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House arrest is really a popular type of incarceration for political dissidents the world over. Regrettably, it is only utilized on a few high-profile individuals, most likely as a nod to world opinion and foreign political pressure; most such people are simply taken away and occasionally not heard from again.

A quite humane kind of punishment, house arrest has gotten a bad reputation due to its widespread use by authoritarian governments all around the world. Nevertheless, optimists will note that such considerable adoption bodes well for democracy and human rights in the long run.

After all, it might have been much less difficult for the tyrants to simply murder their opponents outright, as was practically always the case in the past and as is still far too often the case even now. But the prevailing Zeitgeist is such that a nod towards some kind of decorum has become rather expected behavior, even of tyrants.

In the democracies, house arrest is only used in instances of relatively petty crimes and/or where the convicted has outstanding health issues that might make prison a likely death sentence. Unlike in authoritarian countries, house incarceration in a democracy is enforced by technological means, using sophisticated electronic measures to ensure compliance instead of armed guards posted around the clock preventing access and egress.

First tried as far back as the turn of the twentieth century, it’s only in the late seventies and early eighties that home incarceration really came into form with the development of reliable monitoring devices. Usually, the subject has to wear a bracelet or anklet that contains sensors which provide information on his or her whereabouts, enabling tracking by the authorities.

A less intrusive form involves automatic calling services which will call up the subject at random times, with computers matching the subject’s voice against a database of recognized patterns. Authorities are alerted in instances where the call is not answered or if the voice does not appear to match.

The W-2 Form is utilized to report wages paid and taxes withheld. Officially known as the Form W-2, Wage and Tax Statement, employers must complete one for each employee that receives wage, salary, or other compensation as a result of work performed.

These forms must be delivered to each employee on or before the thirty-first of January of each calendar year so that early tax filers may have access to this crucial document, necessary for claiming refunds or paying any money owed.

Multiple, and most likely thoroughly redundant, W-2 forms will be sent to those workers whose circumstances of employment involve tasks performed in more than one state. Some employers will simply print multiple rows of states on all copies of the W-2 sent out. Others generate W-2s that attribute gross compensation twice, once for each state, possibly causing clerical issues in the process.

The copies that employees really see, which they receive in the mail every year ahead of tax season, is but a few of several that make up the complete Form W-2. One is labeled Copy 2, to be filed along with the state and local income tax returns, if any. Copies B and C are also sent, for purposes of federal income tax returns and personal records, respectively.

Copy 1 is submitted by the employer to the state or local taxing authority, as mandated by law (which some jurisdictions don’t require). Copy A goes to the Social Security Administration. Copy D is for the employer’s own records.

The anatomy of a W-2 Form can be very interesting. On it are recorded everything earned for the year, which often feels like quite a surprise to many, unfortunately! So many taxes…and yet it is almost fun to see precisely how much goes to what, whether for Medicare or Social Security or the 401K.

Mention marble sculpture and chances are that and most folks think about such examples as Michelangelo’s David or Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. But there’s more to marble artwork than that. Of course, no one denies that Italian marble statues are some of the very best examples of the material ever made, but there is much more to working with the “crystalline rock” (its etymology via the ancient Greeks, masters of the material themselves) than what is commonly imagined.

Modern examples abound, in which marble is pushed to the limits. But for some people, the most majestic examples of marble sculpture are those Mother Nature herself has so lovingly crafted over untold eons of patient chiseling and polishing.

For who has not caught his or her breath on the startling simpleness of stalacites and stalagmites? Arising out of the coolness of the dark, or silently suspended off the cavern ceiling, these unmetamorphosed limestone may indeed be what first inspired humankind to chisel and polish.

Or consider such folded and weathered examples as stud the shorelines of lakes, rivers, and oceans. Why do people not normally consider such works in contemplations of marble? Nature is certainly full of beauty, had we but eyes to see.

