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1/2 oz 2015 Bald Eagle Silver Coin
This unusually sized coin is one of only a few fractional silver coins produced by the RCM. The coin features precisely machined radial lines on both sides of the coin as a security feature, just as used on the gold and silver maple leaf coins.
The obverse features the Susanna Blunt effigy of Queen Elizabeth II, and the unusual denomination of two dollars.
The reverse showcases the largest of the birds of prey, a bald eagle, in flight carrying a salmon in it's talons. Tree branches share the foreground with the eagle. All of the writing on the reverse runs around the rim of the coin in the area filled by the radial lines.
In multiples of 20 these coins will be shipped in a plastic tube. In multiples of 480 these coins will be shipped in a monster box.
|Royal Canadian Mint
|Brilliant uncirculated
|The words "Elizabeth II 2 DOLLARS" and the Effigy of Queen Elizabeth II
|A Bald Eagle as it carries a salmon through the air with branches in the background and the words "Canada 2015 9999 Fine Silver 1/2 oz Argent Pur 9999" and the artist's initials
|Susanna Blunt (obverse), Claudio D'Angelo (reverse)


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National Disability Coordination Officer
Transitioning into training, education and employment are important steps for all students. If you are a person with disability aged 15 to 64, you can receive support with this transition through the National Disability Coordination Officer (NDCO) Program.
UON is proud to support National Disability Coordination Officers for the New England-North West (Region 2), Hunter-Central Coast (Region 6), and North Coast (Region 7).
School leavers and teachers
There are many pathways to consider when leaving school. Here you will find information on resources and support to help you map out options and prepare for life after school − whether you are transitioning to study or work.
Employing someone with disability creates a workplace culture within your organisation that values diversity and promotes the employment of people with disability. See information on internship programs and employing a person with disability.
Graduating students
If you are a graduating student with disability, your NDCO can help make this transition as smooth as possible and assist you to find the information you need to secure employment. Learn more about internship programs and finding employment.
People with disability in the community
Your regional NDCO can assist you to find information about options for study or securing employment.

subset: commoncrawl


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NEW! Raspberry Pi NoIR Camera v2
The Raspberry Pi NoIR Camera Module v2 is a high quality 8 megapixel Sony IMX219 sensor custom designed add-on board for Raspberry Pi, featuring a fixed focus lens. It's capable of 3280 x 2464 pixel static images, and also supports 1080p30, 720p60 and 640x480p90 video. It attaches to Pi by way of one of the small sockets on the board upper surface and uses the dedicated CSi interface, designed especially for interfacing to cameras.
- 8 megapixel camera capable of taking infrared photographs of 3280 x 2464 pixels
- Capture video at 1080p30, 720p60 and 640x480p90 resolutions
- All software is supported within the latest version of Raspbian Operating System


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| 12°C Belfast
Restrictions on welfare available to immigrants from the EU to the UK will be extended to child benefits.
Workers from the EU coming to Britain must already wait three months before they can claim jobseeker's allowance under new measures pushed through at the end of last year.
The Treasury has now decided that from July, EU migrants must live in the UK for three months before they can claim child benefit and child tax credit, the BBC said.
Economic secretary to the Treasury Nicky Morgan said the move would ensure that the welfare system would not be abused.
She told the BBC: "The government is building a system that is fair and consistent, one that supports those who want to work hard.
"These changes send a strong message that our welfare system is not open to abuse and will deter those who think that they can move to the UK primarily to claim benefits.
"Making work pay is part of our long-term plan to ensure that Britain's growing economy and dynamic jobs market deliver for those who work hard and play by the rules."
Benefit claimants will also face tests of their spoken English and those with a poor grasp of the language will have training and be expected to improve if it affects their search for work, the BBC said.
The Tories have set a goal of reducing net migration to the tens of thousands by the end of the Parliament.
But the target looks set to be missed after the most recent figures surged year-on-year by more than a third to 212,000 in the 12 months to September 2013.


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Two studies looking for a virus that has been linked to chronic fatigue syndrome have come to opposite conclusions. In a new study in PNAS, scientists found strains of the suspected virus in 32 of 37 stored blood samples from CFS patients, and they also showed up in a few recent samples. These findings don't agree with those of another study released a couple months earlier in Retrovirology, which found no viral presence at all, suggesting that researchers still have work to do to sort this out.
CFS has been a controversial diagnosis for some time, with the debate largely raging over whether it is a physical or psychological condition. Lately, many studies have been testing the involvement of xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV), which is closely related to a virus found in mice and may be associated with prostate cancer.
In the most recent research, a group of scientists applied a test for the virus to a set of 15-year-old frozen blood samples from known CFS patients. They used nested polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, to look for a specific gene sequence associated with an infection of any kind of murine leukemia virus.
The results published in PNAS showed that 32 of the 37 CFS samples tested positive for the virus, while only 3 of 44 healthy samples did. The researchers also took current blood samples from eight of the original 37 CFS patients, and seven of them tested positive again.
While these results seem encouraging for those looking to nail down a physical root cause for CFS, they follow on the heels of another experiment published in the journal Retrovirology that could not locate the virus or any related antibodies in a different set of CFS blood samples.
Part of the issue is that PCR can give different results depending on the conditions used. Different approaches to performing PCR can be highly sensitive or highly specific, and it appears that the choice of reaction conditions may make viruses appear or disappear in different samples.
The authors of the PNAS paper noted that their PCR tests were looking for a particular sequence commonly found in MLV. The sequence corresponds to the gag gene, one that the authors thought was the most distinctive part of the virus' sequence and the easiest to find.
Other studies, though, rely on finding a deletion usually found in the same area as the gag sequence. Testing for this deletion requires a more specific PCR test, and apparently the tests often turn up nothing—the PNAS paper's own samples did not have deletions that would have shown up in such a test, according to the authors.
Aside from testing methods, the nature of the virus seems to present further problems. As the divide between positive and negative CFS-viral links seems to fall somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, many researchers think the differences between American and European procedures may be to blame, or else continental differences between manifestations of the virus.
As scientists are unable to reach a conclusion at this level, it seems that they will have to call it a draw and choose some new testing methods. For their side, the PNAS authors are advocating for a new study that would demonstrate where and how the viral genes integrate into the human genome.
They estimate that the virus copies into as few as one out of every 4,000 cells, and the exact site ranges widely, so this type of research will take quite a bit of time. It's important to emphasize that even if researchers are able to find the virus, it won't demonstrate that it causes CFS. Still, this kind of good hard look may finally put the debate to rest.
PNAS, 2010. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1006901107
Retrovirology, 2010. DOI: 10.1186/1742-4690-7-57 (About DOIs).
Listing image by NIH


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Echoes by Jahzzar
Album Description
TAGGED AS:1intro, tracks to sync, betterwithmusic, pop, indie rock, See More...
TAGGED AS:1intro, tracks to sync, betterwithmusic, pop, indie rock, 90s, alternative, powerpop, electro pop, See Less...
Traveller's Guide is a user guide. 14 songs that try to summarize pop sounds and rhythms that have accompanied us in the past 20 years. Not everyone, of course; this guide focuses on those most direct and fresh, as it can not be otherwise, which have helped shape the character and personality of betterwithmusic.com It is a vindication of the 90's that doesn't ignore new trends, the result of someone who smells like teen spirit and doen't think the past was necessarily better. From Jarvis Cocker to Destroyer. From Blur and Oasis to Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Arctic Monkeys and Deerhunter. From Ash and The Jesus and Mary Chain to Girls and Arcade Fire. Supergrass and Beach Coast. Franz Ferdinand, Radiohead, Beck and The Strokes. Los Planetas, XixónSound and endless etc
Track Info
"Hyper Haze" by lizb
Echoes by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.


