সোমবার, ৩১ ডিসেম্বর, ২০১২

A Checklist for Effective Blog Writing in 2013

business bloggingIn today?s Internet world, especially in 2013, content is (will be) king?and it?s only going to grow in importance. Thanks to changes in search algorithms, an emphasis on authorship and the growing power of Google+, content is quickly becoming more and more important in the eyes of search engines.

Related: The Evolution of Google+

To make sure your content is up to par, here?s a checklist for creating effective blog content?because while blogging doesn?t equal content marketing, it is a crucial part of any winning content strategy.

Start with Your Goal

Know why you?re writing your blog?is it to draw new traffic? Create an online community? Find new business? That goal informs all your other decisions, so keep it at the forefront of your blogging efforts.

Run Through This Checklist

Think of the following list as a run-through of what your blog needs to be effective:

  • Title: Keep the title tag under 70 characters for best search results.
  • Meta Description: Make the meta description a concise summary of your page. (Tip: If you?re using WordPress, a plugin like All in One SEO Pack can make it easy to customize your title and meta description within your post editor.)
  • Headers and Subheaders: <h1>, <h2>, and <h3> tags (and so on) give search engines a basic hierarchy of your content, allowing you to prioritize what matters most.
  • Introduction: Make the beginning of your blog post interesting and attention-grabbing.
  • Relevant Images: The Internet is a visual place, so images make your posts more interesting to readers. Pictures grab readers? attention, clarify a message, and more.
  • Relevant Internal Links: Use your blog posts to point to other content?include links to past articles or other content that relates to what you?re saying. Work it into your text or use a related posts plugin at the bottom of posts. Not only does this get readers digging into your archives, but it also adds more value to your writing.
  • Relevant External Links: In the blog community, readers like to see you?re promoting others? content. Link to content that relates and is relevant to what you have to say, as is appropriate.
  • Organization: Shorten long chunks of copy into shorter, more scannable bits. Generally speaking, online readers respond best to content they can scan.
  • Social Media: While you don?t want to turn social media into a nonstop channel for self-promotion, you can use it to promote posts from time to time. In fact, promoting your content on Facebook and Twitter is a powerful way to spread your message and increase your influence.
  • Call to Action: Remember your goal above? Find ways to coax readers to take the step you desire, whether that means subscribing to a newsletter or buying a product. Come right out and ask them to do it in creative ways within your content.
  • Comments: The most engaging blogs feel like a discussion?readers comment and expect a response. So get involved in your comments. While you don?t have to respond to every person, make it a habit to respond to questions at the very least.

What do you think? This list is not exhaustive?what else goes into quality blog content? What have you seen that?s important?

Photo credit:?adjuice.co.uk

Bio: Shanna Mallon?is a writer for?Straight North, a Chicago Web design firm providing specialized SEO, Web development, and other online marketing services. Follow?Straight North on Twitter?and?Facebook.

In September, the U.S. Justice Department said Florida had ?planned, structured...

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The New Energy Future in Sierra Leone

  • Sierra Leone Telegraph - Saturday 29th December, 2012

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    Miriam Mason ?Sesay, the Country Director of EducAid Sierra Leone and a UK national has been awarded an MBE for her exceptional services to education and to charitable work in Sierra Leone ...

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    Sierra Express Media - Saturday 29th December, 2012

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    Sierra Leone Telegraph - Saturday 29th December, 2012

    Miriam Mason-Sesay, the Country Director of EducAid Sierra Leone and a UK national, has been awarded an MBE for her exceptional services to education and charitable work in Sierra Leone. For over a ...

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    The popular nomination of Dr. Kelfala Mara as minister of financeis a vivid example.The resultsof good governanceof president Koroma?s first term in officeare showing with the country being ...

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    Sierra Express Media - Saturday 29th December, 2012

    On the night you canexpect an array of tracks from an artist described as conscious, sincere and rivet. His style has been compared to the likes ofrapmoguls Common, Nas and Talib Kweli. ...

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    Sierra Express Media - Saturday 29th December, 2012

    ? Working with Government and the Mine Workers Union, Koidu Ltd has resolved the illegal strike at the Koidu Diamond Mine in the Kono District of eastern Sierra Leone. Demands emerging from ...

  • Tigo Tropical Cables to Promote Use of SMS in Fighting Fake Electricals

    Sierra Express Media - Saturday 29th December, 2012

    Millicom International Cellular, one of the world?s leading and most innovative telecom operators, and Tropical Cables & Conductor Limited, a leading West African industrial concern in the ...

  • Source: http://www.sierraleonenews.net/index.php/sid/211669110/scat/8fcd2bb0346b8627

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    রবিবার, ৩০ ডিসেম্বর, ২০১২

    World News: Russian Airliner Crash; India Mourns Rape Victim; Japan Rethinking Nuclear Ban

    Kashmiri Sikh students protesting against the brutal gang-rape of a woman on a bus last week in New Delhi, shout slogans in Srinagar, India, Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged Thursday to take action to protect the nation's women while the young victim of a gang rape on a New Delhi bus was flown to Singapore for treatment of severe internal injuries. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)

    MOSCOW (AP) -- A passenger airliner careered off the runway at Russia's third-busiest airport and partly onto a highway while landing on Saturday, broke into pieces and caught fire, killing at least four people.
    Officials said there were eight people aboard the Tu-204 belonging to Russian airline Red Wings that was flying back from the Czech Republic without passengers to its home at Vnukovo Airport.
    Emergency officials said in a televised news conference that four people were killed and another four severely injured when the plane rolled off the runway into a snowy field and partly onto an adjacent highway, then disintegrated. No collisions with vehicles on the major, multilane highway were reported.
    The plane's cockpit area was sheared off from the fuselage and the tail section partly torn away.
    The crash occurred amid snow and winds gusting up to 15 meters a second (30 mph), but other details were not immediately known. A spokesman for Russia's top investigative agency, Vladimir Markin, said initial indications were that pilot error was the cause.
    The state news agency RIA Novosti cited an unidentified official at the Russian Aviation Agency as saying another Red Wings Tu-204 had gone off the runway at the international airport in Novosibirsk in Siberia on Dec. 20. The agency said that incident, in which no one was injured, was due to the failure of the plane's engines to go into reverse upon landing and that its brake system malfunctioned.
    On Friday, the Aviation Agency sent a directive to the Tupolev company's president calling for it to take urgent preventive measures.
    The plane that crashed Saturday took off from Pardubice airport in the Czech Republic. Jan Anderlik, the director of the company that operates the airport, told Czech public television that the plane underwent a regular technical check before takeoff and no problems were discovered.
    Prior to Saturday's crash, there had been no fatal accidents reported for Tu-204s, which entered commercial service in 1995. The plane is a twin-engine midrange jet with a capacity of about 210 passengers.
    The Red Wings airline is one of the holdings of Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, who also owns the British newspapers The Independent and the Evening Standard.
    Vnukovo, on the southern outskirts of Moscow, is one of the Russian capital's three international airports.

    PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) -- Government officials say 21 tribal policemen believed to have been kidnapped by the Taliban have been found shot dead in northwest Pakistan.
    Naveed Akbar Khan says officials found the bodies shortly after midnight on Sunday after being notified by one policeman who had escaped. Another policeman was also found seriously wounded.
    Khan says the slain policemen were found in the Jabai area of Frontier Region Peshawar, part of Pakistan's troubled tribal region. Khan is a senior political official in the area.
    The 23 policemen went missing before dawn Thursday when militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons attacked two posts in Frontier Region Peshawar. Two policemen were also killed in the attacks.

    QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) -- A government official says a bomb has struck a pair of buses carrying Shiite Muslim pilgrims in southwest Pakistan, killing four people.
    Zubair Ahmed said the attack Sunday in Baluchistan province's Mastung district wounded another 15 people, including three women. The bomb was strapped to a motorcycle and detonated by remote control. One bus was almost completely destroyed. The other was damaged.
    Ahmed said the buses were coming from neighboring Iran, a majority Shiite country and popular destination for religious pilgrims.
    Pakistan has experienced a spike in killings over the last year by radical Sunni Muslims targeting Shiites who they consider heretics. Many attacks have occurred in Baluchistan, believed to be a hiding place for senior Afghan Taliban commanders and also the site of a decades-long insurgency by nationalists.

    NEW DELHI (AP) -- The body of a young woman who was gang-raped and brutally beaten on a moving bus in India's capital has been cremated.
    Indian police have charged six men with murder in the Dec. 16 attack, which shocked the country and triggered protests for greater protection for women from sexual violence.
    The murder charges were laid Saturday, hours after the woman died in a Singapore hospital, where she had been flown for treatment.
    Her body was cremated in a private ceremony Sunday in New Delhi soon after its arrival from Singapore on a special Air-India flight.
    Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress party, were at the airport to receive the body and meet family members of the victim who had also arrived on the flight.

    EL-ARISH, Egypt (AP) -- An Egyptian security official says that thousands of tons of building materials such as cement and steel are crossing into the Palestinian Gaza Strip, which had previously been under a strict blockade.
    He said the move was made in consultation with Israeli officials, who were in Cairo Thursday to discuss security in the Sinai Peninsula and the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire signed by Gaza's Hamas rulers and Israel last month.
    The Egyptian official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
    The director of Gaza's border authority, Maher Abu Sabha, confirmed to The Associated Press that 20 trucks of material are expected to enter the coastal strip on Saturday through the Rafah crossing. Qatar is paying for the raw materials, which were bought in Egypt.

    CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Venezuelan authorities say they have deported a man they describe as a French intelligence agent who was jailed for alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate President Hugo Chavez.
    Prisons minister Iris Varela announced the expulsion of Frederic Laurent Bouquet in a Twitter message Saturday. Varela says Bouquet was arrested on June 18, 2009, and confessed that he came to Venezuela to assassinate Chavez. She says he was caught with weapons.
    Varela has offered no other details on the case. It's unclear if the man was ever formally charged.

    FUKUSHIMA DAI-ICHI NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, Japan (AP) -- Japan's newly installed prime minister has visited the tsunami-devastated Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, site of the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
    Shinzo Abe's visit Saturday to the plant comes amid pledges from his ruling Liberal Democratic Party to review the country's plans to phase out nuclear power.
    A massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, swamped parts of the Fukushima plant, disabling backup systems and triggering radiation-spewing meltdowns that forced tens of thousands of people to flee. The disaster triggered massive protests against atomic energy.
    The LDP regained power in elections this month and plans to spend 10 years studying the best energy mix for Japan. Abe has said he may reconsider the previous government's decision to stop building reactors.

    Source: http://www.wtvy.com/home/headlines/World-News-Russian-Airliner-Crash-India-Mourns-Rape-Victim-Japan-Rethinking-Nuclear-Ban-185192732.html

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    Japan's New PM Tours Crippled Fukushima Nuclear Plant

    Source: http://www.voanews.com/content/japan-prime-minister-tours-crippled-fukushima-nuclear-plant/1574344.html

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    Good Morning Texoma here is Your Texoma Community Credit Union Forecast for Toda...

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    Source: http://www.facebook.com/KFDX3/posts/466714230032080

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    শনিবার, ২৯ ডিসেম্বর, ২০১২

    Routehappy Ranks Flights Based on the Best Experience and Amenities

    Routehappy Ranks Flights Based on the Best Experience and AmenitiesThere are lots of great flight search tools for finding a ticket based on the lowest price and your schedule, but if you also care about your comfort and helpful amenities like Wi-Fi and in-seat entertainment, Routehappy will find you the best quality flights.

    Enter your flight details as you would any other similar site. (It's one-way only, though, so if you need a return trip, you need to search for that portion as well.) In the search results, Routehappy lists flights sorted by a unique happiness rating, which is a combination of several factors, including plane quality, seat roominess, flyer ratings, on-time arrival, and more.

    You can filter the results to your exact needs (e.g., if you must have Wi-Fi or prefer a late departure). When you've found the one that will make you happiest (as far as these things go), click on the details to get the flight number and be taken to the airline or another travel site for purchasing.

    Routehappy is similar to Hipmunk's agony measurement, except instead of focusing on price, duration, and stops, Routehappy focuses on the best travel experience.

    It's too bad the site doesn't display prices along with the results?for that you'll have to use another flight search tool like Hipmunk or Kayak. Still, Routehappy can complement these tools to find you the best flight experience.