Of course, human masterpieces are maybe infinitely more versatile, whereas even the most astounding of natural wonders can only come about as the result of the same eternal forces which, after several hundred millennia, prove to be of a limited repertoire.

But the point is clear; marble has been worked on by much more than just man, and, for that matter, much more than Greeks and Romans and Italians! Marble is found not only in statue form, but some of its greatest achievements has been as buildings, for example, the incredible Taj Mahal in Agra, India. Next ye think of marble, then, think of every thing!

Yes, a camping tent is necessary equipment. But how about a portable grill? Maybe not as essential, but for most casual campers, it’s still something of a need. After all, what’s a warm camping tent with out a warm fire outside, complete with the uniquely fragrant aroma of juicy meat being roasted?

Especially at the end of a hard day’s hike! Although fun in itself, the great outdoors could certainly be improved on with something hot and delicious!

Needless to say, this being the 21st Century, hot food does not have to mean a real fire. There are now meals ready to eat (MRE) that utilize a chemical reaction in order to heat up food flamelessly! A lot easier to pack along with your camping tent than even the most portable of propane grills, to be sure.

Next to shelter, food is the other element of camping that probably most discourages individuals who are otherwise inclined to give the pastime a try. It sounds really nice, even romantic, to spend the evening outdoors, by a lake or on a mountaintop, but without adequate shelter or good food, all the little miseries of a life in the wild become magnified, especially for our modern sensibilities.

The MRE is the greatest thing ever developed in that regard, then. Portable grills and cookers are great, too, but nothing beats an MRE for convenience. A variety of flavors are obtainable, even in just the U.S. alone – take a look at those from other countries, reflecting the culinary customs of the locals!

Of course, fresh air really whets an appetite, so just about anything really should taste great. But just remember one thing: never take food~ into the tent! It will attract pests like insects and other vermin, not to mention much more serious creatures for example bears and the like!

Rhinestones are used in place of valuable diamonds on clothing and fashion accessories. They’re normally utilized as a cost-cutting measure by businesses targeting customers who ordinarily could not afford a diamond on anything but a ring or necklace, though [rhinestones] are only low-cost when compared to the real thing itself.

Gemologically speaking, they are valuable objects in their own right, with numerous intriguing characteristics. some of the best examples are fully able to replicate the sparkling effects of genuine diamonds.

Within the popular culture, rhinestones occupy a curious place. They can be as brilliant as any diamond they are meant to simulate, yet are often employed in brash outlandish ways, like as a part of a showman’s outfit. Elvis, Liberace, and numerous other singers are associated with them, giving these stones a kind of strange status halfway between kitsch and high society.

Two names that are most associated with high society rhinestones: Swarovski and Preciosa, European companies that have defined the rhinestone market for over a century each. Swarovski is based in Wattens, near Innsbruck within the southern Tyrol region of Austria, but its reach is very cosmopolitan, having provided the star atop New York City’s famed Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree for the years 2004 through 2009. Long associated with luxury goods for instance fine crystals, jewelery, and chandeliers, the company also runs an indoor Wattens theme park revolving around its work.

Preciosa is a Czech concern that accounts for most of the other rhinestones produced on the market today, utilizing a secret method that involves only about thirty percent lead in order to minimize refraction.

Other kinds of special coatings and coating processes are employed to produce crystal rhinestones that exhibit diamond-like traits such as rainbows. Intriguing, that the former realms of the Hapsburgs’ Dual Monarchy should host the two finest rhinestone makers in all of the world!

In the early eighties, personal computers were billed as something like educational toys. Some kids wanted them, but only a few parents fully understood the point. The world, see, had not yet undergone the personal computing revolution then.

Computers had not taken over companies, becoming an essential tool of everyday business; there were still whole departments of professional typists who did nothing all day but create paperwork for other departments. Got a bill? Someone typed it up. Have to send a letter? Someone typed it up.

