IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Jan. 28

NEWS A fire ignited by a flare from a band’s pyrotechnics spectacle swept through a nightclub filled with hundreds of university students early on Sunday morning in Santa Maria, a city in southern Brazil, killing at least 233 people, officials said. Simon Romero reports from Rio de Janeiro.

President Mohamed Morsi declared a state of emergency and a curfew in three major cities on Sunday, as escalating violence in the streets threatened his government and Egypt’s democracy. David Kirkpatrick reports from Port Said, Egypt.

Milos Zeman, a former leftist prime minister and economist known for his outspoken populism, became the first popularly elected president of the Czech Republic. Dan Bilefsky reports from Prague.

Despite the government’s best efforts, tax evasion remains something of a pastime in Italy. So this month the National Revenue Agency decided to try a new tack. Rather than attempting to ferret out how much suspected tax cheats earn, the agency began trying to infer it from how much they spend. Elisabetta Povoledo reports from Rome.

President Barack Obama is committed to reaching an agreement to smooth trade with the European Union, the United States’ top negotiator has said, but only if it is constructed in a way that would overcome objections from farm groups and that could win congressional approval. Jack Ewing reports from Davos, Switzerland.

Unlike many publishers that have tried to build digital units on the back of existing brands, the German company Hubert Burda has looked to new businesses, some started from scratch. Eric Pfanner reports from Munich.

EDUCATION In Indonesia, a movement is under way to teach students about AIDS and contraception. Sara Schonhardt reports from Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

ARTS Steps to strengthen protections for art buyers at auctions and galleries are slow to advance, and some question whether they are even necessary. Robin Pogrebin and Kevin Flynn report.

A new book, “Signs for Peace: An Impossible Visual Encyclopedia,” compiled by the Swiss-born graphic designer Ruedi Baur and his wife, the sociologist Vera Baur Kockot, presents hundreds of images of peace motifs through the ages. Alice Rawsthorn reviews from London.

SPORTS Novak Djokovic won a grueling final 6-7, 7-6, 6-3, 6-2 match over Andy Murray to win his third consecutive Australian Open title. Christopher Clarey reports from Melbourne, Australia.

The Southeast Asian Games, which will be held in Myanmar’s capital, Naypyidaw, and other sites throughout the country, is causing acrimony long before a single athlete has competed. Thomas Fuller reports from Bangkok.

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J. Richard Hackman, an Expert in Team Dynamics, Dies at 72

J. Richard Hackman, a Harvard psychology professor whose fieldwork sometimes took him to the cockpit of an airliner to observe the crew in a nearly five-decade quest to determine the dynamics of teamwork and effective leadership, died on Jan. 8 in Boston. He was 72.

The cause was lung cancer, his wife, Judith Dozier Hackman, said.

Dr. Hackman, the author or co-author of 10 books on group dynamics, was the Edgar Pierce professor of social and organizational psychology at Harvard.

In one of his best-known books, “Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances” (2002), he replaced the popular image of the powerful “I can do it all” team leader with that of someone who, as he wrote, had the subtle skills “to get a team established on a good trajectory, and then to make small adjustments along the way to help members succeed.”

The conditions for a successful team effort — among them “a compelling direction, an enabling team structure, a supportive organizational context and expert team coaching” — “are easy to remember,” Dr. Hackman wrote.

“The challenge,” he continued, “comes in developing an understanding of those conditions that is deep and nuanced enough to be useful in guiding action, and in devising strategies for creating them even in demanding or team-unfriendly organizational circumstances.”

Besides tracking the interplay of pilots, co-pilots and navigators aboard civilian and military planes, Dr. Hackman observed corporate boards, sports teams, orchestra players, telephone-line repair crews, hospital workers and restaurant kitchen staff members.

And in recent years, for his 2011 book, “Collaborative Intelligence,” he was allowed to observe interactions within the American intelligence, defense, law-enforcement and crisis-management communities.

“Although my main aspiration has been to provide guidance that will be useful to team leaders and members,” he wrote, “there are no ‘one-minute’ prescriptions here — creating, leading and serving on teams is not that simple.”

Anita Woolley, a professor of organizational behavior and theory at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said, “The key thing about Dr. Hackman’s work is that it stands in contrast to some of the more popular models of leadership that focused very much on style or how leaders behave, versus what they do.”