    Routehappy | via Australian Business Traveller

    Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/eciCvkh9Fk4/routehappy-ranks-flights-based-on-the-best-experience-and-amenities

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    After a century, US Arabs look for pieces of past

    DETROIT (AP) ? Tossing and shivering below deck, Hussien Karoub felt ill. In the cold, crowded conditions, sleep came seldom. When it did, it didn't last long: The cries of children and the moans of those even sicker than he was made certain of that.

    It was approaching midnight somewhere in the North Atlantic, aboard a vessel carrying the 18-year-old Syrian and many fellow immigrants toward, they hoped, a better life. If nothing else, he knew it had to beat this arduous monthlong odyssey in steerage, enduring conditions that were, in every sense, below those in first and second class.

    It would be days before details trickled down about the doomed ship a couple hundred miles away. Above, in his vessel's radio room, came the first distress call from the foundering RMS Titanic: "Require immediate assistance. Come at once. We struck an iceberg. Sinking."

    A couple weeks later, Hussien Karoub arrived in the United States even more anonymously than he otherwise might have. Public attention was elsewhere, focused on the Titanic and its tragic end.

    That is the story of my grandfather's voyage to America. Or, more likely, it isn't. And that's part of the point.

    ___

    I am a third-generation Arab-American, and I am on a journey to learn more about the journey of my "jiddo," the Arabic word for grandfather. I am sorting through family stories, passed down, that have a way of changing in the retelling. Folk tales are compelling, but I am trying to anchor my story to facts before the channels to history close entirely, in hopes they might offer insight about how I got here.

    My quest mirrors those of so many Arab-Americans. They're looking back and trying to unearth their stories, separating myth from truth and ? just as important ? hoping to show their neighbors that, in the story of America, they are not a "them" but an "us."

    Maybe the Titanic tale is true. It's remotely possible, since Hussien Karoub came to the United States in the same year, 1912. My family hasn't confirmed that through records, but by anecdotes like a radio interview from the early 1960s, when he said he came to Detroit in 1915 to make cars after spending three years making hats in Danbury, Conn.

    For many Arabs, a version of the story is true. U.S.-bound Middle Easterners were on the Titanic and other ships traversing the Atlantic. In lower Manhattan, an already thriving Syrian community awaited and would be instrumental in identifying and memorializing the dead and helping survivors meet the new world.

    "I always tell people who ask that Jiddo's ship crossed paths with the Titanic on the way over from Syria," my cousin Carl, the family's historian, tells me. "The wake from the Titanic nearly capsized his tiny ferry and he cursed the Titanic."

    He has no proof, of course. In only a century, the truth blurs in a genealogical game of telephone. Yet why not hitch our tale to that of a great American epic? It's not that big of a stretch. Americans ? most Americans, even ? have done that since the very beginning.

    But I want more than stories.

    ___

    "Who's 'Aszim'?" the voice over the phone asks me. It's Diane Hassan, a researcher from the Danbury Museum & Historical Society. Hassan finds a record saying Aszim was born in Danbury in 1913, which brings us closer to confirming the timeframe of my grandfather's arrival in Danbury. This was my father's first cousin, known to my family by his American name, Jimmy. He was the son of Mohammed, my grandfather's brother.

    I've sought Hassan's help because I've hit a brick wall. Ellis Island, the entry point for millions of immigrants, contains records of my grandfather coming in 1920 aboard the Kroonland with his wife, Miriam, and their young son Allie. That was Hussien Karoub's second U.S. arrival, but there is no record in Ellis Island's archive of his inaugural voyage as a single man some eight years earlier.

    A short boat ride away, they're asking the same kinds of questions on a much larger scale. A group of New Yorkers have worked with curators from the Arab American National Museum in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn on a new traveling exhibit that documents what had been one of the earliest settlements of Arabs in America.

    It's not lost on them that the Little Syria neighborhood in lower Manhattan would become the site of the World Trade Center ? the towers whose destruction a decade ago put many of Middle Eastern descent under intense scrutiny and suspicion.

    For so many decades, the self-appointed "us" of America had names for the not-quite-white, not-quite-black, not-quite-sure group of "them" arriving from the Middle East: "Orientals," ''Ali Baba," and later, "towelheads."

    The increasingly malignant stereotype of Arab and Muslims as terrorists appeared in the 1960s with the Arab-Israeli war but hit warp speed after 9/11. It came in actions ? anti-Islamic hate crime cases reported to the FBI spiked after the terrorist attacks ? but it came more commonly, casually and sometimes just as cruelly in words:

    "Go home."

    Go home. It's as perplexing as it is offensive, especially to those whose American story stretches back a century. Where exactly is home for someone who was born in the U.S.? Or came here seeking a better life ? and succeeded? Or fled tyranny for opportunity? In times of crisis, the public forgets how long Arab and Muslims have been in the U.S. or what they've contributed.

    So, in the face of foes and a forgetful public, it is left to Arabs themselves to remember and remind others of where they've been. That presents difficulties ? not only with facts that were never committed to paper but also with facts that bump into something equally potent: family consensus.

    I've known since I was little that my grandfather made up his birthdate. Why? Because the village where he was born didn't keep records. His gravestone lists his birth year as 1893; his petition to become a U.S. citizen, filed in 1919, says he was born on Dec. 20, 1892.

    That led me to another surprise: learning he registered for the World War I draft in 1917, a full decade before being declared a citizen. The document shows his birthplace as the "Syrian Arab Republic" and his occupation as "grinding for Ford Motor Co." The registration also details back problems, which likely kept him from being drafted. His address is on the same street in the Detroit enclave where, just four years later, he would lead what was likely the first mosque in the United States.

    In Danbury, a whole section of town is referred to as "Little Lebanon," where immigrants like my grandfather came to work in fur and hat factories. One Arab immigrant whose time there wasn't lost to history was William Buzaid, who opened a fur-cutting factory in 1910.

    Hassan is working with the city's Lebanese American Club to learn more about the paths of its forebears. She welcomes my call for help in finding facts to fill my story, knowing it could in turn help Danbury and Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and many other places where Arab-Americans traveled through or put down roots during the Great Migration of 1880-1924. The peak for those coming from what then was known as "Greater Syria" was from 1910 to 1914.

    Even after trying several variations of Karoub ? Kharoub, Karoob, Karub, Karroubi ? I came up empty. Maybe, Hassan suggests, he was among those who came through Baltimore or Boston. Maybe even Canada. Maybe he didn't enter at Ellis Island at all.

    Maybe. A word I can't seem to escape.

