Bangladeshis turn rescuers after building collapse

In this photo taken on Sunday April 28, 2013, volunteer workers protest when they were told that the search would have to stop as they want to continue searching for victims believed to be alive and still trapped. When the Rana Plaza, a garment factory building collapsed, many of the first responders were neighborhood residents, fellow garment workers, relatives of the missing and charity workers, and they repeatedly took some of the most dangerous work.(AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

In this photo taken on Sunday April 28, 2013, volunteer workers protest when they were told that the search would have to stop as they want to continue searching for victims believed to be alive and still trapped. When the Rana Plaza, a garment factory building collapsed, many of the first responders were neighborhood residents, fellow garment workers, relatives of the missing and charity workers, and they repeatedly took some of the most dangerous work.(AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

FILE - In this April 29, 2013 file photo, Volunteer Saiful Islam Nasar poses in front of the rubble of a building collapse in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh. Nasar had no training and almost no equipment. He?s a mechanical engineer. Like Nasar, hundreds of volunteers rushed to the site of a building that collapsed last week to rescue thousands of people trapped in the rubble. They were ordinary folk - self-taught medics and neophyte rescuers. (AP Photo/Ismail Ferdous, File)

In this photo taken on Saturday April 27, 2013, a volunteer worker is assisted as he experienced a sudden loss of Oxygen when trying to help with rescue work. When the Rana Plaza, a garment factory building collapsed, many of the first responders were neighborhood residents, fellow garment workers, relatives of the missing and charity workers, and they repeatedly took some of the most dangerous work.(AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

In this photo taken on Saturday April 27, 2013 volunteer workers help their colleagues as they were experiencing a sudden loss of Oxygen when trying to help with rescue work. When the Rana Plaza, a garment factory building collapsed, many of the first responders were neighborhood residents, fellow garment workers, relatives of the missing and charity workers, and they repeatedly took some of the most dangerous work.(AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

In this photo taken on Sunday April 28, 2013, volunteer workers bear with the stench from decomposing bodies as they transport them out of the disaster site. When the Rana Plaza, a garment factory building collapsed, many of the first responders were neighborhood residents, fellow garment workers, relatives of the missing and charity workers, and they repeatedly took some of the most dangerous work.(AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

SAVAR, Bangladesh (AP) ? The heat in the rubble was sweltering. It closed in on his body like the darkness around him, making it hard to breathe. Working by the faint glow of a flashlight, he slithered through the broken concrete and spotted a beautiful young woman, her crushed arm pinned beneath a pillar. She was dying, and the only way to get her out was to amputate.

But Saiful Islam Nasar had no training, and almost no equipment. He's a mechanical engineer who just days earlier rushed hundreds of kilometers (miles) from his hometown in southern Bangladesh when he heard the Rana Plaza factory building had collapsed and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of garment workers were trapped.

He also understood that maimed women can be cast from their homes.

"I asked her, 'Sister, are you married?' She said 'Yes.' I asked her, 'If I cut off your arm, will your husband take you again?' She said, 'My husband loves me very much.' And then I started to cut," he said.

He had brought a syringe loaded with pain-killer ? his father was a village medic, and had taught him how to give injections ? and he cut through her arm with a small surgical blade. It was easier than he expected because the arm had already been so badly damaged.

He pointed at fading specks of blood staining his vest and pants. He began to cry.

"There was no alternative," he said.

Bangladesh is well-versed in tragedy, a country where floods, ferry sinkings, fires and cyclones strike with cruel regularity. But with state services riven by dysfunction and corruption, often the only hope is the person beside you.

It is a country that makes heroes out of everyday citizens.

Many of the first responders at Rana Plaza were men like Nasar ? neighborhood residents, fellow garment workers, relatives of the missing and charity workers ? and they repeatedly took some of the most dangerous work. Using little more than hammers, hacksaws and their bare hands, they crawled into tiny holes in the wreckage, breaking through concrete and steel bars and working around the clock to drag out the victims.

They knew they were risking their lives.

Hemaet Ali, a 50-year-old construction worker who came to volunteer, told the people around him that his identity card, with his home address, was in his shirt pocket.

"If I die inside, please make sure that my body reaches my family," he told them.

Nasar came to Savar with 50 other men from the small volunteer organization he runs, Sunte Ki Pao. Normally, they assist people who have been in traffic accidents, offering basic first aid, securing valuables and contacting relatives. During seasonal floods, they help however they can when the waters rush into town. Nothing had prepared them to work the front line of their country's largest industrial accident.

