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Past Meetings
Jurassic Holiday Happy Hour
December 03, 2014
5:30 PM to 8:00 PM
911 Washington Avenue; 5th Floor
St. Louis , MO 63101
Venue Website
On December 3rd, we're gonna party like it's 65,000,000 B.C.
2014 Digital Communications Summit Review
November 20, 2014
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
PRSA St. Louis Website
Presentation Review
Digital Communications Summit 2014
November 07, 2014
9:00 AM to 3:00 PM
University of Missouri–St. Louis, JC Penney Conference Center
One University Blvd
St. Louis, MO 63121
Register for the 2014 PRSA St. Louis Digital Communications Summit (formerly 'Tech Day')
October Luncheon
October 15, 2014
11:30 AM to 1:00 PM
Ces & Judy's
10405 Clayton Rd
St Louis, MO 63131
Venue Website
Reputation Management through "Kindtagious"
August Luncheon
August 20, 2014
11:30 AM to 1:00 PM
Ces & Judy's
10405 Clayton Rd
St Louis, MO 63131
Venue Website
Diversity Panel (click Read More) NOTE: You MUST register by Monday, August 18th at 5:00 pm CDT
Cocktail Hour with PRSA St. Louis at The Shack
July 17, 2014
5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
The Shack
13645 Big Bend Road
St. Louis, MO 63122
Venue Website
Join fellow PRSA members [and local media professionals] for cocktail hour on Thursday, July 17 between 5-7 p.m. at The Shack
2014 PRSA Midwest District Conference on June 18-20 in Springfield, Missouri
June 18, 2014
7:30 AM to 4:00 PM
Ramada Plaza Hotel and Oasis Convention Center
2546 North Glenstone
Springfield, MO 65803
Venue Website
2014 PRSA Midwest District Conference to be held in Springfield, Missouri on June 18-20
Convergent Media: What does it mean for communicators?
May 21, 2014
11:30 AM to 1:00 PM
Ces & Judy's
10405 Clayton Rd
St Louis, MO 63131
Venue Website
Today's media convergence means content created for one medium needs to be adaptable to a variety of platforms.
Joint Happy Hour with Local PRSA and AMA Chapters
April 23, 2014
5:30 PM to 7:30 PM
Anheuser-Busch Biergarten
1200 Lynch Street
St. Louis, MO 63118
Venue Website
Admission is free to current PRSA St. Louis Members
PRSA St. Louis Members Only Free Webinar on April 17 At Noon
April 17, 2014
12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
Michael Smart will present: "The New Secrets of Media Pitching Success"
March Luncheon
March 19, 2014
11:30 AM to 1:00 PM
Ces & Judy's
10405 Clayton Rd
St Louis, MO 63131
Venue Website
Erin Budde from STL 250 will talk about St. Louis' historic celebration in 2014
PRSA STL Career Development Day
February 28, 2014
9:30 AM to 4:30 PM
Buder Commons on the campus of Maryville University
650 Maryville University Dr
St Louis, MO 63141
Venue Website
A day of learning that will prepare you to land the perfect job!
Annual Pro-Am Day
February 01, 2014
5:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Date and Time: TBD


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Michelle King joins City Year L.A. for our 2016 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service
In honor of Black History Month, City Year Los Angeles wanted to take a moment to celebrate the incredible accomplishments of one of our most inspiring champions: Michelle King, Superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District. She has dedicated her 30-year career to the students of L.A. Unified. Beginning as a teacher in 1985, King worked her way to a principal role in 1997. She excelled while holding various leadership positions at the district, including deputy superintendent, until being named Superintendent in 2016. We sat down with King, the first female African-American Superintendent of our district, to hear more about her vision and hope for the school year.
City Year: A commitment to inclusivity and an unwavering belief in the power of young people are some of our AmeriCorps members' most valuable assets when working with students. In your extensive public school experience, what do you feel are the most important qualities educators need to possess?
Michelle King: I believe one of our most important jobs as educators is to serve as role models for our students on how to achieve while being respectful and good citizens. We need to remind students every day that they have the ability to achieve anything they can imagine as long as they are willing to work and study hard. I encourage every student to dream big and find ways to achieve those dreams, a quality that I hope every one of our educators in L.A. Unified embodies.
CY: We experience firsthand the powerful, lasting effects a positive mentor can have on a student's life. Past or present, who are the mentors that have made a difference in your life?
MK: I was always inspired to work hard and dream big by my parents and family. Throughout my career, I've had the privilege to receive guidance from many great leaders who inspired me by their dedication to service. And, now in a leadership role in the District, I draw inspiration from all of the amazing students I come into contact with every day.
Through all of these sources of mentorship and inspiration, I have learned that engaging and collaborating with students and parents in the educational process and empowering them to make decisions about what works and doesn't work for their school communities is critical to success.
CY: Being the head of our nation's second largest school district is no small feat. What do you see as the biggest challenges and what are some ways City Year is helping to address those?
MK: Our students represent more national origins, speak a wider variety of different languages, and face a more complex set of challenges than ever before. While I often say that diversity is our strength, it is important to remember that the great diversity within our student populations means there are many unique challenges that they face. We have many students who come from communities of high poverty and therefore may not have access to the same resources as students in more affluent communities.
Community-based organizations like City Year add tremendous value to our work because they know the communities they serve well, the struggles students and families face and have tried and true methods of helping every student reach his or her potential. The work provided by City Year really buttresses our efforts to create a solid foundation on which every student is ready to learn and succeed, regardless of where they've been in life or the challenges they've faced.
CY: At City Year, we are fueled by idealism and the desire to help contribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's vision of the Beloved Community. What is your own vision for LAUSD and our students?
MK: My vision is a district that gets every single student to graduation having successfully completed the course requirements needed to be college prepared and career ready. I aim to move closer to that vision rapidly through these key strategies:
1. Creating a solid foundation for our early learners before they start kindergarten
2. Increasing attendance
3. Effectively engaging our communities
4. Promoting school safety
5. Proficiency for all
King speaks at City Year L.A.'s 2016 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service
For more #makebetterhappen inspiration, please check out:
City of Los Angeles Black Women's Day Honorees 2017
City Year AmeriCorps members and staff join actress Issa Rae in Black Women's Day reception ceremony, hosted by Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson at L.A. City Hall.
The Ultimate Leadership Experience
These AmeriCorps members share why they are invested in service and what service has invested in them.

subset: commoncrawl


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The air is heavy with the scent of crushed grass and last night's rain. Driving through one of the few straight stretches on the ghats of Sahyadri, I glance at my watch. It is nine-thirty in the morning, almost an hour has passed since the last bustle of the maximum city. The throbbing roar of the engine feels like a just-hatched dragon between my thighs.
The twisting road embraces a scraggy rock face, forcing me to breathe-in the present. The road, though now in a state of disrepair, is still serviceable.
another bend…
the road snakes into
I remember this road from the times I was dating my wife. The expressway was yet to be built and every weekend, a six hour journeyon this two lane highway, would mean meeting her. Sometimes just after the rains, we would drive down to a small hill called tiger's leap and spend hours talking in the bleeding glow of the setting sun. The journey had never seemed long or tiring then.
white bedspread…
a thin mist takes over
our silences
I take the next exit, parking by the side of a small lake to stretch my back and legs.The lake is shallow, it may have filled up in the gentle rain of last two nights. A pair of lapwings walk its muddy banks. The yellow in their throat and beak stand out against the washed out landscape. I have never noticed the pattern or colour of a lapwing before. But then I have never stopped mid-highway weighed down with a sore back either.
I guess one has to be old enough for both…
the dull throb
of your absence
waxing … waning


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Find Phone Numbers has No connection with any of the companies listed on this site and other phone numbers can be found in the public domain. If you have any queries you can Contact us
We are a premium rate call referral service and forward calls to the relevant company and department at a cost of 5p per minute from a BT Landline - What is a call referral service?
To find out your nearest store/branch telephone number. Click the Button below:
Contact Blue Arrow On:
The official contact number for Blue Arrow can be found free from bluearrow.co.uk.
Blue Arrow Telephone Number for Customer Services, job, advertiesment, vacancies and all other enquiries.
Blue Arrow is a UK based employment and recruitment agency that specialises in temporary or permanent staff for industrial, catering, driving, logistics and office vacancies. their head office is in Luton and they are now part of the Impellam Group plc and have over 50 branches around the UK, making them one of the largest recruitment companies in the UK with over 50 years experience within the recruitment sector. They offer a flexible approach to recruitment using their branch network, delivery centres or on-site managed services (placing a Blue Arrow recruitment team at your place of business).
They pride themselves on offering solutions, rather than services. Flexible, scalable and responsive recruitment services are the main focus of the company, and they work hard to maintain their position as an industry leader, investing in people and career development, to create a mutually beneficial relationship. Blue Arrow have a Partnership Charter which clearly sets out what you can expect from them as your partner, you can find out more from their website, or give the customer service team a call using the phone number provided.
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Lately, I've been dreaming of a greenhouse. Not sure if its because of our cool, Minnesota spring weather, or simply the idea of gardening under glass, but I'm in love with this idea.
But if I'm going to do this, I need a plan. Picked up a couple of interesting greenhouse building books – but am really intimidated. I just want a simple, easy to maintain glass house that let's me grow seedlings early, and grow lettuce and cold season greens over the winter.
More to come.
What's planting? I just planted my tomatoes and peppers this weekend with my daughter. She;s a great help in the garden! Planted them deep, with plenty of sheep composted manure. I'm lucky to have a local sheep farmer nearby that sells his manure. For local folks, check him out email@example.com. 1 yard for $40. Rich, composty, clean garden soil. LOVE IT!
My potatoes continue to sprout through my piling. Its getting that I have no more dirt to cover the green shoots. I'm told I can harvest the early potatoes end of June. Yeah – can hardly wait!
Sugar Peas are up but not blossoming yet, and pre-sprouted beans planted last weekend are popping up string and sure. I planted three types of beans – a dry bean for winter soups, a green bean for summer eating and freezing and combo bean for eating and drying if I miss a few.
My lettuce (leaf and head) are up and s-l-o-w-l-y growing in this cool spring weather. My brocolli needs thinning, as do the baby carrots. Radishes too.
Yikes! Time to get into the garden!


