National Association of Realtors | Residential Deals - The Real Deal

More residential deals not getting done

Nearly one-third of real estate agents nationwide faced contract cancellations last month

March 30, 2012 02:30PM
By Kenneth R. Harney

What?s behind the unusually high rate of contract cancellations and settlement delays in the real estate market? With signs of recovery emerging in many parts of the country, shouldn?t deals be zipping along with minimal complications?

Apparently not. Nearly one-third of real estate agents in a new national survey reported experiencing contract cancellations ? purchases crumbling before going to closing ? in February. That?s up dramatically from a similar poll 12 months earlier, when just 9 percent of agents reported cancellations. Another 18 percent reported delays in scheduled closings in the latest study, which involved approximately 3,000 agents surveyed by the National Association of Realtors.

The high reported cancellation rate (31 percent) doesn?t mean that nearly one of every three of all signed contracts is falling apart, according to the association, but rather that more than triple the number of agents and their clients are running into deal-endangering problems compared with 2011. If you are a potential buyer or seller in an otherwise improving marketplace, you need to be aware of the issues that are hampering sales, and be prepared in advance to deal with some of the most prominent.

Tops on the list:

? Appraisals below contract. You may assume that the true market value of a house is what a seller and buyer agree to in a binding contract, but it?s not. The appraiser hired by the bank may come up with a different opinion of value ? significantly below what was agreed between the parties ? and this is occurring with far greater frequency today than in previous years. Part of the problem is the excessive use of price-depressed foreclosure sales chosen as ?comparables? to value non-distressed houses under pending contracts. But some appraisers are inexperienced, unfamiliar with local pricing trends, and go far beyond their normal duties.

For example, Risa Bell, an agent for national brokerage Redfin in Boston, recently represented purchasers of a bank-owned property being sold ?as is.? An appraiser for the lender not only detailed a long list of needed repairs to the house, but said the deal could only proceed if the prospective buyers spent thousands of dollars fixing up the house before ? not after ? closing. Along the way, frozen pipes in the unheated house broke and a contractor hired to do repairs filed a mechanic?s lien requiring payment before the title could be transferred. All of this combined to kill the financing and torpedo the closing, but the buyers ultimately were approved by a second lender using a different appraiser, who made no such demands for repairs in advance.

Ultra-conservative underwriting and documentation requirements. It?s no longer just towering credit score minimums, hefty down payments and mind-bending paperwork submissions that get mortgage applicants turned down. ?It?s a lot of other stuff, too,? said Melissa Zavala, broker and owner of Broadpoint Properties in Escondido, Calif. Increasingly she?s been running into regulatory hoops and restrictive underwriting rules at FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that knock signed contracts off the tracks or at least delay them for months.

For instance, FHA?s toughened rules on condominium associations ? limits on the percentage of existing residents in the entire project who are delinquent on their condo dues, plus controversial requirements for ?recertifications? of condominium developments that many condo boards find costly and burdensome in terms of legal liability ? are rendering individual units in those communities difficult to get financed, no matter how well qualified the purchasers. Little-publicized recent changes in FHA rules on loan applicants who have outstanding collection accounts buried away in their credit files ?can force you to take three to four months to clean up? through mandatory repayment plans, Zavala said in an interview. By that point the contract may well have gone bust.

? Poor service by lender staff. Agents in the survey identified ?lack of customer service? and ?generally bad attitudes? as contributing factors to delays and some contract failures. But Zavala said real estate agents themselves need to be on the ball when loan processing deadlines begin to slip or communication breaks down with lenders. ?Agents can be part of the problems? ? and the solutions ? when it comes to moving the financing along, she said.

Bottom line: If you seriously want to go to closing on a house you?re buying or selling, make sure you know all the key rules and requirements up front, then stay on top of the lending, escrow, title and real estate professionals assigned to your transaction.

And don?t give up if your deal runs into complications. There are more of them out there than usual.

Ken Harney is a syndicated real estate columnist.

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Army Reviews Controversial Drug After Afghan Massacre

Obviously it's pure speculation, but I have a hard time believing this would mitigate any punishment Bales receives. It would be a nightmare of the most extreme order for the military should Bales be exculpated, even in the most limited sense. The Afghans have been screaming for him to be tried under Afghan law. It would be hard enough to punishment short of the death penalty to the Afghan public, much less an outcome that ends with him in psychiatric care first. This is just one more massive headache in a case that can't be over for the Pentagon fast enough.

In the mean time, expect relations to continue to deteriorate between Afghan security forces and ISAF troops. There is real danger of this review fueling conspiracy theories and sparking further knife-in-the-back attacks on ISAF troops like we've already seen.

It increasingly seems that no one is winning from this war. Afghan civilians have had any sense that westerners provide safety shattered. Westerners trust their Afghan counterparts even less. And yet most of Afghan development depends on the industry that supports the international presence there, which a hasty pull-out would destroy. What's the least bad option here?

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Clocking galaxy clusters to gauge dark energy

The universe's oldest light and its largest objects could provide a new way to study dark energy, the mysterious entity believed to be pushing the universe apart at an ever-faster rate.

The discovery of the universe's accelerating expansion earned three physicists a Nobel prize last year, but no one knows its source. "What's causing the acceleration?" asks Rachel Bean of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "We really don't have a clue."

The leading explanation holds that there is a set amount of repulsive energy, represented by the cosmological constant, in every spot in space ? as the cosmos expands, more space is created, leading to ever-faster expansion. But other models suggest that dark energy may vary or that gravity itself behaves strangely over vast distances. Measuring dark energy's strength over time could provide some answers.

