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Okay cricket. There's a World Cup on, and it is focussing attention on Zimbabwe, and on Mugabe – extreme nastiness of. So cricket is worth explaining to people whom I wouldn't normally bother to bother about it.
For example, in their first game of the tournament two of the Zimbabwe cricketers, Andy Flower and Henry Olonga made a protest on behalf of their fellow countrymen:
Before the Group-A match started Monday, Andy Flower and Henry Olonga donned black armbands and released a statement condemning the worsening violence and famine in their country, as they mourned what they called "the death of democracy."
Brave men.
So anyway, I'll assume you know roughly what baseball is, and I'll assume I do, and I'll describe cricket basically by saying how it differs from baseball.
First, the similarities, and (I'm guessing) the common ancestry. Both involve a guy propelling a ball in the direction of a batter, and the batter trying to hit the ball. A cricket ball is not so extremely different from a baseball ball, but I'm guessing it's a bit bigger and more than a bit harder and scarier to get hit by. Corrective comments on that welcome. (I've not done much with a baseball. All I know is what I've seen watching baseball on British Channel 5 TV.)
However, the manner in which a cricket ball is propelled at the batter is very different to baseball. In baseball, the pitcher stands in one place and throws the ball. In cricket, the "bowler" runs towards a fixed spot and when he gets there he "bowls" the ball at the "batsman". Important: the bowler must keep his arm absolutely straight, as he swings it round and lets go of the ball. If he doesn't do this, and instead is believed to be throwing it, baseball-style, even a little, this can cause an international diplomatic incident. If a bowler is "no balled" for throwing, i.e. yelled at by one of the umpires as soon as he does it, this is a huge deal for the bowler, for the bowler's entire career, for his team, for cricket, and for all cricket fans everywhere. Cricket fans like me can still remember the names of bowlers no-balled for throwing years and even decades after it happened: Griffin of South Africa, Meckiff of Australia … You have to keep your arm straight!!
Being no balled for overstepping the mark and bowling from a few inches closer to the batsman than you should, well that's no big deal. You lose one "run" (which is what a point in cricket is called). You can't get a batsman "out" if you do it, but your cricket career won't be affected.
Next big difference: unlike in baseball, the ball once bowled then generally strikes the ground, in between the bowler and the batsman, and quite near to the batsman, before the batsman tries to hit it. Baseball, to a cricket fan, looks like an endless succession of "full tosses", that is, balls that never hit the pitch and which for a cricket batsman are extremely easy to hit.
Because the ball strikes it just before the batsman tries to strike the ball, the nature and state of the pitch makes a huge difference in cricket. It can vary a lot from match to match, and during a match. A good pitch for batting means that the ball bounces predictably off the pitch and is thus easy to hit. A "difficult" pitch means that the ball can sometimes deviate when it hits the pitch, and so when the batsman tries to hit the ball he's liable to miss, or to miscue.
Like baseball, cricket also has its equivalent of "curve" balls, or whatever they're called, in that a cricket ball in the hands of a skilful bowler also deviates in the air, when on its way towards the batsman. How greatly it does this depends a lot on the weather. With the possible exception of golf, there's probably no other game in the world where the weather counts for more than it does in cricket.
There are broadly speaking two ways to bowl. You can bowl fast, and make the ball swing in the air and deviate from the pitch. And you can bowl slow, and make the ball spin in the air and deviate a lot when it hits the pitch. For international bowlers fast means 80 mph and more, and slow means about 50 mph.
To cope with all the complexities caused for him by the bowler, the cricket batsman has one huge advantage over his baseball cousin. His bat is wider, and it is flat. It's not a stick. It's more like a big and very thick paddle. Hitting the ball quite often is not that difficult, and a good batsman will reckon on hitting the ball pretty much as often as he tries to.
The batsman scores "runs" by hitting the ball out amongst the fielders, and running the length of the pitch from where he started out to the other end, where the bowler bowled from. Every length thus travelled is worth one run. He can also hit the ball to the boundary (quite a common occurrence) and get four runs. Or (much rarer) he can hit it, home run style, over the boundary, and get six runs. There are two batsmen out on the pitch at any one time, one at each end. If one scores a run, that means they swap ends, and the other one then faces the next ball. Bowlers take it in turns to bowl balls in sets of six, switching ends after each set of six (after each "over).
Whereas baseball scores seldom go to more than a dozen runs, cricket matches typically involve totals of one, two, even three hundred, and sometimes more. In the game that opened the World Cup, for example, in which the West Indies narrowly defeated South Africa, both sides scored getting on for three hundred runs each.
How does a batsman get "out"? Answer, he's guarding his "stumps" (a line of three sticks stuck in the ground that stand about waste high behind him when he bats) and if he misses the ball when the bowler bowls it and the ball hits these stumps, the batsman is out "bowled". If the ball strikes the pads that the batsman wears on his legs for protection, and the umpire decides (after much yelling and gesticulating by the fielding side) that the ball would have hit the wicket, the umpire gives the batsmen out "leg before wicket" (lbw). And, if the batsman hits the ball in the air and a fielder catches it before it lands, the batsman is out "caught" – as is the rule with baseball, yes? And if the batsmen, when trying to complete one of those "runs" don't manage to cross before the fielding side picks up the ball and throws it at and hits those stumps, then the batsman who failed to make his ground is "run out", again, much as a baseball player is dismissed for failing to reach his next base before the ball does.
Each team has eleven players, all of whom bat, so when the fielding team have got ten of them out, that's it, the team is "all out", and the other guys take a turn. Whoever makes the most runs wins.
Cricket now comes in two versions. There is the type that lasts a day, which is the kind they're playing now in the World Cup, and then there's cricket that lasts a seriously decent length of time, like three, four or five days.
One day cricket, a relatively recent invention not liked by purists of the old school, has a winner and a loser. Each team receives a set number of balls, and the team that gets the most runs wins. But in the original, longer version of the game, the contest can end in a draw. In that, both teams bat twice. Suppose that in the final "innings" the team batting second is trying to make two hundred runs to win. If it does that before all its guys get out, it wins. If all its guys get out before they reach a combined total of 200, they lose. But if time runs out before either of those things happens, it's a draw. Five solid days of desperately competitive action can end with no one winning.
I could go on, but I'll answer just one more important question about cricket, which is really a criticism rather than a question. This is the one that goes: Cricket, that's a game for a bunch of pansies and cissies, right? Only "gentlemen" play cricket, not regular guys.
If this is what you think, I can't stop you. But a word of advice. If this is what you want to go on thinking about cricket, don't ever play it. A long spell of bowling really takes it out of a man, and as for batting ?!
Put it like this, how would you like it if a man ran straight at you as fast as he could and then propelled a heavy, potentially very hurtful ball at you at a speed that can sometimes get quite close to 100 mph? Trust me, you'd be scared. Yet the proper way to bat is to get your body directly in line with this horror story, so that if the ball doesn't hit your bat, it is extremely likely to hit you.
Don't confuse the fact that the moments of the fiercest sort of cricket action can sometimes be rather, er, occasional, with the notion that when the action does happen it doesn't amount to anything. For a serious cricket fan like me to be watching a good tight run chase, with batsmen clouting fast bowlers to all parts of the field, well, life doesn't get any better.
Just before World War 2, there was a huge scandal in the world of cricket, know to this day as "Bodyline". Bodyline was a particularly scary way of bowling that was aimed right at the bodies of the batsmen, even more directly than usual. And who was doing it? The English. That's right. The gosh-I'm-most-frightfully-sorry – more-tea-vicar? – after-you-no-I-insist-after-you – English were bowling this Bodyline stuff.
And our guys were bowling their Bodyline bowling at Australians. And the Australians were the ones saying that our guys were being too rough and nasty. That's right. Those rugged, crocodiles for breakfast, brave-hearted Australians were the ones saying that the English weren't playing fair, and with some justice I might add. It got very serious, with cabinet ministers on both sides getting dragged in and insults flying around in all directions, some of them even being uttered in the House of Commons.
I sometimes think that if Adolf Hitler had paid a bit more attention to cricket he might not have been so casual about letting that World War 2 thing get started, that I mentioned earlier, that broke out a few years after Bodyline.
By all means be baffled by cricket, and if you were when you started reading this, you almost certainly still are. But don't you dare try telling me that it's not a game for Real Men to be playing. I've played it, and I have the scars and the broken teeth to prove it. And when English teeth of my vintage got broken they stay broken.
When I heard last night about Olonga and Flower making their protest, I was mightily impressed, but I wasn't surprised. Cricket is a tough game, and the people who play it are tough, gutsy people.
Watching cricket is a different thing entirely. That can get very dull, no matter how many cucumber sandwiches are available, and getting people to do that, at any rate in England, is getting harder by the year.
On the other hand, I recently heard it said that in India they have more cricket fans than Europe has people, so the game clearly has a future for a good while yet.
For more cricket blogging, try Michael Jennings.