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This is the list of people participating in the Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group.
The Member-only view of this list includes additional contact information. See also the Patent Policy status page for this group.
This group is now closed; see the list of groups currently open. You can still see the list of former participants.


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The Bush crime family, like its spirit animal the shark, are predators who have outlasted their more attractive primaeval competitors in the GOP clades by prioritizing simple vicious bloodlust over flexibility or intelligence. But with the ancient seas of WASP plutocracy drying up and a swarm of even more vicious new competitors evolving to compete in the shallows and the muck, current exemplar JEB! is not doing very well in this changing new environment. There is still plenty of flesh remaining on his carcass, however, so his retinue of remoras and pilot fish have yet to abandon him.- Anne Laurie at Balloon-Juice, with an opening about which little more needs to be said, except that the rest of the post is pretty good too.
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Quote of the day: Extended-metaphor edition
Want to read more from p3? 2016, QOTD, Republicans
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One of the main things which the Jerusalem Open House is trying to make is a center in which everyone and every group will feel safe and comfortable.
Jerusalem, as a place with a large religious population has, I'm sure, also a large religious GLBT population. This population has difficulties in getting together and finding that they are not alone with their problems and difficulties. So, the Jerusalem Open House (this is the name of the Amuta and of the center) is trying to create a comfortable place for this group (as for other groups).
From our short experience (we only exist one year) one of the main problems is reaching this invisible crowd.
Most of the gay population (by gay I refer to the entire "GLBT community") is deep inside the closet and either doesn't know about us or is afraid to be in touch with us. So maybe the first thing that could be done is just spread the word about us so people will know about this project and maybe you or your group can be the go-between or the bridge for these people.
The next step should be establishing religious group(s) (gay, lesbian or mixed) and in this I think we can work together.
If you or somebody you know would like to establish the group, myself or other people from the J.O.H, can help the group with their needs.
If you want more information about the Jerusalem Open House or would like to help with starting a frum GLB group, you can contact them at:
The Jerusalem Open House P. O. Box 33107 Jerusalem 91037. Or click here.


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World Security Report2018-01-30 17:52:10
CONTROP Provides Advanced Flight Safety Solutions at Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport, for Bird, Wildlife & Drone Early Detection
CONTROP announces two (2) major air safety projects. The company provided unique, advanced flight safety measures at Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport for bird, wildlife and drone early detection. In addition, the Dallas City Council has approved the purchase of this system for the Dallas Love Field Airport in Texas, with installation expected to take place in late 2018.
CONTROP's SPEED-BIRD system is based on the successful SPIDER system, with unique highly sensitive panoramic scanning technology that automatically detects birds during scanning. Along with advanced algorithms that were developed specifically for this application, this system will be integrated as a key component of Pharovision's SENTINEL system. The SENTINEL is an EO/IR-based automatic detection and tracking system. It helps prevent collisions between aircraft and birds or flocks of birds or other wildlife, whether in the sky, on the ground, or near the runway – during take-off, landing, and taxiing. It can also detect people who trespass on airport property, as well as drones that fly into the airport's airspace. The system automatically determines what an object is, tracks it, and alerts airport personnel.
The system integrates a thermal imaging camera with advanced electro-optics, and a day camera. The combination of the continuous zoom lens of the IR camera, and the full-color live video cameras, allows the SPEED-BIRD system to automatically perform wide area surveillance, providing highly accurate real-time day and night detection and tracking.
For more information contact:


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Paying More For Less
Food prices have risen sharply over the last year and a sharp rise in commodities' prices this year will cause prices to soar even further. Some large food companies have announced they will increase the prices they charge grocery retailers on things like chocolate bars. Other companies will try something different like keeping the price relatively the same, but decreasing the amount of food in packages and boxes. The end result will be you paying more for your favorite cereals, chips, ice cream and candies for less of the product. Haagen-Dazs for example, reduced the amount of ice cream in a container significantly from 16 ounces to 14 ounces while making the container appear to be the same size by making the top the same size even thought the container itself is smaller. It is tricks like that you need to be aware of. For a complete lis of products affected from aol.com, click here.


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Unemployment linked to rise in prostate cancer deaths
- May 15, 2015
- Comments
- Viewed: 4796
The knock-on effects of the economic downturn have been explored in economy and psychology. Now researchers are examining the effects of unemployment on an even darker subject - cancer mortality.
One would think that dealing with unemployment was challenge enough. But according to the latest research published in ecancermedicalscience, rises in unemployment are associated with significant increases in prostate cancer mortality.
This is the first study that has systematically explored the consequences that changes in unemployment - in particular the Great Recession of the late 2000s - have had in generating excess deaths due to a treatable disease such as prostate cancer.
The effect continued for at least five years after a 1% rise in unemployment, says study author Johnathan Watkins of King's College London, London, UK.
But was the effect simply due to the fact that the unemployed patients might belong to social groups that are more likely to experience prostate cancer mortality?
The researchers are keeping an open mind about the exact causes of this correlation - it's likely due to a cohort of factors influenced by macroeconomics, such as changes in nutrition, societal challenges, and possibly even psychological outcomes.
"There are two broad implications emerging from this study," Watkins explains. "First, policies that support employment may have positive knock-on effects on mortality rates from a treatable disease such as prostate cancer.
"Second, healthcare professionals should be aware of the additional risks entailed by unemployment, and facilitate access of care to this population."
"Both policy makers and clinicians can work together to mitigate the health outcome effects of unemployment."
But there's some hope to be found in the study: initiatives that bolster employment may have societal knock-on effects of their own.
Watkins and colleagues suggest that support initiatives may thus help to minimise prostate cancer mortality during times of economic hardship.
The reasons for avoiding economic downturns and prostate cancer are obvious to all, but it's good to see another reason to take an interest in economic and physical health.
Audrey Nailor
Also in this section
- New PSA test examines protein structures to detect prostate cancers
- A better way to image metastatic prostate cancer
- Newly discovered protein may protect kidney cells from injury
- A person's diet, acidity of urine may affect susceptibility to UTIs
- Award-winning agent developed for prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment
- New treatment for polycystic kidney disease
- Kidney failure impacts survival of sepsis patients
- Urine-based test improves on PSA for detecting prostate cancer
- Unemployment linked to rise in prostate cancer deaths
- Advanced viral gene therapy eradicates prostate cancer in preclinical experiments
- Recurrence of prostate cancer detected earlier with innovative PSMA-ligand PET/CT
- Treating gum disease reduces prostate symptoms, CWRU researchers find
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The "ASW Ibiza Special Collection" T-Shirt
SFr. 39.00
- SFr. 195.00
Availability: In stock
Brand: BARRACA CHIC
Refunds on full priced items will be credited to the original credit card that was used to make the purchase minus the shipping fees. No refunds on sales and sample items. We are only able to accept merchandise purchased from the www.barracachic.com.


text: The indefatigable Waddell (Little Mo, 1993, etc.) shines with this tale of memory-making. A mother and daughter head out into the night, on their way to the nearby sea. The town across the bay is picked out in lights, the moon low and full, the atmosphere quietly charged. They step into the dark water, splash and laugh, swim out deep. Back on shore, they are enchanted by the steady oceanic pulse--the waves are like a campfire, suspending time. Much later, they head for the sanctuary of home and sleep. Waddle again is paired with a crackerjack illustrator. Eachus's use of color pencils conjures a feeling of conspiracy between mother and daughter, although some of the drawings have a pewter finish that cuts into their warmth. Clearly, memories are made of such stuff, but the touch is light; the spare text doesn't allow for ham-handedness. (Picture book. 3+)


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FIVA protects the responsible use of historic vehicles through legislative monitoring, the development of recommended policies, specific supportive action and effective relations with national and international authorities.
The Legislation Commission:
The main body within FIVA looking after this task in the legislation commission. With strong ties to legislators and other stakeholders, the commission holds regular meetings to discuss new and old regulations and laws to ensure that historic vehicles can be used and driven on a regular basis.


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Doctor Whoever Fan Art
In celebration of the BBC announcing that Doctor Who would be returning on September 1st, I would like to submit the following. I came across this fan art courtesy of Deviant Art and loved it so much that I wanted to share.
This piece comes from Quirkilicious.