"It was beyond imagination," he said Monday, six days after the collapse, when the search for survivors had given way to the search for bodies, and heavy equipment had replaced the rescuers.

Thin and lanky, the 24-year-old was well-suited for crawling through the tight tunnels he cut. At first, he had only his mobile phone to light the tiny spaces. He could see shattered chairs and tables. Sewing machines and fabric. And the battered bodies of the men and women who were crushed when the walls and ceilings came crashing down.

"I could just fit my shoulders in," he said. "I often felt like I would die and I would call out to my God."

The rescues, each of which could take many hours, were exhausting, both physically and emotionally.

"We would shout 'Is there anybody here? Please make a sound.' Sometimes you would hear an 'Oooh, oooh' and you knew someone was there," he said.

Over six days, he pulled six people out alive, and removed dozens of bodies. He would work until exhaustion set in and then attempt to sleep ? the first night on the roof of the collapsed building, the next two in a nearby field. Even now that he has moved into a tent, rest does not come easy.

"The images of the bodies flash in my mind," he said.

Eating also has been a problem.

"I have lost my taste," he explained. "I just keep smelling the smell of dead bodies."

The sickly sweet waft of rot from the building was ever present, and rescuers routinely sprayed cheap floral air freshener around the site in a futile attempt to control it.

Not all of the rescue workers at Rana Plaza were untrained. The government sent some 1,000 soldiers and firefighters to the site. But from all appearances, the majority of the rescuers who went into the rubble were volunteers. Altogether, some 2,500 people were brought out alive from the wreckage. The death toll stands at 386, but will surely climb as the largest pieces of rubble are moved.

The military, which oversaw much of the rescue efforts, dismisses the notion that they let volunteers take the lead.

"I have not heard of rescuing so many people in recent history anywhere in the world in case of such disaster," said Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy, a top military officer in the Savar area. "What we have done is excellent."

But it is clear that volunteers once again carried more than their share of the country's burden.

Sayed Shohel Harman, an unpaid community volunteer for the fire department, found a survivor whose arm was pinned under a concrete slab. The man begged Harman to give him a knife so he could cut off his own arm and free himself. Harman refused, saying he would go and get help.

"The doctors said it was too risky for them to go inside," Harman said. "They told me to go back and try to drag him out."

When he returned, the man was there, but his arm was gone. Another volunteer had given the man a knife and he had cut through his own flesh and crushed bones.

"I just sat down after seeing that," Harman said. "It was horrible."

Nasar said he will soon return to his hometown, where he will comfort his worried mother and look for a new job. He was forced to resign from his to join in the rescue. But most of all, he will think of the beautiful young woman whose name he never heard and whose fate he never learned.

"I pray to Allah that she has been saved, is alive and can return to her husband."

.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-04-30-Bangladesh-Everyday%20Heroes/id-fef70d19bb334618a2bb12a31ae0e020

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Samsung tells the design story behind the Galaxy S 4 (video)

In case you missed it, Samsung released a new phone over the weekend and now the company's put together a quick video describing the design notions behind its Galaxy S 4. Expect to hear the word "intuitive" a fair few times, mostly in regard to those new software features and a return of those nature-inspired design licks. Samsung adds that it's has also cranked up the attention to detail on the hardware design, in search of the "perfect line" for its new flagship, though we're not exactly sure if it can be both "unlike anything you've ever seen before" and "not a radical difference, but more an evolution," as mentioned in the clip. Take in some sun-kissed vistas and the chilled-out soundtrack right after the break.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

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Source: Samsung Tomorrow (YouTube)

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/RMEakbqMTdA/

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How Would You Like Your Assistant -- Human or Robotic?

Apr. 29, 2013 ? Roboticists are currently developing machines that have the potential to help patients with caregiving tasks, such as housework, feeding and walking. But before they reach the care recipients, assistive robots will first have to be accepted by healthcare providers such as nurses and nursing assistants. Based on a Georgia Institute of Technology study, it appears that they may be welcomed with open arms depending on the tasks at hand.

More than half of healthcare providers interviewed said that if they were offered an assistant, they preferred it to be a robotic helper rather than a human. However, they don't want robots to help with everything. They were very particular about what they wanted a robot to do, and not do. Instrumental activities of daily living (IDALs), such as helping with housework and reminding patients when to take medication, were acceptable. But activities daily living (ADL) tasks, especially those involving direct, physical interactions such as bathing, getting dressed and feeding people, were considered better for human assistants.