To do so, researchers need to determine the expansion rate of the universe at different cosmic eras by looking further into space. That's because light travels at a finite speed, so looking further away means looking back further in time. So far, astronomers have used techniques such as measuring the distances from Earth to supernovae.

Galaxy clusters

Now Nick Hand at the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues are the first to use the motion of galaxy clusters to gauge cosmic expansion. Because gravity pulls objects together at known rates and dark energy pushes them apart, studying whether two neighbouring clusters fall together as expected sheds light on dark energy's strength.

First the researchers overlaid a map of 7500 galaxy clusters spotted by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey on top of a map of the universe's oldest light, called the cosmic microwave background radiation, made with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile.

When photons of this ancient light, which permeates all of space, pass through a galaxy cluster, they get squashed or stretched depending on whether the cluster is moving towards or away from Earth, in the same way an ambulance siren sounds higher in pitch as it approaches and then lowers as it zooms past.

Next the team measured the difference in how squashed or stretched the light was in pairs of clusters, allowing them to gauge the clusters' relative motions along the line of sight to Earth.

Dark energy changes

There is not yet enough data to determine if dark energy changes in time, but the measurement shows the technique could test this in the future, says team member Arthur Kosowsky of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. "This is the first step on a road to using velocities as a way to measure the development of structure in the universe," he says.

Team member David Spergel at Princeton University agrees. "We can't say anything profound about dark energy yet. But the fact that we now have this new tool means we're in a better position to do something interesting," he says.

Fortunately more information will be available soon. The ACT is getting a new detector in May, and the Sloan survey continues to spot more clusters. "In a year or two we'll be able to redo this analysis with much higher sensitivity," Spergel says. "That's all we need to do now: wait for the data to get better."

Journal reference: arxiv.org/abs/1203.4219

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Urine-soaked eggs a spring taste treat in China city

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What?s Obama?s Nuclear Endgame?

This scenario, of course, was loony. Even in the most optimistic scenarios, the ?winning? side would lose at least 10 million people, and suffer hundreds of billions of dollars in damages, as a result of the retaliation. (As Gen. Buck Turgidson, the George C. Scott character, in Dr. Strangelove put it, ?I?m not saying we won?t get our hair mussed up ??) But really (readers under the age of 30 or so will have to trust me on this), educated scholars and statesmen actually held forth on such scenarios, with straight faces and ?furrowed brows, not just in the depths of the Cold War but well into the 1990s.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=f1f631586826175ede25d40f7064120e

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AP sources: Wisconsin's Paul Ryan, GOP budget chairman, expected to endorse Romney (Star Tribune)

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Feast Your Eyes On The First Image Of AT&T?s White Lumia 900

Longtime readers may already know that I have a peculiar fixation on white phones, and I'll admit that my heart went a-quiver when AT&T revealed that a white Lumia 900 would be released shortly after its black and cyan brethren. For those of who share my particular predilection, take a gander at AT&T's latest snowy-white handset, which is scheduled to land on store shelves on April 22 with the same $99 price tag.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/8xHGJNymTx0/

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'Thermal cloak' hides from heat

27 March 2012 Last updated at 05:46 ET

The range of physical phenomena that scientists are trying to "cloak" objects from has a new entry - heat.

French researchers have shown how to apply the ideas of "optical cloaking" - the endeavour to make a Harry Potter-style cloak - to the thermal world.

The applications for the idea, outlined in Optics Express, stretch beyond hiding from thermal-imaging devices.

It could also be used to direct and move heat around in temperature-sensitive electronics.

There has been a tremendous amount of research into what is called transformation optics since it was first proposed as a means to an invisibility cloak in 2006.

So far, all of the cloaking approaches have limitations that keep them well short of the invisibility promised in fiction. But more recently, similar ideas have been put to use to shield objects from magnetic fields, or even from sound or seismic waves.

All of these approaches aim to manipulate the peaks and troughs of waves to achieve their cloaking effects.

But as Sebastien Guenneau of the Institut Fresnel in France explained, the transfer of heat is a subtly different business.

"Heat isn't a wave - it simply diffuses from hot to cold regions," he said.

"The mathematics and physics at play are much different. For instance, a wave can travel long distances with little attenuation, whereas temperature usually diffuses over smaller distances."

The trick was to apply the mathematics of transformation optics to the equations describing diffusion; the result, Dr Guenneau and his colleagues found, was a means to shuttle heat around at will.

They proposed a cloak made of 20 rings of material, each with its own "diffusivity" - the degree to which it can transmit and dissipate heat.

"We can design a cloak so that heat diffuses around an invisibility region, which is then protected from heat," Dr Guenneau explained.

"Or we can force heat to concentrate in a small volume, which will then heat up very rapidly."

It is this ability to direct and concentrate heat that may find first application, for instance in the microelectronics industry, where the heat load in specific areas remains a difficult challenge to engineers.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-17518210

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Apple ready to license its nano-SIM design for free, on one not-so-nano condition

If you hadn't heard, there are two rival nano-SIM designs going around, but only room for one of them to become an industry standard. Nokia, Motorola and RIM sit together in one corner, and we've already covered why they think their design is superior. On the other side of the ring sits Apple, which has its own tactics for bringing ETSI, the European Telecoms Standards Institute, over to its way of thinking. According to a legal letter shown to FOSS Patents by a "perfectly reliable source", Apple is prepared to license its nano-SIM design royalty-free, so long as it becomes the new standard and all other nano-SIM patent holders reciprocate the gesture. Such a gambit may not appease Cupertino's rivals and it certainly doesn't address their technical concerns, but it might show that Apple isn't looking to profit out of this particular format war and is simply continuing its quest for greater clarity on FRAND licensing terms. Then again, it could all just be lawyer-speak.