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THE government has branded the opposition deputy leader, Julie Bishop, a liar and an embarrassment after she claimed not to know she was talking on the phone last week to the self-confessed fraudster and former union bagman Ralph Blewitt.
Ms Bishop's claim robbed the Coalition of momentum in its pursuit of the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, with Labor saying she had no right to quiz Ms Gillard about her actions as a lawyer 20 years ago while ''lying'' about her own actions just last week.
Ms Bishop ignored the taunts in Parliament to keep pressing Ms Gillard, who again declined to state whether she had written a letter to West Australian corporate authorities in 1992 vouching for the bona fides of the slush fund established by her then boyfriend and Australian Workers' Union Victorian state secretary, Bruce Wilson.
Ms Gillard said she would answer the question if the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, asked it but, for the third day, he didn't ask a single question on the issue.
Just a day after Ms Bishop had to backtrack after accusing Ms Gillard of being complicit in and profiting from the union fraud 20 years ago, she was again on the defensive after Fairfax Media reported she had spoken to Mr Wilson's sidekick, Mr Blewitt, by phone last week.
This contradicted a claim Ms Bishop made on Tuesday when she said she had spoken to Mr Blewitt once, on Friday last week in Melbourne when a meeting at a cafe was arranged by the blogger, Michael Smith, who is relentlessly pursuing Ms Gillard over the slush fund saga. When pressed on Wednesday, Ms Bishop said that while in Perth last week, Mr Smith had rung her and ''said he was at dinner with someone who wanted to speak to me''.
''That person did not identify themselves and said he was pleased that the AWU fraud was being raised in Parliament,'' she said. She then claimed her phone dropped out and she did not know who she had been speaking to.
The government said this was entirely implausible. ''Who on earth was she expecting on the phone? Humphrey B. Bear? Oh, no, he can't talk,'' Ms Gillard said.
''The deputy leader of the opposition is now an embarrassment to the Leader of the Opposition and the opposition generally,'' she said.
Mr Blewitt also contradicted Ms Bishop, telling Channel Nine that he spoke to Ms Bishop by phone for about three or four minutes after Mr Smith handed him the phone.
The Trade Minister, Craig Emerson, said Ms Bishop was a liar. ''She should therefore resign or be sacked,'' he said.
Ms Gillard said she provided routine legal advice to Mr Wilson in 1992 to help him incorporate the association but had no further involvement with it or knowledge that Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt were misappropriating funds from the association.

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Saving Shaundi
This is a sub-mission of Three Way, based on choices you made after clearing it.
To the Monument!
After speaking with Kinzie, jump off the dock on the left side to find a speed boat. You can wait for your backup to come in with you, or you can just floor it to the monument now; your backup will eventually catch up with you by teleporting across the water, but it may take them a while.
Once you approach the island, swing around the right side of the first star point you come to. There, you'll find some stairs, but you may just wind up teleporting onto the island regardless. Start killing everyone you see, and be wary of the flying VTOL overhead. There's also a sniper high up on the tower, and it may be in your best interest to just ignore him. He can't hit you once you get to the base of the tower, so just sprint over there and start making your climb.
Stopping the Bombs
Once you reach the blue pylon, you're teleport to the top, and a five-minute countdown will start. A standard Saint is to your immediate left, and you can untie him to gain another follower. Don't take too long, as you're about to be pincered from both sides by STAG soldiers. In fact, it may be best to just kill the enemies before untying the Saint to be sure you're clear. After that, use the Sonic Boom -- automatically equipped for you -- to knock the first charge off the balcony.
Work around this floor, knocking the four charges off. You'll have four total Saints to untie as well. Even though that puts you past your cap, untie them anyway. This way, if any of them fall, you'll have someone else to replace them; and whether they're directly following you or not, they'll help watch your back.
After clearing those four charges, look for the stairs leading up on the east side of the balcony. Head up, but watch for planes. If you're out of rockets here, know that you can usually take down a plane with enough rifle fire; it just might take a while.
Check your fire up on the upper balcony because it's almost too easy to shoot the charges if you're not paying attention, and that won't end well: it only takes a single shot to blow the charge and kill everyone. The best strategy here is to resist the urge to shoot the enemies straight-on, and instead turn at an angle so you're firing into the air if you miss. Always be aware of what's behind the enemy, not just the enemy himself.
These STAG soldiers can take a lot of punishment, so you can put a quick end to any individual firefight by just grabbing him as a human shield and flinging him off the edge of the tower. It's suicide to try it in the middle of a STAG pack, but it's a great way to eliminate stragglers.
Keep an eye on the clock, because it's likely you've only got a couple minutes left. While the upper balcony is physically smaller, it's more dangerous due to the larger force facing you in addition to the smaller margin of error. Plus, enemies will always be spawning in, so you won't be to just fully clear it. Eliminate the soldiers you can around a given charge, then send it off to the drink the moment you can. Then, again being sure to be at an angle so you don't hit the next one, work your way around the perimeter.
At the Summit
Climb the final stairs of the statue on the north side. Your backup will dismiss itself as the song fades, and the path is linear so you'll have no problem finding your way to the top.
As a throwback to the original Saving Shaundi scenario in Saints Row 2, Kia has Shaundi firmly in her grasp. You can't hit her, but there are plenty of grenades nearby. While we saw flashbangs last time around, this time it's ... uh ... farts in jars. Seriously.
The Farts in Jars takes up the flashbang grenade slot, Down on the d-pad. There's an unlimited supply of them behind each of the four large shipping containers up there. Grab a set, fling it into Kia, and she'll drop Shaundi due to the stench. Shoot Kia in the face, but be ready, because one volley won't kill her.
VTOLs arrive to help out, but they're honestly irrelevant. If they even bother to fire, just hide behind the boxes as you collect more Farts in Jars. Kia herself won't come out of that little boxed in area, so you don't have to worry about her chasing you. Once the VTOLs are done and start to reposition, pop out and throw another fart in her face. It takes about three or four volleys, and it'll be over.


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It's official: clip-together music technology hardware platforms are the trend of late 2013. We've already seen littleBits' Synth Kit and the Patchblocks modular synth units, and now we have Palette, a modular controller system that enables users to join together knobs, faders, buttons and the like to create their own devices.
Each Palette kit is supplied with a USB power module that hooks up to your computer. This is then detected by the companion desktop app, which becomes aware of the controller modules you then attach on the fly and knows how you have them arranged. Once you've got a setup you're happy with, simply map modules to software as you wish.
That's pretty much it, other than to say that each Palette module also has built-in LEDs that you can control. You can find out more on the Palette Kickstarter page, where a pledge of $89 will get you a Starter Kit comprising four modules (Power, Button, Dial and Slider). There are various other pledge options, including the $599 Professional Kit that's made from wood and gives you 16 modules to play with.
We can't deny that Palette looks like great fun, though when push comes to shove, it remains to be seen how many people are dissatisfied enough with off-the-shelf controllers to go ahead and invest in it.
(Via Create Digital Music)


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Nick Curtis
A graphic designer with over thirty years of experience in print, A/V, broadcast television and the Web, Nick Curtis has been passionately interested in typography ever since he discovered a type specimen book in his early teens. He credits Push Pin Studios and the Haight-Ashbury Art Nouveau revival of the 60s as other major influences. Additional fonts by Mr. Curtis include Cuppa Joe, Zinzinnati and Mister Chuckles, all published by ITC.
Nick Curtis can fix the precise moment when his love affair with typefaces began. One fateful afternoon in 1962 — the day before trash pick-up day — he was cruising the alleys in his neighborhood in East Dallas in search of tossed treasures. This particular day Curtis hit the motherlode: hundreds and hundreds of glass mosaic tiles in various shades of blue, and a big fat green binder from JCS Typographers of Dallas. Inside the binder were fonts, more than he had ever seen or knew existed. From that day on, his fate was sealed. (By the way, the tiles eventually became a tabletop.)
Curtis eventually pursued a career in graphic design: at a college, doing freelance concert poster lettering in the late 60s, at a computer company, at an audiovisual production company, at an NBC affiliate television station and at a prepress shop, along the way. All during that time, he kept his interest and fascination with fonts alive. He began his career as an electronic fontmaker in 1997 when a friend, frustrated with trying to learn Fontographer, sold Curtis his copy of the program. The first few years were a learning experience, producing a lot of fonts with admittedly "ragged edges"; but time, experience and the expert counsel of industry professionals have polished those edges. In 2000–2001, Curtis licensed several of his designs with mass-audience appeal to Agfa-Monotype, Bitstream and ITC Fonts. He is a Resident Associate of the Smithsonian Institution, a Registered Researcher with the Library of Congress, and a member of the Internet Type Designers Association.
Nick's fonts are sold as Nick's Fonts.