The findings will be presented April 27- May 2 at the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Paris, France.

"One open question was whether healthcare providers would reject the idea of robotic assistants out of fear that the robots would replace them in the workplace," said Tracy Mitzner, one of the study's leaders and the associate director of Georgia Tech's Human Factors and Aging Laboratory. "This doesn't appear to be a significant concern. In fact, the professional caregivers we interviewed viewed robots as a way to improve their jobs and the care they're able to give patients."

For instance, nurses preferred a robot assistant that could help them lift patients from a bed to a chair. They also indicated that robotic assistants could be helpful with some medical tasks such as checking vitals.

"Robots aren't being designed to eliminate people. Instead, they can help reduce physical demands and workloads," Mitzner said. "Hopefully, our study helps create guidelines for developers and facilitates deployment into the healthcare industry. It doesn't make sense to build robots that won't be accepted by the end user."

This study complements the lab's prior research that found older people are generally willing to accept help from robots. Much like the current research, their preferences depended on the task. Participants said they preferred robotic help over human help for chores such as cleaning the kitchen and doing laundry. Getting dressed and suggesting medication were tasks viewed as better suited for human assistants.

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/aZ-QL8DdR1Q/130429125518.htm

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Warsaw ghetto survivor in Israel recalls uprising

JERUSALEM (AP) ? Two days before her comrades embarked on an uprising that came to symbolize Jewish resistance against the Nazis in World War II, 14-year-old Aliza Mendel got her orders: Escape from the Warsaw Ghetto.

The end was near. Nazi troops had encircled the ghetto, and the remaining Jewish rebels inside were prepared to die fighting. They had few weapons, and they felt there was no point in giving one of them to a teenage girl whose main task to that point had been distributing leaflets.

"They told me I was too young to fight," said the survivor, now 84, who uses her married name, Aliza Vitis-Shomron. "They said, 'You have to leave and tell the world how we died fighting the Nazis. That is your job now.'"

She's been doing that ever since, publishing a memoir about life in the ghetto and lecturing about the revolt and its legendary leader, Mordechai Anielewicz. While nearly all her friends perished, she survived the ghetto and a later period in a Nazi concentration camp. She made it to Israel, married and has three children, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

On Sunday night, 70 years after the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Vitis-Shomron is set to speak on behalf of Holocaust survivors at the official ceremony marking Israel's annual Holocaust memorial day.

"It's a day of deep sorrow for me, because I remember all my friends in the (resistance) movement who gave their lives," said Vitis-Shomron. "But it was also a wonderful act of sacrifice by those who gave up their lives without even trying to save themselves. The goal was to show that we would not go down without a response."

Six million Jews were killed by German Nazis and their collaborators in the Holocaust of World War II, wiping out a third of world Jewry.

The 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising was the first large-scale rebellion against the Nazis in Europe and the single greatest act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Though guaranteed to fail, it became a symbol of struggle against impossible conditions, illustrated a refusal to succumb to Nazi atrocities and inspired other acts of uprising and underground resistance by Jews and non-Jews alike.

While the world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, the date of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, Israel's annual Holocaust memorial day coincides with the Hebrew date of the Warsaw ghetto uprising ? highlighting the role it plays in the country's psyche. Even the day's official name ? "Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day" ? alludes to the image of the Jewish warrior upon which the state was founded. The ghetto battle contrasts with the image of Jews meekly marching to their deaths.

Israel has wrestled with the competing images for decades. After setting up their state in 1948, just three years after the end of the war, Israelis preferred to emphasize the heroic resistance fighters, though their numbers were relatively small. In recent years they have come around to recognizing the overwhelming tragedy of the murder of millions of Jews and the traumas of the survivors who still live along them.

Before the war, Warsaw had a vibrant Jewish community, and a third of the city's population was Jewish. The Nazis built the Warsaw ghetto in 1940, a year after occupying Poland, and began herding Jews into it.

The ghetto initially held some 380,000 Jews who were cramped into tight living spaces. At its peak, the ghetto housed about a half a million Jews, said Havi Dreifuss, a researcher at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial who has studied the ghetto.

Life in the ghetto included random raids, confiscations and abductions by Nazi soldiers. Disease and starvation were rampant, and bodies often appeared on the streets.

The resistance movement began to grow after the deportation of July 22, 1942, when 265,000 men, women and children were rounded up and later killed at the Treblinka death camp. As word of the Nazi genocide spread, those who remained behind no longer believed German promises that they would be sent to forced labor camps.