Apple ready to license its nano-SIM design for free, on one not-so-nano condition originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Mar 2012 06:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Clash over floating home reaches US Supreme Court

This undated photo provided by Fane Lozman shows his dismantled home in Riviera Beach, Fla. Court documents refer to it as ?that certain unnamed gray, two-story vessel approximately 57 feet in length.? To Lozman, it was a floating Florida home never intended to sail the seas. Now a long-running dispute over exactly what the structure was has landed before the U.S. Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Fane Lozman)

This undated photo provided by Fane Lozman shows his dismantled home in Riviera Beach, Fla. Court documents refer to it as ?that certain unnamed gray, two-story vessel approximately 57 feet in length.? To Lozman, it was a floating Florida home never intended to sail the seas. Now a long-running dispute over exactly what the structure was has landed before the U.S. Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Fane Lozman)

This undated photo provided by Fane Lozman shows his dismantled home in Riviera Beach, Fla. Court documents refer to it as ?that certain unnamed gray, two-story vessel approximately 57 feet in length.? To Lozman, it was a floating Florida home never intended to sail the seas. Now a long-running dispute over exactly what the structure was has landed before the U.S. Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Fane Lozman)

in this photo taken Wednesday, March 7, 2012, Fane Lozman gestures as he talks to a reporter in Miami Beach, Fla. Lozman, a 50-year-old former Chicago financial trader, seemingly lost his nearly six-year battle with the seaside city of Riviera Beach, Fla., when his floating home was hauled away in 2009 and destroyed by court order. But Lozman refused to give up, claiming officials vindictively and illegally targeted him for eviction from the city?s marina because of his vocal opposition to a major redevelopment plan. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

in this photo taken Wednesday, March 7, 2012, Fane Lozman gestures as he talks to a reporter in Miami Beach, Fla. Lozman, a 50-year-old former Chicago financial trader, seemingly lost his nearly six-year battle with the seaside city of Riviera Beach, Fla., when his floating home was hauled away in 2009 and destroyed by court order. But Lozman refused to give up, claiming officials vindictively and illegally targeted him for eviction from the city?s marina because of his vocal opposition to a major redevelopment plan. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

MIAMI (AP) ? Court documents refer to it as "that certain unnamed gray, two-story vessel approximately 57 feet in length." To Fane Lozman, it was a floating Florida home never intended to sail the seas. Now, a long-running dispute over exactly what the structure was has landed before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lozman, a 50-year-old former Chicago financial trader, seemingly lost his nearly six-year battle with the seaside city of Riviera Beach when his home was hauled away in 2009 and later destroyed by court order. But Lozman refused to give up, claiming officials vindictively and illegally targeted him for eviction from the city's marina because of his vocal opposition to a major redevelopment plan.

"Whatever they had to do to get me out of there, they were going to do it," Lozman said. "All I want to do is live a quiet life. I didn't look for this drama, it came to me because I wanted to stay at the marina."

The only-in-Florida backstory matters less to the Supreme Court than a more fundamental question: When is something a vessel, and when is it not? The court agreed to take the case earlier this year and is expected to hear arguments in October.

The vessel definition is crucially important to not only people who live on the water but also to major commercial businesses such as floating casinos, hotels and restaurants, said Stanford University law professor Jeffrey Fisher. The outcome will determine whether federal maritime or state laws apply to structures that are moored, more or less permanently, in one place.

"Federal maritime law is very different often than state law because it's crafted for the specific dangers and concerns of maritime commerce and navigation at sea," said Fisher, an experienced Supreme Court litigator who is handling Lozman's appeal. "Here you have a question of federal law that has divided courts across the country. It's very significant."

For example, owners of floating homes usually must pay property taxes, while those owning vessels under maritime law do not. Coast Guard regulations require certain levels of crew for vessels. The standards differ on what kinds and amounts of damages can be awarded in personal injury lawsuits. There are different rules aboard vessels for employment disputes and compensation for workers injured on the job.

Owners of vessels and floating structures across the U.S. are closely watching the case so they know which set of laws to follow.

"The most overarching concern in maritime law on the planet is uniformity," said David Weill, a maritime attorney in Long Beach, Calif., who isn't involved in Lozman's case. "It's extremely important that shipping interests have uniform treatment as they go from port to port."

Two federal appeals courts have ruled the owner's intent is key to determining whether a structure is a vessel. In Lozman's case, however, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that what mattered most was if a structure was "practically capable of transportation over water," which closely tracks the language in federal law that dates to the 1870s.

Riviera Beach officials declined comment because of the pending legal case. But in documents urging the Supreme Court not to take the case, they insisted the structure was not similar to a land-based home that would be afforded important state law protections against seizure.

Yet Lozman's home had no engines, no bilge pumps, no steering mechanism, no lights or navigation aids. It had to be towed wherever it went. It had no Florida vessel registration number. All it did was float.

"It was a very unseaworthy craft," Lozman said, adding the appeal of living there was the immediate access to his speedboats and other pleasure watercraft.