And so getting a pc in those days was like getting educational toys for Christmas – or so numerous unsuspecting parents thought. They may have read something regarding the coming computer revolution and vaguely comprehended that such electronics will be somehow important to the world in a few years, but it’s doubtful the common buyer thought much about it. No, it was the kids who clammored – and how educational could the thing be if kids were voluntarily, even passionately, asking for it?

Asking, demanding – hardly the behavior of children in relation to many educational toys! And indeed, for many kids, the computer became nothing more than a glorified videogaming machine, a home arcade.

To be sure, a much wider selection of entertainment software was obtainable for computer platforms than on the game consoles of the era, a variation which continues, though less sharply, today. But make no mistake: the ultimate use the majority of kids got out of a home computer system at the time was electronic entertainment.

Fortunately for a few, however, having a pc within the home – it was often shared between siblings – lead to professions in information technology. For these individuals, the early fascination with computers has endured, maturing into jobs creating software, installing hardware, supervising networks. For their parents, a computer was truly the investment in their children originally envisioned.

Rainwater collection is arguably the most visible and thus symbolic aspect of rainwater harvesting. Down through history all over the world, drinking water for people and livestock as well as irrigation for crops has been provided by collecting rainfall. In many places, even these days, rainwater is really the only available source of water.

A number of techniques are used in rainwater collection, from easy ones for personal use to complex industrial designs supplying entire facilities. Typically, rainwater is harvested from either the ground or the roof. Some roofing materials may be harmful to human health, however, but although useless for drinking they may possibly still be utilized for washing clothes, flushing toilets, and irrigating gardens.

Harvesting rainwater is a excellent way to cut back on water usage, and it’s very simple for homeowners to implement. All that’s needed is some rain tanks or barrels to catch rooftop runoff and also the like. Of course, more sophisticated catchment methods are available, but nothing beats old-fashioned methods for cost if not convenience!

It is easily possible to reduce by half the amount of municipal water used by deploying a home catchment system, even if it only consists of a single tank collection rain. The rate of collection is largely related to the intensity of rainfall, as measured by annual precipitation. Get more rain, catch more rain!

Ground-based collection methods are normally found only in areas where rainwater is quite scarce and other sources aren’t available. These systems are also a lot more suited to whole communities rather than individuals or individual families, though the size of the community should be small.

But no matter the method, proper maintenance is essential for hygenic reasons, even if the water isn’t meant for actual consumption. For example, water barrels should be covered to prevent mosquito infestation and algae growth.

Tens of thousands of people search for an online auto loan calculator every day, according to search engines like Google. It really is not surprising, of course, given how essential cars are in most people’s everyday lives. But the most important aspect of purchasing a car isn’t something that any calculator can help with.

An auto loan calculator is part of an entire suite of widgets available on the internet that will calculate just about anything which can be quantified, from caloric consumption to foreign currency exchange rates, but there’s no programming genius possible that will have the ability to figure out the most important consideration of all involving car ownership. Not that calculators are difficult to program; producing such software has been a standard textbook exercise for many computer programming course for years and years.

No, the most critical factor of all just isn’t quantifiable.

It’s you.

While an auto loan calculator can crunch the numbers, it can’t determine why you are purchasing a car – or a particular type of car, at a particular time, from a particular place, under a particular set of conditions (and so forth and so on). But this is the most crucial aspect of car purchasing: you.

Beyond your income, personal credit rating, and current level of debt – all put together – looms the much larger, more important matter of your own motivations. Do you really need a car?

Is public transportation really non-existent? Would it truly be much too much inconvenience to handle?

Will it be worthwhile for you to still be paying years and even, likely, decades from now for a car, an automobile with which you may not even be satisfied any longer?

A lot of people won’t think of these things. But it’s really important to realize that taking out a loan is going into debt. A calculator can only show you some numbers. You will still need to make the choice a good one.

