An analysis of real estate listings priced at $1 million and up shows that
"perfect" listings—written in full sentences without spelling or
grammatical errors—sell three days faster and are 10% more likely to sell for
more than their list price than listings overall. On the flip side, listings riddled with
technical errors—misspellings, incorrect homonyms, incomplete sentences, among
others—log the most median days on the market before selling and have the
lowest percentage of homes that sell over list price. The analysis, conducted by Redfin, a national
real-estate brokerage, and Grammarly, an online proofreading application,
examined spelling errors and other grammatical red flags in 106,850 luxury
listings in 52 metro areas in 2013. For
an industry without a universal stylebook, real-estate agents vary greatly in
their listing descriptions. While some
brokerages have created internal guidelines, much of the actual writing is
still left up to the discretion of listing agents. Aside
from errors, the analysis also looked at style preferences in listings. One of the most common: phrases written in
all-capital letters. These listings saw
the least success in terms of sale price, with only 5.6% of homes selling above
list price. The practice is most common
in Las Vegas, where 28.5% of listings were written in all capital letters in
2013, compared with 8.4% of listings nationwide.
on the horns of a dilemma faced with the choice between
two equally unpalatable alternatives; in an
awkward situation Synonyms: between
the devil and the deep blue sea, between a rock and a hard
place, between Scylla and Charybdis
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/on-the-horns-of-a-dilemma
Breakfast Cereals Compared by ACalorie Counter
A sortable table comparing over fifty
cereals from Post, Kellogg's and General Mills with explanations of terms such
as trans fat and HFCS, and list of best and worst cereals at http://www.acaloriecounter.com/breakfast-cereal.php
A pangram is
a sentence that contains all letters of the alphabet. Less frequently, such sentences are
called holalphabetic sentences. Interesting pangrams are generally short ones;
constructing a sentence that includes the fewest repeat letters possible is a
challenging task. However, pangrams that
are slightly longer yet enlightening, humorous, or eccentric are noteworthy in
their own right. By far the most
well-known pangram is, "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog." Curiously, this sentence is often misquoted by
changing "jumps" to "jumped." The past tense version, lacking an
"s," is not a pangram. Often, too, it is misquoted as "the lazy
dog" rather than "a lazy dog."
Find examples of pangrams from
longest to shortest at http://www.rinkworks.com/words/pangrams.shtml
"How many letters are in the
alphabet"? The answer is 11, because it takes 11 letters
to spell "the alphabet". That's a riddle, of course.
English has 26 letters; Russian has 33; Maori has 13 plus 2 digraphs (NG
and WH). Although there's some disagreement,
Hawaiian may have the fewest letters at 12, and Tamil the most with 247.
The Amstel is
a river in the Netherlands which runs through the city of Amsterdam. The river's name is derived from Aeme
stelle, old Dutch for "area abounding with water". Amstel beer is named after the river. The Amstel brewery, as a lot of other
breweries, was situated close to the Amstel river because clean river water was
used to produce the beer. Amsterdam took its name from the river. The city developed out of a small
fishing village called "Amstelredam", built in the 13th
century alongside a dam at the mouth of the river. The town was granted city rights around 1300. The
hamlet developed into the small town "Amsteldam", which later became
"Amsterdam". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstel
To be in high cotton (or tall cotton) is to feel
good. It's an idiom from having a good
harvest.
The latest twist on phishing is spear phishing. No, it's not a
sport, it's a scam and you're the target. Spear phishing is an email that appears to be
from an individual or business that you know. But it isn't. It's from the same criminal hackers who want
your credit card and bank account numbers, passwords, and the financial
information on your PC. The spear
phisher thrives on familiarity. He knows
your name, your email address, and at least a little about you. The salutation
on the email message is likely to be personalized: "Hi Bob" instead of "Dear
Sir." The email may make reference to a "mutual friend." Or to a recent online purchase you've made. Because the email seems to come from someone
you know, you may be less vigilant and give them the information they ask for. And when it's a company you know asking for
urgent action, you may be tempted to act before thinking. How do you become a target of a spear
phisher? From the information you put on
the Internet from your PC or smartphone. For example, they might scan social networking
sites, find your page, your email address, your friends list, and a recent post
by you telling friends about the cool new camera you bought at an online retail
site. Using that information, a spear
phisher could pose as a friend, send you an email, and ask you for a password
to your photo page. If you respond with
the password, they'll try that password and variations to try to access your
account on that online retail site you mentioned. If they find the right one, they'll use it to
run up a nice tab for you. Or the spear
phisher might use the same information to pose as somebody from the online
retailer and ask you to reset your password, or re-verify your credit card
number. Take a look at your online
presence. How much information is out
there about you that could be pieced together to scam you? Your name? Email address? Friends' names? Their email addresses? Are you on, for example, any of the popular
social networking sites? Take a look at
your posts. Anything there you don't
want a scammer to know? Or have you
posted something on a friend's page that might reveal too much?
Nigeria’s Boko Haram: Frequently Asked Questions by Lauren
Ploch Blanchard Congressional Research
Service 7-5700 May 20, 2014 Boko Haram emerged in the early 2000s as a
small Sunni Islamic sect advocating a strict interpretation and implementation
of Islamic law for Nigeria. Calling
itself Jama’a Ahl as-Sunna Li-da’wa wa-al Jihad (roughly translated from Arabic
as “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad”),
the group is more popularly known as Boko Haram (often translated as “Western
education is forbidden”), a nickname given by local Hausa-speaking communities
to describe the group’s view that Western education and culture have been
corrupting influences that are haram (“forbidden”) under its conservative
interpretation of Islam.
Read 20-page
report at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R43558.pdf
Frank Reginald Scott (1899-1985) was a poet, lawyer, constitutional expert, and political
activist. As an undergraduate student at McGill University, he edited several
literary journals with A. J. M. Smith and published poetry by A. M. Klein. Part of the Montreal Group of poets, Scott
helped to shape modernist poetry in Canada.
He wrote over twenty books and won the Governor General’s Award for both
poetry and non-fiction. Read his poem
Laurentian Shield at
The Canadian Shield, also known as the Precambrian
Shield or Laurentian Plateau, covers about half of Canada as well as most of
Greenland and part of the northern United States; an area of 4.4 million square
kilometers (1.7 million square miles). It
is the oldest part of the North American crustal plate and contains fossils of
bacteria and algae over 2 billion years old. The shield is composed of granite and the
earth’s greatest area of exposed Precambrian rock (igneous and metamorphic rock
formed in the Precambrian geological era 500 million years ago). http://www.canadianshieldfoundation.ca/?page_id=39
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1152
May 23, 2014 On this date in 1568,
the Netherlands declared
their independence from Spain. On this date in 1829, an Accordion patent
was granted to Cyrill Demian in Vienna. On this date
in 1911, the New York Public
Library was dedicated.
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