Yet a Florida federal judge and the 11th Circuit judges determined the structure was, in fact, a vessel, in part because it had been towed several times to different marinas across hundreds of miles.

Lozman's story began when he picked the marina in Riviera Beach, one of South Florida's poorest coastal cities, as the place for his floating home. Not only did it give him easy access to his speedboats and pleasure craft, but it was governed by the same state laws as homes on land.

Then Lozman learned Riviera Beach was planning a $2.4 billion private redevelopment project for the marina. The plan included the use of its eminent domain powers to take many local businesses and homes for a project geared toward wealthy yacht owners. On May 10, 2006, the city council held a hastily-called private meeting to designate the project's master developer ? one day before then-Gov. Jeb Bush signed a law prohibiting use of eminent domain authority for such non-public projects.

Lozman decided to challenge that decision in state court, arguing the meeting violated state open-government laws. That's when the trouble began.

Lozman claims he was followed and harassed, his truck tampered with and damaged. He started showing up at city council meetings, where he got thrown out regularly and was even arrested a couple of times. He became a fixture on local TV newscasts. The local politicians considered him a nuisance; other people saw him as a crusader.

Then the city served an eviction notice, contending that Lozman's 10-pound dachshund, Lady, was a dangerous dog and that he used unlicensed repair workers at his home. The city argued at the time that he was on a month-to-month lease that could be terminated under state landlord-tenant law.

No mention of the structure as a vessel ? yet.

Lozman fought the eviction in court and won, with a jury finding in March 2007 that the eviction amounted to retaliation. Meanwhile, the marina redevelopment plan was shelved, only to be replaced by a scaled-down version that didn't include use of eminent domain powers. Lozman fought that plan, too.

The city then decided to change the rules at the marina, telling Lozman in 2009 his right to stay there would be revoked unless he got the structure registered as a vessel and proved it could be moved when a hurricane or tropical storm threatened. The city also demanded payment of more than $3,000 in dockage fees. When Lozman refused to pay or leave the marina, the city went to federal court and for the first time sought to use U.S. maritime law to impose a lien on the structure as a vessel, not a house.

Fisher said this maneuver was a game-changer and set the dispute on its course to the Supreme Court. The floating home would have been protected from seizure under state law. But a judge sided with the city, so the structure was seized then bought by Riviera Beach for $1,400 and ultimately destroyed.

So, Lozman can never get his floating home back. He's now living in Miami Beach and is no longer battling the latest marina redevelopment plan. But he won't give up the legal dispute over his home, and he made enough money in the financial markets to take the case to the highest court in the land.

"When someone punches you in the face, you either fight back or you run and hide," he said. "I'm going to fight back."

The case is Fane Lozman v. The City of Riviera Beach, Florida. No. 11-626.

____

Follow Curt Anderson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Miamicurt

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-03-25-Supreme%20Court-House%20or%20Boat?/id-d2bcd55b6e4c42e89b76c5a474fe6291

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Sony Bloggie Live Hands-on

The Bloggie Live is built as an instant sharing device. Just press the?Share.? The Bloggie Live lets you upload directly to Facebook?, YouTube?; and PlayMemories Online? wirelessly wherever there?s a Wi-Fi connection. Not in a Wi-Fi area? No problem. You can easily transfer movies and photos wirelessly to your compatible smartphone or tablet and share them with friends through the PlayMemories Mobile app. It records in full 1080p HD with its 12.8-megapixel CMOS sensor, giving you razor sharp images. Built in 8GB of built-in memory that records up to 3 hours of HD footage.

Let not forget the Bloggie Live allows you to turn your content to a live streaming event.

Source: http://booredatwork.com/2012/03/22/sony-bloggie-live-hands-on/

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Simple Home Improvement Project Schemes for Security and ...

Many people have boundless ideas of home improvement projects they would like to try. On the contrary, like we all know, the one thing that is often getting in the way is cost and know-how. Anyhow, a lot of problems can be resolved with just a smidgeon of originality and investigating. Consider everything that is possible on a smaller magnitude; re-fashioning an entire room is not necessary.

You can come up with quite a few ideas, if you keep the improvement of safety in mind, while you do a walk-through of your home. Plus, there are tons of options for improving your home with smaller tasks. You can up multiply the possibilities, if you are willing to learn some new skills.

There is such an array of techniques for making the conditions of your home better, for example with personal safety. Because they slip on the stairs, thousands of people die or are injured every year. Consider putting non-slip adhesive strips on steps that lead to your basement, if you have one. We have all taken a glance at these from time to time and they work really well and allow for secure footing.

Make sure that you add at least one or more strips to even step. In order to ensure the highest amount of safety, we suggest that you add at least three narrow strips to every step. If you have children in your home, then this becomes even more crucial for thwarting horrible falls.

People who have garages realize how irritating it can be to keep them arranged. Evidently, there is no plus side to the fact that garages at some time or another become the catch-all storing place. Consequently, if you desire to do something for tidiness, find and set up hangers inside your garage. Including those that can be hung on walls, there are quite a few different devices and designs. A majority of individuals use these for hanging garden gizmos and other tools that dont weigh a whole lot. If you have a lot of hand tools, even as few as half a dozen, then this will free up space.

If you have single pane windows, or a sliding glass door that is old, you should replace it with something more energy-efficient to lower your heating and cooling bills. If energy efficiency is important to you, Anderson windows may have exactly what you are looking for. Coming in a wide variety of designs and colors, these windows are very modern and energy-efficient. This company also does special orders catering to those with specific needs in mind. It is always recommended to get dual pane sliding glass doors as they will be the most energy-efficient. The dual panes actually have special gases that promote energy efficiency through beneficial thermal interactions.