Unless you’ve got one of them portable Coleman Roadtrip grills, camping food will most likely mean some thing like an MRE, or Meal, Ready-to-Eat. Originally created for the U.S. military, MREs are self-contained lightweight rations available in a wide range of flavors. They’re also produced by other nations for their militaries, with all the familiar flavors a local would expect!

For instance, MREs for South Korean troops feature such regional delicacies as kimchi, while Italians enjoy beef tortellini; Swedes and Norwegians get cod stew with sour cream and potato, and Poles make do with bogracz (beef goulash). And though soldiers in the field can’t use camping grills for obvious security reasons, thanks to the marvels of modern science MREs now provide hot meals flamelessly!

Today’s MREs contain a Flameless Ration Heater, or FRH, which will increase the temperature of an eight-ounce entree by a hundred degrees Fahrenheit in no more than twelve minutes. FRHs use a simple chemical reaction to provide heat sufficient to warm up the precooked contents of an MRE.

The concept is to use the natural oxidation of a metal to produce heat. MREs now reach boiling point within seconds, steaming and bubbling! In ten minutes or so, dinner is ready. As may be imagined, they aren’t anywhere near the power of your least expensive Coleman Roadtrip grills, but they ain’t any person spending the night outdoors.

No, combat cuisine does not compare to camping fare, but it’s not actually that bad, and, frankly, isn’t roughing it part of the overall experience, regardless of whether in the military or living out of doors?

Of course, you could just opt to go totally authentic and hunt game and roast it over a campfire spit! But an MRE is really a nice compromise between that and a Coleman grill.

So you’re “in” real estate. Whether as a lay buyer or seller, or a professional investor or developer like Isaac Toussie, you’re dealing in real estate and naturally you’ve combed the internet looking for information to help you with this industry. Other than the absolute most fundamental of dicta, such as “location, location, location,” what it means to be in the real estate business is this: negotiating.

If the heart of all business in general is selling (and it is), then the heart of the real estate business is successfully negotiating as positive an outcome for yourself as possible. And acquiring the most favorable terms calls for mastery of one of any number of tactics and strategies, such as the art of the low-ball, which is what this article will explore.

It’s how the pros do it, pros like famed developer Isaac Toussie. This “gray art” is one of the most common methods employed in any negotiation, whether it involves property or diplomacy or even, if you think honestly about it, romantic courtship! It’s a way to fluster the other party, maybe psychologically destabilize them enough to be open to your point of view, as it were. Essentially, you behave so outrageously as to flummox them and reframe the situation – which is to say, the terms – more in your favor.

Simply put, you low-ball the numbers and see if they don’t work out in your favor after all. Low-ball the asking price with a counter-offer that is so much lower that it would almost feel insulting – operant word being “almost.”

You don’t want to be regarded as a time-waster, of course. You need to be taken seriously, after all. So your low-balled number shouldn’t be totally out of the realm of possibility, like a dollar! But it should be dramatically low enough, such as one-fifth or even more if you’re feeling really lucky (one rule-of-thumb holds that if you’re not personally embarrassed by the figure, you haven’t gone low enough). The take-away is that by doing this, you start things up at a frantic pace, signaling to the other party that you’re one mean businessman (or woman).

But don’t confuse this attitude with a take-no-prisoners approach. You are negotiating, not fighting. You should be willing to continue negotiating, which is to say remain engaged and respond quickly to the other party. The key to low-balling is to assess the other side’s reaction. Is s/he now angry? Or amused? Or do they understand what you’re doing – hence signaling their own experience in the matter and their own toughness? Such information will be crucial to helping you plot the rest of your strategy.

Learn how to be a tough negotiator by low-balling the other party and flustering them! Go for broke. What is there to lose? (Again, don’t get “being aggressive” mixed up with “being insulting.”) If you don’t ask, you won’t receive. It is more art than science, and so a matter of delicacy, which calls for experience – but you have to start somewhere, and you need to start now. So start low and with any luck maybe you won’t have to inch up too high!