stage in the era of electronic dance music, made something of a comeback, and young bands are peppered in with the nominees we’ve come to expect each year.

The best new artist category is a great example of this year’s diversity. From the minimalist R&B of Ocean, the pop-influenced sounds of fun. and Hayes, the soulful rock of Alabama Shakes and the Americana swing of The Lumineers, there’s little resemblance between the acts.

“I think people listen to a lot of types of music and Spotify has proven that, and iPod has proven that,” Lumineers member Wes Schultz said. “Radio stations don’t prove that. … Every person in that audience tonight, I saw them freaking out about various artists that have no relationship to each other.”

Alabama Shakes drummer Steve Johnson noted the diversity in the category after the show, then made a surprising statement: “If I were on the other side of the fence, I’d vote Frank Ocean personally.”

The members of fun. were “dorking it up” as they learned about their nominations, lead singer Nate Reuss said, and were especially excited to show up in the album of the year category, which also included Ocean’s major label debut, the Keys’ “El Camino,” Mumford’s “Babel” and White’s “Blunderbuss.”

“It’s been an incredible year in music,” guitarist Jack Antonoff said. “It feels like alternative music is back, looking at album of the year, especially those nominations. We couldn’t be more proud to be in there. … I think when we were sitting in our chairs out there, when we saw Jack White up there, that’s when we really pinched ourselves. We felt so honored to be in the same category.”

The 55th annual Grammy Awards will be held Feb. 10 in Los Angeles. Trophies will be handed out in 81 categories.

The 5-year-old nominations show was held outside Los Angeles for the first time and showcased Music City for its growing role in the music industry. The Bridgestone Arena marked the largest venue the show has been held in and it may have been a dress rehearsal for a chance to host the main awards show sometime in the future.

LL Cool J returned as host, sharing duties with Swift, whose hit song “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” earned a nod in the jam-packed record of the year category. She was joined by fun., Gotye, Clarkson’s “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You),” The Black Keys‘ “Lonely Boy” and Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You.”

Song of the year nominees were Ed Sheeran’s “The A Team,” Miguel’s “Adorn,” Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe,” Clarkson’s “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” and fun.’s “We Are Young.”

Swift and LL Cool J opened the show by putting together a beat-box version of Swift’s hit “Mean.” Hayes displayed his versatility while announcing the best pop vocal album by singing snippets of each star’s hit song. Maroon 5 played headliner, singing three songs mid-show before finishing off the live broadcast. The group stuck around for an hourlong performance afterward for the crowd in attendance.

Assisted by Monae, fun. reimagined “We Are Young” with orchestral strings as the crowd sang along, Ne-Yo, in wine-colored bowler, kicked things up with a cadre of dancers on his new club-infused song “Let Me Love You.” And the show tipped its hat to Nashville with a salute to Johnny Cash by Dierks Bentley and The Band Perry.

___

Online:

http://grammy.com

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Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: Running in Reverse

This column appears in the Dec. 9 issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Backward running, also known as reverse or retro running, is not as celebrated as barefoot running and will never be mistaken for the natural way to run. But a small body of science suggests that backward running enables people to avoid or recover from common injuries, burn extra calories, sharpen balance and, not least, mix up their daily routine.

The technique is simple enough. Most of us have done it, at least in a modified, abbreviated form, and probably recently, perhaps hopping back from a curb as a bus went by or pushing away from the oven with a roasting pan in both hands. But training with backward running is different. Biomechanically, it is forward motion’s doppelgänger. In a study published last year, biomechanics researchers at the University of Milan in Italy had a group of runners stride forward and backward at a steady pace along a track equipped with force sensors and cameras.

They found that, as expected, the runners struck the ground near the back of their feet when going forward and rolled onto the front of their feet for takeoff. When they went backward though, they landed near the front of their feet and took off from the heels. They tended to lean slightly forward even when running backward. As a result, their muscles fired differently. In forward running, the muscles and tendons were pulled taut during landing and responded by coiling, a process that creates elastic energy (think rubber bands) that is then released during toe-off. When running backward, muscles and tendons were coiled during landing and stretched at takeoff. The backward runners’ legs didn’t benefit from stored elastic energy. In fact, the researchers found, running backward required nearly 30 percent more energy than running forward at the same speed. But backward running also produced far less hard pounding.