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Looking For Side Income Job Ideas During The Holidays?
Making extra money on the side in addition to your normal 9-5 job is nothing new. In fact, it is a trend that is only gaining popularity. According to recent studies conducted of the working class in America, as many as 30 percent report that they have side gigs of some kind to help bring in money. Almost half of Millennials do as well. Today, there are more side income job ideas to mine than ever before. And many have the potential to become quite lucrative, going beyond just making extra money on the side.
Clearly, this is a trend with a strong future ahead of it. Looking at statistics like this, one cannot help but wonder how side income job ideas got to be so popular. Everyone likes making a extra money on the side, of course. With the current trends of uncertainty in the economy and job market every extra dollar helps. That side job may be all that keeps a family out of serious trouble with a health crisis or major repair or some other catastrophe hits. But side projects are also a great way to build skills, make new contacts, expand your career base options, and learn something new.
But how do you go about finding good side income job ideas, and how do you do it effectively? Snyder Insurance and Financial Services has pulled together a list of 25 easy and useful side income job ideas that can help you in making extra money on the side before the holidays. Between these tips and making sure you're family is protected through the best health and homeowner's insurance policies for your budget, nabbing that side job just might open avenues of opportunity you never thought possible!
Turn The Expertise You Already Have Into Side Income Job Ideas. Be An Online Expert!
Side Income Job Ideas #1. Create a course that you can set up and then sell it to others through weekly or monthly subscriptions where for a fee they get access to the course you created.
Side Income Job Ideas #2. Create an ebook. It can be on pretty much any topic that has a following or demand. Write it, publish it, and sell it to bring in some side income. This is a great side income job idea anyone can do.
Side Income Job Ideas #3. Create a Slack community that can then be sold to businesses to use. A Slack community is a real-time message platform. It facilitates team communications in one cyber area. It provides single window access for all conversations, but it also allows for direct messaging to an individual for a more private conversation. Having a ready-to-go platform already set up is a big bonus for businesses and it can be a way to earn some extra cash.
Side Income Job Ideas #4. Create a private, paid social network that can be tailored to specific niche markets or demographics. These can be sold to businesses working in that industry or targeting a specific audience.
Side Income Job Ideas #5. Curate premium content that people can subscribe to. You can offer a weekly email or a regularly updated membership site where they can access content and use it on their own sites.
Side Income Job Ideas #6. Repurpose templates or make templates to sell. Whether it is templates for power points, word documents, webpages or anything else, selling pre-made templates is an easy way to earn some bucks.
Side Income Job Ideas #7. Create bundle deals for services you may already be offering or dabbling in. If you like power points and websites, make a bundle deal combining the two that you can sell to businesses.
Side Income Job Ideas #8. Sell your photos online to stock photos sites and other photo and art sites. There are plenty online so find one that accepts your style and topic and upload them for easy passive income on the side.
Side Income Job Ideas #9. Sell your notes, tutorials, guides, and how-to processes. Whether it is for academic study, help for a business or a hobby, these learning aids are becoming very popular today.
Side Income Job Ideas #10. Buy and sell domain names so businesses can find the ones they want. Simply purchase domains, then search for businesses that could use them and offer them deals for the domain rights.
Side Income Job Ideas #11. Create a Mac app that businesses could use with their devices. You could develop one on your own or you could partner with a programmer to launch one into the market.
Side Income Job Ideas #12. Are you app-savvy? Then create a Web app. There are plenty of apps already in the market but it is true what they say: there's an app for that! So if you think of something that doesn't have an app yet, see if you can make one.
Side Income Job Ideas #13. Create a WordPress Plugin that can be used to improve websites. Many people use WordPress but miss out on the fine details of plugins, so selling ones pre-made and ready to go is a money maker.
Side Income Job Ideas #14. Program scripts for websites, apps, and other devices that businesses would then purchase from you in order to streamline their business operations and save money on their own employee's work.
Side Income Job Ideas #15. Create an e commerce store where people sign up to buy or sell products and services through your site. You can run these with membership fees or sell them outright to businesses to use as their own.
Side Income Job Ideas #16. Dropship. This is where a retailer does not keep products in stock, but sends customer orders and shipment details to a manufacturer or another retailer. The manufacturer or retailer then ships the order to the customer.
Side Income Job Ideas #17. Create a job board for people to post about jobs they need filled or to show they are looking for work. Small sites gain modest income but if you drive traffic to the site, you can make a pretty penny.
Side Income Job Ideas #18. Create an agency. There are many highly qualified people who are still looking for work right now. Find them jobs or freelance gigs, they get hired, and take a cut of their earnings as a 'finder's fee.'
Side Income Job Ideas #19. Become an influencer. If you are already popular on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Youtube or Snapchat you can get paid to feature offerings you like as an influencer.
Side Income Job Ideas #20. Create affiliate accounts. Do you already have an audience following you on your blog posts or website? You can get a cut of the money if you advertise a third-party product and your followers then buy because of your posts.
Side Income Job Ideas #21. Write ads and marketing content for websites. They can purchase this content and use it however they want to improve their business and marketing reach. This makes a good side income job idea.
Side Income Job Ideas #22. Secure sponsorship for your blog podcast or newsletter. If you are very successful and popular with social media and platforms you could get people to pay you to talk about certain things on your site.
Side Income Job Ideas #23. Make websites, fill them with some blogs and promote the site to get some followers. Then you can sell the site to someone as a ready to go already established site.
Side Income Job Ideas #24. Provide support to those who need it whether through phone consultation, emails, tutorials, web videos, or written how to and guides. This is a popular side income job idea.
Side Income Job Ideas #25. Write for blogs. If there is something you're passionate about or if you know about some of the popular trends of the day then blog bout them and find advertisers who will pay or you to write.
Snyder Insurance & Financial Services Wish You The Best During The Holiday Season!
You can use these tips to do more than making extra money on the side for the holidays. You just might find side income job ideas that will last the year long and make a real difference to your family's income.
Meanwhile, we at Snyder Insurance hope you think of us when you're ready to explore or expand your insurance options. We are a fully independent insurance agency that has proudly served Chicago and Illinois for over 30 years.
Call (630) 960-4848 or use our Contact Page to learn why we're one of the top-rated insurers in the state. Tell us how we can help you!
Happy Holidays To Your Family From Ours!


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Central to the mission of Pulse Ministries is its heart to run effective training opportunities that will develop, equip and challenge people's gifts, heart and ministry. We focus particularly within children and youth ministry as well as Christian leadership and evangelism.
We offer both short and long-term internship opportunities.
Short-term (16+ years)
You will serve with alongside us for a week or a weekend away – getting involved in a mission which involves either children's or youth ministry.
You will be given chance to stretch and develop your gifts, receive one-to-one mentoring, spend time in God's Word and have plenty of time to deepen your relationship with God.
If you want a God-centred opportunity which will grow, challenge, stretch and develop you, as well as open your eyes to see more of Jesus, then this is for you!
Do you want to get involved? Let us know by getting in touch!
Long term (18+ years)
You will serve as part of team Pulse for a long period of time, from 3-12months.
You will have the chance to be involved in the day-to-day running of Pulse Ministries as well as going away on missions. You will be involved in both the children and youth aspects of the ministry and will be able to try tasks both in and out of your comfort zone!
This includes: preparation for missions, creation of resources, delivering talks, exhibiting at conferences, travelling away on mission and much more!
Throughout the internship Pulse Ministries commits to investing in you as a leader and an evangelist. There will be lots of time for you to explore your spiritual giftings, to know more of who God is and learn what it means to be in full-time ministry.
Think this could be for you? Get in touch for more details!
In need of training for a whole team? See what training Pulse could offer you here.
"I will always be so thankful to Pulse for seeing the potential in me as a young leader, investing into my life, and giving me the opportunities to serve and grow in God. Getting involved with Pulse will change your life!"
Jodi Calder, Mattersey Hall Christian College
"Why should you intern? Because it is an opportunity to be challenged to the very core and moulded like clay into more of who God has created you to be. It has been the most fun, adventurous, courageous and freeing journey as I've come face to face with God and His incredible power in and through me."
Elle Risbridger, HTH Hastings
Jodi Calder, Mattersey Hall Christian College
Elle Risbridger, HTH Hastings


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What do I wear To A portrait session? Can I bring props?
Definitely bring props if you have some! You want your photos to show who you are, and there's no better way to do that than with some of your favorite things. You want to bring clothes that express you and your unique personality! That being said, there are some general rules you should follow:
- Try to avoid baggy clothing, it tends to make you appear larger in photographs!
- If your session includes outfit changes, bring a combination of clothing; just make sure they are all wrinkle free and ready to go when you arrive!
- Patterns are always fun, and textured clothing works extremely well in photographs! Have fun with it! White/black dresses make for classy photographs, but don't be afraid to have a little fun when picking out your outfits!
- If you're taking group/couple photos, don't go full on matchy matchy. Instead, try to work with accent colors or different shades of the same color.
- Above all, make sure you feel comfortable in the clothes you bring and that they express who YOU are!
Do you travel to different locations?
Absolutely! I have a few ideal photo spots of my own, but if you have one closer and more convenient to you then definitely let me know. If you're interested in destination wedding photography, or if you just want me to travel a couple of hours to take your photos, I would be happy to talk with you about making this happen!
How long will it take to get my pictures? How will you give them to me?
Editing typically takes around 1 or 2 weeks once you have chosen your images, and I will give you all of your images via Pixieset. Portrait sessions receive between 15-30 photos, and events & weddings receive anywhere between 500-600 photos depending on session time.
Do you do prints? Will I get a print release form?
Yes! I can do professional printing and have access to high quality photo paper, ink, and printers. Cost varies depending on what size and type of photographs you would like. I can also create custom photo books for an additional charge as well! If you want to print your own pictures, I will give you a print release form at no extra cost.
Will you post our pictures online?
With your permission, of course! I love to make blogs about my experience with my clients. In addition there will be a page where you can view all your photographs, I'll give you the link and you can share your photos with all your friends and family!