Rather than viewing pay as a prime motivator for good performance, she continued, “he focused on features of people’s jobs that made them more intrinsically satisfied: the freedom to determine how they conduct their work, having a variety of tasks, having knowledge of the ultimate outcomes of their work, knowing how their work affects or is received by other people.”

He also liked to overturn some of the received wisdom about teamwork. In a 2011 article for The Harvard Business Review, Dr. Hackman listed “Six Common Misperceptions About Teamwork.” Among them was this:

“Misperception No. 2: It’s good to mix it up. New members bring energy and fresh ideas to a team. Without them, members risk becoming complacent, inattentive to changes in the environment, and too forgiving of fellow members’ misbehavior.

“Actually: The longer members stay together as an intact group, the better they do. As unreasonable as this may seem, the research evidence is unambiguous. Whether it is a basketball team or a string quartet, teams that stay together longer play together better.”

John Richard Hackman was born in Joliet, Ill., on June 14, 1940, the only child of J. Edward and Helen Hackman. His father was an oil pipeline engineer, his mother a schoolteacher.

Dr. Hackman received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., in 1962, and a doctorate in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1966. He soon joined the psychology and administrative sciences department faculties at Yale, where he taught until 1986, when he moved to the psychology and business departments at Harvard.

Besides his wife, who is an associate dean at Yale, he is survived by two daughters, Julia Beth Proffitt and Laura Dianne Codeanne, and four grandchildren.

After Dr. Hackman died, The Harvard Crimson wrote that for years he had “devoted countless hours to improving one team in particular — the Harvard women’s basketball squad, for which he volunteered as an honorary coach.”

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

Read More..

Gadgetwise Blog: App Smart Extra: On the Slopes

Apps that add a technological edge to your skiing or snowboarding vacation were the subject of a recent App Smart column. But the column could barely make a dent in discussing all the apps available to help winter sports enthusiasts. Here are some more suggestions.

One class of app that can be both helpful and fun is those apps that link you to the different Web cams that many resorts now have on the mountainsides. The Ski Webcams app, free on iTunes or $1.59 on Android, is one of the best of these. It can link you to resort Web cams either near your location or from a very extensive list or, just for fun, to random cams from around the world. It’s a very no-frills app. But it does tell you when each image was collected so you can see how up-to-date the picture is. And you can zoom into the images, which is useful for high-res video feeds.

For a different type of ski app experience, you may love the free iOS app SloPro. It’s a video editing app that offers a rather cool trick: the ability to slow a movie clip down to super slow motion, like the effects you get in sports videos shown on TV. These effects happen through image processing inside the app, so they’re not as eye-catching as using a slow-motion camera to film a skier making a jump, for example. But the effects are impressive, once you’ve mastered the app’s slightly tricky interface. And if you’re on a snow vacation with some friends, then you may be able to achieve some amazingly dramatic film clips.

There are also many apps available that are resort-specific, but since these come from different app developers their quality varies. For example the Val d’Isère Ski Guide app for Android, for the very popular French ski resort, has a pretty basic and uninspiring interface but offers detailed information on up-to-the-minute events, weather and facilities in the town. The $1 iOS app Live North Lake Tahoe is more graphically clever, and thus a little easier to navigate. It also offers a few niceties like a piste map and road cameras so you can plan your journey around traffic or difficult weather. But it does cost soemthing, and offers you services you could get for free by downloading one or two other free apps.

It’s definitely worth spending some time checking out what’s available for your chosen resort before you head off on a ski trip.

Quick call

Delta Airlines has released a free iPad app that has many typical services like destination maps and social networking tools. But it also has a “Glass Bottom Jet” option in-flight that shows an image of the ground underneath your aircraft’s flight path, assuming you’re hooked up to the airline’s in-plane Wi-Fi network.

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Fire Sweeps Through Nightclub in Brazil; Scores Dead

Agencia Rbs/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Firefighters working to put out a fire at a nightclub in Santa Maria, Brazil, early on Sunday morning.

RIO DE JANEIRO — A fire ignited by a flare from a live band’s pyrotechnic spectacle swept through a nightclub filled with hundreds of university students early Sunday morning in Santa Maria, a city in southern Brazil, leaving at least 245 people dead, police officials said.

Throughout Sunday morning, health workers hauled bodies from the nightclub, called Kiss, to hospitals in Santa Maria, with some survivors were taken to the nearby city of Pôrto Alegre to be treated for burns. Valdeci Oliveira, a local legislator, said he saw piles of bodies in the nightclub’s bathrooms after entering the venue with rescue workers.

Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello, a public security official in Santa Maria, said in a news conference Sunday that emergency responders had counted at least 245 dead and 48 wounded in the blaze. Witnesses who survived the blaze described a scene of mayhem inside the huge nightclub as hundreds of patrons rushed for its main exit.

“I only got out because I am strong,” Ezequiel Corte Real, a 23-year-old survivor, told reporters. He said he helped others escape the blaze, as well.

The disaster in Rio Grande do Sul, a relatively prosperous state in southern Brazil, sent shock waves throughout the country. Brazilian media reported that President Dilma Rousseff canceled appointments at a summit meeting in Chile of Latin American and European leaders, to travel to Santa Maria, city of about 260,000 residents that is known for its cluster of universities.

The disaster ranks among the deadliest nightclub fires in recent memory, comparable to the 2003 blaze in Rhode Island that killed 100 people and nightclub fire in 2004 in Buenos Aires in which 194 were killed.

Witnesses said the fire was ignited around 2 a.m. after a rock band began performing for an audience numbering in the hundreds, comprised largely of students in the agronomy and veterinary medicine programs in a local university. Many of the victims died of smoke inhalation, according to emergency officials.

“The smoke spread very quickly,” said Aline Santos Silva, 29, a survivor of the blaze, in comments to the GloboNews television network. “Those who were closest to the stage, where the band was playing, had the most difficulty getting out.”

Brazilian television stations broadcast images of trucks carrying corpses to hospitals in Santa Maria, where family members were gathering on Sunday. Photographs taken shortly after the blaze and posted on the Web sites of local news organizations showed frantic scenes in which people on the street outside the nightclub pulled bodies from the charred venue.

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Labor Relations Board Rulings Could Be Undone

By ruling that Mr. Obama’s three recess appointments last January were illegal, the federal appeals court ruling, if upheld, would leave the board with just one member, short of the quorum needed to issue any rulings. The Obama administration could appeal the court ruling, but no announcement was made on Friday.

If the Supreme Court were to uphold Friday’s ruling, issued by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, it would mean that the labor board did not have a quorum since last January and that all its rulings since then should be nullified.

Many Republicans and business groups applauded Friday’s ruling. They often assert that the appointments Mr. Obama made to the board have transformed it into a tool of organized labor. But many Democrats and labor unions say Mr. Obama’s appointments restored ideological balance to the board after it was tipped in favor of business interests under President George W. Bush

Mark G. Pearce, the board’s chairman, issued a statement saying the board disagreed with the ruling and suggested that other appeals courts hearing cases about the constitutionality of Mr. Obama’s appointments could reach a different conclusion.

“In the meantime, the board has important work to do,” said Mr. Pearce, whose agency oversees enforcement of the laws governing strikes and unionization drives. “We will continue to perform our statutory duties and issue decisions.”

Unless the Senate confirms future nominees to the board — Senate Republicans have blocked several of Mr. Obama’s board nominees — Mr. Pearce will be the only member left if Friday’s ruling is upheld. The board has five seats.

Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican who is the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued a statement that urged the recess appointees to “do the right thing and step down.” He added, “To avoid further damage to the economy, the N.L.R.B. must take the responsible course and cease issuing any further opinions until a constitutionally sound quorum can be established.”

The three disputed recess appointees included two Democrats, Sharon Block, deputy labor secretary, and Richard Griffin, general counsel to the operating engineers’ union; and one Republican, Terence Flynn, a counsel to a board member. Mr. Flynn resigned last May after being accused of leaking materials about the group’s deliberations. Another Republican member, Brian Hayes, stepped down when his term expired last month.

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40 Years After Roe v. Wade, Thousands March to Oppose Abortion

Drew Angerer/The New York Times

Pro-life activists made their way down Constitution Avenue toward the Supreme Court during the March for Life in Washington on Friday.

WASHINGTON — Three days after the 40th anniversary of the decision in Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, tens of thousands of abortion opponents from around the country came to the National Mall on Friday for the annual March for Life rally, which culminated in a demonstration in front of the Supreme Court building.

On a gray morning when the temperature was well below freezing, the crowd pressed in close against the stage to hear more than a dozen speakers, who included Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council; Representative Diane Black, Republican of Tennessee, who recently introduced legislation to withhold financing from Planned Parenthood, and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky; Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley of Boston; and Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania and Republican presidential candidate.