What all of this means, says Giovanni Cavagna, a professor at the University of Milan who led the study, is that reverse running can potentially “improve forward running by allowing greater and safer training.”

It is a particularly attractive option for runners with bad knees. A 2012 study found that backward running causes far less impact to the front of the knees. It also burns more calories at a given pace. In a recent study, active female college students who replaced their exercise with jogging backward for 15 to 45 minutes three times a week for six weeks lost almost 2.5 percent of their body fat.

And it aids in balance training — backward slow walking is sometimes used as a therapy for people with Parkinson’s and is potentially useful for older people, whose balance has grown shaky.

But it has drawbacks, Cavagna says — chiefly that you can’t see where you’re going. “It should be done on a track,” he says, “or by a couple of runners, side by side,” one facing forward.

It should be implemented slowly too, because its unfamiliar motion can cause muscle fatigue. Intersperse a few minutes periodically during your regular routine, Cavagna says. Increase the time you spend backward as it feels comfortable.

The good news for serious runners is that backward does not necessarily mean slow. The best recorded backward five-kilometer race time is 19:31, faster than most of us can hit the finish line with our best foot forward.

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Mona Ackerman, Psychologist Who Wrote Advice Column, Dies at 66

The cause was ovarian cancer, said Richard Cohen, her longtime companion and a columnist for The Washington Post.

Dr. Ackerman ran a private practice on the Upper East Side of Manhattan before a meeting with Arianna Huffington led to “Dr. Mona Knows,” a question-and-answer column. The format was more narrative device than “Dear Abby”; Ms. Ackerman at times wrote the questions along with the answers.

Topics included coping with the death of a child; psychological profiles of public figures like Bernard L. Madoff; and appraising Dr. Phil’s therapeutic credentials.

Her treatment for cancer forced her to end the column in 2009, but Dr. Ackerman continued to write occasionally online for The Daily Beast.

Mona Riklis was born in Tel Aviv on May 22, 1946, to Judith and Meshulam Riklis. They emigrated to America, where Mr. Riklis became a billionaire by pioneering leveraged buyouts and junk bond deals.

Her marriage to Irwin Ackerman, in 1966, ended in divorce. She graduated from New York University and earned her Ph.D. from the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology at Yeshiva University.

In addition to Mr. Cohen, Dr. Ackerman is survived by her father; a sister, Marcia Riklis; a brother, Ira Riklis; a son, Ari Ackerman; a daughter, Gila Steinbock; and two grandchildren.

Answering a question in her column about how to communicate with a dying friend, Dr. Ackerman advised: “Don’t be afraid, be honest and ask questions.

“Don’t assume you understand or can make the pain go away,” she added. “What you can do is listen, respond and give back what is needed, even if that is silence.”

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L.A. fire chief blames slower response times on budget cuts

Los Angeles Fire Chief Brian Cummings turned the tables on City Council members Tuesday, blaming increased 911 response times on budget cuts approved by lawmakers.

"You gave us a budget," Cummings said during a nearly two-hour City Hall hearing. "We're giving you the most effective Fire Department that we can within that budget."

Cummings was summoned to appear before the council after he failed to produce a plan to improve service and response times, which have grown longer since budget cuts were ordered three years ago after the economic downturn.

The council asked for the blueprint in April. On Tuesday, Cummings was given an additional 60 days to submit the plan.

Cummings blamed the delay on the department's data problems, which have been the subject of multiple investigations by city auditors and outside experts. Years of response time data were found to be flawed and the LAFD has accurate data only for the last two to three months, Cummings said.

Reliable performance data from a longer period is needed before changes in the department deployment plan can be recommended, he said. Improvements will require more funding, he added.

"The simple answer is money," Cummings said. "The way we improve response times is by putting more resources in the field."

The department's performance has been under scrutiny since March when fire officials acknowledged producing inaccurate response time data that made it appear rescuers were getting to emergencies faster than they actually were.