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Get Off Your Duff! Sitting Is the 'New Smoking'
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Could too much time in your chair be killing you? Studies show sitting more than six hours a day puts you on a potentially deadly track, even if you exercise!
That's pretty bad when you consider Americans sit about nine hours a day on average.
When we sit, especially for long periods of time, our bodies tend to shut down, which can lead to an early death.
Dr. James Levine, a Mayo Clinic endocrinologist, is a leading researcher on the health hazards of sitting too much.
The 'New Smoking'
"The trick, the trick, the trick," he said, is to have it firmly fixed in our minds, "that sitting is the new smoking. That sitting is literally bad for you."
For 15 years, Dr. Levine has studied the grim consequences of spending too much time on our duff.
For starters, obese people sit on average two-and-a-half hours more every day than thinner people. Sitting for long periods of time could actually make bottoms bigger because sitting down puts a large amount of force on the body tissues that make fat cells. It causes them to produce up to 50 percent more.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
"People who sit for a prolonged period of time throughout the day are predisposed to developing diabetes, and those people who have diabetes, their diabetes gets worse," Levine warned.
Add to that increased blood pressure and more, including emotional problems.
"People who sit more are more prone to cancers, breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon, I mean, multiple cancers," Levine explained.
"In addition, they're more prone to depression, to feeling blue," he said. "Even people who have mental illness, their illness is actually worse."
Walk While Working
As a potential solution, Dr. Levine worked with companies to improve employee health. He also teamed-up with Steelcase, the office furniture company, to develop the Walkstation, a desk with a treadmill built right into it.
The Walkstation allows users to stroll at a very slow pace all day for optimum health. In fact, the Walkstation doesn't even go any faster than two miles per hour.
Corporations nationwide have been clamoring to jump on the Walkstation bandwagon. But at about $3,500 each, although they are considered the gold standard of treadmill desks, not everyone can afford one.
Fortunately, there are cheaper alternatives. Jill Weisenberger, a nutritionist and author who has a home office, spent less than $500 for something similar.
"I was sitting for hours and hours and hours, sometimes for 10 or so hours," she recalled. "And I just know all that sitting is bad for you."
Weisenberger realized she had a problem when she began writing her nutrition book, Diabetes Weight Loss: Week by Week: A Safe, Effective Method for Losing Weight and Improving Your Health.
As a health expert herself, she became concerned about the repercussions of sitting all day even though she exercised every morning.
Weisenberger purchased the TrekDesk online for about $479. The TrekDesk is a wide, tall, adjustable desk that fits virtually any existing treadmill. She simply put it over the treadmill she already owned.
"Ever since I got the desk I don't complain about back pain and I'm much more comfortable" she smiled.
Weisenberger keeps her pace at just 1.4 miles an hour so she can concentrate on her work. The slow pace means she doesn't ever get sweaty or out-of-breath.
"I could be on it for three to seven hours, and so I almost always walk about 30-some miles a week," she said.
Stand Up Operation
Although a treadmill desk is the preferred method of beating the "sitting all day blues," it's not always practical. The next best thing is a standing desk. It's also cheaper than a treadmill desk.
CBN's Dorothy Schulte produces promotions for "The 700 Club." She figured out an inexpensive way to avoid sitting down all day by designing her own standup desk.
As a result, she said she feels so much better.
"I noticed a lot of the back pain went away," she said. "I was a lot less tired at the end of the day."
For just $35, she simply attached two wooden blocks to the bottom of her regular desk, raising it about 10 inches. She also replaced her chair with a bar stool.
"I don't stand the whole day, constantly," she explained. "I'll probably go back and forth 30, 45 minutes at a time."
Off Your Duff
If you can't walk or stand at your desk, don't worry. There are still lots of things you can do to minimize the health hazards of a desk job.
For example, offset the effects of sitting by taking the stairs at your work place, instead of the elevator.
Levine recommends using a portable stair-stepper periodically throughout the day.
"Slide it under the desk," he advised. "When the phone goes, you pull it out, and start stepping away."
Another idea to break up the long hours sitting is to set an alarm as a reminder to take a lap or two around your work area. It's a practice that might not seem like much, but Levine said short, sporadic movement really adds up.
"People get as much or potentially more benefit from being up and walking a little bit every hour than going to the gym three times a week," he said.
Instead of emailing a co-worker, walk over to them. Choose the printer that's far from your desk, and park far away from your building.
"I'd say the number one item, and we've deployed this in over 60 corporations in the United States, is walk-and-talk meetings," Levine said.
Also, walk at lunchtime. A good way to measure how you're doing is to wear a pedometer, which keeps track of how many steps you're taking. A good goal is 10,000 a day.
The Bottom Line
The office isn't the only danger zone. When you get home, avoid being a couch potato.
Studies show each hour sitting in front of the television means an 11 percent higher death risk.
So the bottom line is, there are lots of ways to get off your bottom! That way you can keep your desk job and your good health.
*Originally aired November 2012.
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Friday, May 25, 2007
Into The Garden
A month ago the garden was calling to me to come away from the keyboard, out into the sunshine and fresh air and to get my seedlings planted, the weeds pulled, some flower seed started, and some mulch spread. I was looking forward to squash and tomatoes and wildflowers at the very least.
A month later and I made my first harvest today of some small green and yellow zucchini. The plants are growing and seem to be happy, the first tomato blossoms are opening and a couple of the wildflowers are blooming. The wildflower area is filled with plants in a mat of various kinds of foliage. Next month, if not sooner, I'll have photos to show you. Should be beautiful!
Some new things have been added in the last month. A friend gave me some bright geraniums and I bought a six pack of deep blue lobelia. Sweetie bought me some Russian Red Basil, which is in one of the planters with the lobelia.
I planted some morning glories and sweet peas. No flowers yet, but the plants are starting to climb the supports. I started some seed of regular cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, and chard. Yesterday they were big enough to plant. Most went into containers (look at the last container on the walkway), but a couple went into the ground, protected with anti-gopher wire netting.
I discovered that some violas, nasturtium, calendula and poppy plants self-seeded. I weeded carefully around them, so they are now ready to bloom. Parts of the garden even received bark mulch. Now I need to weed again and spread some more mulch.
It is so much fun to go out into the garden and harvest the first fruits of my labor...squash, sweet squash. Keep an eye out in the coming month for recipes that make use of the 'future food' that is now food ready for the kitchen.
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The following analysis of the greater Las Vegas, Nevada real estate market is provided by Windermere Real Estate Chief Economist Matthew Gardner. We hope that this information may assist you with making better-informed real estate decisions. For further information about the housing market in your area, please don't hesitate to contact your Windermere agent.
Job growth in the Las Vegas metropolitan area continues at a very brisk pace. A total of 32,300 new jobs were added over the past 12 months, representing a very strong annual growth rate of 3.3%. For perspective, the U.S. as a whole is growing at around 1.6%, or half the rate of Las Vegas.
Even as jobs are added to the local economy, the unemployment rate is still higher than one would expect to see. The seasonally adjusted rate is 4.9%, which is down from 5.25% a year ago but still well above the national rate. This can be attributed to a rapidly rising labor force that has grown by over 34,000 in the past year as people who had been on the sidelines start to look for employment.
- A total of 9,146 homes were sold in the third quarter of 2018 — a drop of 4.8% over the same period a year ago. The drop in sales since the start of the year had been attributed to a lack of inventory, but we are now experiencing a substantial increase in homes for sale. This has given buyers more choice and less urgency.
- Pending sales dropped by 5% versus the same period a year ago and were down by 16% when compared to the second quarter of this year. This suggests that closings in the fourth quarter will not be very robust.
- Sales rose in three sub-markets compared to a year ago, with the Aliante market seeing solid growth (but bear in mind that this is a very small area and subject to volatility in sales). There was also a slight increase in sales in Whitney and a smaller rise in Northeast Las Vegas. All other markets saw sales decline, the most substantial of which was in the Southeast sub-market.
- In a nutshell, Las Vegas is experiencing the same increase in listing activity as a majority of U.S. markets. There is no cause for panic, but more choice does lead to a temporary slowing in sales as buyers take their time choosing a new home.
- Home prices in the area rose by 11.8% compared to the third quarter of 2017 — to an average of $304,182 — and were a modest 0.6% higher than in the second quarter of this year.
- The Las Vegas market continues to see home prices rise but I believe we will start to see a slowdown as affordability issues start to appear.
- Prices in all sub-markets rose compared to the same quarter last year. The strongest growth was in the Northeast Las Vegas sub-market, where prices were up 22.5%. Eleven sub-markets saw double-digit price growth.
- The takeaway is that home values are likely to continue to increase, but more choice — in concert with affordability constraints — will lead to a slowdown in the rate of price growth.
- The average time it took to sell a home in the region dropped five days compared to the third quarter of 2017.
- Region-wide it took an average of only 27 days to sell a home in the third quarter of this year.
- Days on market fell in all but two of the sub-markets compared to a year ago. The exceptions were in the Queens Ridge area (+4 days) and in Green Valley (+1 day).
- The greatest drop in days on market was in Northeast Las Vegas, which took 10 fewer days than in the same quarter of 2017.
The speedometer reflects the state of the region's real estate market using housing inventory, price gains, home sales, interest rates, and larger economic factors.
Though employment growth in Clark County continues to be very robust, this has yet to be reflected in any major growth in earnings. Home prices have been growing at some of the fastest rates in the U.S., which is affecting affordability. With the lack of real wage growth, and in concert with rising inventory levels, I believe that the market will start to trend toward more balance, but we have a ways to go. Because of this, I have moved the speedometer a little more toward buyers.
Mr. Gardner is the Chief Economist for Windermere Real Estate, specializing in residential market analysis, commercial/industrial market analysis, financial analysis, and land use and regional economics. He is the former Principal of Gardner Economics, and has more than 30 years of professional experience both in the U.S. and U.K.