Mr. Santorum spoke of his wife’s decision not to have an abortion after they learned that their child — their daughter Bella, now 4 — had a rare genetic disorder called Trisomy 18.

“We all know that death is never better, never better,” Mr. Santorum said. “Bella is better for us, and we are better because of Bella.”

Jeanne Monahan, the president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, said that the march was both somber and hopeful.

“We’ve lost 55 million Americans to abortion,” she said. “At the same time, I think we’re starting to win. We’re winning in the court of public opinion, we’re winning in the states with legislation.”

Though the main event officially started at noon, the day began much earlier for the participants, with groups in matching scarves engaged in excited chatter on the subway and gaggles of schoolchildren wearing name tags around their necks. Arriving on the Mall, attendees were greeted with free signs (“Defund Planned Parenthood” and “Personhood for Everyone”) and a man barking into a megaphone, “Ireland is on the brink of legalizing abortion, which is not good.”

The march came two months after the 2012 campaign season, in which social issues like abortion largely took a back seat to the focus on the economy. But the issue did come up in Congressional races in which Republican candidates made controversial statements about rape or abortion. In Indiana, Richard E. Mourdock, a Republican candidate for the Senate, said in a debate that he believed that pregnancies resulting from rape were something that “God intended,” and in Illinois, Representative Joe Walsh said in a debate that abortion was never necessary to save the life of the mother because of “advances in science and technology.” Both men lost, hurt by a backlash from female voters.

Recent polls show that while a majority of Americans do not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned entirely, many favor some restrictions. In a Gallup poll released this week, 52 percent of those surveyed said that abortions should be legal only under certain circumstances, while 28 percent said they should be legal under all circumstances, and 18 percent said they should be illegal under all circumstances. In a Pew poll this month, 63 percent of respondents said they did not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned completely, and 29 percent said they did — views largely consistent with surveys taken over the past two decades.

“Most Americans want some restrictions on abortion,” Ms. Monahan said. “We see abortion as the human rights abuse of today.”

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, who spoke via a recorded video, called on the protest group, particularly the young people, to make abortion “a relic of the past.”

“Human life is not an economic or political commodity, and no government on earth has the right to treat it that way,” he said.

The crowd was dotted with large banners, many bearing the names of the attendees’ home states and churches and colleges. Gary Storey, 36, stood holding a handmade sign that read “I was adopted. Thanks Mom for my life.” Next to him stood his adoptive mother, Ellen Storey, 66, who held her own handmade sign with a picture of her six children and the words “To the mothers of our four adopted children, ‘Thank You’ for their lives.”

Mr. Storey said he was grateful for the decision by his biological mother to carry through with her pregnancy. “Beats the alternative,” he joked.

Last week, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America started a new Web site, and on Tuesday, its president, Cecile Richards, released a statement supporting abortion rights.

“Planned Parenthood understands that abortion is a deeply personal and often complex decision for a woman to consider, if and when she needs it,” she said. “A woman should have accurate information about all of her options around her pregnancy. To protect her health and the health of her family, a woman must have access to safe, legal abortion without interference from politicians, as protected by the Supreme Court for the last 40 years.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 25, 2013

A summary that appeared on the home page of NYTimes.com with an earlier version of this article misstated the day of the march. It took place on Friday, not Thursday.

Read More..

40 Years After Roe v. Wade, Thousands March to Oppose Abortion

Drew Angerer/The New York Times

Pro-life activists made their way down Constitution Avenue toward the Supreme Court during the March for Life in Washington on Friday.

WASHINGTON — Three days after the 40th anniversary of the decision in Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, tens of thousands of abortion opponents from around the country came to the National Mall on Friday for the annual March for Life rally, which culminated in a demonstration in front of the Supreme Court building.

On a gray morning when the temperature was well below freezing, the crowd pressed in close against the stage to hear more than a dozen speakers, who included Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council; Representative Diane Black, Republican of Tennessee, who recently introduced legislation to withhold financing from Planned Parenthood, and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky; Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley of Boston; and Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania and Republican presidential candidate.

Mr. Santorum spoke of his wife’s decision not to have an abortion after they learned that their child — their daughter Bella, now 4 — had a rare genetic disorder called Trisomy 18.