Fire officials are dealing with other embarrassments. Federal officials are investigating whether confidential information was obtained illegally on hundreds of patients who rode in Fire Department ambulances, according to a city lawyer. The department also has been criticized by the city's top budget officials for going over its budget by millions of dollars.

On Tuesday morning, The Times reported on a YouTube video titled "Firehouse Burlesque Hula Hooping" showing a woman in high-heels and tight shorts dancing with a hoop at a Venice fire station. The video was a promotion for Hoopnotica, a fitness company. The firm's chief executive said the shoot was unplanned, lasted no more than 30 minutes and that no money changed hands.

Last year, firefighters from the same Venice firehouse and another station were investigated for allowing fire engines to be used in porn shoots. Shortly after those videos surfaced, the controversy spread to Cummings when the chief acknowledged that he once posed for racy photos with a bikini-clad woman when he was stationed in Venice as a captain.

Cummings said the department was investigating the hula hoop video. Councilman Mitchell Englander, who chairs the council's Public Safety Committee, said firehouse antics are "another part of the culture we have to change."

At the council meeting, Cummings and other fire officials reviewed the recent findings of a task force formed to examine the department's various data management troubles.

Councilman Eric Garcetti said he was happy the data problems were being addressed, but said he wanted a detailed plan for service improvements.

He also said the department needs stronger leadership. "I want somebody fighting for this department," he said. "Talk to your firefighters out there. They don't feel that is happening."

After the economic downturn, the council and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa cut the LAFD's annual budget by $88 million — from $561 million in 2008 to $473 million in 2011.

The cuts led to service "brownouts," which took units out of service on a rotating basis, and which were eventually replaced by a new deployment plan. Cummings, an assistant chief at the time who oversaw development of the redeployment, predicted response times would match pre-recession levels following the changes. But investigations by The Times and City Controller Wendy Greuel found response times for medical emergencies have increased over the last four years.

Councilman Richard Alarcon admonished his colleagues, saying they should have known their budget cuts would lead to slower response times.

"Even Barry Bonds can't hit home runs with a plastic bat," said Alarcon, who voted against the cuts.

This spring, responding to concerns about the department's performance and the controversy over the accuracy of its data, lawmakers added back $40 million to the department budget. Cummings has requested an additional $50 million in next year's budget.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

robert.lopez@latimes.com

ben.welsh@latimes.com

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Dec. 5

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.

Read More..

Netflix to get Disney films in TV distribution deal

(Reuters) – Walt Disney gave a much needed boost to Netflix, becoming the first major Hollywood studio to use the video service to bypass premium channels like HBO that traditionally controlled the delivery of movies to TV subscribers.

News of the deal, which enables Netflix to stream Disney‘s first-run movies to its subscribers, boosted Netflix shares by 14 percent.

Liberty Media Corp, whose Starz group now distributes Disney movies on TV, fell almost 5 percent.

Investors saw the Netflix-Disney deal as an important endorsement of the DVD rental and streaming service, which has been struggling with slowing subscriber growth and higher costs for content distribution.

Disney movies will be available for streaming on Netflix starting in 2016, after its current deal with Liberty Media‘s pay-TV channel Starz expires. The deal is for both new Disney movies and library content such as “Dumbo” and “Alice in Wonderland.”

“An exclusive deal with Disney differentiates the Netflix content from Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant Video,” said Anthony DiClemente, an analyst with Barclays Capital.

But some analysts worried that Netflix paid too much to get Disney‘s movies. Tony Wible, an analyst with Janney Montgomery Scott, estimated in a report that Netflix paid more than $ 350 million a year for Disney‘s movies and said “we would not be surprised if (Netflix) would need to raise capital”.

By comparison, HBO agreed to pay an estimated $ 200 million annually in its so-called “output,” or movie licensing deal, with 20th Century Fox earlier this year, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The deal gives Netflix streaming rights to movies from Disney‘s live-action and animation studios, including those from Pixar, Marvel, and the recently acquired Lucasfilm. On October 30, Disney announced a $ 4 billion deal to purchase the famed studio founded by George Lucas, which will now make new episodes in the blockbuster “Star Wars” series.

“This deal brings to our subscribers some of the highest quality, most imaginative family films being made today,” Ted Sarandos, Netflix‘s chief content officer, said in a statement. “It’s a leap forward for Internet television.”