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Introduction | The Phrack Staff |
Phrack Prophile on Punk | The Phrack Staff |
Phrack World News | EL ZILCHO |
Loopback (is back) | The Phrack Staff |
How to make it in Prison | TAp |
Kernel instrumentation using kprobes | ElfMaster |
ProFTPD with mod_sql pre-authentication, remote root | FelineMenace |
The House Of Lore: Reloaded ptmalloc v2 & v3: Analysis & Corruption | blackngel |
A Eulogy for Format Strings | Captain Planet |
Dynamic Program Analysis and Software Exploitation | BSDaemon |
Exploiting Memory Corruptions in Fortran Programs Under Unix/VMS | Magma |
Phrackerz: Two Tales | Antipeace & The Analog Kid |
Scraps of notes on remote stack overflow exploitation | pi3 |
Notes Concerning The Security, Design and Administration of Siemens DCO-CS | The Philosopher |
Hacking the mind for fun and profit | lvxferis |
International scenes | various |
==Phrack Inc.== Volume 0x0e, Issue 0x43, Phile #0x02 of 0x10 |=----------------------------------------------------------------------=| |=------------------------=[ PHRACK PROPHILE ON ]=----------------------=| |=----------------------------------------------------------------------=| |=------------------------=[ email@example.com ]=-----------------------=| |=----------------------------------------------------------------------=| |=---=[ Specifications Handle: punk AKA: ihaq Handle origin: Feelin' lucky, punk? Produced in: Probably the missionary position. Urlz: HTTP://WWW.EROWID.ORG Computers: Intel p75, Intel P4, iMac 20", MacBook Pro 15.4" Creator of: Amnesia - The nightmare you forget exists Member of: The SYNDICATE, 2l8, Project CASSOULET, formerly Ac1dB1tch3z Admin of: *.com, The LAB Projects: Amnesia - portable FreeBSD rootkit Projekt Mayhem - like everyone else with a cool hat Project CASSOULET!@# Codez: Amnesia - The most portable kernel module backdoor ever? Opium - Attempt at a functional & portable solaris kit. xlib.c - Xlib ENV overflow exploit from back in the day with grsux bypass. vtesto - Full in-memory backdooring & intrusion. omelette.c - Old eggdrop asynchronous DNS overflow. Active since: 1997 Inactive since: Whenever the drugs kill me. |=---=[ Favorites Actors: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Johnny Depp, Riley Evans, Lexi Belle, Sash Grey, Eva Angelina. Films: Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Authors: Albert Hofmann Articles: p49-14, p53-5, p55-8, p55-12, p56-5, p60-7, p60-10, p66-8 p56-14, p57-8, p57-9, p58-4, p58-7, p58-8, p59-7, p61-6 Meetings: I don't go to AA nor NA Sex: Wild and dirty Books: LSD: My problem Child, PIHKAL, TIHKAL Novel: Your browser cache Meeting: Rita Marley Music: Jesselyn, Marcel Woods, Mark Knopfler, Pink Floyd, Bush, Motorpsycho, Mudvayne, Tiesto, Johan Gielen, Jefferson Airplane, Leftfield, The Prodigy, Infected Mushroom. Alcohol: Anything > 21 years and beer. Also, red wine as it turns innocent girls into sluts Cars: Bugatti veyron Girls: Should look and act like pornstars Foods: As long as it doesn't bleed I like: Hacking, drugs, sex and lulz I dislike: Whitehat faggots |=---=[ Your current life in a paragraph Crazy. Always hacking, always traveling. Living like a vampire on meth. The amount of drugs in my bloodstream is the envy of every pharmacy on earth. Still trying new things, hungry for knowledge. Living on the edge is the only way to live. |=---=[ First contact with computers A mysterious black box appared in my parents house as a kid, shiny Intel p75, with a whopping 16MB of ram + A monster 850MB disk. Much to my dismay, it and the dialup connection it had were both password protected. Now look what happened... |=---=[ Passions : What makes you tick The puzzle of how to ruin your life with computers. The race against the admins. The art of exploitation, the thrill of the hunt. That said, nothing beats ruining someones life with their own computers. |=---=[ Entrance in the underground As so many hackers before me, it was in the dark ages of EFnet, before chanfux and while some opers actually weren't flaming homosexuals. I stepped out of the shadows with 2l8.txt after many years of largely ignoring the scene. route still "had time to manage that place". I joined Ac1dB1tch3z and never looked back. |=---=[ Unix or Windows? UNIX. I would rather have my balls dragged out thru my ass and stuffed in my fucking mouth rather than being stuck with something that is designed to break, not to mention spy on you. I am probably always will be a FreeBSD guy. There simply is no matching the power and agility of FreeBSD. As far as laptop/desktop OS is concerned I like OSX with it's FreeBSD core. It's not perfect, but it works, and looks pretty too. |=---=[ Which research have you done or which one gave you the most fun? Learning to know the FreeBSD kernel like it was my girlfriend's pussy. For most of you this would be your mom's vagina or your dad's meat pole. |=---=[ Personal general opinion about the underground The truly dark underground is awesome. The whitehat crowd who think they are underground make me sad. Do us all a favour and commit hara-kiri, whitehat maggots. I am truly impressed with the level of skill within the blackhat underground. The leaders of the world would crumble in fear if they had any idea whatsoever about the extent of this. It's only too bad that all the whitehat posers, who's only "skill" is publishing other peoples work and posting XSS to Full-Disclosure. Why the fuck would anyone post anything to FD except for lulz & phear. This is beyond me. |=---=[ Memorable Experiences/Hack Putting gay porn on EFnet.org, only to realize everyone thought it was the pix from the oper convention... watching these morons scramble in fail, lol @ dns cache poison theory. P.S.: EFnet NS still vuln to file editing attack. Joining Ac1dB1tch3z, the most awesome phorce in nature. Owning my own ISP at age 14. Taking out an entire block of businesses using land.c, only later to realize they all went bankrupt. Figuring out nonexec stack and heap bypass techniques. Rm'ing idiot #phrack ops from existance. Pissing off the vice president of South Africa. Pissing on the squad car first time I was arrested. Getting my ass handed to me by susieq after not having hacked for like a year. Linking in hacked up EFnet servers for teh lulz. Being too high on mushrooms to get my ass to HAR opening day. |=---=[ Memorable people you have met You can meet people now? I thought that was what faceblog was for. Al Gore - The biggest hypocrit alive...wish I had an axe.. Krzee - Crazy nigger flew all the way to NL just to party with me. Chris - Made Miami tolerable. Grimey & Lance - Viva Montreal!@# nomed - mah nl bro. |=---=| Memorable places you have been svn.freebsd.org - best source kood cookie.efnet.nl aka irc.efnet.nl - best online chats irc.narc.net - the name says it all ircd-hybrid.org - hello world Chelsea C.'s inbox - omg. you dirty thing |=---=[ Disappointing people you have met I don't socialize with failurez, but maybe I can interest you in sum CASSOULET? [=---=[ Can you be a hacker/blackhat without hacking anything Can you be a crack addict without smokin' da rawkz? No. That said, I believe alot of people have the hacking spirit and just dont know it. The hacker mindset is prevailant in many people, too bad some people use it for the wrong purpose or ignore it completely. If you see the light at the end of the tunnel, you are looking the wrong way. |=---=[ Ac1dB1tch3z experience It was a damp day, EFnet had just been raped and violated like a hooker in the midst of an etherbinge mixed in with ghb and rohypnol, yes, a dream for most of you, I know. A friend of mine approached me about joining some gathering of hackers to take of the world. This was my entrance into Ac1dB1tch3z. It took only a few minutes to realize the magnitude of what I had become part of. Even hardened hackers I had known for ages would come, see the constant scroll of mad hax og run away with the tails between their legs. They say ignorance is bliss, but ignoring that people that have been doing reliable remote ring 0 exploits since 2001 is just retarded. I grew alot during my time in AB, being around people who actually have a clue and are trustworthy was really useful to me. Suddenly I had access to pick the brains of the best hackers on the planet. Developing weaponized exploits was part of daily routine. Creating and proving new backdooring concepts was considered a passtime. Owning was considered a way of life, and that usually meant owning whitehat niggerz. The daily brainstorming about 0day ideas is probably what I miss the most. |=---=[ Wikileaks? Julian Assange? Adrian Lamo? I think wikileaks is doing important work, by that i mean pissing on the hypocracy that is the U.S. Army. Assange is a weirdo. Who knows if he raped and or molested those women. I would have. Now Adrian, he's a real class act. Eternal attention seeker, liar and bullshitter. He would do humanity a favour by jumping in a pool of liquid lava. |=---=[ Memorable places you have been Amsterdam. Montreal. Cities of Sin. These are the kind of places you will find whitehats dressed as female prostitutes to serve your perverted desires, or the place to smoke a good joint and eat some mushrooms with nekkid sluts running around. |=---=[ Things you are proud of Ruining whitehat and blackhat posers lives. Being the darkest blackhat alive. Skydiving. Licking an entire sheet of LSD. Crashing 2 cars before i was 7. Holding the world record for most consumed drugs. Not yet murdering abh. Being the bigger man and not blowing up FD archives. Pissing off the vice prez of South Africa. Having had my own private beach. Not watching TV. Cutting someones finger off in 3rd grade. Growing A+ weed. Restraining from physically beating whitehats into a pulp. Still being sane after 35grams of mushrooms. |=---=[ Things you are not proud of Realizing that people like kingcope exist and are allowed to walk around without having their fingers cut off and columbian necktie hanging out their throats. Knowing Osmosis had nude pix of Estella, after I found out she used to be a dude. Not knowing that Joanna used to be a dude, until recently. Not printing 1k t-shirts with dan kam's unpublished gmail pass on it for HAR.. |=---=[ Opinion about dark underground. Still exist? Where? It very much does. Whitehats would have you believe otherwise, probably because their world would crumble if they had any clue about the magnitude of it. I could tell you where, but I would have to kill you. |=---=[ Most impressive hackers sd, sauron, anakata, xtix, twiz, sgrakkyu, susieq, scut, halfdead, the_uT, blkho, halvar, duke (even tho iDefense sux). |=---=[ Opinion about security conferences You might as well go turn yourself in. Fed-cons. Only reason to go to any of them is to hand Dan Kaminsky his inbox. P.S.: Dan, your girlfriend is fucking psycho man, I heard she tried to violate loophole... Don't fight your own battles? However, if i had to choose one, it would be Blackhat/defcon: Nowhere else on earth can you piss on that many whitehats in one go, not to mention epic shit like getting lh to hand Dan Kam is own funeral. |=---=[ Opinion on Phrack Magazine 1985' ? 1995' ? 2005' ? '2009 ? Cool. Good. wtf?!. Getting there. |=---=[ What you would like to see published in Phrack ? More articles about breaking the rules of the matrix. More innovative advanced exploitation techniques. More hax news, more ridicule, route got that part right. More whitehat rape. |=---=[ Shoutouts to specific (group of) peoples Ac1dB1tch3z, zf0, h0no, UIA, #phrack ops, everyone@laggy, alloy, LaMaLo, the rest of 2l8, mad props to the ILF. |=---=[ Flames to specific (group of) peoples Whitehats can lick my nutz, spender smokes crack. I hope Dan Kaminsky dies from autoerotic asphyxiation. I know Ben Hawkes will get gangraped soon. Well deserved, too. Fucking bug killer. Also: ret_ join your dead family. Alan..I hope the irish find you. |=---=[ Quotes I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me. In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music. |=---=[ Anything more you want to say Hackers always w1n. And by hackers, I mean blackhats. This fuckton of scada 0days isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but you can be sure we will put them to good use. I would also like to thank the Phrack staff for this honor. --------[ EOF