A small group of rebels began to spread calls for resistance, carrying out isolated acts of sabotage and attacks. Some Jews began defying German orders to report for deportation.

The Nazis entered the ghetto on April 19, 1943, the eve of the Passover holiday. Three days later, the Nazis set the ghetto ablaze, turning it into a fiery death trap, but the Jewish fighters kept up their struggle for nearly a month.

The Jewish fighters who had fortified themselves in bunkers and hiding places managed to kill 16 Nazis and wound almost 100, Dreifuss said.

They were ultimately brutally vanquished. Anielewicz and others died inside the bunker on 18 Mila Street, which later became the title of a famous novel by Leon Uris that fictionalized the events.

"It was a moral victory. No one believed the Jews would fight back," said Dreifuss. "It's amazing that after three years of Nazi occupation, starvation and illness, these people found the strength to disobey the Nazi orders, stand up and fight back."

Anielewicz, who was in his early 20s, became a heroic figure in Israel, with a village and streets across the nation named in his honor.

Vitis-Shomron remembers him well. She said he was a tall, charismatic leader of a younger generation who refused to submit quietly to the Nazis as their parents did.

"His theory was, 'don't get used to what is happening. Don't accept it,'" she said. "The Nazis wanted to turn us into slaves, and he said that only free people could resist."

The approach put Vitis-Shomron at odds with her parents, who objected to her activity in the youth movement. Often she would defy the Nazi curfew and only return home in the morning. She narrowly escaped S.S. officers in the streets as she posted underground leaflets calling on Jews to resist or escape.

She said the hardest part for her was escaping before the uprising began, joining her mother and younger sister in their hideout on the Polish side of town outside the ghetto. She remembers watching the red skies above the burning ghetto, where her friends were waging war.

"If it was up to me, I would have stayed behind and fought to the death with them. I had no fear," she said. "The uprising represented Jewish pride. It was us saying, 'we will not die the way you want us to. We will die the way we want to, as free people.'"

Vitis-Shomron was later captured and sent the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with her mother and sister. They all survived and eventually made it to Israel. Her father was deported from the ghetto and killed in a Nazi death camp.

Today, Vitis-Shomron volunteers for Yad Vashem, collecting pages of testimony from fellow survivors that help build the museum's depository of names of the victims.

Despite her own past, she claims not to have experienced the psychological damage that plague other survivors.

"I never saw myself as a victim. I was on the active side, the resisting side," she said. "It helped me cope."

___

Online: http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/warsaw_ghetto_testimonies/index.asp

____

Follow Heller at www.twitter.com/aronhellerap .

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/warsaw-ghetto-survivor-israel-recalls-uprising-173855032.html

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Pastor Rick Warren?s son commits suicide: church

Jae C. Hong/AP

The 27-year-old son of Pastor Rick Warren committed suicide on Friday, Saddleback Valley Community Church said in a statement. Here Warren acknowledges the audience at the popular church.

LAKE FOREST, Calif. ? The Southern California church headed by popular evangelical Pastor Rick Warren said his 27-year-old son committed suicide on Saturday.

Warren?s Saddleback Valley Community Church near Los Angeles said in a statement that Matthew Warren had struggled with mental illness and deep depression.

?Matthew was an incredibly kind, gentle and compassionate young man whose sweet spirit was encouragement and comfort to many,? the church?s statement said. ?Unfortunately, he also suffered from mental illness resulting in deep depression and suicidal thoughts. Despite the best health care available, this was an illness that was never fully controlled and the emotional pain resulted in his decision to take his life.?

Warren, the author of the multimillion-selling book ?The Purpose Driven Life,? said in an email to church staff that he and his wife had enjoyed a fun Friday evening with their son. But Matthew Warren took his life Saturday after ?a momentary wave of despair at his home.?

Over the years, Matthew Warren had been treated by America?s best doctors, medication, counselors and prayers for healing, Warren said.

?You who watched Matthew grow up knew he was an incredibly kind, gentle, and compassionate man,? he wrote. ?He had a brilliant intellect and a gift for sensing who was most in pain or most uncomfortable in a room. He?d then make a bee-line to that person to engage and encourage them.?

Saddleback?s website says that about 20,000 people attend weekend services at the Orange County church.

In 2008, the church sponsored a presidential forum with Barack Obama and Republican John McCain. Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney had been invited to a similar forum last fall, but Warren canceled it, saying the campaign had become too uncivil.