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These days a teaser trailer for your movie just isn't going to cut it online, getting a decent video marketing campaign together can really help up your engagement online.
As big fans of the horror genre we are looking forward to the remake with the usual sense of trepidation mixed with hope but this online video is a great way to get people talking about the film.
The ad is certainly on the more extreme side of prankvertising with some of the coffee shop customers genuinely freaking out. Its also great to see the setup behind the video production for some added value.
Take a look:
Did you get scared. Blame us on Twitter @spectrecom


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Multimedia--The Kyenjojo Orphans
I've received a great deal of positive feedback on part one of the story I did (see below, Sun., Aug. 29--"Finding some perspective") about six orphans in Western Uganda. Click here for photos of journalist Betty Mujungu, the six kids, and their old and new homes. The original radio story Betty did, as well as a follow up radio report that I produced, are both posted here. Part two of the story is below.
Radio's power lifts orphans to better life
From the Parkville Luminary
KYENJOJO, UGANDA—As you look at the one-room mud brick hut—cracked, crumbling, and depressing--it's incomprehensible that six orphans lived alone in this shanty for 13 months.
The hut sits in a small valley in rural, isolated Kyenjojo district, about five hours west of Kampala by car, and about 45 minutes from the nearest town, Fort Portal. The village where the hut is located, Mbale-Kaigoro, is inaccessible by car, and is a strenuous 20 minute hike from the nearest rutted dirt road.
Annet, at 14 the oldest of the orphans, recently accompanied us back to the hut. As we reached the site of her former home, Annet was somber, as was Betty Mujungu, the radio journalist who first told her listeners the story of the six orphans about three weeks ago. This hut is in the place that the father of the six, drunk, frequently beat the kids' mom. The father went too far one night, and killed the mother. Remorseful, the father then killed himself. The six children were suddenly orphaned, and left alone with no relatives or neighbors willing or able to help them.
Betty, a journalist at Life FM in Fort Portal, produced a report about the orphans' plight, featuring the kids telling their pathetic story. In the radio report, the children talked openly about how they were suffering, about enduring a leaky roof in the hut, and about how they didn't have enough to eat. Annet told Betty about how one of the younger girls injured her leg escaping from a would-be rapist.
It's hard to listen to Betty's report without crying.
Life FM's listeners were touched by the story, and immediately sprung into action. Ten different donors generously gave food and clothing to the children. Shortly thereafter, the biggest miracle of all occurred for the kids. Betty's mother, Edith Birungi, offered to take in the orphans, all six of them. (This is on top of two other orphans Edith and Betty brought into their home two years ago).
The Kyenjojo orphans, Adolph (5 years old), Patrick (7), Violet (9), Peter (11), Janet (13), and Annet (14), told me, in soft voices, how grateful they were to have food, clean clothes, and affection at Edith and Betty's house.
However, one final hurdle remained for the orphans--getting into school. In Uganda, as in much of the developing world, students have to pay to enroll in primary and secondary school. For these six kids to enroll in school and buy uniforms, the price tag was $250—much more than Betty and her mom could afford. However, a benefactor stepped forward, and gave Betty the $250 to cover school fees and uniforms. The donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, also pledged to pay the orphans' school fees in the future. His money won't be wasted. Janet said she wants to be a teacher, while Annet is determined to become a doctor.
Life still isn't perfect for the six children. The orphans all share one room, so things are cramped. The kids don't have beds, and sleep on pallets on the floor. When I visited the house, the children clung to one another very closely, and seemed eerily quiet, even depressed. Also, Betty and Edith's house has no electricity. An electrical line runs along the street in front of their house, but they don't have enough money to drop a line to serve their home. Finances are very tight. Edith can't work (she had a stroke several years ago that left her weak on her right side), so the only regular income coming in to the house is Betty's small radio station salary. Edith said God will provide for them all, somehow.
Betty attended one of my peace journalism workshops about a month ago. She told me that it was this workshop that gave her the tools and encouragement she needed to report the story about the orphans. In the workshops, I tell my students, all radio journalists and announcers, to give a voice to the voiceless, and to strive to make their communities a better place. Betty was obviously listening.
All too often, radio in Africa has been used to inflame hatred and spark violence. Betty's story will be a good lesson for my future students that the power of radio in Uganda can be harnessed for the good of society. Thanks to Betty's report, the six orphans, including seven year old Patrick, are now looking forward to a better life.
In a radio story I produced about Betty and the orphans, Patrick observed, "At least we (now) see that there is some future, some hope."


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TRENTON -- A 79-year-old Hudson County woman has become the fifth New Jersey resident to die from H1N1 influenza, or swine flu, the state health department confirmed today.
The woman, who had other underlying health issues, was taken to Bayonne Medical Center on June 15 after developing a cough and fever. She died Friday.
"I extend my sympathies to the woman's family during this very trying time," Heather Howard, commissioner of the state Department of Health and Senior Services, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, influenza is a serious disease and deaths are not unexpected."
The health department did not identify the woman nor provide her hometown or other information about her.
There are 21,449 confirmed cases of the novel flu virus in the United States, contributing to 87 deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In New Jersey, there are now 568 confirmed cases of H1N1 influenza, affecting residents in 19 of the state's 21 counties, the state health department said today. In addition, 275 probable cases are being tested by the state laboratory.
In most cases, the illness has caused typical flu symptoms, including fever, cough, sore throat, chills and body ache, public health officials have said.
Nationally, about 70 percent of people requiring hospitalization with swine flu have had an underlying health condition, most often asthma or diabetes, said Daniel Jernigan, deputy director of the CDC's influenza division.
People with compromised immune systems or chronic heart disease are also at higher risk for severe illness, Jernigan said.
Stephen Smith, an infectious disease specialist at St. Michael's Medical Center in Newark, said people with these conditions are at higher risk for severe illness because their ability to clear their airways is compromised.
In New Jersey, four of the five people to die from the swine flue have had other, unspecified health issues.
The four are the Hudson County woman who died Friday; a 10-year-old boy from Sussex County, a 36-year-old man from Union County; and a 49-year-old man from West Orange. The state medical examiner's office is trying to determine whether the fifth person, a 15-year-old boy from Franklin Township, in Somerset County, had underlying health issues.
Public health officials are telling residents to protect themselves by washing their hands frequently with soap and water or hand sanitizer, covering their mouths when they cough or sneeze and staying home from work or school when ill.
"It is important for all New Jersey residents to remain vigilant and take proper precautions to protect themselves and their families," Howard said in the statement.


text: Movie Network's FMC teamed up with famous Bondi Beach film festival Flickerfest to present a family friendly selection of the best short films from the festival's history. pictureDRIFT created the opening titles and graphics package for the program. Referencing the structure of a film intro where each character is introduced, the Freshflicks on FMC opener is made up of sequence of Bondi "character" title card scenes. Each scene introduces a character in the eclectic Bondi beach story, exaggerating their presence and transforming them into a glamourous movie ideal through the use of paparazzi style camera flashes and star icons, setting the stage for freshflicks on FMC