    ___

    Devon Akmon also wants to fill in some ancestral blanks. He lacks even more basic facts than I do. He knows this much: He's half-Lebanese, like me, and his family came from northern Lebanon. But who came to the U.S., and when?

    "This is the hard part. This is what we don't know," said Akmon, now deputy director of the Arab American National Museum. "They first came to Kentucky. That's the story I want to figure out. ... It's family history. Knowing your family's story only back a generation ? it seems so mysterious."

    To know more, he said, enhances his "sense of self-worth."

    How can details like these disappear so soon? A relative's reluctance to reminisce is a common obstacle for the family historian, and Akmon said his grandfather didn't talk a lot about his past.

    It's a challenge in his day job as well. "Trying to do research on Arab-Americans in the early ... 20th century is very difficult," he says. "It's so underdocumented."

    That's an underlying theme of the 1985 book, "Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience," by Alixa Naff. It draws on dozens of interviews with pioneer immigrants and their descendants from more than 25 communities, including my uncle ? a son of Hussien Karoub who followed him into ministry.

    You come away with one overarching feeling: The ancestry quest of Arab-Americans is common to all immigrants, be they Irish, Italians, Germans, Jews or others. It is the story of most everyone in America.

    Yet Syrians are one of the least studied of America's ethnic groups ? partly because they were smaller in number and the formal Arabic language was not widely understood by Western students and scholars before World War II. But Naff says the blame also falls upon Arab immigrants, who "neglected to study themselves."

    "The history of their American experience was, by comparison, too insignificant and too fleeting to warrant recording," she wrote.

    So, what filled the cultural void? American myth and history. "Lacking ancestral legends and heroes that had an organic relevance to their lives, they adopted American legends as their own ? presidents, cowboys, athletes and men like Charles Lindbergh," Naff wrote.

    Maybe the Titanic ? itself no slouch as an American history tale ? looms so large in my grandfather's legend because the sea at that time of its fateful passage was filled with Middle Easterners seeking a new life, including on the "unsinkable" ship itself. There, 154 of the Titanic's passengers were Arabic; 29 survived.

    Those who did included 24-year-old Catherine Joseph, who was sailing steerage with her children, 6-year-old Michael and 2-year-old Anna. The passenger record indicates her husband, Peter, sent them back to Lebanon a few months earlier to save money, but called them back to Detroit.

    We know these facts about the Joseph family because of "Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition," which spent several recent months at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, the capital of Arab-America. Visitors learned about passengers and their fates on special tickets handed out at the exhibition's entrance.

    It didn't take years for the tales of those on the Titanic to be told. Arabic-language newspapers from New York's Little Syria played a particularly aggressive role in helping to identify victims and provide support to families and survivors ? something it was uniquely equipped to do.

    "The entire Syrian community of New York identified with the difficulties of those who had left their homeland seeking a better future in a new land," Leila Salloum Elias wrote in 2005 in an essay that laid the groundwork for a new book, "The Dream and the Nightmare: The Syrians Who Boarded the Titanic."

    "They were reminded of their own journey across ocean and sea," she wrote. "The Syrian community considered the ship's Syrian passengers as part of it."

    What kind of impression did that leave on my Jiddo? I wonder if he was there to see newspapers report, connect and advocate on behalf of those on the ship, and if those efforts helped him decide to launch his own newspaper a few years later in Detroit.

    No doubt he was lured like many other immigrants by the promise of Ford's "five bucks a day" to make Model Ts. But he saw another, less material motive: Muslims making Michigan their home would need a spiritual leader. He could put his Islamic studies to work to help build an American community.

    More help in my quest comes from the National Archives, the main repository for pieces of the American story. Naturalization records contain details about where and when an immigrant came to the United States ? and my grandfather's record is among them, at the Archives' Chicago branch. It teases me even more.

    He listed himself as a sewing machine operator. He had a scar on his left palm. His signature ? in a sturdy, stylish penmanship for a man who wasn't raised reading or writing English ? attests that he is neither polygamist nor anarchist.

    I press on. Genealogy specialist Constance Potter runs a general search on several conceivable spellings for Hussien Karoub. As far as the archive is concerned, no record exists of my grandfather's 1912 arrival.

    That's unsurprising. Many ports of entry were overflowing with huddled masses. Immigrants' names were taken verbally, so there's no guarantee that our best guesses on spelling match the elusive record. And until 1935, there was no National Archives.

    "There were all these years when things could disappear," Potter says.

    While she admires my pursuit and recognizes my disappointment, Potter consoles me with an existential parting shot about who we are as Americans.

    "Everyone's ancestor was somewhere on July 4, 1776," she says. "Whether signing the Declaration of Independence or somewhere in Syria, they were there."

    ___

    Every quest, particularly when it comes to your own history, eventually arrives at a crossroads with some version of the same question: What is the point?

    Why struggle to pin down my grandfather's details, to separate truth from tall tales? Surely it's not to feel more American. The day my family moved from becoming to belonging has long since passed.

    Does my faltering attempt to retrace his journey make any difference? After all, he made it. He became one of the United States' first imams, opened the nation's first free-standing mosque and started a newspaper, the American-Arab Message, for a community that would become one of the largest outside the Middle East.

    Hussien Karoub had seven children, five of whom survived into adulthood. He died at 79 in 1973. I was only 4 then, but I remember a warm, gentle man. My strongest memory is looking up to see him smile at me as I tore through his house with joyful abandon. Yet his legacy lives on through his descendants, including doctors, musicians, teachers, business owners as well as a lawyer, lawmaker and a journalist. And veterans of foreign wars.

    We are Muslim, Christian, and other ? a fitting multireligious legacy for a man who was both praised and criticized for embracing other faiths and not seeing his own as monolithic.

    A century on, we are Arab-Americans, though we have become less Arab and more American. Yet there's a pull to learn a little more about the front end of the hyphen. Maybe the urge is strongest when you feel fully connected, when reaching to the past runs no risk of giving up the present. But as the generations pass, the yesterdays become more remote. The trail fades.

    It doesn't surprise Elias that my family's lore includes a Titanic tale. She once interviewed a man whose grandfather asserted that as many as 15 people from her Syrian village perished when the great ship went down. No record supports that fact, but Elias later learned where the story came from.

    "If someone left a village, let's say in March 1912, to go to 'Amreeka' and they were never heard from again," Elias says, "it was just assumed they were on the Titanic."