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The Hope swimming and diving teams launch their season Saturday (Oct. 23) by participating in the MIAA Relays hosted by Calvin College. It is a non-scoring meet devoted entirely to relay events. The regular season begins a week later (Friday, Oct. 29) with an MIAA dual meet at Albion
The programs is led by John Patnott who over his 30-year career has coached 31 MIAA championship teams (19 women, 12 men).
The Flying Dutchmen are the three-time defending MIAA champions. The pre-season roster of 25 swimmers and divers includes three seniors, nine juniors, eight sophomores and five freshmen.
Co-captains of the team are juniors Patrick Frayer (Grand Rapids/East Grand Rapids HS) and Brian Yount (Franklin, Ind./Franklin Community HS).
There are three returning swimmers who achieved All-MIAA honors a year ago -- sophomore Josh Grabijas (Howell/Howell HS), junior Michael Huisingh (Holland/Holland HS), and junior Jeff Shade (Davison/Davison HS).
Grabijas is the defending MIAA champion in the 500-yard and 1,650-yard freestyles. Shade was the 2009 MIAA champion in the 1,650.
Coach John Patnott's Pre-Season Overview
"Hope enters its 33rd year of swimming and diving competition with great anticipation. Although Hope graduated a large class last year it looks to compete for the Championship once again. Hope will be strong in the distance events with the top three distance swimmers in the MIAA returning (Josh Grabijas, Andrew Rose, and Jeff Shade). The breaststroke events should also be strong for the Dutchmen with Michael Huisingh, Geoff Ludema, Mark Waterstone, Alex Perkins, and Gregg Elhart all having the potential to score in the finals. Diving will also be strength for Hope as Ray Gaskell returns and the addition of Michael Heydlauff to the roster. The MIAA Championship was decided by a mere 25 points last year an it looks like it will just as close this year."
The Flying Dutch return 17 swimmers and divers from a 2009-10 team that placed second in the MIAA. The pre-season roster includes five seniors, three juniors, eight sophomores and five freshmen.
Team co-captains are senior Anna Heckenliable (Fort Collins, Colo./Fort Collins HS), senior Ashley Jasperse (Grand Rapids/Forest Hills Central HS), junior Sarah Sohn (Arlington Heights, Ill./Prospect HS), and senior Alicia Tuuk (Lansing, Ill./Munster HS).
There are four returning swimmers who achieved All-MIAA honors a year ago -- sophomore Laura Cameron (Ann Arbor/Pioneer HS), senior Kathryn Schewe (Berkley/Berkley HS), junior Sarah Sohn, and sophomore Libby Westrate (Grandville/Grandville HS).
Sohn is the defending MIAA champion in three events -- the 500-yard and 1,650-yard freestyle and 400-yard individual medley. She set the MIAA record in the 1,650 in 2009. Westrate marked her freshman year by winning the MIAA championship in the 100-yard and 200-yard freestyle races.
Coach John Patnott's Pre-Season Overview
"Hope enters its 33rd year of swimming and diving competition with excitement. Once again Hope will be in the hunt for the MIAA Championship. The Dutch will be strong in the backstroke events with the return of Katie Schewe, Laura Cameron, Lisa Heyboer, Alicia Tuuk and the addition of Maria Kieft. The butterfly events should also be strong for Hope with Ashley Jasperse, Alicia Tuuk, Anna Heckenliable, and Chelsea Wiese returning. Libby Westrate will lead the Hope Women sprinters and Sarah Sohn will head up the women distance swimmers. Diving will also be strength for Hope as Kyleigh Sheldon and Jessica Warner returning. Perhaps Hope's greatest strength will be its balance in all of the events."


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#softcontrolabstracts 2012-ongoing @softmobility @karialtmann
In recent years, a central challenge for Rhizome as an internet-based organization has been adjusting to the C A S C A D E (to expand on a phrase coined by Gawker Deputy Editor Max Read), the torrent of feeds that more or less constitute the contemporary (though rapidly changing) internet. Most of our traffic comes to Rhizome via these feeds—Facebook and Twitter, of course, and the new ones that are angel-invested into reality every day. Still, we don't jump onto every rapidly popularizing forum; we have one of our own to cultivate.
All of this is all to say that we never had a compelling reason to start an Instagram account, or, let's say, a compelling way in which to use the platform. But this changed last fall, when artist Ed Fornieles suggested that he launch and operate an account on our behalf as a way of layering up the "character" of Rhizome for his LARPesque gala, New York New York Happy Happy. In the weeks leading up to the event, his posts staged a descent into moneyed debauchery (champagne, neoclassical painting, Macklemore) and creepy biotechnologies (cloning, intense photos of eyes). It was an oddly charged experience for us at IRL Rhizome, at times agonistic: one image was taken down for infringing Insta's Terms of Service (it was a guy's bethonged butt with the text "Believe in the Booty") and we asked Ed to take one or two down for broaching our (flexible to a point!) sense of institutional responsibility.


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You drink, you pee. But urine is more than just
that drink you had a few hours ago. If you've ever wondered where pee
comes from, this movie has the answers!
Note: All information on KidsHealth® is for educational purposes only.
For specific medical advice, diagnoses, and treatment, consult your doctor.
© 1995-
Images provided by The Nemours Foundation, iStock, Getty Images, Veer, Shutterstock,
and Clipart.com.


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The mission of the Stalking Resource Center is to enhance the ability of professionals, organizations, and systems to effectively respond to stalking.
Also see: Are You Being Stalked? (Brochure) Es usted victima de acecho? Stalking Fact Sheet Acecho: hoja de informacion
While legal definitions of stalking vary from one jurisdiction to another, a good working definition of stalking is a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear.
Stalking is serious, often violent, and can escalate over time.
You are not to blame for a stalker's behavior.
[Matthew J. Breiding et al., "Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Violence, Stalking, and Intimate Partner Violence Victimization – National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, United States, 2011", Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Vol. 63, No. 8 (2014): 7]
[Katrina Baum et al., (2009). "Stalking Victimization in the United States," (Washington, DC:BJS, 2009).]
These are common reactions to being stalked.
*The murder of a woman.
[Judith McFarlane et al., "Stalking and Intimate Partner Femicide," Homicide Studies 3, no. 4 (1999).]
A stalker can be someone you know well or not at all. Most have dated or been involved with the people they stalk. Most stalking cases involve men stalking women, but men do stalk men, women do stalk women, and women do stalk men.
[Kris Mohandie et al., "The RECON Typology of Stalking: Reliability and Validity Based upon a Large Sample of North American Stalkers," Journal of Forensic Sciences 51, no. 1 (2006).]
2011© National Center for Victims of Crime. All Rights Reserved.
P.O. Box 101207, Arlington, VA 22210
p.202-467-8700 | f.202-467-8701 | [email protected]
Return to the National Center