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The Songs of Knives
Jessica Drake-Thomas
When I was about twelve, and Amelia was six, my family went on a trip to New York City to see the tree at Rockefeller Square. There was a woman, wearing a worn out coat, hair cropped in a crooked bob with greasy bangs, she was dirty. We were engulfed in the stink of roasting chestnuts because it was near Christmas. She yelled unintelligible words at Amelia. She turned to my mother. "What is she saying?" My mother grabbed her hand.
"It doesn't matter. She is mentally ill." But the woman was pointing at Amelia, her yelling rising to a crescendo. It sounded like a black magic spell. The woman frightened me. But now I understand. The woman saw Amelia, a blonde-haired blue eyed cherub in a thick, clean pink coat and envied her.
I am twenty-three and in college. I feel like something crawling out from underneath a rock: something moldy, mossy, wrapped in decaying seaweed. It is morning, hated morning. The sun is shining through my blinds, like it has for the past four hours that I have remained under my pile of comforters. My head aches from lying in for too long. Is it too late for coffee? I don't care enough to make any.
I can smell the remains of bacon that they made for breakfast. It has seeped in beneath my closed door and is stuck on me—the glutinous residue of the smell in my hair, and my clothes, and the blankets. Nothing is safe from their gross morning rituals. I am a vegetarian. I only eat things that leave nothing behind. I want to be something that needs nothing, eventually.
I spent most of last night almost drifting off to sleep, and then ejecting myself out of bed, just to write more notes on my post-its for my book. They are arranged in a wreath around my face on my bathroom mirror. They read things like:
Pale skin, ossification, bloodless, floating in embalming jars beneath the Blood Orchid.
He opens his mouth. Moths fly out.
Gone, her black glass eyes stare out into eternity. The Occido Lumen.
Instead, we tend the Bone-Garden. The Dead are not hidden.
Holidays are sinking ships. There are no warm Christmases. We sit in silence and tension that needs a carving knife.
I stopped taking my pills. The Lithium was making me puke water and Pepto Bismol. Nothing would stay down, and my esophagus was on fire. The others, I figured that if I stopped taking them, I might turn into a normal person again. Normal people don't take medications that make one's hands shake, or sleep for twelve hours straight, or make them gain forty pounds in under a year. Normal people can work nine to five jobs. Normal people can lose weight. Normal people know what happiness is. Manic euphoria is not happiness. I always feel like the people I know think I'm a joke or an adventure when I get that way. And they all go away when The Sadness comes. No one stays for that.
Last night, about 4 am, I was wearing a black silk dress that Grammy had bought for me at a consignment store. I had been kneeling in the shower, hands raised above my head, like I was praying, or about to stab someone—myself. I was watching the hot water swirl down the drain. I was reciting my mantra, feverishly: "onetwothreefouronetwothreefouronetwothreefour." My dress was saturated with sweat and water. I kept kneeling, repeating my numbers as fast as I could, hoping to be soothed by the hot water. When I got out, able to move again, I watched myself in the mirror, face almost plastered to the surface, like Alice poised to fall into the looking-glass. A couple of my Post-its fell off from the moisture in the air, their ink leaching outward from the drops of water from my skin. My skin was pale, luminous, and bright, and it left a smudge in the steam on the glass. I felt hot, sweating because the AC was off. I could feel that I was me inside of my body, so clearly, so clearly. I was seeing myself with a new type of clarity that I had never before achieved. Then something shifted. My eyes were dilated— something there was wrong, different—feral. And I thought of the knives in the kitchen drawer—so shiny, so sharp. And they sang a song to me, alluring like one of Chopin's Etudes. I began to feel nauseated. I thought I saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye appear in the corner of the shower behind me. I jumped and looked. There was nothing there. I felt like I was being watched. I ran into my room, and I threw myself onto my bed, and listened to my blood, pounding in my ears, I was sticking to my sheets. There was a little man, dressed like a Christmas elf watching me from the door. He was made out of mist, the edges of his body swirling in circles. He was waving to me. I shut my eyes. He went away, but I could hear him sighing in my ears.
It is a hot Texas morning. My younger sister, Amelia, is still asleep. Mama is sitting on the back porch with the dogs, drinking a glass of ice water. She has been up since five, when the dogs wake her up. Emma is a terrier, with tiny bladder syndrome. She can barely make it through the night without having to pee. Marcy is a two-year old lab, and wants to do whatever Em wants.
"It's about time! Good Afternoon," She says as I step out.
"It is eleven," I say.
"Mr. Man is coming to visit tomorrow." She means my father. I keep telling her that this is creepy, because it is what Kathy Bates' character calls James Caan's character in Misery. My father lives outside of New Orleans in a crap town called Destrehan that is named after a plantation that I once visited in grade school. It had walls made out of cotton fibers and mud. Somehow, that made it cool inside. I don't know how it didn't melt. It is both rainy and humid in Louisiana. Anyhow, my dad isn't allowed in the house here. It upsets my sister to the point where she is ill for days afterward. He is an angry person. And deluded. He thinks that everything is fine. All I can say is that I remember getting slapped in the face one too many times for illegitimate reasons. My parents get lunch together once a month. She gives him his mail, listens to his bullshit and sends him on his way.
"Where will you go to eat?" I ask.
"Five Guys, maybe."
"I would like Five Guys in my mouth."
"Heehee. Oops." I say all of this in a flat voice. I want to distract her. However, this does not work. She's like a pendulum.
"He really has no idea how much damage he has done. Really. Amelia gets sick to her stomach whenever he comes. Intermittent Explosive Disorder, I say. He would storm off, slamming doors, and then come creeping down, and laughing like everything was better. And he won't even go for help. He doesn't see how he has lost everything. The family. Our marriage. I am never living with him again. Two months in, and I was repairing doors and holes in the walls. And what he did to you—"
Mama. Stop. Daddy basically lied to her about going to see a genetic counselor or specialist or whatever. Now I have a genetic disorder. We go over this all of the time—how he is the reason I had my first episode and lost my religious beliefs and refuse to do math without a calculator (I actually can't do math without a calculator).
I remember a morning, years ago, when I was still in high school. I could hear him yelling at Mama, downstairs. I was in bed, beneath my gray comforter, shaking. I had locked my door the night before, because he had been angry with me for my math test grades. What are you going to do? Work at Burger King? He slammed his way up the stairs like (I'd like to say a mad man, but he was) a mad man. "Get the FUCK up. We are going to church." About an hour later, he chucked the car keys out of the car window onto the front lawn and then stormed back into the house. Amelia cried. Mama went looking for the keys. I took out the novel that I was reading.
Now, he is a pathetic thing. He goes to church pretty much every day, and feeds the homeless, and washes the feet of the Poor. The last time I saw him, he had forgotten to clip his nails in a long time, his clothes were covered in food stains, and he wore this saint medal necklace that the Catholics wear. The chain was corroding on the collar of his shirt. He showed it to me. One of the medals was held on by a rusty safety-pin. The whole time that we had lunch together, at an outdoor café in New Orleans, he spoke barely above a whisper, talking about how he had been saved.
Mama breaks into my thoughts. "So, when you were at the beginning of Freshman year at college, and you said that your roommate came home puking every night, did that really happen, or were you hallucinating? I have been wondering." I sit for a moment. I remember the sounds of vomiting. I remember the smell. I remember pounding on the R.A.'s door, crying. I remember the R.A. shining a flashlight at Stacey in her bed, and declaring that she did not see any vomit. I remember sitting on a couch in the common area and crying so hard I got a headache behind my eyes. Now, I think. Did that really happen? Two weeks ago, I was walking through the street downtown in New Orleans. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small white dog walking beside me. When I looked, there was nothing there. People may be afraid of us, the clinically insane, the mentally ill, but it is way more frightening to not be able to trust your own brain. I am not safe inside of myself.
At lunch, Amelia comes downstairs. She has just woken up, since she stays up until five in the morning doing homework for her AP classes. She is conventionally pretty, and she doesn't wear make-up. But I guess she doesn't have to. Despite the late hour of her bedtime, she has no dark circles under her eyes.
"There is nothing good to eat," She moans in her tiny nasally voice that she utilizes when she is cranky.
"I just bought you some French bread and turkey this morning. And there are grapes," Mama replies, false-happily, sycophantically—take your choice.
"No-ho. I don't want that." Amelia whines. She shakes herself a little as she says this. The child-tantrum is coming on.
"I can go to the store—or Brooklyn Café," Mama prompts. Amelia is in love with the boy who works behind the counter at the Brooklyn Café.
"Noooooooo,"Amelia sits down on the kitchen floor. "I'll just eat nothing."
"Are you sure? I don't mind," Mama says, reaching for her keys. Amelia stands up and slaps them out of her hand. I throw down my sandwich, sickened.
"Don't treat Mom that way, you bitch!"
"Fuck off you fat fuck!" She flies upstairs, punctuating her sentence with a scream and a door slamming. Mama sighs and shakes her head. I start to cry. The Lithium, for the first couple of months made me gain weight. I used to be one hundred and nineteen pounds. Now I'm one hundred and sixty, and I don't fit in many of my clothes. I run from the kitchen. I need to find a shirt that fits.
I can't find it. My green tank top. I need it. I go through all of the laundry that my mother is doing for my sister, folding as I go, even the dirty stuff. I take my own laundry, devoid of my shirt; into my room. I sit down and cross my legs and start folding. A hard hard stone is in my throat. As I cry, harder and harder, that stone breaks into pieces of sharp edges. I am hyperventilating. Mom is helping Amelia to find something to eat, and there is no one to help me. I lean forward over my laundry, heaving, mouth wide. My white towels become stained with my running mascara.
"Helen? Helen!" It's Mama. "What's the matter?"
"My emerald green t-shirt. Someone took it."
"I will go look. Relax." She leaves, and I throw all of my laundry into the basket. There is an ornament, a tassel with a porcelain doll's head hanging over the door handle. I snatch it up, tearing the string that holds the head to the tassel. I unweave the strings of the tassel, shredding them feverishly, like fiddling with a rosary. The pieces create a pile around me. I throw the head with its delicate red lips and flat black painted porcelain page boy at the corner. I don't care if it's broken or not.
I stand, and start tearing my watercolor paintings and charcoal drawings off of my bulletin board, now slowly and methodically shredding the Arches paper. It feels like vellum and it tears like moss. I stare at my dirty hands. On my dresser, there are framed pictures of my family. I can't let them see me like this. Grammy and Grandpa. They are dead. They shouldn't see me doing these things. I place all of the frames facedown. Even the ones with pictures of living people. Even the ones with pictures of me. I am just disappointing. I remember one night, during high school, I sat on my bed, sobbing loudly and chafing my legs that I hadn't shaved in weeks, I can't remember why (for either of them). Mama said something about praying to God. I said "I don't believe in God. Why would he make me feel this way?" She looked straight at me, "Then I don't think that you are the child that we raised." This was before I was diagnosed. She didn't know. But it was true. I am not the child that they thought they raised. There may be something to the changeling theories.
Mama comes back in. "I found it. It was my fault…" She is surveying the damage. "What did you do?"
"I feel better now, thank you." I take the shirt and squeeze out of my old size small t-shirt and put the green one on, making charcoal fingerprints all over it. I feel better, relieved within the midst of my destruction. I have no intention of cleaning it up. It feels beautiful.
I am sitting in my reading chair, reading The Fellowship of the Ring. The blue book covers are falling off of it, and most of the pages taped or glued back in. I am feeling weird. Really sad, just sad. I might start crying soon. No reason, really. I feel old, tired, and skeletal. I have a head-ache behind my eyes that won't go away. So I am consulting my comfort-book. I am in the middle of the Bridge of Khazad-dûm while wearing my replica Elven Leaf Brooch from the movies when Mama comes in.
"You upset Amelia earlier," Mama says, "You have to understand—"
It is as though a door has been kicked open: I sit up and scream, shutting my eyes, and scrabbling at my face with my nails. It burns. Mama grabs my hands. Strips of skin are stuck in my finger-nails. I am beyond words. "I was trying to protect you, Mama." She looks at me, eyes wide.
"Helen. Calm down." But I can't. My throat is dry and sore. My face is on fire, like I am sunburned, and I am sobbing without sound. My book is on the floor, a pile of leaves. "Come eat dinner. Take a breather. Then come out and eat."
When Mama leaves, shutting the door, I slide down to the floor and begin to beat my head against the hard wood of the floor. I don't know what else to do. I hate myself. I want to hurt. I want to knock out the headache behind my eyes. I start hitting my head upon a nearby footstool. Heaving, sobbing, I scream. At the beginning of the scream, a flap of mucus membrane in my throat shifts, and the scream changes into something awful. I run out of breath, start again. When I stop, my voice comes out in a rasp:
"Send me to the hospital send me to the hospital send me to the hospital." I throw a closed can of cherry lime-aid soda at the door. It dents both can and metal door handle. I cry, until I am tired. I rest my head on the floor, I am in child's pose.
I am remembering another time. It was the summer after Grandpa died. The same year I moved away for college and Mama left Daddy and took Amelia to live in New Jersey at Grammy and Grandpa's house. It had been a long day, and I refused to come downstairs for dinner. I was upset. All day, Amelia had been rude to me. Name-calling. Leaving me to pick up an unfinished one-thousand piece puzzle on my own, after harassing me to stop reading and play with her. That door had been kicked open. I had to fight it. I had to fight back, because the person kicking that door open might be my tormentor. I ran downstairs, screaming, just screaming with no words. Grammy, Mama, and Amelia were sitting at the dinner table. I threw chairs, and I broke a model boat that was on a shelf. Mama grabbed me, and held me down, forcing my head against the floor. I struggled, crying.
I creep into the kitchen. Mama and Amelia are at the table, I am in full sight, but they aren't looking at me, as though I am an explosive deer. I pretend to open the cabinet to the glasses, but instead open the drawer for the knives. I slip out a knife with one hand, and a glass with the other. I fill the glass with water, and return to my room, walking gingerly.
It isn't sharp enough. I run it over the skin on the inside of my arm. If it is going to do anything, I will have to gouge my skin. I sit disappointed, thinking of the false songs of the knives last night. This is when Mama comes in to check on me.
"What are you doing?" she snatches up the knife, holding it to her chest. "Why would you do this?"
"It would feel good." I curl up on the floor, shaking. "I don't want to die."
She leaves and then comes back with the phone book and the cordless house phone. She sits down in my reading chair. She is talking to the doctor.
"Here. Speak to her."
"Hello." I whisper.
"Hi Helen. When did you stop taking the Lithium?"
"It was making me throw up Pepto-Bismol and water."
"I am going to call a prescription in to Walgreens for the liquid version of it, ok? It should be easier to digest. What flavor do you want it in? Strawberry? And I will add some more of your Seroquel. Do I need to have you sent to the hospital?"
"No, and I hate strawberry."
"Make a big-girl decision, here, Helen."
"Big-girl decision? Big-girl decision? I am an Adult, Doctor Crowley. I might not be feeling well. But I am still a Human Being." I hang up and slide the phone vehemently across the carpet toward my mother. "Why can't anyone help me? I am still a Human Being." I slam my head against the floor in frustration.
"I know. What is happening?"
"Prescription will be at the Walgreens." My mother gets the alerts for when my medications are ready on her cell-phone. I realize that the dogs have not come into my room all day. I miss them even though they are somewhere in the house. I start to cry into the white carpet (that I have stained with charcoal), silently, just tears. I feel lonely. I have no voice left to call them.
While I was still at school last month, I got tired. I stopped doing my work to stay in bed and watch TV. The Lithium started to make me throw up. I was in pieces that I could not pick up. One day, I realized that I wanted to leave. I had enough money in my savings account to fly from New Orleans to the New Jersey shore. Enough to rent a house for a couple of months, by myself. Every summer, Grammy and Grandpa would rent a house in Lavallette that would fit the entire family—us, and Mama's sister and her children. We would spend all day on the beach, and get ice cream every night at Salty's. The Shore. That is where I planned on going, with its pure white dunes and green ripcord salt grass. I wanted to feel the sand, scouring the skin beneath my toes. I would lie down on the blue and red plaid picnic blanket that my grandparents kept in the trunk of their car. I would pretend that they were still there with me. I would remember Grandpa, refusing to wear sunscreen, and wearing his blue plaid button-up shirt open, his lobster-red man boob tan. I'd think of Grammy, standing at the edge of the water, arms crossed and talking to either Mama or my aunt. She would wear a floral swimming suit that accented the wasp-shape of her body that older women develop. She would be looking out for sea glass. But that was my talent. Whenever everyone would come back to the group, they would hold seashells, and I would show up with handfuls of sea glass, misty colors of blue, white, green, and brown. I felt proud to hand everyone pieces. It was the only luck that I've had in my life. I made the mistake of telling my roommate that I would be gone for a little, and she called my mother, who came and picked me up. I suppose I am on a "Medical Leave."
It is a drive-thru pickup window for the Walgreens pharmacy. My Mama parks, then rolls down the window and picks up the receiver.
"The Insurance company won't cover the pills since prescriptions for both of them have already been filled this month." The woman at the window says. She has a fat face and wears her hair in a bun on the top of her head like Mrs. Pillsbury Doughboy.
I need these pills so that I can stop feeling this way I need them and I need them NOW. I grab the receiver, and say:
"You are going to send me to the hospital."
"I can't give them to you," she says, "The Insurance company won't cover them."
I need them now, I realize. My life depends upon this. My hands freeze over the receiver, and I scream into it, something more wordless and animal and painful that I have ever heard comes out of somewhere all inside of me. I am remembering the woman on the streets in New York. I could be her. I can see the woman at the window. She is holding her hands to her face. Then the words come back, just as Mama pulls the receiver from my frozen hands:
I curl up in fetal position against my seat. I have no more left. I start sobbing because that is the only thing left to do.
"I'm sorry." Mama says, and then pulls away quickly, the wheels of the car screeching.
If they send me to the hospital, they will take away my underwire bras. When I took clothes and books to my friend Julia when she was hospitalized, they ripped the underwires out of her bras right in front of her. She cried. There is something cruel about destroying undergarments in front of people. Dehumanizing. They will take away the tie to my bathrobe. They will take away my shoe-laces. They will take away my books and shake them to pieces, looking for razorblades. They will take away my phone. They will take away my note-book. They will take away my pens. They will not let Mama in for 72 hours. I will be alone, alone and locked away where everyone wants to leave me.
We go home without the medication. The Pillsbury bitch at the Walgreens would not give us the medication because it would jeopardize her job. My life, my self is at stake. Every part of my body aches from exhaustion as I get out of the car. I walk straight to my room, ignoring Amelia who is watching Glee. I have a hidden bottle of Pinot Noir and a shit ton of Xanax. If I can't fix the pain, at least I can dull it.
Everything is hazy. I want to fuck somebody but I'm stuck in a pseudo-suburban development ten miles from the nearest bar, called The Ice House. Within those ten miles, in the dark, lives the Texan wildlife—huge ass snakes, wild boars, cougars, and armadillos. You don't fuck with an armadillo. They might be blind, but they are vicious, have claws, and carry leprosy. Mama took my license and credit card away days ago when I started acting erratic.
The Xanax is on the top floor of the dollhouse that Grandpa made. I start to cry a little. He made the house out of wood, with real windows with plastic panes and a door with hinges and a working knob. He even added shingles to the roof. Then he painted the outside pink—my favorite color. I swallow five Xanaxes and then wash them down with some wine. Maybe porn will help this time. I don't know how far I get. I black out.
I wake up in my mother's bed. She is holding me. I don't remember getting here. I am wrapped up in the picnic blanket from Grammy and Grandpa's car. I have known that she loves me. I had forgotten how much.
Jessica Drake-Thomas is a graduate of Tulane University and Emerson College's MFA in creative writing program. She currently lives out of a suitcase.