In the world today, there is no such thing as doing too much home-improvement, especially in regard to security. Investing a lot of cash into a security system is not necessary which is very good to know. All you need to do is determine what you need for your home and install it as soon as possible. You could also go onto the Internet and do research before making your purchase.

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Tags: home, Improvement, security

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Prehistoric monster snake makes brief NYC visit

NEW YORK (AP) ? A prehistoric monster snake is making a quick stopover in New York City's Grand Central Terminal.

The full-scale replica of the Titanoboa (Ty-TAN'-uh-BOH'-ah) was unveiled Thursday as a promotion for an exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., titled "Titanoboa: Monster Snake."

When it roamed the earth, the snake was 48-feet long and weighed 2,500 pounds.

Titanoboa was discovered in 2005 among a trove of fossils in one of the world's largest open-pit coal mines in Colombia. It lived more than 60 million years ago when dinosaurs no longer ruled the Earth.

The traveling exhibit runs from March 30 through Jan. 6, 2013. A special documentary will air on the Smithsonian Channel on April 1.

The giant reptile heads for Washington Friday evening.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/aa9398e6757a46fa93ed5dea7bd3729e/Article_2012-03-23-Monster%20Snake-Grand%20Central/id-3d8b1a62df204423b785fb94adc21e46

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Holy classic cars, it's a Batmobile race!

The 1989 Batmobile, left, raced the 1966 Batmobile, right, for a Web series -- and the winner may surprise you.

By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

The Batmobile might be the coolest car in movie and TV history. But just which Batmobile reigns supreme? Is it the 1966 version Adam West and Burt Ward drove in on TV, or the movie version Michael Keaton revved up in 1989's "Batman" and 1992's "Batman Returns"?

The Web series "Super Power Beat Down" recently pitted the two classic cars against each other in a straight-on quarter-mile street race, filmed in San Diego and shown online.

The 1966 car features a Bat-A-Ram, siren, ejection seats and reportedly can reach 160 miles per hour.

The 1989 car has machine guns, grappling hooks, a grenade launcher and reportedly can reach 180 miles per hour.

But when the show put them to the test, in a photo finish ... the 1966 Batmobile squeaked across the finish line just ahead of its 1980s counterpart. Adam West can now say, "In your FACE, Michael Keaton!" Not that he would.

Holy vintage vehicles, Batman!

Watch the race above, and tell us which car you'd rather have on Facebook.

Related content:

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Source: http://entertainment.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/22/10813665-holy-classic-cars-batman-1966-tv-batmobile-races-1989-movie-batmobile

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Business And Leisure Travel India | A Travel-and-Leisure | pmi ...

Mar

21

March 21, 2012

Business And Leisure Travel India | A Travel-and-Leisure Article So, it is up to you to choose any of the holiday packages India instead of taking two different packages. And this is not because they are inexpensive but provide the same luxury and comfort as any other package. Apart from the business travel agencies that provide excellent business trips, you can also opt for an agency that offers a combined trip with minimal expenses on [...] All packages will provide you with your business needs for meetings and conferences and meanwhile assure a memorable time for your family.
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Source: http://www.no-pmi.com/?p=1801

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Prudent Press Agency - HCG weight loss protocol for a quick weight ...

United States of America. (Prudent Press Agency) If there is someone who is interested in loosing the excess fats form the body and is worried of the health issues concerned with it, he can simply go on with the HCG weight loss plan.

HCG weight loss plan is a natural and effective weight loss remedy that can allow an individual to cut down the extra fats and also assure the fats are lost naturally without causing any harm to the overall health and fitness of the body.

HCG in the recent times have become much popular for its weight loss results and more and more people are now using this to loose the excess fats from their body. along with the HCG doses the person is required to take on a low calorie HCG diet that complements the working of HCG hormone taken in the form of shots. Through out the weight loss plan the experts will be keeping a close watch on the health of the dieter, thereby assuring that the person is just loosing fats with no health complications.

So if anyone is interested in loosing the excess fats from his body can simply go on with this HCG weight loss plan. for more details about this weight loss plan log on to their website or can simply call their experts at 1-800-590-7788 for free weight loss consultation.

Source: http://prudentpressagency.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=24836

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Sky dubs upcoming internet TV service 'Now TV', chases those currently without pay-TV

After recently announcing plans to launch a new over-the-top internet based TV service in the UK Sky CEO Jeremy Darroch has revealed its name, Now TV, and what it will bring to customers. Speaking at the Media Guardian Changing Media Summit in London, Darroch indicated Now TV would operate as its own brand, targeting the 13 million UK homes that don't pay for TV from any provider, offering instant access to movies this summer with sports and other entertainment coming soon after, with access by monthly subscription or PPV across a variety of devices. It will be different from the existing Sky TV service, and all of its online tie-ins like Sky Go by focusing on flexibility and "spontaneous access" Constantly complaining about a lack of access to programming like, say, Game of Thrones without a traditional pay-TV package? It sounds like this should be right up your alley, so while details like exact pricing are still TBA, feel free to hit the source links below for all of the info currently available including a transcript of his speech, or head to the Now TV website directly to sign up for updates.