text: NYSE:ORCL Oracle Stock Forecast, Price & News Adding Choose a watchlist: Adding You have already added five stocks to your watchlist. Upgrade to MarketBeat Daily Premium to add more stocks to your watchlist. Adding Oracle Co. Please log in to your account or sign up in order to add this asset to your watchlist. Log In and Add $59.80 +0.50 (+0.84 %) (As of 09/28/2020 06:49 AM ET) Add Compare Share Today's Range$58.96Now: $59.80▼$59.9950-Day Range$53.99MA: $56.83▼$60.9452-Week Range$39.71Now: $59.80▼$62.60Volume9.37 million shsAverage Volume13.97 million shsMarket Capitalization$180.05 billionP/E Ratio18.75Dividend Yield1.61%Beta0.83 ProfileAnalyst RatingsChartCompetitorsDividendEarningsFinancialsInsider TradesInstitutional OwnershipHeadlinesOptions ChainSEC FilingsShort InterestSocial Media Oracle Corporation develops, manufactures, markets, sells, hosts, and supports application, platform, and infrastructure solutions for information technology (IT) environments worldwide. The company provides services in three primary layers of the cloud: Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Infrastructure as a Service. It offers human capital and talent management, enterprise resource planning, customer experience and relationship management, procurement, supply chain management, project portfolio management, business analytics and enterprise performance management, and industry-specific application software, as well as financial management and governance, and risk and compliance applications. The company also licenses its Oracle Database for storage, retrieval, and manipulation of data; and Oracle Fusion Middleware software to build, deploy, secure, access, extend, and integrate business applications, as well as automate business processes. In addition, it provides a range of development tools, identity management, and business analytics software solutions for mobile computing development to address the development needs of businesses; Java, a software development language; and big data solutions. Further, the company provides Oracle Engineered Systems, servers, storage, industry-specific hardware, and hardware support products, as well as operating systems, virtualization, management, and other hardware-related software. Additionally, it provides consulting services, including IT strategy alignment, enterprise architecture planning and design, initial software implementation and integration, application development and integration, security assessments, and ongoing software enhancements and upgrade services; and customer support and education services. The company serves businesses, government agencies, educational institutions, and resellers. Oracle Corporation was founded in 1977 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California.Read More Beat the Market (BTM) Rank™ 2.2 Analyst's Opinion Consensus RatingOracle has received a consensus rating of Hold. The company's average rating score is 2.35, and is based on 10 buy ratings, 15 hold ratings, and 1 sell rating.Price Target Upside/DownsideAccording to analysts' consensus price target of $60.03, Oracle has a forecasted upside of 0.4% from its current price of $59.80.Amount of Analyst CoverageOracle has been the subject of 18 research reports in the past 90 days, demonstrating strong analyst interest in this stock. Previous Next 3.0 Community Rank Outperform VotesOracle has received 1,983 "outperform" votes. (Add your "outperform" vote.)Underperform VotesOracle has received 1,377 "underperform" votes. (Add your "underperform" vote.)Community SentimentOracle has received 59.02% "outperform" votes from our community.MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Oracle and other stocks. Vote "Outperform" if you believe ORCL will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote "Underperform" if you believe ORCL will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days. Previous Next 2.5 Dividend Strength Dividend YieldOracle pays a meaningful dividend of 1.61%, higher than the bottom 25% of all stocks that pay dividends.Dividend GrowthOracle has only been increasing its dividend for 1 years.Dividend CoverageThe dividend payout ratio of Oracle is 27.75%. This payout ratio is at a healthy, sustainable level, below 75%.Dividend SustainabilityBased on earnings estimates, Oracle will have a dividend payout ratio of 24.87% next year. This indicates that Oracle will be able to sustain or increase its dividend. Previous Next 2.0 Company Ownership Insider Buying vs. Insider SellingIn the past three months, Oracle insiders have sold more of their company's stock than they have bought. Specifically, they have bought $0.00 in company stock and sold $139,428,167.00 in company stock.Percentage Held by Insiders36.60% of the stock of Oracle is held by insiders. A high percentage of insider ownership can be a sign of company health.Percentage Held by Institutions48.24% of the stock of Oracle is held by institutions. High institutional ownership can be a signal of strong market trust in this company. Previous Next 1.3 Earnings and Valuation Earnings GrowthEarnings for Oracle are expected to grow by 7.52% in the coming year, from $3.59 to $3.86 per share.Price to Earnings Ratio vs. the MarketThe P/E ratio of Oracle is 18.75, which means that it is trading at a more expensive P/E ratio than the market average P/E ratio of about 17.65.Price to Earnings Ratio vs. SectorThe P/E ratio of Oracle is 18.75, which means that it is trading at a less expensive P/E ratio than the Computer and Technology sector average P/E ratio of about 57.31.Price to Earnings Growth RatioOracle has a PEG Ratio of 1.44. PEG Ratios above 1 indicate that a company could be overvalued.Price to Book Value per Share RatioOracle has a P/B Ratio of 14.44. P/B Ratios above 3 indicate that a company could be overvalued with respect to its assets and liabilities. Previous Next Analyst Opinion: 2.2Community Rank: 3.0Dividend Strength: 2.5Insider Behavior: 2.0Valuation: 1.3 5 -4 -3 -2 -1 -Overall Beat the Market Rank™2.18 out of 5 stars Industry, Sector and Symbol Stock Exchange NYSE Industry Prepackaged software Sub-IndustrySystems Software SectorComputer and Technology Current SymbolNYSE:ORCL Previous Symbol CUSIP68389X10 CIK1341439 Webwww.oracle.com Phone650-506-7000Debt Debt-to-Equity Ratio6.68 Current Ratio2.66 Quick Ratio3.03Price-To-Earnings Trailing P/E Ratio18.75 Forward P/E Ratio16.66 P/E Growth1.44 Sales & Book Value Annual Sales$39.07 billion Price / Sales4.61 Cash Flow$4.91 per share Price / Cash Flow12.19 Book Value$4.14 per share Price / Book14.44Profitability EPS (Most Recent Fiscal Year)$3.46 Net Income$10.14 billion Net Margins26.13% Return on Equity85.71% Return on Assets10.90%Miscellaneous Employees135,000 Outstanding Shares3,010,888,000Market Cap$180.05 billion Next Earnings Date12/10/2020 (Estimated) OptionableOptionable $59.80 +0.50 (+0.84 %) (As of 09/28/2020 06:49 AM ET) 30 days | 90 days | 365 days | Advanced Chart Receive ORCL News and Ratings via Email Sign-up to receive the latest news and ratings for ORCL and its competitors with MarketBeat's FREE daily newsletter. Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) Frequently Asked Questions How has Oracle's stock been impacted by COVID-19 (Coronavirus)? Oracle's stock was trading at $44.72 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 (Coronavirus) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, ORCL shares have increased by 33.7% and is now trading at $59.80. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. Do Wall Street analysts recommend investors buy shares of Oracle? 26 Wall Street analysts have issued "buy," "hold," and "sell" ratings for Oracle in the last year. There are currently 1 sell rating, 15 hold ratings and 10 buy ratings for the stock, resulting in a consensus recommendation of "Hold." View analyst ratings for Oracle. When is Oracle's next earnings date? Oracle is scheduled to release its next quarterly earnings announcement on Thursday, December 10th 2020. View our earnings forecast for Oracle. How were Oracle's earnings last quarter? Oracle Co. (NYSE:ORCL) announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, September, 10th. The enterprise software provider reported $0.93 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts' consensus estimates of $0.86 by $0.07. The enterprise software provider earned $9.37 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $9.15 billion. Oracle had a return on equity of 85.71% and a net margin of 26.13%. During the same period last year, the firm earned $0.81 earnings per share. View Oracle's earnings history. How often does Oracle pay dividends? What is the dividend yield for Oracle? Oracle announced a quarterly dividend on Thursday, September 10th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, October 8th will be given a dividend of $0.24 per share on Thursday, October 22nd. This represents a $0.96 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.61%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, October 7th. View Oracle's dividend history. How will Oracle's stock buyback program work? Oracle declared that its Board of Directors has approved a stock repurchase program on Thursday, March 12th 2020, which authorizes the company to repurchase $15,000,000,000.00 in outstanding shares, according to EventVestor. This repurchase authorization authorizes the company to reacquire up to 9.8% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase programs are often a sign that the company's board believes its shares are undervalued. What guidance has Oracle issued on next quarter's earnings? Oracle issued an update on its second quarter earnings guidance on Thursday, September, 10th. The company provided earnings per share (EPS) guidance of $0.98-1.02 for the period, compared to the Thomson Reuters consensus estimate of $0.94. The company issued revenue guidance of +1-3% to $9.715-9.900 billion, compared to the consensus revenue estimate of $9.59 billion. What price target have analysts set for ORCL? 26 analysts have issued 12 month price objectives for Oracle's stock. Their forecasts range from $41.00 to $70.00. On average, they anticipate Oracle's share price to reach $60.03 in the next year. This suggests a possible upside of 0.4% from the stock's current price. View analysts' price targets for Oracle. Has Oracle been receiving favorable news coverage? News stories about ORCL stock have been trending negative on Monday, InfoTrie Sentiment Analysis reports. InfoTrie identifies negative and positive press coverage by monitoring more than six thousand blog and news sources in real time. The firm ranks coverage of publicly-traded companies on a scale of -5 to 5, with scores nearest to five being the most favorable. Oracle earned a media sentiment score of -2.9 on InfoTrie's scale. They also assigned media coverage about the enterprise software provider a news buzz of 0.0 out of 10, meaning that recent press coverage is extremely unlikely to have an impact on the company's share price in the immediate future. View the latest news about Oracle. Are investors shorting Oracle? Oracle saw a drop in short interest in the month of September. As of September 15th, there was short interest totaling 30,470,000 shares, a drop of 12.7% from the August 31st total of 34,890,000 shares. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 14,890,000 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is currently 2.0 days. Currently, 1.6% of the shares of the company are sold short. View Oracle's Short Interest. Who are some of Oracle's key competitors? Some companies that are related to Oracle include Microsoft (MSFT), ServiceNow (NOW), VMware (VMW), Fortinet (FTNT), Symantec (SYMC), Proofpoint (PFPT), Qualys (QLYS), CommVault Systems (CVLT), Progress Software (PRGS) and FalconStor Software (FALC). View all competitors. What other stocks do shareholders of Oracle own? Based on aggregate information from My MarketBeat watchlists, some companies that other Oracle investors own include Intel (INTC), Cisco Systems (CSCO), NVIDIA (NVDA), Walt Disney (DIS), Micron Technology (MU), AT&T (T), Bank of America (BAC), Alibaba Group (BABA), Netflix (NFLX) and General Electric (GE). Who are Oracle's key executives? Oracle's management team includes the following people: Mr. Lawrence J. Ellison, Co-Founder, Chairman & CTO (Age 75)Ms. Safra Ada Catz, CEO & Director (Age 57)Mr. Mark Vincent Hurd, CEO & Director (Age 62)Mr. Edward Screven, Chief Corp. Architect (Age 53)Mr. Douglas A. Kehring, Exec. VP of Corp. Operations & Head of Corp. Devel. (Age 46) What is Oracle's stock symbol? Oracle trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol "ORCL." Who are Oracle's major shareholders? Oracle's stock is owned by many different retail and institutional investors. Top institutional shareholders include Vanguard Group Inc. (6.17%), BlackRock Inc. (4.88%), Bank of New York Mellon Corp (1.14%), Nordea Investment Management AB (0.98%), First Eagle Investment Management LLC (0.97%) and FMR LLC (0.58%). Company insiders that own Oracle stock include Bruce R Chizen, Charles W Moorman, Dorian Daley, Edward Screven, Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeffrey Berg, Jeffrey Henley, Lawrence Joseph Ellison, Mark V Hurd, Michael J Boskin, Naomi O Seligman, Renee Jo James, Safra Catz and W Corey West. View institutional ownership trends for Oracle. Which major investors are selling Oracle stock? ORCL stock was sold by a variety of institutional investors in the last quarter, including Yacktman Asset Management LP, BlackRock Inc., Tiedemann Advisors LLC, Davis Selected Advisers, FMR LLC, AQR Capital Management LLC, FIL Ltd, and Bank of Nova Scotia. Company insiders that have sold Oracle company stock in the last year include Bruce R Chizen, Dorian Daley, Edward Screven, Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeffrey Berg, Jeffrey Henley, Lawrence Joseph Ellison, Safra Catz, and W Corey West. View insider buying and selling activity for Oracle. Which major investors are buying Oracle stock? ORCL stock was purchased by a variety of institutional investors in the last quarter, including Vanguard Group Inc., Nordea Investment Management AB, Point72 Asset Management L.P., LSV Asset Management, MERIAN GLOBAL INVESTORS UK Ltd, Achmea Investment Management B.V., First Trust Advisors LP, and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. View insider buying and selling activity for Oracle. How do I buy shares of Oracle? Shares of ORCL can be purchased through any online brokerage account. Popular online brokerages with access to the U.S. stock market include Vanguard Brokerage Services, TD Ameritrade, E*TRADE, Robinhood, Fidelity, and Charles Schwab. What is Oracle's stock price today? One share of ORCL stock can currently be purchased for approximately $59.80. How big of a company is Oracle? Oracle has a market capitalization of $180.05 billion and generates $39.07 billion in revenue each year. The enterprise software provider earns $10.14 billion in net income (profit) each year or $3.46 on an earnings per share basis. Oracle employs 135,000 workers across the globe. What is Oracle's official website? The official website for Oracle is www.oracle.com. How can I contact Oracle? Oracle's mailing address is 500 ORACLE PARKWAY, REDWOOD CITY CA, 94065. The enterprise software provider can be reached via phone at 650-506-7000 or via email at [email protected] This page was last updated on 9/28/2020 by MarketBeat.com Staff 30 Days of MarketBeat All Access for $1.00 Sign up for MarketBeat All Access to gain access to MarketBeat's full suite of research tools: Best-in-Class Portfolio Monitoring View the latest news, buy/sell ratings, SEC filings and insider transactions for your stocks. Compare your portfolio performance to leading indices and get personalized stock ideas based on your portfolio. Stock Ideas and Recommendations Get daily stock ideas top-performing Wall Street analysts. Get short term trading ideas from the MarketBeat Idea Engine. View which stocks are hot on social media with MarketBeat's trending stocks report. Advanced Stock Screeners and Research Tools Identify stocks that meet your criteria using seven unique stock screeners. See what's happening in the market right now with MarketBeat's real-time news feed. 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Job openings in the U.S. dropped in July, indicating employment growth may be hard-pressed to pick up through year-end. The number of positions waiting to be filled fell by 58,000 to 3.66 million, the Labor Department said in a statement Friday. Hiring and separations also cooled.
Companies are reluctant to add workers as Europe�s debt crisis slows global markets and the so-called U.S. fiscal cliff of automatic tax increases and spending cuts looms at the end of 2012. Persistent unemployment, a �grave concern� according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, is a hurdle for consumer spending, which makes up about 70 percent of the economy.
�Firms are going to remain cautious about adding jobs,� Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts, said before the report. �Demand is lackluster. All the uncertainty is still there.�
Today�s report helps shed light on the dynamics behind the monthly employment figures.
Payrolls rose by 96,000 workers in August after a revised 141,000 increase in July that was smaller than initially estimated, the Labor Department said on Sept. 7. The median estimate of economists in a Bloomberg survey called for a 130,000 advance. Private payrolls, which exclude government agencies, rose 103,000 after a revised gain of 162,000.
The number of people hired fell to 4.23 million in July from 4.28 million the previous month, while the hiring rate held at 3.2 percent, today�s report showed.
By Industry
Job openings decreased in manufacturing, professional and business services, and education and health services.
Companies reducing staff include Mountain View, California- based Google Inc., which plans to cut about 4,000 positions at its Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. unit, with about one-third of the reductions coming in the U.S. Printer maker Lexmark International Inc. will shed 1,700 jobs globally.
Total firings, which exclude retirements and those who left their job voluntarily, decreased to 1.55 million from 1.76 million a month before, today�s report showed.
About another 2.16 million people quit their jobs in July, up from 2.13 million in the prior month. The separations rate fell to 3 percent.
Past Year
In the 12 months ended in July, the economy created a net 1.8 million jobs, representing 51.4 million hires and about 49.6 million separations, today�s report showed.
Considering the 12.8 million Americans who were unemployed in July, today�s figures indicate there are about 3.5 people vying for every opening, up from about 1.8 when the recession began in December 2007.
The payrolls report last week showed the unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent as more Americans left the labor force. The rate has been stuck above 8 percent since February 2009, the longest stretch in monthly records going back to 1948.
The lack of progress in the labor market helps explain why Federal Reserve policy makers meeting this week may opt for additional easing to boost the economy. The U.S. has managed to recover 4.1 million of the 8.8 million jobs lost as a result of the 18-month recession that ended in June 2009.