Warren was named the top newsmaker of the year for 2009 by the Religion Newswriters Association, gaining attention with his invocation at Obama?s first inauguration and comments in the aftermath of California?s Proposition 8, which overturned gay marriage.

Warren also has made headlines for his fundraising abilities, raking in more than $2.4 million after making a plea for donations in 2010 to fill a $900,000 deficit at his Southern California megachurch.

The evangelical pastor made similar pleas after Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Asian tsunami, raising $1.7 million and $1.6 million from Saddleback parishioners.

Source: http://feeds.nydailynews.com/~r/NydnRss/~3/IyxomegkU4E/story01.htm

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Mexico?s Controversial Memorial for Drug War Victims

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://www.myantiwar.org/view/253215.html

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'The Great Gatsby' Trailer Shows Off Epic Soundtrack

Here's the thing: we're totally obsessed with the new "The Great Gatsby" trailer. It doesn't matter that it's a little bit disjointed as it tries to showcase its newly announced and absolutely incredible soundtrack because the visual feast director Baz Luhrmann has provided absolutely makes up for it. The trailer highlights the complicated relationship between [...]

Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2013/04/04/great-gatsby-trailer-soundtrack/

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Eagle Forum Blog: Libertarians on marriage

The American Libertarian Party claims to be "The Party of Principle - minimum government, maximum freedom", and it argues that the state should get out of the marriage business. This would be a grand social experiment, but let's look at what they mean. Its platform says:

1.3 Personal Relationships. Sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity should have no impact on the government's treatment of individuals, such as in current marriage, child custody, adoption, immigration or military service laws. Government does not have the authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships. Consenting adults should be free to choose their own sexual practices and personal relationships.

The California platform (pdf) has more details:

13. Marriage
We support the rights of individuals to form private relationships as they see fit, either by contract or by mutual agreement. We regard marriage as one such private relationship. The State of California should not dictate, prohibit, control, or encourage any such private relationship. To implement this principle, we advocate:

A. The repeal of all marriage and marriage dissolution laws and their replacement by contracts where desired by the parties.
B. Property not specified as "community property" not being presumed as such.
C. The repeal of all alimony laws.
D. The recognition in law of marriage contracts as an addition to, or replacement for, marriage and marriage dissolution laws.
E. The right of all consenting adults to form marriage contracts without regard to gender, sexual preference, degree of consanguinity, or number of parties to said contracts.
F. Until such time as the state of California ends its involvement in marriage, we call upon the state to issue marriage licenses to any adults without regard to gender.

So they want to allow polygamous and incestuous marriages. The state would not really be out of the marriage business, because it would have to recognize and enforce those marriage contracts.

This approach presumes that the only interested parties are consenting adults. But the main point of marriage law is to protect the interests of the resulting kids, and they are certainly not consenting adults to the arrangement.

I suppose that a couple could agree to a marriage contract, and make their own decision about community property. But the socially more important part is to agree on the care and custody of any resulting kids. For example, they may wish to agree to joint child custody in case of divorce, and that they will separately support the kids.

Unfortunately, the laws of all 50 states prohibit enforcement of any such contract. Child custody is put at the discretion of a family court judge, and child support is based on formulas related to the income tax system. The court will not enforce any contract for the care and custody of kids. All parents are subject to having their lives micromanaged by judges who have opinions about the best interest of the children.

California already lets consenting adults behave as they wish. If the Libertarians really followed their principles of minimum government and maximum freedom, then they would support parents making enforceable contracts for the care and custody of their kids. I could be wrong, but I do not see where the Libertarian Party supports this basic freedom.

Source: http://blog.eagleforum.org/2013/04/libertarians-on-marriage.html

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Danielle Hrzic: Gourmet Growth: How I Took My Small Business to ...

A 10x10 kitchen, a few employees and a passion to improve the quality of school lunches in the Chicago area -- that's how Gourmet Gorilla began. My husband and I started our business because we saw a need that we wanted to fill. As our first son was about to turn one year old, we were given the colorful lunch menu from his school. Being healthy eaters at home, who regularly shopped at Whole Foods and farmers markets, we of course started investigating the ingredients in the meals! We were discouraged with what we found and approached the school, only to find that there were no options in the area at the time for sourcing healthy, cooked-from-scratch meals, that used organic and/or local ingredients. As is the case with many small business owners, we had a desire to fix this problem! We began calling other schools in the area to find that there was a real demand for this type of service and so we hired our first chef named Elvis and started cooking!