Sky dubs upcoming internet TV service 'Now TV', chases those currently without pay-TV originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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That's Easy for You to Say! ? Public Speaking 102 | Be Evolutionary

Guest blogger JP Voilleque, with Carmen Voilleque

In our last posting we emphasized the importance of excellent content, good organization and sound evidence in delivering an effective presentation. But, it likely left you wondering: ?What about the zazzle? The flash? The sparkle?

There are several aspects of speechmaking that we neglected in our first posting ? and a good deal of them have to do with adding pizazz! It?s all well and good for your speech to be rhetorically sound, grounded in logic, and well supported by research. But, speaking with passion, grace and fire is another thing altogether. Where?s the sizzle? What are you doing to wow the crowd?

As a general rule, the only way to guarantee that your audience is awake and engaged is to care about what you are saying. The sum total of every trick in the book will not match the simple purity of someone who?s excited about his or her subject. I?m willing to make the following wager at any time, anywhere. I will bet that your best, most technologically advanced, media-riffic presentation cannot beat a passionate Evolutionary with pen and poster paper. You can make your presentation inside an inflatable dome screen wearing LED clothing and swinging a light saber, and an Evolutionary Communicator ?will give a better speech with cue cards on an easel in a bare room with one light bulb. This is because when an Evolutionary gets up to speak, they have something to say. They are not shy about having a message to deliver. And they care about that message, the positive impact it could have on the audience and its potential to change the world. Their motive for speaking is the secret sauce.

However, since no one ever seems to believe us when we say that, we feel compelled to offer advice on some of the more prevalent presentation technologies, and suggest a right and wrong way to utilize each of them.

PowerPoint, Flash, Silverlight, and other slideshow development platforms.

photo credit minor9th via flickr

There is no greater sin than the misuse of PowerPoint. Books have been written on the subject. Some are even good. The abuse of PowerPoint is so prevalent, so pervasive, that it has moved beyond jokes about slides to the whole notion of slides being a joke. This is the sad legacy of horrible talks that relied too much on PowerPoint, created massive slide overload, positioned the presenter with his or her back to the audience so that (s)he could read the slides aloud, and other travesties of justice that remain unpunished. PowerPoint is novice speaker Kryptonite, and the sooner you reconcile your own account vis. misuse of slides, the sooner you will see an improvement in your presentations.

Here?s the thing: the more you obligate your audience to read, the less attention they will pay to what you?re saying. And, if the things they?re reading and the things you?re saying are the same thing, why are you there? Rather than stuff your slides full of content, you want to stuff them full of evocative echoes of your content, or the key points of your speech. Your tool use will improve a great deal if you maintain the mindset that slides embellish, rather than define, your speech.

Like pop culture references and California chardonnay, embellishment is best when it is kept within contemporary limits of taste. Americans, as a rule, are PowerPoint Victorians: if we can stick another embossed roof tile into the corner of the slide, we absolutely will. This is a habit that must stop. The best slides can convey powerful messages:

• Without saying anything
• With little or no recourse to animation
• With a single picture
• With a simple chart or graph
• By being blank (i.e. by focusing attention back to the speaker)
• With a single word

This is not to say that some slides aren?t better with more content than the above list ? only to emphasize that the best presentations do not allow the audience to lose themselves in the slide unless that ?loss? of attention is in fact a deepening of attention, calculated, planned, and executed through the visual medium as a complement to speech.

There is no higher calling than hacking slides to pieces for being wordy, for not adding value, for pulling you off-message, or pulling your audience away from the message. Be merciless. On average, an Evolutionary Communicator?s keynote will use 9-17 slides. We have clients who bring us 80-slide decks for a twenty minute speech (well, maybe only 72). If you?ve ever been in the audience for either speech, we?re pretty sure we know which one you like best.

Teleprompters

Depending on the size and import of your speech, you may be using a teleprompter. If you are, it?s something that takes some getting used to. Your formal rehearsal will probably be the first time you see it in action, and you?ll need to take some time to calibrate it to your speaking rhythm, pauses, and so forth. Ideally, you?ll have someone working the teleprompter for you so that they can adjust on the fly.

The most important thing to remember about teleprompters is that staring into the middle distance is no better than staring down at your notes. Substantial portions of your speech will be memorized, and for the rest, you?ll need to practice using your peripheral vision to track where you are in your speech as you continue to talk to the audience. If it?s distracting or annoying, don?t use it. If people insist, use it and then ignore it.

Handouts, Follow-Alongs, and other Paper

Even worse than presentation slides that don?t hew to the message are handouts that commit such sins. Now, not only is your audience being pulled off message, they?re ignoring you and staring at their laps. Nothing kills a room faster than giving someone something to read while you talk. You want eyes front, engaged listeners, action in the room when you ask the audience a question or seek comments. Handouts necessarily work against audience behaviors that keep them in your pocket. Sometimes it is inevitable that you will have some paper involved (in a meeting of executives, for example, or less formal presentation environments where you?re one of a variety of items on the agenda). However, that?s not an excuse to bury your audience in paper.

We are frequently asked for our slides before our presentations, so that some helpful minion can print them out and distribute them to the audience, with handy ruled lines next to each slide. Seems okay, right? People can write notes next to the thing that sparked the thought. These requests are increasingly common, and sometimes speakers even offer up their slides before being asked. Nonetheless, we invariably refuse, sometimes against a rising tide of dismay and panic. ?Here?s why.