DREAMWORKS EXCLUDED

Movies from Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios are not included in the deal, as that studio distributes its movies through CBS’s Showtime on TV. Disney recently signed a deal to distribute DreamWorks’ films theatrically after the studio’s deal with Viacom’s Paramount Pictures expired.

The deal allows Netflix to stream Disney movies beginning seven to nine months after they appear in theaters, as Starz does now under Disney‘s prior agreement. The deal does not cover DVD rentals of Disney movies.

Disney said in November that it would shut down its own video streaming service, Disney Movies Online, which had failed to catch on with users. A message on the ‘Disney Movies Online’ website said it would shut down on December 31.

Netflix, which started its streaming business with mostly older films, has been moving to add more original programming and produces TV shows such as “Lilyhammer,” which stars “Sopranos” actor Steven Van Zandt as an American gangster who starts a new life in Norway. The company also struck a high-profile deal with actor Kevin Spacey for “House of Cards.”

The Disney pact follows similar deals Netflix has inked for new films with smaller studios, including Relativity Media, The Weinstein company and DreamWorks Animation.

The agreements have saddled Netflix with nearly $ 5 billion in contractual commitments over the next three years for deals its made for streaming content, the company said in a recent quarterly earnings report.

Netflix‘s struggles over the last year, which have included missed subscriber guidance, an ill-fated attempt to split the DVD and streaming operations, and a swooning stock price, recently attracted the attention of billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn.

Icahn disclosed in regulatory filings on October 31 that he had amassed a nearly 10 percent stake in the video company and suggested it should pursue a sale. Netflix responded by adopting a poison pill defense.

Losing Disney’s movies means Starz is left with only Sony Pictures for film content. The pay-TV channel cast the ending of its agreement with Disney as its decision, saying it preferred to use the money for original programming creation.

Liberty Media‘s shares will “rebound,” said Vijay Jayant, an analyst with International Strategy and Investment Group.

“We believe it was Starz‘ decision to remain prudent and walk away from the bidding for Disney content,” ISI said in a report, estimating that it might have cost Starz $ 400 million to keep the movies.

Without that expense, Starz can step up its production of original series such as “Spartacus” and “Magic City,” which ISI said have become more valuable to cable operators anyway.

Netflix shares jumped $ 10.6491, or 14 percent, to $ 86.6491. Liberty Media shares fell $ 5.49, or almost 5 percent, to $ 105.56.

(Reporting By Ronald Grover; Editing by David Gregorio; Editing by Peter Lauria, Tim Dobbyn, David Gregorio and Jeremy Laurence)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Willis Whitfield, Clean Room Inventor, Dies at 92

The enemy was very small but it was everywhere. World peace, medical advancement, iTunes — all would eventually be threatened.

Half a century ago, as a rapidly changing world sought increasingly smaller mechanical and electrical components and more sanitary hospital conditions, one of the biggest obstacles to progress was air, and the dust and germs it contains.

Stray particles a few microns wide could compromise the integrity of a circuit board of a nuclear weapon. Unchecked bacteria could quickly infect a patient after a seemingly successful operation. Microprocessors, not yet in existence, would have been destroyed by dust. After all, an average cubic foot of air contained three million microscopic particles, and even the best efforts at vacuuming and wiping down a high-tech work space could only reduce the rate to one million.

Then, in 1962, Willis Whitfield invented the clean room.

“People said he was a fraud,” recalled Gilbert V. Herrera, the director of microsystems science and technology at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. “But he turned out to be right.”

Mr. Whitfield, who worked at Sandia from 1954 to 1984, died on Nov. 12 in Albuquerque. He was 92. The cause was prostate cancer, his wife, Belva, said.

His clean rooms blew air in from the ceiling and sucked it out from the floor. Filters scrubbed the air before it entered the room. Gravity helped particles exit. It might not seem like a complicated concept, but no one had tried it before. The process could completely replace the air in the room 10 times a minute.

Particle detectors in Mr. Whitfield’s clean rooms started showing numbers so low — a thousand times lower than other methods — that some people did not believe the readings, or Mr. Whitfield. He was questioned so much that he began understating the efficiency of his method to keep from shocking people.