That first year, we partnered with our son's school and an additional two other schools, quickly growing out of that 10x10 kitchen and into our first production space. We were now producing about 1000 meals per day and secured another 20 contracts for the coming school year. We were enjoying the success and growth, and positive feedback from schools and parents (the kids were eating their vegetables!) and we knew we were on our way to building a sustainable business. With this growth, however, we found ourselves leading a much different company than we first started, and needed guidance on how to take us through the next stage. We wanted to serve more schools, and surprisingly, we found the answer was to leave the kitchen.

Small business owners often feel the need to be a part of every aspect of the business. For me, that was overseeing meal production, arranging delivery and directing food prep and cleanup. When I learned I had to pull myself away from the business -- I needed to work on it instead of in it -- our business started to expand rapidly. We hired a director of operations to allow both my husband and me to stop focusing on the day-to-day management. This change allowed us to obtain additional contracts, increasing our production by almost 50 percent year over year. And the best part: I haven't chopped a vegetable in months!

I learned to step out of the daily management through my participation in Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program at Harold Washington College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago. I applied because of the promise of practical business knowledge. Our company had grown from a few employees serving 100 meals a day to more than 30 employees serving 7,000 meals a day to 90 different schools. I wanted to learn how to successfully continue this growth.

The program delivered on its promise of a practical, actionable business education. I learned how to better analyze the company's finances and cash flow, be an effective leader and make the right hires. This included hiring the right accounting team to prepare us for the next stage in our business growth and create the indispensable position of director of operations. Our mission is to provide healthier eating options for our children. Today, we are serving over 7,500 meals per day throughout Northern Illinois. We are making an impact in all communities, and our students are eating their fruits and veggies and enjoying it! I look forward to improving the lunches at many more schools and, eventually, around the country. I look forward to seeing the impact we will make on helping grow healthier bodies and minds. And I know now I'll only accomplish this if I stay out of the kitchen!

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/danielle-hrzic/gourmet-growth-how-i-took_b_3006748.html

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Girl Power: More Women Are Buying Real Estate Before They Put a ...

Sure, it?s easier to buy a home when you have a spouse. Dual income households tend to be a no-brainer to some mortgage lenders. But that hasn?t kept all the single ladies from becoming independent women with homes of their own and, of course, bills, bills, bills.

In fact, this segment of real estate consumers has been a survivor of sorts, reporting record growth as the economy digs its way out of a recession. According to a recent study from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, the National Association of Realtors, and the U.S. Census Bureau, single women outpaced single men by a factor of two as new homeowners in 2011. And in that year, 56 percent of single women owned their own home, whereas just 47 percent of single men did.

Here?s a little excerpt from a great story about the topic from the Southern Way of Life blog:

For those skeptical about why a single woman would want to buy a 3 bedroom/2 bath home with a 2-car garage in a master-planned community, Cullinane has a quick rebuttal: ?Many single women aren?t buying for themselves.? In fact, a recent AARP survey found that 40 percent of single female home buyers would consider having a non-romantic roommate ? maybe a sister, maybe a long-time friend who?s also single.?? A larger home means two sisters or friends can lead separate lives, but not at twice the cost.

?And builders have been onto this trend for awhile now,? Cullinane said. ?They?re building what I call ?women-centric homes,? or homes that can accommodate changing lifestyles. That?s why I?m a big proponent of something called ?universal design? ? homes designed with tomorrow in mind.?

Jan Cullinane, a consultant and author of The Single Woman?s Guide to Retirement, also sees this demographic as one that will grow as women age, either after divorce or being widowed.

Here?s my question for you ladies: If you were to buy a home without a spouse or partner, what are some features you couldn?t live without?

I?ll go first: I?d put a huge lighted vanity and makeup table in the master bathroom fit for a Hollywood starlet. What about you?

Source: http://www.candysdirt.com/2013/04/02/girl-power-more-women-are-buying-real-estate-before-they-put-a-ring-on-it-to-the-tune-of-72-billion/

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Anatomy of a Knuckleball

Dickey digs into the leather with the nails of his index and middle fingers just behind the runway, where the ball's seams are closest together; he places his thumb and ring finger on the sides of the ball. He keeps his nails even with a fine-tooth glass file and strong with the nail-hardening product Trind. Nails are a vital stabilizing force, enabling Dickey to release the ball with almost no spin.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/sports/physics/anatomy-of-a-knuckleball?src=rss

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The Daily Roundup for 04.02.2013

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/SRPMS85uYro/

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