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Babies learn some early words by touch
A caregiver's tactile hints help 4-month-olds recognize names for body parts
By Bruce Bower
Awash in streams of adult chatter, babies fish out and recognize some of their first words thanks to well-timed touches from their caregivers, a new study suggests.
An experimenter's synchronized taps on an elbow or knee enabled 4-month-olds to notice nonsense words embedded in spoken strings of syllables, say psycholinguist Amanda Seidl of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., and her colleagues. Timed touches from parents and other adults as they say the names of body parts may explain how babies tune in to words such as feet and tummy months before recognizing other nouns, the scientists propose April 16 in Developmental Science.
"Caregivers' touch cues may play a key role in infants' ability to recognize body part words so early, and these words could provide a toehold for learning other early nouns," Seidl says.
Touch has largely been overlooked as a sense needed by babies for the daunting task of deciphering words as adults talk.
Infants selectively respond to people's names, such as mommy, early on, but names appear to be special cases: Adults frequently say names to babies without using any other words. What's more, a word such as mommy is often enunciated with an attention-grabbing melody.
In contrast, words referring to various types of objects cascade out of adults' mouths amid a torrent of verbs and modifiers. In the last couple of years, evidence has suggested that infants nonetheless start to recognize words for foods and body parts by age 6 months.
When presented with pairs of pictures, 6- to 9-month-olds typically looked at the one depicting a food or body part — such as a banana or hand — just named by their mothers, psychologists Elika Bergelson of the University of Rochester in New York and Daniel Swingley of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia reported in 2012.
Infants probably use a variety of acoustic cues to pick words out of adults' utterances, including pauses and intonation changes, Bergelson says. Seidl's results add tactile cues to this mix, she remarks. "Given that touches from adults are frequent and can be tracked by young babies, touch is a good candidate for helping babies break into the speech stream."
In the new study, 24 4-month-olds were held by their mothers as a recording played of a woman speaking a string of 27 nonsense syllables that could be subdivided into nine fake words, each consisting of three consecutive syllables. The syllable string repeated 24 times, lasting five minutes and 45 seconds.
A female experimenter touched each child on a single body part, such as a knee, each time a specific set of three consecutive syllables, corresponding to a word, played. The experimenter also touched the youngster on another body part, such as an elbow, just once during the 24 repeats of the recording for each of the eight other words made of three-syllable combinations.
Afterward, babies spent substantially less time looking toward speakers playing the word that had always elicited touches than looking toward speakers emitting words linked with one touch or new words composed of three syllables that appeared in the recording but not consecutively.
Seidl interprets this result as an indication that 4-month-olds had familiarized themselves enough with words associated with consistent touches by an adult to be more intrigued or surprised by other three-syllable mixes.
In a trial with 24 more 4-month-olds and the same recording, a female experimenter touched her own knee or chin each time a particular three-syllable word played and touched her own elbow or eyebrow once for every other simulated word in the recording. Babies who watched that act showed no preference for any word type afterward.
Receiving consistently timed touches from caregivers critically helps infants to identify these words, Seidl concludes. Preliminary data from her lab suggest that mothers touch their babies on the appropriate spot within one second of saying words for body parts.