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From austerity to refugee: the words that defined 2015, part two
In late December, we took a look at satire, transgender, and other words that defined the first six months of 2015. Here's the second and final part of our end-of-year roundup.
The ongoing drama of the troubled Greek economy entered its final phase in the month of July this year when the governing Syriza party reached an agreement on the conditions of a third bailout programme with the so-called Troika of the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Eurogroup. The tense negotiations between the two partners received extensive coverage in the international press, and there was one slogan associated with the Greek financial crisis that stood out in particular: austerity.
The word came into English via Middle French austerité, which was originally defined in the context of religious practice as 'severity, harshness, asceticism' and, more specifically, as 'self-mortification'. When applied to a person, austerité was used in the sense 'sternness of manner, mercilessness'. Those definitions emerged in the 13th century; in the 16th century they were joined by the meanings '(of a landscape) bleakness, roughness' and '(of flavour) astringency'.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) dates the first occurrence of austerity with the sense 'restraint in public spending' to the late 1930s. The term apparently entered common use in 1942, and, according to the OED, 'was frequently used in the context of rationing and other measures introduced by governments in the period during and after the Second World War'.
But austerity was not the only word of linguistic interest produced by Greece's financial woes. There was, of course, the ubiquitous Grexit, which was added to OxfordDictionaries.com in the August 2015 new words update. In the same month, our guest blogger Vasiliki Koui also explored the Greek origins of Europe, economy, and other terms surrounding the country's economic crisis.
Originally regarded as a fringe candidate, British politician Jeremy Corbyn was elected Leader of the Labour Party on 12 September 2015. His astonishing rise from outsider to favourite in the leadership campaign was accompanied by lively discussions in the British media about Corbyn's political standing as well as his very own brand of economic measures, aptly titled Corbynomics. The term was picked up by several media outlets within the UK, but has presumably not caught on in other parts of the world given its particular British focus.
Like Grexit and dressgate, Corbynomics is a portmanteau, a popular method of forming new words by combing existing material. But what exactly are Corbynomics? The word has not yet gained enough traction to be included in Oxford Dictionaries, but according to The Economist, Corbyn's economic policies include introducing a 'maximum wage', nationalizing energy companies, and printing money to boost public investment.
By the beginning of September, the refugee crisis had already been going on for well over a year. But it was the photograph of the lifeless body of three-year old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi lying on a Greek beach that revealed, for the first time, the full extent of the human tragedy unfolding at Europe's shores and put a face to the human plight of the Syrian refugees.
Following the publication of the image, mentions of refugee picked up in the English-speaking press, and in the UK, a debate broke out about the difference in meaning between refugee and migrant.
In the dictionary, migrant is defined as 'a person who moves from one place to another in order to find work or better living conditions', while a refugee is 'a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster'. The latter was partly formed within English, from the verb refuge and the suffix –ee, modelled after French refugié. It is also partly directly derived from this French term meaning 'gone in search of refuge'.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, a refugee was a Protestant who fled France to seek refuge elsewhere from religious persecution. The OED lists another definition specific to a historic event: during the American Revolutionary War, refugee was defined as 'a member of a group of guerrilla fighters active in support of the British cause, especially in New York, and nominally affiliated with the Tories'. In this sense, they were apparently so called because many supporters of the British in New York were refugees from other parts of America.
Now, it is important to note that the term refugee also has a legal dimension, and being denoted as such gives a person certain rights under international law. The full definition was laid out in Article 1 of the 1951 Geneva Convention, later revised in the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, which can be read on the website of the UNHCR.
The word refugee also made the shortlist for our Word of the Year in 2015.
Apple releasing their new batch of emojis in October got a lot of people really excited. The announcement came only a few months after emoji was declared to be the fastest growing language in the UK. Indeed, it was basically impossible to escape those small digital images this year, which was part of the reason why we awarded ???? with the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year title.
Although the emoji's popularity has been increasing rapidly for years, reaching a temporary peak in 2015, the word itself has been around for almost two decades. According to the OED, emoji made its first appearance in English in a Nikkei Weekly article in October 1997.
The noun emoji combines the Japanese form e for 'picture' and moji for 'letter, character'. Mobile technology business SwiftKey identified the 'Face with Tears of Joy' as the most popular emoji of 2015, making up 20% of all the emojis used in the UK, and 17% of those in the US.
Only ten months after the deadly Paris shootings, the French capital's streets became once again the scenes of a horrible terror attack. Sadly, it turned out to be only one incident in a long line of several tragic events in November: the bombing of a Russian airplane in Egypt, as well as suicide bombings in both Beirut and Baghdad were among the other high-profile attacks being carried out by terrorists this month.
It is therefore no surprise that terrorism started trending on OxfordDictionaries.com:
Use of the term also picked up in the press following those events, according to the Oxford New Monitor Corpus:
Terrorism is a borrowing from French terrorisme, which came into being during the French Revolution of 1789–94 to specifically describe the 'government by intimidation as directed and carried out by the party in power in France'. According to the OED, the term first appeared in English in 1795, in a speech by Thomas Paine. The definition of terrorism as 'the unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims', which today is the more common one, emerged in that time as well.
For a more detailed look at the meaning of the word terrorism, read Stephen Spector's article on the OUP blog.
The beginning of the December saw vast parts of China covered in hazardous smog, and in the north of England and Scotland, thousands of people spent Christmas and New Year's fighting heavy rain and flooding. Other countries were also hit by extreme weather conditions over the holidays: in some parts of the US, this December became the warmest since records began, while in Australia, more than 100 homes were destroyed by a ravaging wildfire on Christmas Day.
Then there was, of course, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change taking place in Paris, where 196 countries reached a historic agreement to dramatically reduce the dangerous greenhouse emissions blamed for global warming.
In the light of all these tumultuous weather events, you could say that December was all about the climate.
Climate in the sense of 'characteristic weather conditions of a country or region' has been around since at least the 16th century. The OED tells us that the word is of multiple origins: it is partly a borrowing from Old French climat and partly from late Latin clima, climat-. It ultimately comes from Greek klima 'slope, zone', derived from klinein 'to slope'. The term originally denoted a zone of the earth between two lines of latitude, then any region of the earth, and later, a region considered with reference to its atmospheric conditions.
Photo credit: zsirosistvan / Shutterstock.com.