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Certain noxious ideologies just refuse to die, and still, those crazy beliefs continue to spit out some kernel of truth.
Elites condemn them, yet they also greatly believe in them – and even practice some of their sinister arts. The regular people will embrace the ideological hodgepodge for the simple solutions to their hard lives. Meanwhile, these false faiths slowly strangle the last remaining decency from our putrid lives.
Racialism-Eugenics is one such ideology that will probably never fully die in the modern world. The reason is that its origins lie at the excrement of the European colonial empires who had created this dastardly mess, some five hundred years ago.
The first colonial monsters and empires represented the Spanish and the Portuguese invaders. Many racialists like to quote from the founders of modern eugenics, polygenism, craniometry and phrenology, (structural brain differences), but modern racial sciences and eugenics actually birthed from the lies of bad Catholic Christianity.
On the Iberian peninsula during the late 1400s, or the fifteenth-century, the Aragonese, Castilian and Portuguese empires were finishing their 'reconquests.' What was this conquest truly about? The Catholic Church ordered a Crusade, or cruzada, against the Muslim invaders of the peninsula, which had taken place during the second decade of the 8th century A.D.
A religious war was in full operation, and not just against the Muslims, or moros, but also against all forms of Christian heresy, called herejes, such as Gnostic Christian churches, and there was also a war against the large Jewish communities found in most cities and towns in the peninsula, called juderías.
As the Christians, representing the Castilians, Aragonese and Portuguese, began to expel the religious enemies of the Church from the peninsula, the royal courts began issuing more restrictive laws and decrees against the religious enemies that stayed within the Iberian peninsula. All the religious communities, meaning the Christians, Muslims and Jews had lived within their own communities, or ghettos. This spatial segregation was already clear even within the Muslim cities on the peninsula.
When the Christians decided to siege an 'enemy combatant' city and took it, called toma, the Christian knights usually murdered a bunch of religious enemies unfortunate enough to walk the public streets, and then they turned the main mosque into a cathedral church. They soon forced the religious groups to stay within their own walled communities. Not only did the religious adversaries have to return to their districts at night, but they had to wear distinctive clothes and symbols sown on their outfits, even hats. They lost certain rights, called fueros, such as prohibitions from carrying swords in public, riding horses, attending universities, and the payment of certain taxes. The royal courts hoped these prohibitions would force the Jews and Muslims to convert to Christianity – or leave.
Many adherents did convert publicly to Christianity, others left, and yet some of them actually practiced their old religious beliefs in private, or mixed the old traditions with the new religion.
Once the Christian kingdoms had defeated the last of the Moorish kingdoms on the Iberian peninsula, called Nasrid Granada, on January 2, 1492, the Spanish state was ready for the final stage of its liquidation, or its Christian Crusade against all religious enemies, implying the Moorish Muslims and the Jews, or judios.
Two of the Christian kingdoms on the peninsula had already united into an imperial power, called Las Españas, or the Kingdom of the Spains, comprising Castile, (including the northern Celt-Iberian provinces of Galiza, Asturias, Santander), and Aragon, also including Catalonia and Valencia. There were also the recently reconquered southern, Muslim provinces of Extremadura and Andalucía, which fell under the jurisdiction of Castille.
A hundred years later, this imperial power would later include the kingdoms of Vizcaya, (the Basque Country), the Portuguese empire, and the conquered provinces of the Carib nation, (Las Islas Occidentales), the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, (southern Italy), the Mexica Empire, (Aztec New Spain), the Tahuantinsuyu Empire, (Inca Peru), and the eastern Malay islands on the Pacific, Las Filipinas, or the Philippines, Flandes, the modern Benelux countries, Franche-Comte, (a province in eastern France), and El Ducado de Milano, or the Duchy of Milan in northern Italy.
By the decade of the 1580s, the Kingdom of the Spains transformed into the greatest world empire that human history had ever seen – and even greater than the Mongol empire of the 1240s, because the sun never set on the Spanish imperial flag.
Around hundred years earlier, the 1470s, the Spanish united Christian monarchy, or los reinos cristianos, also introduced the Holy Inquisition in order to uncover, punish and redeem any converted New Christians, or cristianos nuevos, who refused to fully practice the new faith, or that continued to practice the old religious traditions in private. Meanwhile, the royal throne issued full expulsions against any non-Christians that refused to convert: the Jews in 1492 and the Muslims in 1609.
With the danger of New Christians inside the Empire, the Spanish Inquisition developed a pseudo-scientific system for better surveillance, control, arrest and even physical extermination of the potential threats, called, limpieza de sangre, or blood cleanliness. According to those medieval experts, blood poisoning spread through mothers giving breast milk to their babies. The Spanish Catholic Church had found a new obsession with saving babies from poisoned heretical mother's milk!
The inquisitors believed that people who had practiced un-Christian religions had then permanently poisoned their own blood-breast milk through religious heresy. Christianity has always had obsessions with blood and fire, in the case of the Holy Blood of Jesus on the Cross, and the Lake of Fire Hell in the Apocalypse for non-believers of the Christian religion.
The first racial division of modern history represented the religious divide between Old Christians who kept the true Catholic Christian faith, (and yet did not go over to the Protestant heresy in the later decades), and the New Christians, recent converts to Christianity, from the Jewish and Muslim faiths.
The first realm of religious enemies represented the pagan idolaters, (inclusive of the eastern religions, such as Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Taoists and Confucians), who if conquered through a Crusade or Holy War, had to convert to Christianity, with persuasion, or more than likely, with the sword, fire, and chains of violence.
The second group of adversaries were the other monotheist apostates, such as Jews and Muslims.
The most dangerous ones, or the religious terrorists in those days, were the heretics, or simply the Christians that refused to conform to Catholic doctrine and practice, such as the Gnostics, called alumbrados, the various Protestant sects, non-Catholic Orthodox, and the excommunicated Churches of the East, such as the Nestorians, Assyrians, Mandaeans and Copts.
As the Spanish Empire conquered new lands in the Americas, or the western hemisphere of the Earth, it needed cheap and servile labor for their plantation and cattle economies. Its enemies on two continents, the Western Hemisphere, or the Americas, and in Africa, were both pagan idolaters. If noble natives and Africans converted to Christianity, then they received noble privileges, such as carrying weapons, riding horses, wearing aristocratic European clothes and not having to work or pay taxes for a living.
If these former idolaters were commoners, and even if they converted to Catholic Christianity, they still could not receive any noble privileges, while they had to work for noble and wealthy Spanish colonials. During the decade of the 1580s in the Americas, Spanish colonials referred to these New Christian, darker skinned, native-African mixes as castas, or as racial castes.
Through the practices of the Spanish-Portuguese Empires, race had transformed into its modern, perverted, helter-skelter dimensions: internal population enemies dominated through the Nation-State, the losers of European colonial invasions and genocides, concern over a poisoned blood-gene pool, facial phenotypes, and low socio-economic status.
This is the true conception of the modern ideology of racialism, including its later variants of scientific racialism, positivism, utilitarianism, Malthusian overpopulation theories, prohibition against illegal drugs, social Darwinism, polygenism, craniometry, phrenology, eugenics, anthropology-culture studies, psychobabble and IQ, or Intelligence Quotient.
Racialism-Eugenics has existed as an important ideology in the maintenance of earlier colonial power relations, while it has instituted sophisticated social controls within contemporary society. It has become the state religion for most European nations and for all European colonial-settler states. This ideology defends the European sponsored imperial genocides against Natives, Africans and Asians, or against whatever non-European inferior cultures.
Racialism-Eugenics has further served as a bulwark for continual mass imprisonment and police murder against the poor inside of the 'non-white' population base. Most dreadfully, this pseudo-doctrine with its state institutional supports has enabled a type of self-hatred and inferiority complex within the targeted, darker people.
As the Afro-revolutionary Franz Fanon wrote, the colonized or ex-colonized must not only fight the actual oppressors and state criminals, but also has to acknowledge the demons of doubt and subservience within him or herself.
This fetid belief system would also move on to even greater societal targets: the poor in general regardless of color, the 'criminal element,' and the mentally ill. The sociopathic ideology still murders it potential victims and has destroyed millions of lives up to this actual day.
It now hides its evil works through various contemporary institutions: the mental hospital-social services clinic, the prison, and mandatory state schooling segregation, such as Special Education, Special Needs and Remedial Level Classes.
Let us continue to expose its sordid and covert history of institutional violence. As European settler-colonialism engaged in even more genocidal wars and slavery operations, the same race oil-grease to the imperial engines began to work on its own. The Spanish colonial masters developed over 64 different racial caste distinctions between white Spanish and the Native and African racial shades. We still use some of their racial terms today: mulato, negro, marron, mestizo, zambo, coyote and lobo.
As the 18th century, or the 1700s, continued, all the European colonial powers: Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English, French and Danish developed the solid concept of 'whiteness' versus the supposed, darker scum of humanity: African slaves, Indian, (meaning American), savages and Hindu coolies, (in the India Subcontinent or South Asia).
During the 19th century, or the 1800s, European racialism took on a more 'scientific' or positivistic flair. Suddenly, a whole slew of European and European-American intellectuals, (too many to list in this essay), began to formulate philosophical-scientific theories on race, nation, culture, genetics, environment and brain-skull size.
Within all of these racialist theories there emerged our modern surrogate ideologies-sciences of Natural Evolution, Nationalism, Social Darwinism, Liberalism, Utilitarianism, Anthropology, Positivism, Social Psychology, or (social criminality-mental illness), Genetics, and the most violent and sinister of them all – Eugenics.
By the 20th century, Eugenics became the complete science in uncovering the true nature of the poly genetic races, blood poisoning, the elimination of skin color, the understanding of inferior beings, social pathologies, such as containment of the poor, the criminal elements, and the disposal of the mentally ill. In all the European nations and the European run colonial-settler states, from the United States to Australia to Canada to South Africa to every dictator pest in Latin America, state institutional policy supported a heavy defensive and offensive system against the internal-external race dangers.
The infernal methods against the rotten inferior beasts included outright physical genocide and mass imprisonment-forced slavery. Meanwhile, state actors forced kidnapping rings and mandatory schooling for Native children, inclusive of cultural genocide. Medical 'professionals' encouraged scientific experiments on host populations and forced sterilization against targeted women. Banking magnates allowed segregation of inferior groups within ghettos or within urban poverty zones, while the state denied any social benefits towards lower class recipients. In a sense, 'the white-elite state' hoped that the inferior breeds of half-humans would die out. The earlier over-population theories of Malthus became popular once again, and the European homegrown ideology of Fascism would put the final touches on the Racialist-Eugenics pseudo-science.
Up to our actual time, the ideologies of anthropology, liberalism, natural selection, social psychology, psychobabble, genetics and IQ have desperately tried to hide their racialist-eugenics past lives. This essay serves to expose the truth to all Anarchists, and to whomever else, about one of the world's more vile ideological monsters.
American universities no longer have Eugenics studies, but this does not mean that the elites, who control our contemporary existence, do not believe in such theories. They still adhere to them, and this is the reason they send their children to highly segregated, university prep schools, where their fellow elites attend, and where very few of the racial vermin, poor, and criminal underclass will also attend – and where they definitely cannot afford the tuition.
This perverted-genocidal ideology and pseudo-science is still very much alive, both within the closed discussions and secretive meetings of world elites, such as Bilderberg and the World Economic Forum, and within the all of our contemporary institutions of social control: schools, corporate work sites, prisons, militaries, governments, media conglomerates and bureaucracies.
As long as the modern state maintains its rights to commit heinous crimes, so this ideology will continue to ooze its infections, and putrefy our lives and culture.