“I think Whitfield’s wrong,” a scientist from Bell Labs finally said at a conference where Mr. Whitfield spoke. “It’s actually 10 times better than he’s saying.”

Willis James Whitfield was born in Rosedale, Okla., on Dec. 6, 1919. In addition to his wife, his survivors include his sons, James and Joe; a sister, Amy Blackburn; and a brother, Lawrence.

Mr. Whitfield became fascinated with electronics as a young man and received a two-year degree in the field after high school. He served in the Navy late in World War II, working with experimental electronic systems for aircraft. In 1952, he received a bachelor’s degree in physics and math from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Tex.

By 1954 he was working at Sandia, which was involved in making parts for nuclear weapons and at the time was overseen by the Atomic Energy Commission. Mr. Whitfield’s duties soon included contamination control. By 1960, he had established his basic idea for the clean room.

“I thought about dust particles,” Mr. Whitfield told Time magazine in 1962. “Where are these rascals generated? Where do they go?”

The clean room was patented through Sandia, and the government shared it freely among manufacturers, hospitals and other industries.

Mr. Whitfield’s original clean room was only about six feet high, built as a small, self-contained unit. Some modern electronic devices, including the iPhone, are now built in China in huge clean rooms in structures that are more than a million square feet. Workers wear protective clothing, and other anticontamination methods have been added, but they still depend on Mr. Whitfield’s approach to suck up dust.

“Relative to these electronics, the particles are just massive boulders that would short out all of your electronics and make them not work,” Mr. Herrera said. “The core technology, just the cleaning part, hasn’t really changed a lot.”

Mrs. Whitfield said she was often been asked if her husband was a particularly fastidious man, and she always noted that he tended not to put his shoes away. He did live in a tidy house, though, and colleagues say he never tired of getting out a flashlight and shining it sideways across his coffee table to illuminate the prevalence of tiny dust particles that most people never notice.

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Rhode Island Judge Has Stake in Pension Case Outcome

Can a judge rule impartially on pension cuts when her mother, her son, her uncle and even she herself all have a stake in preserving the status quo?

Rhode Island, the site of a sweeping pension overhaul last year, has brought in a prominent New York lawyer to litigate the question: David Boies, perhaps best known for representing Al Gore in the fight over the 2000 presidential election and for waging an antitrust battle against Microsoft on behalf of the government in the 1990s.

Rhode Island’s dispute may not reach quite those dramatic heights, but it is being closely watched as a first major test of whether, and how, financially strained states and cities can cut the benefits of their workers and retirees.

Several public employee unions have sued Gov. Lincoln Chafee and other Rhode Island officials, accusing them of acting illegally when they pushed through a package of money-saving pension cuts last year, including suspending annual cost-of-living increases for most retirees. The unions want the richer benefits restored.

Their five pension lawsuits were assigned to Judge Sarah Taft-Carter of the state Superior Court, who has handled public pension cases before and handed a big victory to the unions in one recent case. Mr. Boies, who at $50 an hour is working for a small fraction of his ordinary fee, is seeking a less conflicted judge, and could even ask to move the case into federal court.

The case has raised questions and strong feelings about the overhaul in Rhode Island, a state so small that it seems as if nearly everybody has friends or family in the pension system. Could the judge see beyond the harsh effects on her own family?

When the subject came up in a hearing in October, Judge Taft-Carter acknowledged that her son, a state trooper, was earning a pension, and her mother, the widow of a mayor, was already receiving one. (The uncle’s pension came to light only later.)

She said she had researched the matter, sought advice from a judicial ethics board and concluded that her relatives’ interests “will not reasonably impact my ability to be impartial.”

Her son joined the state patrol just three years ago, she said, so calculating his pension “requires a large degree of speculation and assumption.” Her mother’s pension was too small to be a factor, she said. (Court papers put it at about $22,000 a year.)

And while the overhaul means the judge’s pension will be smaller despite having to contribute more, she said that was true of all judges in the state: “If my financial interest should require disqualification, then all other state judges would be similarly required to recuse themselves.”