    Speaking to so many descendants of Titanic survivors and victims, Elias realized the value of trying to know her own story: "Do you know how many said, 'I wish I had asked more questions'?"

    I can't ask Jiddo any more questions about his path to America. The Titanic tale? It probably wasn't true, but no matter. I can continue chipping away at the myths, the facts and the blanks, knowing that his trip was the catalyst for my family's larger one ? our evolution from being a "them" to an "us."

    In fact, as I look back at his journey through the prism of my place in this country, I spot something new, something I didn't quite expect: The immigrant Hussien Karoub, it seems, was about as "us" as you can be.

    ___

    Follow Jeff Karoub on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jeffkaroub

    Source: http://news.yahoo.com/century-us-arabs-look-pieces-past-173656843.html

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    China forces real-name telecoms registration ? RT

    Chinese telecommunication companies will require ID from their customers before installing a landline, selling a mobile phone service contract or giving access to the internet. Critics call the new rules an assault on freedom of speech.

    The real-name registration rule was passed Friday by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China?s top legislative body. The 12-article document also set rules on how the companies have to manage the personal data of their customers, their responsibility for illegal use of the information and the way who governmental regulators and the customers can oversee it, reports Xinhua news agency.

    It also specifically forbids sending any business-related messages to phones or personal emails without owner consent, which is meant to curb spamming.

    The move is meant to "ensure internet information security, safeguard the lawful rights and interests of citizens, legal entities or other organizations and safeguard national security and social public interests," the decision says.

    The regulation did not require subscribers to use real names when posting information online.

    The regulation would help the country address the rapid development of technology and fight against online scams, fraud, identity theft and libel, Li Fei, deputy director of the Commission for Legislative Affairs of the committee explained to the media earlier this week, when the draft document was under consideration.

    Critics see the new rules as an attempt by the Chinese authorities to restrict online freedoms and discourage potential whistleblowers from anonymously reporting abuses online.

    Chinese government encourages use of internet for areas like business and education, but is cautious about information which it views as a potential threat to public good. It censors the net from politically sensitive messages and restricts access to some services that puts information flow out of the governmental control.

    Back in January China instructed the country?s most popular microblogging service, Sina Weibo, to request its users to provide their real names. This was meant to curb spread of harmful rumors among its 400-million-strong user base. The company reported in May that it had problems implementing real-name registration due to technical difficulties and reluctance of the users.

    Source: http://rt.com/news/china-internet-real-names-007/

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    শুক্রবার, ২৮ ডিসেম্বর, ২০১২

    Putin signs anti-US adoptions bill

    Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the final Cabinet meeting of the year in the government headquarters in Moscow, Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Dmitry Astakhov, Government Press Service)

    Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the final Cabinet meeting of the year in the government headquarters in Moscow, Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Dmitry Astakhov, Government Press Service)

    (AP) ? President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a law banning Americans from adopting Russian children, abruptly terminating the prospects for more than 50 youngsters preparing to join new families and sparking critics to liken him to King Herod.

    The move is part of a harsh response to a U.S. law targeting Russians deemed to be human rights violators. Although some top Russian officials including the foreign minister openly opposed the bill, Putin signed it less than 24 hours after receiving it from Parliament, where it passed both houses overwhelmingly.

    The law also calls for the closure of non-governmental organizations receiving American funding if their activities are classified as political ? a broad definition many fear could be used to close any NGO that offends the Kremlin.

    The law takes effect Jan. 1, the Kremlin said. Children's rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said 52 children who were in the pipeline for U.S. adoption would remain in Russia.

    The ban is in response to a measure signed into law by President Barack Obama this month that calls for sanctions against Russians assessed to be human rights violators.

    That stems from the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was arrested after accusing officials of a $230 million tax fraud. He was repeatedly denied medical treatment and died in jail in 2009. Russian rights groups claimed he was severely beaten.

    A prison doctor who was the only official charged in the case was acquitted by a Moscow court on Friday. Although there was no demonstrable connection to Putin's signing the law a few hours later, the timing underlines what critics say is Russia's refusal to responsibly pursue the case.

    The adoption ban has angered both Americans and Russians who argue it victimizes children to make a political point, cutting off a route out of frequently dismal orphanages for thousands.

    "The king is Herod," popular writer Oleg Shargunov said on his Twitter account, referring to the Roman-appointed king of Judea at the time of Jesus Christ's birth, who the Bible says ordered the massacre of Jewish children to avoid being supplanted by a prophesied newborn king of the Jews.

    A painting depicting the massacre and captioned "an appropriate response to the Magnitsky act" spread widely on the Internet. The phrase echoed Putin's characterization of the ban while it was under consideration.

    U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell expressed regret over Putin's signing the law and urged Russia to "allow those children who have already met and bonded with their future parents to finish the necessary legal procedures so that they can join their families."

    Vladimir Lukin, head of the Russian Human Rights Commission and a former ambassador to Washington, said he would challenge the law in the Constitutional Court.

    The U.S. law galvanized Russian resentment of the United States, which Putin has claimed funded and encouraged the wave of massive anti-government protests that arose last winter.

    The Parliament initially considered a relatively similar retaliatory measure, but amendments have expanded it far beyond a tit-for-tat response.

    UNICEF estimates that there are about 740,000 children not in parental custody in Russia while about 18,000 Russians are on the waiting list to adopt a child. The U.S. is the biggest destination for adopted Russian children ? more than 60,000 of them have been taken in by Americans over the past two decades.

    Russians historically have been less enthusiastic about adopting children than most Western cultures. Putin, along with signing the adoption ban, on Friday issued an order for the government to develop a program to provide more support for adopted children.

    Lev Ponomarev, one of Russia's most prominent human rights activists, hinted at that reluctance when he said Parliament members who voted for the bill should take custody of the children who were about to be adopted.

    "The moral responsibility lies on them," he told Interfax. "But I don't think that even one child will be taken to be brought up by deputies of the Duma."

    Many Russians have been distressed for years by reports of Russian children dying or suffering abuse at the hands of their American adoptive parents. The new Russian law was dubbed the "Dima Yakovlev Bill" after a toddler who died in 2008 when his American adoptive father left him in a car in broiling heat for hours.

    In that case, the father was found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter and Russia has complained of acquittals or light sentences in other such cases.