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The following article explains the bizarre hoax perpetrated against Megan Meier by Lori Drew and others that resulted in megan's death by suicide. If it doesn't provoke your sense of outrage you have no emotions.
Behind the online hoax that led to a girl's suicide.
by Lauren CollinsTHe New yorker;; JANUARY 21, 2008
Just past suppertime on a starry night in November, several unfamiliar cars pulled up outside 251 Waterford Crystal Drive, in Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, where news vans had been parked for weeks to cover a tragedy that came to be known, in the bluff shorthand of the morning shows, as the MySpace Suicide Hoax. A well-combed man in a blue suit, a correspondent for "Good Morning America," stood on the front lawn yelling into his BlackBerry. Two ornamental angels loomed from an upstairs window of the house, a two-story Colonial with white siding. Inside, much of the furniture had been removed from the living room, making way for a large picture, propped on an easel, of Megan Meier.
A year earlier, Megan had committed suicide after an exchange of hostile messages with a boy who had befriended her on MySpace. She was thirteen, a volleyball player and a Chihuahua maniac. "M is for Modern, E is for Enthusiastic, G is for Goofy, A is for Alluring, N is for Neglected," she had written in an acrostic poem that accompanied her MySpace profile. The "MySpace Suicide Hoax" tagline that appeared on the broadcasts and in the chat rooms was, however, a misnomer. Megan's suicide—for anyone who had not already heard, or been forwarded, the story (often with a stunned "OMG")—had not been a hoax; rather, it was precipitated by a hoax, involving a boy named Josh Evans. Josh Evans was a fake, a cyber-character created by neighbors of the Meiers.
In the picture, Megan was wearing a rhinestone tiara. Her eyes were rimmed with black eyeliner, her brows plucked into the shape of birds' wings, her brown hair prettily lifted off her face in layers. She stared directly at the camera, screwing her lips into the half-sulky, half-silly, exactingly lip-glossed pout that—whether designed to suggest vampiness or simply to mask the indignities of orthodontia—is a ubiquitous affectation of American teen-age girldom.
Megan—Megan Babi was her Internet handle—had used a similar photograph to illustrate her MySpace profile. It was just a casual snapshot, but something about it seemed to embody both the sadness and the exhilaration of female adolescence. Megan loved Pink, a loungewear line by Victoria's Secret, which is popular for the inclusion of a free toy "mini-dog" with many purchases. Like Pink, the photograph represented a tender contradiction: the girl who wants both a stuffed animal and a Miracle Bra. "Oh, god. Poor baby. How could she think she was ugly?" someone wrote on Jezebel, a blog aimed at women in their twenties, reading that Megan hated the way she looked. The pictures reminded one how costly an expression a smile can be for a girl of thirteen. It was safer, Megan's pose suggested, to strike wary airs than to convey an earnestness that could be exploited by her enemies at school or, worse, on the Internet.
Like many teen-agers, Megan and her peers carried on an online social life that was more mercurial, and perhaps more crucial to their sense of status and acceptance, than the one they inhabited in the flesh. On MySpace, and on other social-networking sites, such as Friendster and Facebook, a person can project a larger, more confident self, a nervy collection of favorite music, books, quotations, pleasures, and complaints. He or she, able to play with different personas, is released from some of the petty humiliations of being a middle-schooler—all it takes to be a Ludacris fan is a couple of keystrokes.
But trying on identities is, in the fluid environment of the Internet, a riskier experiment than raiding Mom's makeup bag. Squabbles that would take days to percolate in person can within seconds explode into full-blown wars. Disputes can also become painfully public. Sites allow users to rank their "Top Friends," so that the ever-shifting alliances of a clique are posted, for all to see, in a sort of popularity ledger. Likewise, polling applications enable a person to pose a question—Is Caitlin hot or not?—to his or her network of acquaintances, who can follow the results in real time, via a brightly colored thermometer icon (as can Caitlin).
Teen-age identities mutate so quickly online, and can be masked so easily, that by the morning after Megan was pronounced dead Josh Evans had vanished from MySpace. It wasn't until a month after her death that a neighbor named Michele Mulford told the Meiers that Curt and Lori Drew, who lived four houses down, had created "Josh" in concert with their thirteen-year-old daughter, a longtime friend of Megan's. (An eighteen-year-old girl who worked for the Drews was also involved.) The two thirteen-year-olds had recently quarrelled. Mulford's own daughter, also thirteen, had been given the password to the account, and had sent at least one unkind message to Megan in Josh's name. Megan had accompanied the Drews on several vacations, and they knew that she was taking medication.
For nearly a year, on the advice of the police, the Meiers had kept quiet about the Drews' involvement in Megan's death. After investigators determined that the Drews' actions, if cruel, had not broken any laws, the Meiers spoke with Steve Pokin, a columnist at the local paper, the Suburban Journals. Pokin revealed the ruse in his column, "Pokin' Around," on November 13th of last year. "I know that they did not physically come up to our house and tie a belt around her neck," Tina Meier told Pokin. "But when adults are involved and continue to screw with a thirteen-year-old—with or without mental problems—it is absolutely vile." (Pokin did not name the Drews.)
Pokin's story threw first Dardenne Prairie and then everyone else—guidance counsellors, techies, First Amendment advocates, parents, bloggers, parenting bloggers—into paroxysms of recrimination. They were all certain that something sick, and distinctly modern, had happened, but no one could agree about whether its source was a culture that encouraged teen-agers to act too grownup or one that permitted grownups to behave like teen-agers. An Australian newspaper invoked the television show "Desperate Housewives," declaring that Waterford Crystal Drive had "been transformed into a real life version of Wisteria Lane." Amid the furor, Jack Banas, the prosecuting attorney for St. Charles County, announced that he would reopen the case. (Last week, a federal grand jury in California—where MySpace is based—issued subpoenas for a potential wire-fraud prosecution. The Drews' lawyer says his clients have not received one.)
Back in the Meiers' living room, the correspondent for "Good Morning America" was attempting to warm up the Meiers—Ron, a tool-and-die maker, and Tina, a real-estate agent. "The producers in New York have some spectacu—um, really moving—pictures of the two angels, and I'm going to have to ask you about that," he said. Tina nodded. A thirty-seven-year-old with wholesome features and a blond bob, she looked sallow and drawn. So did Ron, a burly man wearing a plaid shirt.
Before the taping, Ron gave Tina a bereft, searching glance. The cameraman was hoping to capture it. "Could you look at your wife again?" he said. Then he asked Tina, "Could you look at your husband?"
"Stop!" Tina said, holding a palm up, before bursting into strained laughter. "We're getting a divorce."
When the filming was over, Tina drove to her mother's house, twenty minutes away. Ron still lives on Waterford Crystal Drive. So do the Mulfords and so do the Drews, whose porch light stayed on into the night.
ardenne Prairie is thirty miles west of St. Louis, nearly equidistant from the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers. Around seven thousand people live there, a seventy-per-cent increase since 2000. O'Fallon, the next town over, has ranked high on recent best-places-to-live lists in Money and on RelocateAmerica.com. The twin preoccupations of the boom community, kids and real estate, culminate in the town's subdivisions: Peaceful Valley, Pinnacle Points, Dardenne Landing, Dardenne Meadows, Dardenne Estates.
Ron and Tina Meier both grew up nearby. They met in the second grade, and in high school they were prom dates. In 1990, when Tina was nineteen and Ron was twenty, they married. Two years later, Tina gave birth to Megan. "She was just this little chunky thing, always had an attitude," Tina said recently, sitting in her mother's living room. In 1994, the family moved into a new house in the Waterford Crossing subdivision, where developers plowed corn and soybean fields and laid down sod as green as Palmolive dishwashing liquid.
Waterford Crossing is an enclave of modest one- and two-story houses. From above, its streets resemble a capital "F," with a curving main drive bisected by a cul-de-sac. There are no television antennas, fuel tanks, laundry poles, or aboveground swimming pools visible on any property, per the bylaws of the homeowners' association; each household is permitted no more than two pets. With few trees or fences to obstruct conversation, or to offer privacy, Waterford Crossing inspires a neighborliness that surpasses the occasional borrowed egg. Waterford Crystal Drive was a particularly friendly block: residents talked in their driveways or back yards, invited one another for drinks on the patio and for Super Bowl parties, carpooled, dog-sat, shared with one another the numerical codes that would open their garage doors. "There were, like, five families, all kind of intermingled," Blaine Buckles, a teen-ager who lives in the neighborhood, told me.
As Megan got older, she demonstrated a worrisome volatility. "Megan could come in a room and be happy, and something could affect her and she would just switch," Tina recalled. In the third grade, Megan told Tina that she wanted to kill herself. The Meiers took her to see a psychiatrist. Megan was prescribed Celexa (an antidepression drug), Concerta (for A.D.D.), and Geodon (a mood stabilizer). "I, as her mom, always felt it was her weight. Megan always just felt like she was never enough," Tina recalled. "Even in kindergarten, she made a comment about how she didn't like her legs compared to other girls' legs."
Still, Tina said, Megan "was not this depressed kid every step of the way." Sixth grade "wasn't horrible," but Megan had some skirmishes with girls in her class. She loved going fishing with her dad, watching horror movies, and playing with her Chihuahua, Barry. "Megan had imagination," Ron told me.
Around the neighborhood, she maintained a reputation for fearlessness. Blaine recalled, "Me and my brother were scared of frogs—she wasn't. She'd stick it in our faces." Megan was loud and funny; she laughed in theatrical, air-sucking gasps. For years, she had served as the self-appointed guardian of a blind boy at her school, leading him through the hallways between classes.
In 2005, "seventh grade started, and that's when it was just a mess," Tina said. "Megan was trying desperately to fit in." Her parents were particularly upset by her insistence on cultivating what Tina called "the instant maturity look." That year, Megan and the Drews' daughter maintained a fickle friendship. (In 2004, Tina sold the Drews their house.) The Drews' daughter, according to neighbors, was prim and obedient, while Megan had the wilder, more domineering personality. The girls would go on jags of companionship. "They would do all day Friday, do all day Saturday, and, by the time Sunday came, Megan needed her space," Tina recalled. Sometimes this left the Drews' daughter feeling rejected, and, according to Tina, "Lori and Curt getting ticked off."
All parents take umbrage at slights to their children, but the physical proximity of the two families, and their roles in the close-knit dynamic of Waterford Crystal Drive, made the situation tense. According to some of their neighbors, the Drews had never been popular on the block. They seem to have been regarded as local inconveniences, their offenses good-humoredly endured but regularly remarked upon, like those of a barking dog. "Lori was slightly annoying, but I didn't see a cruel streak," Michele Mulford said. Christine Buckles, Blaine's mother, recalled that they were "kind of pushy. They'd been here for a couple of months, and felt like they should be included on everything." Christine and Blaine even devised a special signal so that Christine could excuse herself when the Drews lingered in conversation. Nevertheless, Tina says that she asked Megan to be nice to the Drews' daughter. "Listen, are you being ignorant?" she'd tell her. "You can't just call her when you have nothing else to do." But the relationship fizzled, with some hard feelings.
For eighth grade, Ron and Tina transferred Megan from public school to Immaculate Conception Dardenne, where the classes were smaller and uniforms were mandatory. The change was "wonderful," Tina said, with Megan "not paying attention to her hair as much, not worrying about undereye concealer." Megan soon began asking her parents for permission to open a MySpace account, so that she could chat with her new friends.
Tina and Ron were hesitant: the year before, Megan and the Drews' daughter had secretly set up a MySpace account. They were found out when a cousin of Tina's discovered the profile, which featured a flashing Playboy bunny icon. The Meiers did not mention the incident to the Drews. According to Jack Banas, Lori Drew, going through her cell-phone bills, found that someone had placed a series of calls to New York. Lori's daughter told her that Megan had made the calls, to talk to a boy they had met online. The Drews and the Meiers never discussed that incident, either.
"Just think about it, Mom, please!" Megan persisted. "Please, for my fourteenth birthday can I get a MySpace account if you approve of what's on there?"
Tina and Ron agreed to allow Megan to open an account, with some restrictions: "1. Your dad and I are the only ones who know the password. 2. It has to be set to 'private.' 3. We have to approve the content. 4. We have to be in the room at all times when you're on MySpace."
On September 13, 2006, the profile for Megan Babi—"Female, 14 years old, getto st. louis, MISSOURI, United States"—went live. For her instant-messaging name, Megan chose "prettynbling16." She wrote, "I'm an 8th grader at icd school * I'm goin to st. dominic high school * um I like love to hip hop dance and I love to shop * ya theres really hott guys at my school they are fine!!!"
ySpace, with its cluttered layout, can suggest an online incarnation of the broken-windows theory—surface disorder begetting actual chaos. It works like this: a person signs up (all he needs is an e-mail address) and then constructs a profile by choosing text, songs, graphics, wallpaper, and video clips. Often, when you open a page, the music's already thumping, as if you'd stumbled into a party in someone's basement.
The reigning aesthetic on the site is bulletin board meets lava lamp: tack up a bunch of stuff and set it blazing in bubbly neon. Black backgrounds with cramped, colored fonts are popular, as are blinking banners, cartoon characters, hearts, exclamation points, pictures of cars, and graffiti-style writing. MySpace has a pliant grammar, and its users manipulate lowercase and capital letters for visual effect. "Z"s trump "s"s, so that "Miss Honey Love" becomes "Mz.Hon3y Luv." A boy named Shane writes his name "$h@NE," in the pasteup style of a ransom note.