If ever there were a way to destroy your link with the audience, it would be to allow them to read ahead. Consider ? who doesn?t want to see what?s coming next? But the difference between providing the scaffolding from the stage and providing it on paper is gigantic. You cede control when you hand out a paper outline. Your audience decides where to go next, not you.

To borrow from Winston Churchill,

Never give [your slides]. Never give [an outline]. Never, never, never, never?in nothing, great or small, large or petty?never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense [and even then, don?t provide handouts 90% of the time]. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the [client].

One last reason to avoid handouts or follow-along slide pages is that it gives you fewer things to worry about. If you simply never give your slides, then you don?t have to worry about last-minute changes to your content. If your slides are not front and center in your mind all the time, you?re more likely to focus on message, presentation dynamics, and keeping your audience on the edge of their seats with nothing more than the dulcet tones of your fabulous voice!

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Source: http://www.easci.com/beevolutionary/blog/thats-easy-for-you-to-say-public-speaking-102/

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Zvox Z-Base 220

The soundbar has become a popular way to enhanced HDTV sound without getting a full surround speaker system. It's small, inexpensive, and usually just one or two pieces. ZVox has a different, yet equally affordable and simple take on the idea. The company's ZBase systems are one-piece sound systems that are more slabs than bars, yet offer a full range of sound response and much more power than an HDTV can produce. The $199.99 (direct) ZVox Z-Base 220 is the company's smallest sound system, built for smaller HDTVs but featuring lots of power. The Z-Base 220 features three 2-inch speaker drives, a 5.25-inch subwoofer, and 35 watts of power in its simple frame. It's not for audiophiles or home theater enthusiasts, but anyone looking to put some more power in their HDTV's sound will be pleased.

Design
The boxy Z-Base 220 is a shining example of "stealth boring" industrial design. It's so plain and flat that it might as well be invisible in a home theater system. This isn't a bad thing; some audiophiles like displaying their speakers, but many listeners prefer sound to fill the room without much thought about what's making it. The flat black grille, plain orange LED display, and 3.5 by 17 by 12.5-inch (HWD) matte black body blend into most furniture as an easily ignored chunk. Because it's so deep and weighs 12 pounds, it can't be easily placed in front of an HDTV or mounted on a wall. You need to have the surface space to support it. The Z-Base 220 fits easily under smaller HDTVs 17 to 27 inches ideally, according to ZVox, but bass vibrations mean it's best used with nothing on it. The company markets it as a device you can place your small HDTV directly on it, but that's not a good idea if you want to listen to anything with bass.

Under the black grill are small mute/power, volume, and input buttons and a 3.5mm input jack. They're tucked below the body of the Z-Base 220, so they don't interrupt the flat design. The back of the device holds two RCA stereo inputs, an optical input, and a coaxial input.

The fat membrane remote controls all of the Z-Base 220's settings. Besides power, input, mute, and volume buttons, the remote has buttons for surround sound modes, dialog emphasis, output leveling, and adjusting bass and treble. Besides multiple surround modes and adjusting high end and low end, there aren't many adjustments like EQ settings on the speaker.

Sound
I watched Predator on Blu-ray to test the Z-Base 220's sound and surround abilities. The gunshots were suitably loud and dialog was clear even without the dialog emphasis mode turned on. With it enabled, the midrange was boosted slightly and treble and bass seemed to be flattened, so while it indeed brought out dialog slightly, it hurt the other sounds and music. When the volume was pumped up to maximum, high-frequency sounds like the predator's actions became slightly crunchy.

Surround sound was less impressive. While the Z-Base 220 can accept 5.1-channel surround sound and produces simulated surround with its single box, it doesn't offer the imaging a real surround system or a set of well-spaced stereo speakers can produce. If you want a real surround experience, or a wide sound field, the Vizio VHT510 ($249.99, 4 stars) offers a wide sound bar with a wireless subwoofer and surround satellites for full surround sound, and the Samsung HW-D450 ($299.99, 3.5 stars) has a wide stereo field and much more bass response with its own subwoofer.

Even so, the room thumped impressively (if not as impressive as it would with a large, dedicated subwoofer), and the flat bass notes in The Knife's Silent Shout stayed clear until the highest volume levels, when the drivers began to distort. For a one-piece sound system, the Z-Base 220 has some pretty hefty bass response. But if you want to take advantage of that bass, you'll have to ignore the benefit of it being such a flat device; while the base didn't distort at all at most volume levels, anything placed on top of the Z-Base 220 vibrated horribly to the beat. While there are no grilles on the top of the device, you still shouldn't block it or put any pressure on it to ensure clarity and that nothing on it will vibrate. Without the top obstructed, though, the bass is surprisingly powerful.

If you want to enhance your home theater's sound, the ZVox Z-Base 220 is an inexpensive way to add plenty of power without any hassle. It's louder and sounds better than a cheap sound bar, and while it doesn't have the bass output or surround imaging of discrete speakers and a subwoofer, it's extremely easy to set up and unobtrusive to keep on a shelf under your HDTV. Just make sure you have the room for it.

More Speaker reviews:
??? Zvox Z-Base 220
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/GUNeUkaDBXk/0,2817,2401578,00.asp

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Mortgage delinquencies continue to decline - Real Estate Investors ...

By Dennis Norman,on March 22nd,2012

The U.S. mortgage loan delinquency rate was 7.57 percent of all home loans in February,down 5.0 percent from the month before and down 14.0 percent from a year ago,according to the ?First-Look?report issued by Lender Processing Services,one of the countries largest loan servicers and aggregators of loan performance data. The foreclosure presale inventory rate was 4.13 percent in February,a 0.5 percent decrease from the month before and a 0.3 percent decrease from a year ago.