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NCAA Wrestling Ed Ruth.jpg
Penn State's Ed Ruth, right, has his armed raised after defeating Lehigh's Robert Hamlin in their 184-pound title match at the NCAA Division I wrestling championships. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
One would think that Penn State wrestler Ed Ruth, who after Saturday night in Des Moines, Iowa, now has two NCAA gold medals and a winning streak that has stretched to 69, would have had a lifelong passion for this sport at which he excels.
Apparently there really are two sides to every story.
"Edward did not like wrestling,'' his mother, Thanayi Ruth said. "He was part of Central Dauphin's elementary wrestling program and Kenny Courts was his head coach.
"I used to drop him off at his [Courts'] house, and ninety percent of the time he didn't want to get out of the van. I had to pull him out of the van," Thanayi Ruth said.
"So I asked, 'What do I do?' and [Ken] said, 'If he were my kid, he'd be going to practice.'
"Because the alternative was to stay at home and watch TV, and I didn't want him to stay at home and watch TV.''
So Ed Ruth's mom and youth coach stayed on him when he was, as Ken Courts Sr. said, "second or third grade,'' hoping, as his mom said, "eventually it would sink in.''
It was a process. There would usually be one or two kids who would keep him from winning the Eastern National youth tournaments, Courts said. And as a sophomore and junior at Susquehanna Twp. High School, he lost to current teammate Quentin Wright in the PIAA semifinals both years.
"He was pretty decent back then; he wasn't the greatest, he was just decent,'' Thanayi Ruth said, noting that she noticed things coming together for him during the 10th grade.
"Basically it was just to keep him busy,'' she said about Ed's elementary days.
"Kenny, he was really good. I would drop [Edward] off at [Kenny's] house and he would take him from his house to practice,'' Thanayi Ruth said.
"It was funny because also at that time, when Edward would get out of the car, he wouldn't immediately go into practice. He'd wander around and he'd come to the door and Kenny would say, 'You ready?' and [Edward] would shake his head that he was ready.''
No one's happier that Courts and his crew got him ready than his Penn State coach, Cael Sanderson.
"He has a phenomenal feel for wrestling,'' Sanderson said about his redshirt junior champion. "He's unique in what he does. It's not something guys are used to.
"What stands out is he's extremely competitive and he's competitive every day and very consistent in that way.
"He's a guy that doesn't really get tired, he gets warmed up. We've been saying that from Day 1 with him. You put those things together: great athletic ability … the guy that wants to be the best and have fun … wants to get out there and perform. That's a pretty good combo.''
Courts might dispute that warmed-up part of which Sanderson spoke.
"The hardest job was getting him to warm up before he went out,'' Courts said with a laugh. "Everything else was there.''
And Courts knew that early on, pretty much from the day Thanayi Ruth called him about young Edward becoming a part of the Central Dauphin elementary program.
"Right away,'' Courts said about Ed's potential.
"I saw amazing balance from a kid at an early age. When I watched him at the middle school where we practiced walk on his hands up and down the steps, I knew right then, and I told his mother even that day, that if he sticks around wrestling he's gonna be outstanding.
"It was amazing the things he could do,'' Courts said. "Even then he was an excellent wrestler, but I think he loved football a little more early. But his mother was very forceful in making him continue to do it. She'd drop him off at the house every day and we'd take him to practice. She did an outstanding job.''
Ruth committed to Penn State to wrestle for coach Troy Sunderland and then attended Blair Academy in New Jersey for one season and won a national prep title.
"He decided to go to Penn State and I thought that would be a good fit for him with the coach that was there at that time,'' Courts said.
"The maturity from high school to college was there and it was only a matter of time that he'd be on that national podium. It was a matter of time. He's the whole package, no doubt about it.''
What makes Ed Ruth stand out, Courts said, is his ability, but it transcends that.
"The long, lanky wrestler, his leverage, his outstanding balance… He's probably one of the hardest wrestlers, I'm guessing, to take down,'' Courts said.
It doesn't happen much now (Lehigh's Robert Hamlin got to him twice in the November dual meet) and it didn't happen much then.
Courts explained that the goal of Ruth's young teammates, and that included Walter and Marshall Peppelman, currently wrestling for Harvard and Cornell, respectively, was to be able to take Ruth down.
"We knew they were where they should be if they could do that,'' Courts said. "Edward was a little heavier in weight but still, if you took Edward down you knew you could probably beat anybody in your weight class. Working out with him was sensational.''
Ruth is one of the calmer wrestlers you'll ever see. He doesn't panic if an opponent gets a deep takedown shot on him or puts him in a precarious position. In fact, Ruth often times exposes his own back to the mat in order to put his opponent on his.
Like Sanderson, Courts cites Ruth's ability and drive, his ultra-competitive gear, as the secret to his success.
"Ability was No. 1 and I'm sure now his drive is No. 2,'' Courts said. "I don't care what school he's at, he'd still be a national champ. Penn State's a great school. Ohio State's a great school. Iowa. Wherever he would be at… because it's his ability. But I think the drive now overrides those things.''
Courts and Ruth still speak. In fact, Courts chatted with him at this year's Penn State-Ohio State match in Columbus. Courts' son, Kenny, wrestles for the Buckeyes but wrestled against Penn State's Wright during that match.
"He was the same calm, relaxed guy who's excellent,'' Courts said about their talk. "The calmness was always a part of it. When he lost he'd work to get back where he was but he was always calm.
"I was glad that Ohio State bumped Kenny up to 197 only because of the friendship we've built up for so long. We could all see each other; It worked out good.''
Ruth's mom and ex-coach remain incredibly pleased the things are working out.
Courts is ready to see even more success.
"Well, since I was a part of his wrestling career early, it's probably one of the biggest thrills you can have as a coach, besides your son winning a state title,'' he said about Ruth winning a national crown.
"You see a kid that you worked with, who you took to practice, you made him get in the van, you made him go to practice and now he continues to still do it even at the next level.
"Even last year I had to cry for a moment because of the moment of me and his mother to get him where he's at today, to get him to practice, to get him to do those things. The discipline now he has is amazing. My heart goes out to him.
"You want to see him win a couple more national titles. Maybe at a different weight class that Kenny's in next year,'' Courts said, "but I hope he wins a couple more because he sure deserves it. He paid the price.''
He's a fan favorite at Penn State's Rec Hall. They chant "R-u-u-u-u-u-u-th'' when he wins and they anticipate him throwing his patented crossface cradle on an opponent — any opponent.
"Yeah, that's special, that's my kid,'' Thanayi Ruth said about the Rec Hall experience. "I'm just enjoying every moment of it. I appreciate the fans how they enjoy him and I love the fact that he appreciates them and wants to give them a show.
"He appreciates the fans and everything at the school. It's just a wonderful opportunity.
"And he wants it now instead of me wanting it for him,'' she said. "He wants it for himself now and that's the big difference. He bought into the fact that he was good. And he can be as good as he wants to be and he's buying into everything that's available to him and what he's capable of.
"It's just amazing to be honest with you. I thought he was good, but I didn't expect he'd be at this level. It's a blessing.''
Sort of a gift that keeps on giving.
"My husband and I were very, very excited that he won,'' she said about last year's title that Ed won in St. Louis. "I just wanted to jump out of my seat and hug him all up.
"And I just had to tell him, 'thank you,' because as a parent he makes me very proud. If he does that again this year, I'll be excited again.''
He did just that on Saturday in Des Moines. And with one more year of eligibility remaining, it's a success story that isn't over yet.
: 184 pounds
: Junior
High School
: Susquehanna Twp., Blair Academy (N.J.)
Season Overall Big Ten/NCAA (tournaments)
: Redshirt
: 38-2 overall; 3-0 at Big Tens; 6-1 at NCAAs
: 31-0; 3-0; 5-0
: 33-0; 3-0; 5-0
: 102-2; 9-0; 16-1