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U.S. FCC extends 1st deadline to comment on net neutrality
By Alina Selyukh WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday pushed back to July 18 the first deadline to submit comments on the agency's proposed new Internet traffic rules after a surge in traffic overwhelmed its online filing system. Companies, consumer advocates, lawmakers and citizens had sent nearly 680,000 comments on the FCC's proposed so-called net neutrality rules -- which guide how Internet service providers (ISPs) manage web traffic on their networks -- as the deadline for first comments approached on Tuesday. For much of Tuesday, however, the database appeared to be down or unaccessible, which FCC spokeswoman Kim Hart attributed to an "overwhelming surge in traffic." "Please be assured that the Commission is aware of these issues and is committed to making sure that everyone trying to submit comments will have their views entered into the record," she said, announcing a delay of the deadline to midnight on July 18. After that, commenters will be able to reply to each other's initial submissions through Sept. 10. The proposal has attracted one of the biggest responses in FCC's history, showcasing the complicated and intense nature of the debate launched after a federal court in January struck down the FCC's previous version of such rules. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has proposed rules that would ban ISPs from blocking users' access to websites or applications but would allow some "commercially reasonable" deals between content providers and ISPs to prioritize delivery of some traffic. The proposal stirred up consumer advocates who have long advocated that the FCC reclassify and regulate ISPs as telecommunications services, like public utilities -- a move rejected by cable and wireless companies and by Republicans both in Congress and at the FCC.Wheeler has not proposed reclassification as the solution, but has not taken it off the table as a potential route, though some industry experts have suggested reclassification could leave the door open for paid prioritization deals. "Reclassification ... is not only entirely unnecessary but would be unwise and likely unlawful," Comcast Corp said in its filing on Tuesday. Thirteen prominent Senate Democrats, including Ed Markey, Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Charles Schumer and Elizabeth Warren, in turn wrote to the FCC calling for reclassification, with appropriate legal caveats for the industry. Another call for reclassification on Tuesday came in co-signed comments from the attorneys general of New York and Illinois, Eric Schneiderman and Lisa Madigan. Several web companies such as Vimeo and Etsy have also urged the FCC to reclassify ISPs, though the industry's Washington representative, the Internet Association, has not sought that specific approach in its opposition of the FCC allowing some pay-for-priority deals. "We don't want to live in a world where there are fast lanes and slow lanes for the Internet because we don't believe we could afford to pay for the fast lane," Etsy's policy director, Althea Erickson, told Reuters TV on Monday. "It's really hard to imagine Etsy being able to start and grow under the conditions that the chairman is proposing." (Reporting by Alina Selyukh; Additional reporting by Karen Freifeld and Lily Jamali in New York and Marina Lopes in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Bernard Orr and Leslie Adler)


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The Baltimore Ravens have sent out an official press-release regarding who they are playing in the 2013 pre-season. Here is what it says:
April 4, 2013
For Immediate Release
A nationally-televised (ESPN) game on Thursday, Aug. 22, against the Carolina Panthers at M&T Bank Stadium highlights the Super Bowl XLVII Champion Baltimore Ravens' 2013 preseason schedule.
The Ravens open the preseason at Tampa Bay, with the game's exact date and time still to be determined. In the second week of the preseason, Baltimore hosts the Atlanta Falcons at M&T Bank Stadium on Thursday, Aug. 15.
Following their nationally-televised home game against the Panthers, the Ravens close out the preseason at St. Louis in a contest currently scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 29.
Baltimore is 40-27 all time in preseason play. Under head coach John Harbaugh (2008-12), the Ravens have compiled a 13-7 record in the preseason.
In their preseason history, the Ravens are 6-3 vs. Atlanta, 4-1 vs. Carolina and 0-3 vs. St. Louis. Baltimore has never faced Tampa Bay during preseason play.
Ravens 2013 Preseason Schedule
Date TBD at Tampa Bay BuccaneersThursday, Aug. 15 vs. Atlanta Falcons
Thursday, Aug. 22 vs. Carolina Panthers (National ESPN Telecast)
Thursday, Aug. 29* at St. Louis Rams
*Tentatively scheduled
(Times for the Ravens' preseason games will be determined at a later date.)


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LAST WALTZ IN VENICE – Venice Carnival in Costume® 2018
Events News Various events Venice Carnival 2018
[ 13 February 2018; 15:00 to 17:00. ] Hotel Splendid Venice
Tuesday, February 13th at 3 p.m.
[caption id="attachment_9584" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Ph. DigitImage – do not use without permission[/caption]
A dancing chocolate to celebrate the end of carnival
The sweet event of the Venice Carnival in Costume® held in a typical campiello (small square) – covered by a glass rooftop – of the hotel Splendid Venice. The guests […]


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This could also have been subtitled: Poor Women. Too Clever For Their Own Good.
I'm a little bit fed up with these kinds of articles, and they have been many:
After midnight on a rainy night last week in Chapel Hill, N.C., a large group of sorority women at the University of North Carolina squeezed into the corner booth of a gritty basement bar. Bathed in a neon glow, they splashed beer from pitchers, traded jokes and belted out lyrics to a Taylor Swift heartache anthem thundering overhead. As a night out, it had everything — except guys.
"This is so typical, like all nights, 10 out of 10," said Kate Andrew, a senior from Albemarle, N.C. The experience has grown tiresome: they slip on tight-fitting tops, hair sculpted, makeup just so, all for the benefit of one another, Ms. Andrew said, "because there are no guys."
North Carolina, with a student body that is nearly 60 percent female, is just one of many large universities that at times feel eerily like women's colleges. Women have represented about 57 percent of enrollments at American colleges since at least 2000, according to a recent report by the American Council on Education. Researchers there cite several reasons: women tend to have higher grades; men tend to drop out in disproportionate numbers; and female enrollment skews higher among older students, low-income students, and black and Hispanic students.
In terms of academic advancement, this is hardly the worst news for women — hoist a mug for female achievement. And certainly, women are primarily in college not because they are looking for men, but because they want to earn a degree.
But surrounded by so many other successful women, they often find it harder than expected to find a date on a Friday night.
I have bolded the bit that is extremely insulting. Note that that bit is the closest the article ever comes to congratulating these female students for their hard work and success. This could only happen to women, not to a minority group, say. And not to men.
Can you imagine reversing this? Take something like the military which is predominantly male. Do you see articles written about how the poor men must suffer, not having any women to date? How they can't get married, due to the predominantly male environment? How they therefore should allow more women in and possibly relinquish their own jobs in consequence?
You don't see those articles, and neither were reversal articles of this type written when colleges were filled with nothing much but men. Nobody worried that those poor men couldn't be able to find a wife or a date for the weekend, nobody. And this has never been a concern with all-male colleges even today. It is only a concern when women have become the majority of college students.
What were the concerns about female students in those days when Harvard was all male and dinosaurs roamed on the streets of Cambridge? If I might make one guess, the concern was probably that women were in college only to get their Mrs. degrees and that they took away places from the more deserving men.
In an odd way, this new generation of articles isn't that much different. But now it's the Mrs. degree women are told they can't earn at college. What the solution might be is not made clear, but obviously it is for a certain number of these women to drop out so that more men can enter in their place. That way everyone will be much happier (except the women who are made to drop out as their incomes will be lower and they still can't earn that Mrs. degree).
I'm not quite sure what drives these stories, though I suspect it is our subconscious training in patriarchal thought patterns. If the man is supposed to be the breadwinner and the boss of the household, and if the woman is supposed to be a helpmate and household manager, won't the world fall apart when colleges have -- gasp! -- 57% women?
You may remember that this pattern in colleges is a pretty global one. Women tend to be more than half of college students everywhere they are allowed to, including in Iran, where women are 60% of college students. Thus, the reason for this is not some horrible feminazi plot (as American conservatives argue).
The real reasons are many, but one that holds true all over the world is that men have traditionally had access to many well-paying blue-collar jobs without a college degree, whereas the jobs available for women with just a high school degree or its equivalent usually haven't paid anywhere near as well.
Why doesn't the New York Times write about that,eh? Or of the problems of minority boys and men, the group in which most of the gender difference is created?
Sigh. Those are rhetorical questions.


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mouse and finger
The time for the most colourful parade is here and you ladies are invited to join Queen Elsa and princesses Anna, Tiana and Jasmine for a fun session of celebration. Get your rainbow flags ready 'cause you are about to celebrate the most colourful time of the year at Gay Pride Parade. Play this brand-new dress up game for girls and help your favourite Disney girls prepare to attend the Pride Parade in different cities across the world. There are no fashion rules to follow this time but you have to make sure you make each of them stand out of the crowd. So take a closer look to their special wardrobes and feel free to select four tops covered in powerful messages and then see how you pair each with your favourite skirts or shorts, comfy chic shoes and other statement accessories you can use to help each of them to look outstanding. Have fun and feel free to share your creation in a comment below!


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WATCH: Breathtaking New Video Of Felix Baumgartner's Record Jump
You might recall Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner's 2012 jump from a 24-mile-high balloon capsule, a height of 127,852 feet. He broke not only an altitude record, formerly set by a U.S. Air Force pilot, Col. Joe Kittinger, in 1960, but also a record for speed of descent, breaking the sound barrier on his plummet to the New Mexico desert.
As NPR's Dana Farrington wrote of the feat on Oct. 14, 2012, Baumgartner's accomplishment was "the highest jump, the longest distance free fall and the fastest velocity" (Mach 1.24).
GoPro, the digital camera manufacturer and a co-sponsor of the jump, mounted seven of its HERO2 cameras on "Fearless Felix" and managed to get some breathtaking video of the feat. The first few seconds can be seen in a Super Bowl advertisement that airs Sunday night, but you can see the complete, breathtaking footage above.
It begins with Baumgartner taking directions from Kittinger in mission control. Kittinger directs him to disconnect his oxygen hose and step to the exterior ledge of the capsule.
After the brief conversation, Baumgartner stands at the precipice and says: "I wish you could see what I could see.
"Sometimes you have to be really high up to understand how small you are. I'm coming home now," he says.
Baumgartner salutes and steps off the ledge. The next few minutes of video are nothing short of awe inspiring.