    The Investigative Committee, Russia's top investigative body, on Friday complained that its attempts to have the acquittals overturned or reconsidered had been ignored by the United States. Under U.S. law, acquittals are final except in rare cases.

    Russians also bristled at how the widespread adoptions appeared to show them as hardhearted or too poor to take care of orphans. Astakhov, the children's ombudsman, charged that well-heeled Americans often got priority over Russians who wanted to adopt.

    A few lawmakers even claimed that some Russian children were adopted by Americans only to be used for organ transplants or become sex toys or cannon fodder for the U.S. Army. A spokesman for Russia's dominant Orthodox Church said that children adopted by foreigners and raised outside the church will not enter God's kingdom.

    ___

    Mansur Mirovalev and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this story.

    Associated Press

    Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-12-28-Russia-US-Adoption/id-72bcfefa3c2e44ee9e4b85ed0c820156

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    Incredible E-mail Marketing Tips To Launch Your Business To New ...

    When you?re thinking about marketing a business, you may be thinking about the effectiveness of different marketing techniques. Marketing with email is one of the smartest and most successful methods of communicating with your prospects. In the following paragraphs, you?ll find some tips that will help you use marketing with email effectively.

    Always get a person?s express permission before adding them to any email lists. Without this, your messages may be flagged as spam. In addition to making you appear untrustworthy, unsolicited email messages can land you on an ISP?s blocked sender list.

    Source: http://goozleology.com/incredible-e-mail-marketing-tips-to-launch-your-business-to-new-heights.html

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    Drought unrelenting despite recent snowstorms (Providence Journal)

    Share With Friends: Share on FacebookTweet ThisPost to Google-BuzzSend on GmailPost to Linked-InSubscribe to This Feed | Rss To Twitter | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

    Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/273384311?client_source=feed&format=rss

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    Retail Sales & Excuses - Business Insider

    Retail sales, as I expected, have turned out to be much weaker than what the National Retail Federation (NRF), and other analysts, previously presumed. ?The excuses for the weakness, however, were just as much off the mark as the original analysts' estimates. ? According to an AP article:

    "Shoppers were buffeted this year by a string of events that made them less likely to spend: Superstorm Sandy and other bad weather, the distraction of the presidential election and grief about the massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut.

    The numbers also show how Washington's current budget impasse is trickling down to Main Street and unsettling consumers. If Americans remain reluctant to spend, analysts say, economic growth could falter next year."

    While these excuses may play well in the media, in reality, the fiscal cliff, end of October storm and the school shooting had very little to do with retail sales on a nationwide basis. ?However, what does have much to do with the level of retail sales are incomes.

    The chart of day shows the annual change in retail sales which is a very "noisy" data set. ?I have smoothed that data with a 3-month moving average (black line) and overlaid the annual change in wages and salaries (blue line).

    Not surprisingly when wages and salaries are growing at a slower rate there is a corresponding weakness in the level of retail sales. ?The peak in wages and salaries occurred in early 2011 with the subsequent growth rate trending weaker. ?This corresponds with the economy which has continued to muddle along at a very anemic pace. ?

    While it may be likely that the damage from Hurricane Sandy may have soured some sales, particularly in the North East, it is unlikely to have had much of an effect on the retail sales nation wide. ? For majority of America the "fiscal cliff" debate largely goes unnoticed as it remains a battle between the White House and the "rich" - for the rest the country it is more of a distraction from the things that matter like?"Honey Boo Boo" and "Housewives Of Whereever". ?

    What does matter though, as stated above, are incomes. ?The decline in incomes, which can be seen in the roughly 1.2 million person increase in food stamp participation from June to September, is why retail "holiday" spending is weaker. ?With credit limits reduced, incomes stagnant and real costs of living on the rise - it is not surprising that retail sales are far weaker than the NRF's holiday season predictions. ?

    While the economy is likely to continue to muddle along in the months ahead, largely due to the impact of $85 billion a month in liquidity from simultaneous QE programs, the strain on the average consumer will remain. ?This is due to the spread between the annual change in real wages and headline inflation.

    This spread deteriorates purchasing power and drags on savings. ?Of course, you don't need to go much further than your own pocketbook to realize that your cost of living has increased markedly over the last few years even as reported inflation remains low.

    While the NRF still predicts that retail sales will clock in with a 4.1% annualized increase this may still be exuberant. ?We will have to wait until January to analyze the retail sales data for December, along with revisions for October and November, for a better assessment of the holiday shopping season. ?My best guess is that expectations are still too high and final numbers could have a negative impact on the retail sector.

    Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/retail-sales-and-excuses-2012-12

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    Social media and pr - UK Business Forums

    Our distribution is in musical instruments and accessories.

    We want to utilise social media to promote the products we distribute to muscicians so in turn the dealers get feedback and possible sales.

    What im unclear about is with our facebook and twitter pages, do we hand over the username and password to the PR company for them to post on our behalf and try to attract not only more fans anf followers but more interest and possible sales for our dealers or does the PR company basically tell US what to post, how to post what images work, what engagment to have ect.

    Its just an area im unclear with as I dont really know what a PR company does regarding a social media campaign.

    Any examples of what they do would be great and if they (the pr) do it or if we do from what they suggest to us.

    Source: http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=282004

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    বৃহস্পতিবার, ২৭ ডিসেম্বর, ২০১২

    iPhone 5 launches in more countries

    iPhone 5 launches in more countries

    The iPhone 5 has launched in several new countries recently, predominantly in Africa. The phone launched on December 21 in Botswana, Camaroon, Central African Republic, Egypt, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, St. Lucia, St.Vincent & the Grenadines, Tunisia, and Uganda, along with the islands of Barbados, St. Lucia, and St. Kitts. The iPhone 5 also went on sale in Vietnam.

    Source: (CNN Money)[http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/12/27/apple-iphone-5-launch/]



    Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/D1XMCVM4k_Q/story01.htm

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    Video: What happened to Netflix?

    Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

    Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/50294396/

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    ?Jewel In The Night?, The First Christmas Carol From Space

    Carols in the Cupola 268C1505The first ever musical recording in space (that we know of anyway) was performed just a few days ago on the International Space Station by Col. Chris Hadfield, commander of the International Space Station. The song, which is already climbing up Reddit's r/Music page, is an original Christmas Carol called Jewel in the Night. Based on the commander's Facebook and Twitter pages, he and his crew are celebrating Christmas in every way possible while they're away from their families. They even have a Christmas tree on the ceiling, thanks to what the commander calls "the beauty of a weightless Christmas."

    Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/8LoTveOgOKE/

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    Local Family Spends Holiday Volunteering - Back to Home

    The holidays aren't joyous for everyone. Especially when you don't have a roof over your head or food in your stomach.

    The holidays are a time most people spend with loved ones. But one family is spending it helping those in need.

    Dick Pariset and his family celebrated Christmas with a few extra people this year. But they weren't at home. They were at Matt Talbot Kitchen & Outreach, preparing and serving a holiday meal to those who normally wouldn't have one.

    "It makes you feel pretty good. These folks have a really nice meal, an abundance of food. I'm a farmer, so what would be better than helping people eat a nice meal," Pariset said.

    Dick, his wife Jerry, and their daughter, son-in-law and grandson from Colorado spent Tuesday scooping steaming potatoes and ham for someone other than themselves. They say they feel lucky to have gotten the opportunity.

    "Generally on Christmas day, they have a bunch of people who that's just their day to volunteer. They said 'man that would be wonderful, because we could be with our family for a change,'"Pariset said.

    Volunteering runs in the family. Jerry Pariset helps out at Matt Talbot every week and 13-year-old Dominic isn't new to the organization either. It's the second time he's joined his grandparents there.

    "It's something you can do for somebody else. Christmas is the perfect time to do that," Pariset said.

    The Matt Talbot Kitchen made enough food to serve about 150 people. Surprisingly, they say the holidays aren't their busiest season.

    Matt Talbot staff say they had so many volunteers they had to turn some away. They just hope the volunteering spirit lasts all year.

    Source: http://www.1011now.com/home/headlines/Family-Spends-Holiday-Volunteering-184761871.html

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    WWC: A Brief Recollection

    My first work in the Writing forums here. It'd be extremely appreciated that feedback and criticism be provided. What a way to start here, huh?

    EDIT: It would be prudent to note that this work is inspired from a story a friend told me.


    My earliest memories were that of cold sensations and loud noises. There was a man I recognized as my dad shaking a bell at me. He made lots of funny noises. There was a woman I knew as my mom holding me while telling stories. Those memories were the only time I felt genuinely satisfied, if you could understand that. As I grew up, I wrapped my head more and more around the situation that I found myself in. I started to realize that the delivery truck that I slept in and the canned foods I ate every day weren't normal. I realized that cleaning myself at the fitness centers and standing in line at the soup kitchens weren't something a kid like myself did. I had to adjust to that quickly when I learned that I was "poor", and I hid that at school. Luckily, public education was still around and accessible, though I knew I would never be able to scrounge up the money needed to join a club or sport. The most embarrassing thing for me as a kid was before I learned any of this, and invited a couple of friends in the third grade over to the truck. They were less than impressed, so to say, and my social standing in school plummeted. I don't think I've had any close friends since word began to spread about my financial status.

    I guess I should have tried to make the best out of that situation back then. All good things have to come to an end, and when my dad died because of malnutrition, my mother and I found ourselves without a way to pay for what meager necessities we needed to live. We starved for the first night. The next day my mom told me that she would start working. I wondered how, I learned that she dropped out of high school. I found out the hard way, while walking home from school and finding her bent over the back of our truck squealing like a pig. I don't think I was ever the same, but life goes on, and my mom kept running the same kinds of risks.

    It was in high school that things really got bad for me. I was about to graduate school. I was in my senior year and with the limited resources I had, I was about to walk away with a diploma and find my first meaningful batch of work. I walked home one day and found my mother lying on one of the small mattresses in our truck, naked and covered in blood. Her cell phone, the only phone we had, was broken. I ran for help. I remember how everything felt surreal, like I was watching a play as I grabbed the nearest pedestrian. She was dead before she could reach the emergency room.

    I kept things under wraps. My parents never reached out for help. I didn't know I could. What the doctors told me, what the policemen said, I didn't trust it. Edgy and clich?, I know, but I just didn't see how they could help me. There were tons of other people living in the same conditions I was, why should I have been the exception to the rule? I didn't believe that they could just make my problems vanish. So I lived by myself. The truck wasn't confiscated, and became my cold little barrier to the elements. I had no food, so naturally I knew I had to look for a job. However, nobody was hiring. To feed myself, I dug for scraps in trash bins. To stay warm, I took rags from the trash. I smelled like trash. I looked like trash. It shouldn't have surprised me that I found myself getting kicked out of the job center empty handed more and more quickly. I had to look presentable.

    So I stole. I picked up a brick off the streets and went to well-to-do neighborhoods and broke into their cars. I stole valuables, and pawned them. I took money, and saved it. Then, I made a mad dash for relative safety. Eventually I managed to save enough to purchase a cheap suit and some cleaning supplies. I went back to the fitness center and freshened myself up. Lo and behold, I was finally offered a job like it was some magic spell. I took it without hesitation.

    Of course, having a job didn't put an end to all my problems. It was a terrible job by most standards. It wasn't anywhere near enough to support my standard of living. It was, for all intents and purposes a part-time job. It didn't help that my co-workers knew I was street scum. I dressed in smelling clothes and probably smelled myself despite my attempts to freshen up as much as I could. Nobody talked to street scum, it was common sense. It was like trying to become buddies with the old hobo that sleeps in the alley. I understood that.

    However, there was one girl who was different, in more ways than one. She was foreign, I knew that. I also knew that she held a better position than me. But more than her being foreign and having a better income, she also was the only one who bothered talking to me. I didn't know why she would, nor did I care. I was happy that I had somebody to talk to after so long. I lacked social interaction so likely I said a lot of things that were strange or misunderstood. She didn't seem to mind, though it may be because her grasp of the English language wasn't strong.

    She was also quite nosy. We ate together at lunch, and she would bring up some embarrassing questions. I'd do my best to avoid them, but in the end she would give me a look that suggested she wasn't very impressed. One day, she finally dropped the bomb when I dodged yet another question about my life. "You're street shit, aren't you?" She asked bluntly. I couldn't respond. What could I say? I knew I smelled of it. The fitness center could only smarten up to my ways before barring me access entirely. She nodded, as if my silence were a confirmation and the next day she suggested we eat out, and demanded that I tell her everything. I had numbly nodded my head.