Unlike Facebook, MySpace does not require its users to identify themselves with a first and a last name, so there is little illusion, even, that a profile possesses any direct correspondence to a flesh-and-blood individual. At thirteen, Megan was technically too young to have an account—users are required to be at least fourteen—but MySpace has not instituted any effective means of enforcing its age restrictions. MySpace's attitude toward its users seems to be caveat emptor. Anyone wishing to report an impostor, for instance, is asked to submit a "salute": "This means we will need an image of yourself holding a handwritten sign with the word 'MySpace.com' and your Friend ID. . . ." (A Web site asking its users to communicate by poster board and markers seems akin to the telephone company saying that it accepts complaints only by carrier pigeon.)
In mid-September of 2006, Megan received a friend request from Josh Evans. "The picture of him was adorable," Tina recalled. "He had big blue eyes, very cut features, brown wavy hair." Josh's profile said that he was sixteen years old and six feet three. He had a great chest, preferred Coke to Pepsi, didn't eat sushi ("no eww"), owned "a trillian" CDs, and liked pizza with "green peppers, pepperoni, sausage OH YEAH."
The purpose of "Josh Evans," according to the Drews' testimony to Jack Banas, was to ascertain whether Megan was making nasty remarks about their daughter, whom Megan had previously called a "lesbian." Initially, a police officer wrote in a report that Lori Drew had "instigated" and "monitored" the account; she now contends the report is inaccurate, and has asserted that she merely agreed to the idea, which her daughter and Ashley Grills, the eighteen-year-old who worked for a direct-mail business that the Drews ran from their dining room, initiated. (According to Banas, Grills has been hospitalized for psychiatric care as a result of the case.)
Whoever, exactly, came up with "Josh" conjured more than a perfunctory decoy. An online Frankenstein's monster, geared to the needs of an insecure, excitable teen-age girl, Josh's components were carefully chosen to exploit Megan's vulnerabilities. His profile picture was lifted from that of a handsome teen-age boy. He listened to Rascal Flatts, Korn, and Nickelback. His "turn-ons" included tongue piercings and being nibbled on the ear.
Playing on Megan's susceptibility to underdogs, Josh's creators endowed him with a pitiable bio: "when I was 7 my dad left me and my mom and my older brother and my newborn brother . . . poor mom yeah she had such a hard time . . . finding work to pay for us after he left." His ambitions also seemed tweaked to Megan's desires. His answer to the section "Goal you would like to achieve this year" was "meet a great girl." The girl he was looking for happened to have long brown hair, like Megan. As for weight, Josh answered, "DONT REALLY MATTER."
"Can I add him, Mom, please, please?" Megan said.
Tina eventually gave in. "You can add him," she said, "but if there's one cross word delete him. If he's, like, 'Hey, hot stuff, you wanna come meet me?,' bloop, gone."
For the next four weeks, Megan and her friends carried on a high-spirited correspondence. Their talk, as goofily digressive as any teen-agers', was occasionally marked by innuendo and backbiting, but most of it wouldn't have rated a PG-13. "Haha . . . well I can allow you to have Nick Lachey and Zac Efron as your best men," Megan wrote to a friend as they discussed their hypothetical weddings.
It's the sometimes inorganic genesis of friendships on MySpace that leads to many of its unsavory moments, when people who have never met—or don't exist—infiltrate one another's lives in intimate ways. Care Bears on Fire, a preteen punk band, captures the medium's potential for embarrassing betrayal in a song called "Met You on MySpace," about being duped by a unicorn: "You said you were 12/And lived in my nabe/But you're really 300/and you live in a cave."
Mistaken identities have been a staple of human interaction from Jacob and Esau to Shakespeare, but electronic communication has made misrepresentation temptingly immediate, a development not lost on the producers of "You've Got Mail." The conventions of romantic comedy, though, have required that the parties who detest each other in their workaday existences come to know each other's charms in the parallel universe of the computer. The other way around—proxy war perpetrated online by people who, like the Drews, feign affection face to face—and it's a horror movie. If the classic suburban crime of passion once involved a dusty attic, it may now feature a home office.
The Drews have contended, through a lawyer, that "all messages sent"—from Josh to Megan—"were positive until the last twenty-four hours" of the correspondence, but there were some weird episodes in the twenty-nine days that they exchanged messages. Once, when Megan asked Josh for his phone number, he replied that he didn't have a phone. Another time, Josh asked Megan if she wanted to touch his pet snake, which alarmed Tina. (Megan thought that her mother's interpretation of the offer was disgusting.)
One day, Tina was online and Josh instant-messaged her, thinking it was Megan. That day, Josh was Ashley Grills, a recent high-school graduate, who, according to Jack Banas's report, was the most active of Josh's online impersonators. Tina typed a message: "Hey, I think you're a little old for my daughter." Josh apologized and quickly logged off. Tina says that she called the police to try to find out whether Josh was legitimate, to no avail. She recalled, "Megan then wrote, 'Hey, my mom contacted the po-pos to see if you were real or not,' and Josh said something like 'She's probably just trying to protect you.' That was another red flag. Usually, a sixteen-year-old would just say, 'What a bitch.' "
In spite of Tina's misgivings, she was thrilled to see Megan happy. "He would say, 'How was your day?' " Tina recalled. In response to Megan's tiara picture, he wrote, "You're my beautiful princess." On October 12th, Megan wrote, to a friend, "JOSH=ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!!!! JOSH=100% AMAZING!!! yeah, that's right."
On October 15th, Megan received a message from Josh, written by Michele Mulford's daughter from the Mulfords' home computer. Mulford says that one day when her daughter was playing at the Drews' house someone told her about the Josh Evans account, gave her the password, and encouraged her to join in the game. Her message to Megan, as Josh, said that he had heard she was mean to her friends. In the course of the day, Megan's anxiety escalated. "What???" she wrote at 8:57 P.M. "Umm how bout no were the hell u gewt this?" she wrote, frantically, at 8:59. At 9:00: "Who are u even talkin bout umm ya idk." 9:03: "Ok how bout no tell me who they are and ya so w/e u know u ant to nice ur self!!!!!" 9:05: "What the hell did I even say?"
On the sixteenth, Megan went to school, where she passed out invitations to her fourteenth birthday party, which was to include a game of flashlight tag around the subdivision. At 3:20, Tina picked Megan up at school and dropped her off at home. In the basement, Megan immediately logged on to MySpace. Tina had to take Megan's sister, Allison, to the orthodontist, and, before she left, she told Megan to get off the computer. Ron had worked the early shift and was upstairs taking a nap.
From the orthodontist's office, Tina called Megan to check on her. Megan was crying. She admitted to Tina that she was still online, and that some kids were mocking her. Twenty minutes later, Tina called her again, and found her sobbing. "Mom, I can't even explain!" she said.
When Tina got home, at five o'clock, she found Megan in front of the computer in a state of superheated distress. An insult war had broken out among Megan, Josh, and some of their friends. Megan had called another girl a slut, and the aspersions were returned in kind. Ron says that after Megan died he discovered a final message from Josh, saying, "You're a shitty person, and the world would be a better place without you in it."
Tina and Megan argued. Someone had sent a message calling Megan fat, and Tina saw that she had replied, "I'm skinny now."
"Why would you say that?" Tina asked.
"You're supposed to be my mom," Megan said. "You're supposed to be on my side!" Megan ran up to her room, bumping into Ron on the stairs. After about twenty minutes, Tina had a "god-awful feeling." She went upstairs to Megan's room and found her in the closet. Megan had used a cloth belt—Tina had just bought it for her at Old Navy—to hang herself from a closet organizer. Tina saw her immediately, as Megan had recently persuaded Ron to take the doors off her closet, replacing them with a pair of translucent purple curtains. As ambulances raced down Waterford Crystal Drive, Michele Mulford's telephone rang. It was Lori Drew, who asked for Mulford's daughter. "Mrs. Drew said that something's happened to Megan, and for me to keep my mouth shut," Mulford says her daughter told her, though Drew denies trying to hush the girl.
ver on Hanley Road, just across the street from Immaculate Conception, the Dardenne Prairie mayor's office was in chaos this past November. Tacked to one of its walls was a memo, scrawled with pink highlighter:
Dear officers (especially night shift)— Please provide extra patrol for Waterford Crossing, particularly Waterford Crystal Drive. We are concerned with any suspicious activity in light of the recent media attention.
In the three weeks since Steve Pokin's article appeared, public opinion against the Drews had been harsh, verging on violent. Much of the outrage was directed at Lori Drew as an exemplar of the micromanaging "helicopter parent," a familiar image at least since the Wanda Holloway case. In Channelview, Texas, in 1991, Holloway, a homemaker, attempted to hire a hit man to eliminate a neighbor, Verna Heath, the mother of a girl, Amber, who had twice been elected cheerleader over Holloway's daughter, Shanna. But Channelview and Dardenne Prairie, where teen-agers still have after-school jobs, are not type-A parent/overscheduled kid kinds of towns. Like Wanda Holloway, Lori Drew may not have represented a helicopter parent so much as a more ancient archetype: the resentful neighbor.
Lori Drew has shown little remorse, contending, through a lawyer, that she is the undeserving victim of an "avalanche of criticism." Her statement suggests that she may have been less an overbearing parent than an indifferent one:
Although she was aware of the account, Lori Drew never sent any messages to Megan or to anyone else using this MySpace account. . . . Lori Drew was not aware of any mean, nasty or negative comments made by anyone against Megan until after Megan took her own life. . . .
Pam Fogarty, the mayor, had two hundred unanswered e-mails in her in-box. "People are shocked, and they're pissed as hell!" she told me. Fogarty shared her constituents' indignation. The week before, by a unanimous vote, the town's Board of Aldermen had passed Ordinance No. 1228, "providing for the offenses of harassment and cyberharassment within the city of Dardenne Prairie, Missouri."
Whether out of shame for what they did or over rumors sparked by what they did not do, the Drews had assumed a bunker mentality. Neighbors said that Curt Drew had taken to getting into his minivan and backing down the driveway to retrieve the mail. Their daughter is not attending school. Someone threw a brick through their kitchen window and, in April, the side of their house was splattered with a paintball. "I've got a county here that people are busting these people's property up, setting up fake Web sites," Jack Banas told me. "I'm getting calls from India and France!"
One afternoon, I went to the Drews' house and an older man wearing a Central Missouri State sweatshirt opened the door. "They can't speak," he said apologetically, and closed the door.
The desire for vengeance had been even more virulent online, as people pursued the Drews in a computerized version of a tar-and-feather brigade. On message boards, commenters posted the Drews' home address and Curt's business address (under the heading "Child Killer"), organizing a telephone and e-mail campaign against them and the businesses advertised in The Drew Advantage. Someone hacked into Lori Drew's voice mail. On YouTube, one could watch a creepy video showing photos of Lori Drew—whose physical unloveliness many took as corroboration of a loserish iniquity—intercut with images of an evil clown from a Stephen King movie. The video was set to The Who's "Who Are You?" A vicious blog called "Megan Had It Coming" appeared on the Internet, and people claimed, unconvincingly, that it was written by Lori Drew. The blog is now the subject of a separate investigation by the St. Charles sheriff's department.
On November 25, 2006, the day that Ron and Tina learned that Josh Evans was a fabrication, they went to their garage and removed a Foosball table. They had been storing it at the request of the Drews, who planned to give it to their children as a Christmas present. Using an axe and a sledgehammer, Ron and Tina bashed the table to pieces. They dumped the debris in the Drews' yard, in a box on which Tina had spray-painted "Merry Christmas."
Lori Drew called the police. According to the police report, she "wished to inform law enforcement about a neighborhood dispute." This was the report in which Lori admitted to being actively involved in—rather than, as she now contends, vaguely aware of—the Josh Evans hoax. Lori told the police that she "felt this incident contributed to Megan's suicide, but she did not feel 'as guilty' because at the funeral she found out that 'Megan had tried to commit suicide before.' " (Megan had never tried to commit suicide.) In January, the Drews filed a complaint, saying that Ron Meier drove by while they were shovelling the driveway and shouted, "Who are you gonna kill today?" Ron has been charged with a misdemeanor for performing a "lawn job" on the Drews' front yard. (He denies it.)
On December 3rd, after his review of the case, Jack Banas announced that no charges would be brought. In Banas's reckoning, the Drews are conclusively guilty of little except egregious judgment that set off a chain of horrible events, and deep insensitivity in their aftermath. He invoked the Duke lacrosse case as a cautionary example of due process succumbing to the passions of a community inflamed. "Are you going to hug this lady, say she did something great?" he told me. "No. She made a huge, fatal mistake by trusting these kids. But there are undisputed facts and disputed facts, and even if you believe all of them they still don't give you a criminal fact pattern in the state of Missouri."
The Meiers do not hold Ashley Grills responsible, nor do they blame Michele Mulford's daughter, who sent the message that kicked off the online melee on October 15th. "If you don't think that child wishes she could go back and change that . . . " Tina said. "It could easily have been Megan doing that."
Shortly after Steve Pokin's story broke in the Suburban Journals, Tina Meier ran into Lori Drew at a shopping center. Tina followed Lori to a pizzeria. When Lori walked out, Tina entered the store and spoke to the owner.
"Do you advertise with The Drew Advantage?" Tina asked. "If so, I advise you to take a look at the Journals. The girl involved was my daughter." She did the same thing when Lori went to Divine Nails, several doors down.
"Tina, just please stop this," Lori said, in the parking lot.
"Stop this? Lori, I will never stop this."
Tina Meier, at the end of November, recalled the atmosphere at Waterford Crossing in the days before the trouble started: "Then it was fun and goofy and the kids were out and things were good." In the weeks after the suicide, Megan's MySpace in-box filled with remembrances and apologies. One girl who had been involved in the fight on the night of Megan's suicide wrote to Tina:
Hi . . . you might not know me . . . but [my friend] used to live in missouri and be friends with your wonderful daughter . . . [we] get made fun of too. being called whores etc . . . etc. but we're doing everything we can to stop bullying . . . because we dont want something this terrible to have to happen to anyone again . . . we're going to counciling . . . and i think we're really gunna start to make a difference. ♦