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You're reading an outdated article. Please go to the recent issues to find up-to-date content.
Historically, shock and electrocution have been seen as the primary electrical hazards to people, along with fires of electrical origin, but today, awareness is growing of two other electrical hazards: arc-flash and arc-blast. This growing awareness is largely due to NFPA 70E-2004, Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace.
Electric Shock: Electric shock is the leading of injuries and deaths due to electricity. Approximately 30,000 nonfatal electrical shock accidents occur each year. About 1,000 electrocutions (deaths from electric shock) occur each year, more than half of them while working on conductors and equipment energized at less than 600 volts. Electric shocks happen when people contact live parts or in some other way become part of an electric circuit. Even the current needed to light an old-fashioned Christmas tree bulb (7 1/2 watts, 120 volts) is enough to kill a person if it passes across the chest and through the heart.
Arc-Flash: When electric current passes through the air, temperatures can get hot enough to ignite clothing, melt plastic and burn people's skin up to 10 feet away. Each year more than 2,000 people are admitted to hospitals with arc-flash burns. In addition to burn danger, the very bright light associated with an arc-flash events can cause temporary (and sometimes permanent) blindness.
Arc-flashes are usually short events lasting less than a half-second. They can be caused by such things as dropping a tool or metal part across energized busbars, operating damaged electrical equipment or voltage testing with a meter that isn't properly rated.
Arc-Blast: At higher energy levels, explosion hazards—high pressure, loud noise and flying shrapnel—are added to the thermal and light dangers of arc-flashes. Extreme temperatures generated by the arc cause explosive expansion of both the surrounding air and of metal in the arc path (copper expands by a factor of 67,000 when it vaporizes). This rapid expansion creates a pressure wave that can explode equipment enclosures, knock workers off ladders, spray molten metal, rupture eardrums and destroy personal protective equipment (PPE).
Paradoxically, workers exposed to arc-blasts sometimes suffer fewer burns than those exposed to arc-flashes. The blast energy can blow workers away from the arc, thus reducing their exposure to heat but increasing the risk of serious falls or impact injuries.
The most effective protection against all three classes of electrical hazards is turning off the power before working on electrical equipment and systems. NFPA 70E calls this "establishing an electrically safe work condition," and we'll explain that important subject in a future safety article here on www.ecmag.com.
But sometimes it's necessary to do repair and maintenance work on or around live equipment. When that's the case, it's critical to wear and use the proper protective gear defined in NFPA 70E. NECA publishes a Personal Protective Equipment Selector in both CD and manual form, to help electrical professionals understand and comply with the safety requirements of NFPA 70E. Visit www.necanet.org/store and click on "Safety."
STAUFFER is executive director of standards and safety at the National Electrical Contractors Association, headquartered in Bethesda, MD. He is a member of the National Electrical Code committee and the NFPA 70E committee, and has written several books.


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Most Americans, after buying a product from a store, expect that they will be able to return it -- at least within a reasonable amount of time and assuming the item is undamaged. This instinct is borne out by the policies of most retailers, who generally allow returns of most items within a set time period, for a refund, exchange, or store credit. In Europe, this is a right explicitly protected by contract law. In the US, by contrast, the rules vary from state to state, but in general there is no legally protected right to return an item. In his latest WIP talk, Professor Eric Posner presented a paper he and Professor Omri Ben-Shahar are working on regarding what they call the "right to withdraw" from these contracts (alas, there are sound prudential reasons for not titling the proposal the "right of return").
The core insight Posner and Ben-Shahar develop is the function allowing the return of an item serves in terms of letting consumers assess an item's value. For some purchases, such as home or office furniture, it is very difficult to determine whether the purchase is worth the money without some time experiencing it in your home. You need to know if the chair is comfortable, or if the futon matches your living room color scheme. Allowing consumers to return a product makes them more willing to buy, because they know they'll have the opportunity to determine with greater certainty the actual value the product holds to them.
There is, of course, a story from the seller's side as well. Sellers want buyers to feel comfortable purchasing their products, but they also have to worry about depreciation if the goods are returning after weeks of use. The speed at which depreciation occurs varies from product to product -- perishable items depreciate quickly, permanent furnishings more slowly. Some goods, due to cultural taboos, lose essentially their entire resale value upon being used once, which is why even stores which have generally lenient return policies won't let you return a casket. Other goods, such as music or electronic media, are vulnerable to copying, and thus returns are usually prohibited after the consumer opens the box.
The fact that most stores allow returns, and most consumers expect some reasonable ability to return products they buy, counsels turning some right of withdrawal into at least a default rule, to insure that outlier stores don't exploit consumer expectations. But the content of such a rule is more complicated. Ideally, it should maximize the ability of the consumer to gain information about the value of the product, while minimizing the risk posed to sellers via depreciation. In theory, consumers could just have an unlimited right of return subject to paying the value of any depreciation. But depreciation is extremely difficult to measure objectively. So, as an alternative, Posner and Ben-Shahar propose using time as a proxy -- as more time passes (with a rate that varies depending on the type of good), the item will be presumed to have depreciated in value more. This prevents consumers from externalizing the costs of excessive inspection and deliberation, while still allowing them some ability to back out of the contract if the goods don't turn out to be as valuable to them as they initially estimated.
The second part of the paper looks for traces of this sort of doctrine in American law. And they find one potential source in the famous ProCD v. Zeidenberg case, reviled by the bulk Contracts professors and students alike (albeit for different reasons). ProCD held enforceable additional contract terms contained "inside the box" of a computer that was purchased remotely (and were a black box to the buyer at the time he purchased the good). The 7th Circuit concluded that giving all the terms over the phone would have been impracticable, hence, the "acceptance" of the contract only came after the consumer opened the box and read and assented to the terms. This, Posner and Ben-Shahar argue, is essentially a form of the right to withdraw -- once the consumer receives the goods and finds out more information about them (here, certain contractual terms he may find overly onerous), he has, according to the court, the legal right to return the item as a matter of contract law.
Another parallel comes from the right to reject non-conforming goods, codified in the UCC. Though there are differences, two key assumptions overlap with the idea behind a right to withdraw. The first is the assumption that the buyer might not have important information regarding the quality or kind of the goods until they actually arrive at her doorstep. The notion that there is some information about the product that the buyer is unlikely to be able to obtain until after they are in her presence is similar to a right of withdrawal. Second, the UCC conditions rejection on it occurring within a reasonable amount of time after the buyer discovers (or should have discovered) the defect, and before the goods have had a change in condition (that isn't caused by the defect). This rule is designed to protect the rejection rule from being used to exploit sellers and put them at too much of a disadvantage vis-a-vis their customers. The rule effectively creates a trade-off similar to the one Posner and Ben-Shahar recommend for returns: the longer the good is in the possession of the buyer, the greater the defect necessary to justify returning it.