    It was a pizza parlor, not to shabby of a place but it was a place that was forever engraved in my memory. I arrived early, and when I saw her walk in with a stack of forms, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was when she was somewhere in the middle of explaining to me what each form was and the benefits that I felt the tears rush to my eyes. For the first time in years, somebody was actually offering me a hand for help. It was too much for me to bear, and I began weeping like a child in a pizza parlor off the main street. She said nothing, but I remember her patting me on the shoulder awkwardly. For the first time, somebody wanted to help me. And for the first time, I reached out for help. I spilled the beans completely; I told her everything about my life. She only nodded occasionally, sliding me forms to fill out as quickly as I finished them.

    After work the next day, she handed me a small backpack, and told me to gather my things. My truck, long since out of fuel in the lonely lot was not something I could take with me. She told me she'd have that taken care of. She told me about all the benefits I was missing out on, and reassured me that things will get better. I hung on to those words as the truth, daring to hope and believe in somebody for the first time. I was taken to a comfortable-looking apartment building after the day was done, and I marveled at how warm it was. She demanded that I take a shower, while she washed my grimy belongings, and I had no objections whatsoever.

    There were new ground rules for me now. I could not leave the sofa after lights went out. I was to help out whenever she needed it, no exceptions. I had to continue filling out mountains of forms, and I couldn't use any of the electronic devices. I didn't care. Being given a home and somebody that cared was worth all of it. I dared not disobey her. Time continued to pass, however, and she began to trust me more and more. I was allowed to watch TV and go to the bathroom after she went to bed. I was trusted to go out and do the groceries now. She was my guardian and I was her loyal servant. It sounds lame, I know, but the life I had been given was something I dared not hope to have in the past.

    One night she tells me to go and take a shower since I had not done so. I came back afterward to find that the sofa blankets and pillows had been put away. I go to inquire about this and she merely motions to her own bed.

    "Is warmer to sleep together, no?"

    I couldn't believe my eyes, though I dared not take this the wrong way. She hopped into the bed and I followed after closing the lights.

    "No funny business." She says. I immediately affirm this. She seemed satisfied, snuggling up to my back. "You are gentleman. You do not deserve to sleep like pig in the mud outside." she says. She wraps her arms around me and seems to fall asleep. Of course, I thought about it, but as you guessed I made it my damned not to even come close to doing any of it. It took me a while, but eventually I did manage to fall asleep.

    Christmas was around the corner at this point. I knew exactly what to get her. I had been carefully saving my precious income from the job, and made sure I could keep it a secret from her. After I purchased the gift, I was already excited for the holidays so I could give it to her. The days dragged by, and she became more and more eager for Christmas to roll around as well. On the night before Christmas, she stayed up with me, counting down the seconds until midnight. She even followed the childish rule that she could open one present then and the rest on Boxing Day. The moment the clock's hands reached the 12, she jumped up from the sofa.

    "Christmas!" She squealed, moving over to the modest pile of gifts and agonizing over which one to open first. I stepped forward, tapping her shoulder and presented my gift. She snatched it from my hands with a wide smile, tearing at the wrapping with zeal. She pulled out of the plain box a flute, her eyes widening in amazement. I learned she used to play the flute as a child, but eventually gave it up. She had been saying she wanted to get back to it, but never had the spare change nor memory to purchase one. "Thank you! Thank you! How did you know?!" She exclaimed, enveloping me in a big hug. I hugged her back, telling her it was just a small way that I could repay her for everything she had done for me. She pulled back and smiled. "Well. Here is my present to you." She replied softly, a hint of rose coloring her cheeks. She pulled me into her bedroom, tugging my shirt off in preparation for a long night.

    I woke up in a daze, suddenly aware of the sound of music floating in from the other room. I looked at the clothes on the floor, and my naked self and realized with overwhelming joy that last night was real. I dressed myself and quietly entered the other room, where she was sitting. She was in a trance, playing the flute I gave her with a nostalgic expression. She noticed me eventually though, and placed her present down, walking over to me.

    "New rule." She begins in a matter-of-fact tone, "You do not accept any housing offers, ever. You are my boyfriend now." She says, smiling. I nodded mutely, and she gives me another huge hug. "Merry Christmas." She said. I hugged her back, returning the phrase.

    Now officially a couple, I didn't see much of a change in our lifestyle. There were a few obvious ones, but our daily lives remained mostly the same. We continued to work, planning to spend a vacation somewhere nice. We took extra hours whenever we could, the extra workload didn't seem to bother us one bit now that we had a worthwhile goal. She had introduced me to her parents over the phone, and later she told me they approved until I met them. Everything was unnaturally perfect.

    It was February then, when out of the blue she collapses at work. I dropped what I was doing the moment I heard the news, and headed straight for the hospital. They told me they were trying to figure out what happened and what to do. They told me she was in a coma. They told me a lot of things, and I can barely remember any of it in my state of shock. She didn't say a thing about it, if she knew anything. I could only watch her limp form as the machines beeped and whirred around her. Eventually I was forced to leave.

    I immediately called her family, and after assuring them I would take care of her to the best of my ability, I spent most of my waking hours by her side. The doctors told me that perhaps some stimulation would wake her up, though by the tone of their voice it seemed like a hopeless prospect. Still, I continued to try. Every day, I would sit down next to her and whisper into her ear "Wake up babe, it's Christmas!". Sometimes, I thought I'd see her lips twitch into a brief smile.

    In the end, it didn't work. They finally declared her to be brain dead, and against my will, I allowed them to cut the life support. I called her family, telling them what happened. I spent the days after preparing her body for the transport back home to the country she came from. I sent as much money as I could, determined to have her funeral be as lavish as possible. I quit work. I filed for unemployment and social security benefits. I hardly ever leave the house now, except to pick up groceries. I go to sleep at night clutching a picture of her.

    If moving on means forgetting about her, I hope I never do.

    Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/sRkhIQ3iG84/viewtopic.php

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    15 Things European Startups Might Want For Christmas

    Christmas-Tree-Wallpaper-christmas-8142630-1024-768What do European startups want for Christmas? We've come up with a list of ideas. Feel free to ad your own in the comments. 1. Inspiration - We want European tech founders to think more collectively, lobby government more effectively and put themselves out there as heroes for the next generation to emulate. Don't be shy!

    Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/VMYxbR-MN3M/

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