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For many parents, watching their son or daughter graduate from college is one of the proudest moments of their lives. For Breinigsville resident Ira Lerner, that will certainly be the case as his son, Edward, receives his bachelor's degree from University Park. But to Ira, that moment will be even more special because he, too, will have just walked across the same stage to accept his own Penn State degree.
Ira Lerner and his son, Edward, decided that, instead of choosing one graduation over the other, both will receive their diplomas at Penn State Lehigh Valley's Commencement Ceremony this at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 16, in the West Garden in Fogelsville, Pa.
"My son could have chosen to attend his own commencement ceremony at University Park, but he is walking at Penn State Lehigh Valley as a gift to me," said Ira. "To share that moment with my son is the best graduation gift I could ask for."
Prior to attending Penn State Lehigh Valley, Ira, who had previously received an associate's degree, spent more than 30 years working for the same company. When the family made the move to the Lehigh Valley, Ira began looking for a job and soon realized that he might be at a disadvantage.
"When you work for the same company for that long, they know who you are and what your experience is, so the fact that I only had a two-year degree didn't make much difference," said Lerner. "In today's job market, things are different. I needed that key, the bachelor's degree, to open doors."
He pursued a degree designed for adult learners, Penn State Lehigh Valley's Organizational Leadership (OLEAD) program.
"It offered a flexible schedule that allowed me to take most of my courses online and the affordability was definitely a factor. Even better, I didn't have to take any calculus classes," joked Lerner. "I'm so glad I pursued this degree at Penn State Lehigh Valley. My experience was made even more positive by the dedication of my faculty adviser."
Edward, having taken the traditional high school-to-college path to obtain his degree in physics, understands why his dad made the decision to go back to school.
"I'm excited for my dad. I think he felt held back by not having his degree," said Edward. "Now he can go out and pursue his next career with more confidence."
Though their higher education experiences were much different, both father and son did find time occasionally to commiserate about college life. Edward is quick to note that, at University Park, there is a constant 'college' atmosphere, while dad Ira took most of his classes through his computer. Still, both feel that Penn State has prepared them to take their next steps as job seekers.
As for future plans, Edward hopes to find a job in green energy, with a special interest in solar panel technology, while Ira is focusing on finding meaningful work that serves others.
"I often joked with Edward that I was going to transfer to University Park and we could be roommates. I don't think he appreciated it very much," Ira said, laughing. "But these years that we spent going through the same university at the same time have provided us with memories that not many other fathers and sons can say they shared. And that is pretty cool."