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Applying the Rubric Outside Carleton
Study Overview
The feasibility studies mirror the assessment process at Carleton. A representative from the partner institution visits Carleton to experience the process here. Over the course of the following year, we work with that representative to prepare for a similar assessment on their own campus. In addition to discussing how the rubric content may be adapted to better reflect that institution's needs, we develop a strategy for collecting a sample of student work.
At Iowa State, this latter problem is relatively trivial as they already collect student portfolios to assess student communication. We work with the other institutions to create a sample in a manner that fits their needs. This may be done by targeting assignments from a sampled of courses; paying randomly selected students to submit papers showing analysis, interpretation, or observation; or it may take some other form.
Once a sample of student writing is collected, Nathan Grawe joins the institutional representative in running an assessment session at which teams of faculty readers evaluate student QR. As at Carleton, this reading spans three days. As at Carleton, the reading concludes with a discussion of what faculty readers saw in the papers and how the institution might respond to foster professional development and student growth.
Having applied the Carleton rubric to student work and discussed possible curricular implications, faculty readers then discuss the feasibility of regularly repeating the process as a means of assessing QR effectiveness on their campus. (Note: assessment need not take place annually.) This discussion includes:
- Are there items that should be added to the scoring rubric?
- Are there rubric items that should be deleted?
- What are the alternative ways to generate a sample of student work at this campus?
- Who should be involved in the reading/scoring of papers?
Reports from these studies will be made available on this site as they are prepared.
Study Results
Wellesley College Study Results (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 20kB May4 10)
As our first feasibility study, this was a learning experience. Three lessons emerge in the report. First, QuIRK's rubric is designed for a study of general education work. The science-heavy sample of papers we read at Wellesley posed some challenges when assessing QR quality. Second, when reading at a different institution, two factors are changing: the identity of the readers and the character of the paper sample. To tease out the source of reliability challenges, we need to have the other institutions' readers read Carleton papers in addition to their own--something we implemented in subsequent studies. Finally, most participants thought the assessment exercise valuable and worth repeating.
Morehouse College Study Results (Microsoft Word 68kB May4 10)
Morehouse readers read a sample of papers from Carleton and a second sample of Morehouse work. In both samples, readers were able to achieve reasonable levels of inter-rater reliability. Interestingly, Morehouse readers achieved greater levels of agreement when reading Morehouse papers than when reading Carleton work. The fact that readers were better able to set common standards when looking at work from their own community supports claims that evaluators understand assessment as a localized construct. As at Wellesley, most participants found the exercise worth repeating.
Iowa State University Study Results (Microsoft Word 66kB Jul19 10)
Like Morehouse readers, Iowa State readers read samples both from Carleton and from Iowa State. Unlike the Morehouse experiment, all of the Iowa State papers responded to a common prompt. Scorers achieved a reasonable level of agreement in both relevance and extent, but showed somewhat less agreement in terms of quality.
Edmonds Community College Study Results (Microsoft Word 69kB Aug19 10)
Like Morehouse and Iowa State readers, Edmonds readers read samples both from Carleton and from Edmonds. Papers in the Edmonds sample were written to four different assignments. Reliability in relevance and extent proved strong. While a bit less reliable in the Edmonds papers than in the Carleton papers, scorers achieved useful reliability in QR quality as well.


text: The nation's top tax collector resigned Wednesday amid controversy over Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups that applied for federal tax-exempt status. The official, acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, was aware employees were targeting conservative groups in May 2012, according to the agency. But Miller, then the agency's deputy commissioner, didn't tell Congress about it when he testified before an oversight committee in July – despite being questioned on the issue. He was named acting commissioner in November. An administration official told CNN on Thursday that Obama will appoint a new acting commissioner this week. Announcing the resignation to reporters Wednesday, President Barack Obama said the agency's misconduct was "inexcusable." Read the IRS IG report "Americans have a right to be angry about it, and I'm angry about it," Obama said. "It should not matter what political stripe you're from. The fact of the matter is, the IRS has to operate with absolute integrity," the president said. Obama pledged to work "hand in hand" with Congress as it investigates the matter, and vowed new safeguards will be put in place at the IRS so that "this doesn't happen again." Despite his resignation, Miller is expected to testify Friday at a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee, according to a source familiar with the proceedings. Read the resignation letter In an internal message to IRS employees obtained by CNN, Miller said he would be stepping down as commissioner in early June. "This has been an incredibly difficult time for the IRS given the events of the past few days, and there is a strong and immediate need to restore public trust in the nation's tax agency," Miller wrote. Opinion: With IRS defanged, politics can run rampant 'Rogue' employees News of Miller's resignation followed revelations that the IRS has identified two "rogue" employees in the agency's Cincinnati office as being principally responsible for the "overly aggressive" handling of requests by conservative groups for tax-exempt status, a congressional source told CNN. Miller said the staffers have already been disciplined, according to another source familiar with Miller's discussions with congressional investigators. The second source said Miller emphasized that the problem with IRS handling of tax-exempt status for tea party groups was not limited to these two employees. Miller met with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana on Tuesday to discuss an appearance before Congress. Asked Wednesday in a Senate hallway about his meeting with Miller, Baucus told CNN, "I did not learn as much from the meeting as I would have liked." "I told him that it was in his best interest to be totally cooperative – that it's often the cover-up that causes more problems than the original malfeasance," the senator said. "And just to be totally straight with me and everybody, and he said he would." Meanwhile, Republican congressional leaders on Wednesday accused Obama's administration of potentially criminal behavior in the handling of requests for tax-exempt status from conservative groups. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell suggested criminal behavior had occurred, saying that the "very serious" allegations involve "an effort to bring the power of the federal government to bear on those the administration disagreed with in the middle of a heated national election." "It actually could be, could be criminal and we are determined to get the answers," McConnell said. House Speaker John Boehner was more definitive. "My question is, who's going to jail over this scandal?" he asked. Boehner told reporters that "clearly someone violated the law" in what an IRS inspector general's report described as delayed processing of applications by groups associated with the political right wing. Opinion: The real risk of the IRS scandal Multiple investigations U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who ordered a criminal investigation into the situation, said Wednesday at a congressional hearing that investigators will look at the conduct of IRS offices nationwide. "The facts will take us where ever they take us," he said. Holder said the investigation will also examine whether IRS officials lied to Congress about the singling out of conservative groups. While the allegations originated in the Cincinnati office, the Justice Department inquiry is based out of Washington, Holder said. The comments came as all 45 Senate Republicans sent the White House a letter that called for the administration to "comply with all requests related to congressional inquiries without any delay" involving the controversy. The letter called the scandal "yet another completely inexcusable attempt to chill the speech of political opponents and those who would question their government, consistent with a broader pattern of intimidation by arms of your administration to silence political dissent." The clearly coordinated attacks were part of a GOP effort to increase pressure on the Obama administration over the controversy, one of three potential scandals that has the White House on the defensive less than four months into the president's second term. According to the report by the agency's inspector general released Tuesday, the IRS developed and followed a faulty policy to determine whether the applicants were engaged in political activities, which would disqualify the groups from receiving tax-exempt status. The controversial move began in early 2010 and continued for more than 18 months, the report said, declaring that "the IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention." IRS officials, according to the report, did not consult anyone beyond the agency about the development of the additional screening criteria. They believed that the criteria they came up with were a screening shortcut meant to help with the influx of applications, the report said. Will the scandal affect 2014 elections? The controversial actions began after the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case that greatly expanded the ability of corporations, unions and other organizations to participate in election spending, though not through direct contributions to candidates or parties. After the ruling, the number of politically oriented groups seeking tax exempt status as social welfare organizations under section 501 (c) (4) of the federal tax code increased greatly at a time when the federal government, including the IRS, was dealing with austerity measures that reduced or stagnated personnel and resources. The IRS' top watchdog found that the criteria used to flag potential political applications resulted in substantial delays and the request of unnecessary information from the groups. 'Be On the Look Out' Among the criteria used by IRS officials to flag applications was a "Be On the Look Out" list, which was discontinued in 2012, according to the report. The criteria included: – Whether "Tea Party," "Patriots" or "9/12 Project" was referenced in the case file. – Whether the issues outlined in the application included government spending, government debt or taxes. – Whether there was advocating or lobbying to "make America a better place to live." – Whether a statement in the case file criticized how the country is being run. – Whether it advocated education about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The investigation by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration was initiated after congressional complaints began to surface in the media in 2012 that the IRS was targeting conservative groups and holding up applications. Obama struggles with rocky start to second term "Whether the inappropriate criterion was shorthand for all potential political cases or not, developing and using criteria that focuses on organization names and policy positions instead of the activities permitted under the Treasury regulations does not promote public confidence that tax-exempt laws are being adhered to impartially," the report said. The IRS welcomed the report, saying that it agreed that aspects of its original approach in handling the influx of tax-exempt applications was inappropriate. "The IRS is required by law to determine if organizations are engaging in a legally permissible level of political activity. Centralizing these cases was necessary to achieve consistent treatment," it said in a statement. Inefficient management In a written response included in the report, the IRS commissioner of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division said there was no criminal behavior behind the actions of the agents, but rather inefficient management. IRS in the spotlight: What's a 501(c)(4)? "We believe the front-line career employees that made the decisions acted out of a desire for efficiency and not out of any political and partisan viewpoint," the commissioner wrote. The report's findings indicate that of the 298 cases reviewed by the IRS inspector general as potential political cases not eligible for tax exempt status: 72 contained the name "tea party," 11 contained "9/12" and 13 contained the word "patriots," according to the report. There were 202 cases that did not contain any such reference. Of those applications still open for review, 160 cases were open from 206 days to more than three years – through two election cycles. Among the recommendations made by the Treasury inspector general: The IRS must better document reasons why applications are chosen for review, develop a process to track requests for assistance, develop and provide training to employees before each election cycle and immediately resolve outstanding cases. The report also called on Treasury to develop guidelines to explain social welfare activity – the primary factor in obtaining tax-exempt status.