Total U.S. loan delinquency rate (loans 30 or more days past due,but not in foreclosure):	? 7.57%
Month-over-month change in delinquency rate:	-5.0%
Year-over-year change in delinquency rate:	-14.0%
Total U.S foreclosure pre-sale inventory rate:	4.13%
Month-over-month change in foreclosure presale inventory rate:	-0.5%
Year-over-year change in foreclosure presale inventory rate:	-0.3%
Number of properties that are 30 or more days past due,but not in foreclosure:(A)	3,781,000
Number of properties that are 90 or more days delinquent,but not in foreclosure:	1,722,000
Number of properties in foreclosure pre-sale inventory:(B)	2,065,000
Number of properties that are 30 or more days delinquent or in foreclosure:(A+B)	? 5,846,000
States with highest percentage of non-current* loans:	FL,MS,NV,NJ,IL
States with the lowest percentage of non-current* loans:	MT,AK,WY,SD,ND

This is a good trend to see and one that hopefully will continue. Delinquent mortgages are the precursor to foreclosures and foreclosures have been pounding home prices. So goes the delinquent mortgages,so go the foreclosures and so goes their negative impact on home prices. We have a long way to go but at least things are moving the right direction.

Related posts:

1. Mortgage delinquencies increase in November;?Foreclosures decline from month before The U.S. mortgage loan delinquency rate was 8.15 percent of...
2. Mortgage delinquencies decline in October;?Foreclosures on the rise The U.S. mortgage loan delinquency rate was 7.93 percent of...
3. Mortgage delinquencies decline in August;down almost 12 percent from year ago I keep saying that,until the foreclosure rate gets...
4. Mortgage Delinquencies Decline in March;Foreclosures on the rise A ?first-look?report issued by Lender Processing Services,one...
5. Mortgage Delinquencies Increase in April A ?first-look?report issued by Lender Processing Services,one...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Source: http://realestateinvestordaily.com/foreclosures/mortgage-delinquencies-continue-to-decline-good-news-for-the-real-estate-market/

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More Americans uneasy with political use of religion

Ted S. Warren / AP

Mitt Romney, right, bows his head in prayer as he stands on stage with local elected officials during a campaign rally on Feb. 3 in Elko, Nev. Nearly six in 10 Republican and Republican-leaning voters who favor Romney for the GOP presidential nomination say churches should keep out of political matters.

By James Eng, msnbc.com

In an election campaign season in which issues such as birth control and gay marriage have made headlines,?a growing number of Americans think political leaders are talking too much religion, according to a new national survey.

The survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Research Center?s Forum on Religion & Public Life finds signs of uneasiness over the mixing of religion and politics.

Nearly four in 10 Americans (38 percent) say there has been too much expression of religious faith and prayer from political leaders -- an all-time high since the Pew Research Center began asking the question more than a decade ago. Thirty percent say there has been too little.

---

Most Americans (54 percent) continue to say that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of politics. It?s the third consecutive poll conducted over the past four years in which more people have said churches and other houses of worship should keep out of politics than said they should express their views on social and political topics, according to Pew. That's also an about-face from 2006, when 51 percent of Americans believed churches should speak out and 46 percent said they should keep quiet.

The view that there is too much expression of religious faith by politicians remains far more widespread among Democrats than Republicans, and there are also divisions within the GOP primary electorate.

Fifty-seven percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters who favor Mitt Romney (a Mormon) for the presidential nomination say churches should keep out of political matters. By contrast, 60 percent of GOP voters who support Rick Santorum (a devout Catholic) say that churches and other houses of worship should express their views on social and political questions.

And while more than half (55 percent) of Santorum?s supporters say there is too little expression of religious faith and prayer by political leaders, just one in four (24 percent) of Romney?s backers agree.

Santorum has worked hard on the campaign trail to court conservative Christian voters, and the former Pennsylvania senator has talked openly about the journey of his faith in?visits to evangelical churches.

Kimberly Conger, a political science instructor at Colorado State University who has studied the intersection of religion and politics, says the latest Pew findings are not surprising.

?Religious people's opinions on the relationship between religion and politics seem to be driven by their political identity more than their religious one.? These results bear that out,? she said by email to msnbc.com.

?Republicans are less likely to think there is too much religious talk by political leaders, and Republicans are hearing more such talk than Democrats.? It is also unsurprising that there has been a slight uptick in the overall number of people uncomfortable with religious talk since the Republican primary has had some significant religious overtones.?

As to whether politicians should steer clear of religion on the campaign trail, Conger says it depends.

?It's clear from the breakdown of religious and political groups that Rick Santorum ought to keep talking about religion as long as he's fighting for the Republican nomination. But if he were to win the nomination, he'd have to start appealing to independents, a key voting group that's uncomfortable with candidates' religious talk,? she says.

?They key challenge in the general election will be for Republicans to broaden their appeal by toning down religious talk. But the data suggest that Democrats face a similar if less intense challenge in broadening their appeal by appearing more welcoming to religious beliefs. Both sides will have a fine line to walk.?

The Pew telephone survey was conducted March 7-11 among 1,503 adults. You can read the full results here.

{"contentId":"10796430","totalVotes":"21734"}

Are politicians talking too much about religion?

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Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/21/10796430-pew-survey-americans-think-politicians-are-talking-too-much-about-religion

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