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Ohio Sen. Portman raises money for NHGOP
An Ohio Senator who was on the vice presidential short list with New Hampshire's Kelly Ayotte will hold a fundraiser to help the New Hampshire Republican Party next week.
U.S. Sen. Rob Portman doesn't appear to be testing the waters ahead of the New Hampshire primary. He is going to be in the state to attend his 35th-year reunion at Dartmouth College and asked Ayotte if he could help out while he was in the state.
This makes sense, given another Dartmouth College alum, Sen. Kirtsen Gillibrand, D-N.Y., will attend a fundraiser for New Hampshire's other senator, Jeanne Shaheen, in Concord the same day.
The Portman event will take place June 14 at noon at the Tuscan Kitcken in Salem. Tickets start at $250 per person. Ayotte is expected to attend also.
"Senator Portman has been a leader in the fight to promote pro-growth policies that will create jobs and restore fiscal discipline to Washington," said New Hampshire Republican Party chair Jennifer Horn. "We are very pleased that he has agreed to help our party raise the resources that we need to elect responsible Republicans in 2014 who will help control spending, reduce taxes and limit government."


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Saturday meetup
Official xkcd meetups happen every Saturday afternoon at 4:00 p.m.(*) at that day's normal geohash coordinates. It is considered a Saturday meetup if you are there at 4:00 p.m. or if you meet people, but you are most likely to encounter other readers of xkcd if you go at the designated time. Bring games!
You're encouraged to geohash on any day of the week that the coordinates are accessible to you, but if you attempt one meetup all week, make a little extra effort to have it be on Saturday. All meetups start at 4:00 p.m. or as designated on the graticule page.
There's even an achievement for making it to 100 Saturday meetups.
*In some areas, 4:00pm is too close to sunset during the winter, so earlier meetups are often more appropriate. See individual graticule pages for local conventions.