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e-GEOS will be showcasing braint™, its next generation solution for imaginery based on actionable intelligence analysis. Conceived as a cognitive extension for analysts, braint™ is a new e-GEOS modular IMINT platform, that combines operational workflows for intelligence assessment and report generation of common intelligence tasks from key site analysis, ground activity monitoring and anomalous behavior searching, to situational battle damage assessment and support to mission planning.
braint™, together with the CUT (COSMO-SkyMed Commercial User Terminal) is an integrated dedicated platform for defense and intelligence, it provides high-performance and easy to use tools for analysis, based on the integration of Optical and Radar satellites and in situ data.
The GEOINT Symposium is the preeminent event of the year for the defence, intelligence and homeland security communities. GEOINT is hosted by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), which is the organization dedicated to promoting the geospatial intelligence tradecraft and building a stronger GEOINT Community across industry, academia, government, professional organizations and individual stakeholders.
Come visit us at our booth (#944) and meet the staff to learn more about the company geospatial offering. We will introduce you to COSMO-SkyMed and its capabilities along with the latest achievements.
Monday 23rd
3.30 pm Filippo - COSMO-SkyMed and Braint for IMINT (some examples)
3.45 pm Andreas - GAF Elevation Suite
4.00 pm Filippo - COSMO-SkyMed the Italian radar Constellation
Tuesday 24th
4.00 pm Filippo - SEonSE - the e-GEOS multi-source platform for Maritime Awareness
4.15 pm Andreas - GAF Elevation Suite
4.30 pm Filippo - COSMO-SkyMed the Italian radar Constellation


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Helping Members: Win Work. Develop People. Deliver Work Safely,
Ethically and Profitably. For the Betterment of our Communities.
Join Our Email List
Want us to keep you informed on the happenings at ABC SoCal? Click the link above!
Download the 2019 event calendar by clicking the image below.
Tailgate & Ball Game
Join us for a tailgate party and Angels vs Oakland A's ball game on Saturday, June 29, 2019. For more information regarding the event, visit our Angel Game & Tailgate Party. You can also download the event information flyer. Tailgate party begins at 5:00pm with a 7:07pm game time.
Thank you to the following companies for their support of the 25th Annual ABC SoCal Graduation Ceremony
Taco Bar Sponsor: Walter's Wholesale Electric Co.
Tailgate Sponsors: Clearpath GPS, Enterprise Fleet Management, Milwaukee, Paradise Chevrolet Cadillac, The T&M Group Inc, West Coast Group Benefits
Our Sponsors


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For Appliance Repair or Appliance Installation in Marriotsville call 410-401-7563 to schedule an appointment. We service GE, Kenmore, Whirlpool, Maytag, Frigidaire, LG, Samsung, Kitchenaid, Bosch, GE Monogram for all customer that cannot get scheduled for the date and time of choice through Home Depot, please contact us.
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How about wearing red this spring-summer season? Today I'd like to share with you Valentino Garavani ROUGE ABSOLUTE SIGNATURE capsule collection which is dedicated to three various shades of red ruby, scarlet and classic Red Valentino color. You are about to see all possible amazing accessories starting from bags to jewelry. Each piece is embellished with studs and metal letters, numbers and symbols.
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The LHC has been so plagued by problems and shutdowns that some physicists have wondered if it's being sabotaged by its own future. And the LHC has fallen victim to another bizarre shutdown involving a bird and a baguette.
CERN is reporting that the Large Hadron Collider has been shutdown yet again after a piece of bread fell into the outdoor machinery. That part of the LHC's circuit normally operates at 1.9 Kelvin, but, thanks to the bread bomb, rose to 8 Kelvin, nearly causing the LHC's niobium-titanium magnets to cease superconducting. The incident could have crippled the LHC yet again — and caused significant physical damage to the lab had the LHC been fully operational at the time — but CERN claims that it won't delay the full reactivation of the device, scheduled for later this month.
Technicians believe that a passing bird dropped the bread into the machinery, just the LHC's latest run-in with Murphy's Law.
Large Hadron Collider scuttled by birdy baguette-bomber [The Register via Popular Science]


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Ladies Surf Days
Are you the girl sat on the beach or in the car park watching listlessly as everyone else seems to be having so much fun catching waves? What's stopping you? The thought of pouring yourself into an impossibly tight torture suit constructed of neoprene only to feel self conscious? The fear of not knowing what to do? The perceived pressure of your friends or partner, or the daunting images of sky-high waves and deep water? Its no wonder most women are intimidated by the thought of taking up surfing no matter how much you want to.
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