“We all know that death is never better, never better,” Mr. Santorum said. “Bella is better for us, and we are better because of Bella.”

Jeanne Monahan, the president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, said that the march was both somber and hopeful.

“We’ve lost 55 million Americans to abortion,” she said. “At the same time, I think we’re starting to win. We’re winning in the court of public opinion, we’re winning in the states with legislation.”

Though the main event officially started at noon, the day began much earlier for the participants, with groups in matching scarves engaged in excited chatter on the subway and gaggles of schoolchildren wearing name tags around their necks. Arriving on the Mall, attendees were greeted with free signs (“Defund Planned Parenthood” and “Personhood for Everyone”) and a man barking into a megaphone, “Ireland is on the brink of legalizing abortion, which is not good.”

The march came two months after the 2012 campaign season, in which social issues like abortion largely took a back seat to the focus on the economy. But the issue did come up in Congressional races in which Republican candidates made controversial statements about rape or abortion. In Indiana, Richard E. Mourdock, a Republican candidate for the Senate, said in a debate that he believed that pregnancies resulting from rape were something that “God intended,” and in Illinois, Representative Joe Walsh said in a debate that abortion was never necessary to save the life of the mother because of “advances in science and technology.” Both men lost, hurt by a backlash from female voters.

Recent polls show that while a majority of Americans do not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned entirely, many favor some restrictions. In a Gallup poll released this week, 52 percent of those surveyed said that abortions should be legal only under certain circumstances, while 28 percent said they should be legal under all circumstances, and 18 percent said they should be illegal under all circumstances. In a Pew poll this month, 63 percent of respondents said they did not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned completely, and 29 percent said they did — views largely consistent with surveys taken over the past two decades.

“Most Americans want some restrictions on abortion,” Ms. Monahan said. “We see abortion as the human rights abuse of today.”

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, who spoke via a recorded video, called on the protest group, particularly the young people, to make abortion “a relic of the past.”

“Human life is not an economic or political commodity, and no government on earth has the right to treat it that way,” he said.

The crowd was dotted with large banners, many bearing the names of the attendees’ home states and churches and colleges. Gary Storey, 36, stood holding a handmade sign that read “I was adopted. Thanks Mom for my life.” Next to him stood his adoptive mother, Ellen Storey, 66, who held her own handmade sign with a picture of her six children and the words “To the mothers of our four adopted children, ‘Thank You’ for their lives.”

Mr. Storey said he was grateful for the decision by his biological mother to carry through with her pregnancy. “Beats the alternative,” he joked.

Last week, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America started a new Web site, and on Tuesday, its president, Cecile Richards, released a statement supporting abortion rights.

“Planned Parenthood understands that abortion is a deeply personal and often complex decision for a woman to consider, if and when she needs it,” she said. “A woman should have accurate information about all of her options around her pregnancy. To protect her health and the health of her family, a woman must have access to safe, legal abortion without interference from politicians, as protected by the Supreme Court for the last 40 years.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 25, 2013

A summary that appeared on the home page of NYTimes.com with an earlier version of this article misstated the day of the march. It took place on Friday, not Thursday.

Read More..

Gadgetwise Blog: Is January the Time to Buy Electronics?

At the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, manufacturers tantalized consumers with new electronics soon to hit the shelves. But what does that do to the prices of current models that are being replaced? Is this a golden buying opportunity?

Yes and no. Yes for TVs, no for laptops. I’ll explain.

Decide.com, which tracks the price of electronics, studied what happened to the cost of TVs and laptops in past years after C.E.S.

What it found is that TV prices dip to near yearly lows after the show, matching holiday prices. With the average price of the top 250 TVs at $1,057, the post-show average is projected to drop an average of $211, to $846, based on data from previous  years. That is a 20 percent savings.

Laptops don’t drop so steeply. After the show, the 100 most popular laptops have historically been discounted 8 percent. This year that would mean the top 100 laptops, which average $780 in price, would be reduced $62, to $718.

Laptop price are lowest in late June through early July, right before the back to school sales, and during the last two weeks of September, after those sales, according to Decide.com’s data. At those times the discounts are typically 10 percent.

Of course, averages can be deceiving. Prices are volatile all year around, so a particular TV or computer you want could be discounted far more at any time.

There are a number of browser add-ons and apps that let you track prices of individual products, or you can use Decide.com – but it will cost you. Membership is $5 a month or $30 a year for full access.

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