Mr. Boies is expected to appear in court on Friday and cite the state’s judicial code of conduct, which requires judges to recuse themselves when their spouses, parents or children have an economic stake in the litigation before them.

The state’s Supreme Court justices, who have been asked for a review, are also members of the state pension system.

In an interview, Mr. Boies said that challenging Judge Taft-Carter’s impartiality was just “the first step,” and the bigger issue was whether any judges in Rhode Island could handle the case, given their personal stakes. Companies routinely have their pension disputes decided by federal courts, which grant more leeway in changing pension plans.

“The plaintiffs brought this case the way they did to try to avoid federal jurisdiction,” Mr. Boies said.

Whatever the outcome of the hearing, Mr. Boies said he would continue to represent Rhode Island until all of the lawsuits and appeals were decided.

Mr. Boies, whose standard fee is $1,250 an hour, said $50 an hour was “the same fee that I charged the United States when I represented the Department of Justice in the Microsoft case.”

Mr. Boies became involved, he said, because he was convinced that Rhode Island’s pension troubles were just the tip of a $5 trillion iceberg of unsecured retirement promises to the nation’s millions of public workers. “This is something that can cripple state and municipal governments at a time when the federal government is, more and more, cutting back on the services it provides,” he said.

Public employee unions, in Rhode Island and elsewhere, argue that people like Mr. Boies are exaggerating the size of America’s total public pension shortfall.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2012

An earlier version of this article wrongly attributed the following quotation: Rhode Island’s effort is “the clearest example of fundamental pension reform that we have right now,” Ms. Monahan said. “Even though whatever Rhode Island decides doesn’t serve as actual precedent for other states, other states and cities still want to know if it can work.” The quote was from Amy Monahan, not Gina Raimondo.

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L.A. voters support pension changes over sales tax hike, poll finds

Los Angeles voters who cast ballots in last month's election were more supportive of a major overhaul of the city's pension system than in increasing the sales tax to boost city revenue, according to a survey conducted by Loyola Marymount University's Center for the Study of Los Angeles.

Nearly 44% of voters surveyed backed a proposal by former Mayor Richard Riordan to transition city workers from fixed-benefit government pensions to 401(k)-style, investment-based retirement plans. Nearly 26% opposed Riordan's ballot measure proposal, which the former mayor abruptly abandoned last week. Thirty percent of voters did not have a position.

Fernando Guerra, the center's director, said voters were less welcoming of new tax proposals, including one that is headed for the March 5 ballot. That measure would add another half-cent tax to every dollar worth of purchases made in the city.

Forty-five percent of voters opposed the proposal, 34% favored it, and 20% had no opinion. Loyola Marymount issued the surveys to more than 4,000 people at 50 polling places across the city Nov. 6.

Guerra said his results don't mean the measure will be defeated. But supporters will need to make a clear case for why the additional money is needed, he said. "I would warn them that they have to have a very good rationale, and communicate and explain to the voters why it's needed, just like Gov. Jerry Brown did with Proposition 30," a statewide tax hike that passed Nov. 6.

Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., said the numbers don't bode well for backers of the sales tax increase, which was proposed as a way to preserve basic services after years of cutbacks. Voter turnout is lower in local elections and tends to be more conservative, he said.

Waldman noted that L.A. voters, who responded enthusiastically to Brown's tax proposal and the Measure J tax extension, were still resistant to a sales tax hike. "You had people … who voted for Measure J, voted in favor of Proposition 30, and then turned around and said they wouldn't support a sales tax," he said.

The results from the Loyola Marymount survey differed considerably from those reported in an October poll. Southern California real estate groups, using a private polling firm, found that 64% of likely voters in the March election supported or were leaning toward favoring the sales tax hike.

In that poll, the tax was pitched as a way to pay for 911 emergency response services, pothole repairs, police, firefighters and paramedics. By comparison, the Loyola Marymount survey simply described the half-cent sales tax hike as one that would generate $220 million for the city's budget.

The four leading mayoral candidates are opposing the tax increase, as are some business organizations and the political arm of Service Employees International Union Local 721, which represents many city workers. If passed, the sales tax increase would generate enough revenue to nearly wipe out the city's budget shortfall.

david.zahniser@latimes.com

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