A new treatment using carbon dioxide is set to revolutionize the anti-aging treatment. The �Brazilian Rio-Blush rejuvenation system� is now available in Britain after being a huge success in the US. According to the celebrity Parisian doctor, Jules-Jacques Nabet the treatment has produced amazing results.
While treating a patient carbon dioxide gas is injected just under the surface of the skin using a fine needle. The gas diffuses into the surrounding tissues and cause blood vessel to dilute. Wider blood vessels increase oxygen and nutrient supply to the treated area.
Evidence shows that the carbon dioxide kills the fat cells by causing them to distend. The extra oxygen eliminates fluid build-up between cells and the skin is stimulated to produce more collagen. Fewer fat cells result in a firm and younger looking skin.
Researchers at the University of Siena in Italy studied 48 women over three weeks and found that following the treatment they lost fat in their thigh, knee and stomach. At the same time their skin became thicker and their cellulite smoother.
After the discovery of Botox thirteen years back, the carbon dioxide therapy will become a new, effective anti-aging treatment.
Source: daily mail
Monday, March 31, 2008
Vitamin C rich diet and beauty products may slow skin wrinkling
Researchers now report that people who eat plenty of vitamin C-rich foods have fewer wrinkles than people whose diets contained little of the vitamin.
Vitamin C is an antioxidant, which means that it can combat the effects of free radicals in your body and on your skin. Free radicals are the unstable molecules in the environment that can cause aging of the skin. So, when vitamin C is properly delivered into skin cells, there is a good chance to reduce wrinkles and improve skin texture.
However, eating a bag of oranges every week is not going to bring about the desired results for your skin. In order to see the benefits of vitamin C on the outside of your body, you will need to find a way to combine a healthy diet that is rich in vitamin C with skin care products that contain this important nutrient. Scientists have now discovered how to use a variety of vitamin C derivatives in skin care products that will bring about the same benefits as natural vitamin C with less of the ingredient required for results.
Apart from intake of vitamin c there are also other ways to protect skin from damage and keep it glowing. Free radicals which damage the skin are accumulated due to excessive sun exposure, cigarette smoke and environmental pollutants. Hence, skin has to be protected against these. Have plenty of water, when people are dehydrated wrinkles are much more noticeable. Use sunscreen and a good night moisturizer.
Via:Webmd
Vitamin C is an antioxidant, which means that it can combat the effects of free radicals in your body and on your skin. Free radicals are the unstable molecules in the environment that can cause aging of the skin. So, when vitamin C is properly delivered into skin cells, there is a good chance to reduce wrinkles and improve skin texture.
However, eating a bag of oranges every week is not going to bring about the desired results for your skin. In order to see the benefits of vitamin C on the outside of your body, you will need to find a way to combine a healthy diet that is rich in vitamin C with skin care products that contain this important nutrient. Scientists have now discovered how to use a variety of vitamin C derivatives in skin care products that will bring about the same benefits as natural vitamin C with less of the ingredient required for results.
Apart from intake of vitamin c there are also other ways to protect skin from damage and keep it glowing. Free radicals which damage the skin are accumulated due to excessive sun exposure, cigarette smoke and environmental pollutants. Hence, skin has to be protected against these. Have plenty of water, when people are dehydrated wrinkles are much more noticeable. Use sunscreen and a good night moisturizer.
Via:Webmd
Seven tips for a glowing skin in scorching summer heat!
Good clothes are important as they make us look good but something more important then that is a good skin. Cosmetic Aesthetic Expert Dr. Cheryl Perlis has penned down seven tips that can make your skin the next best thing to wear. I am sure you have got my point, so, check these out.
1. Exfoliate your skin regularly so that your dry, flaky skin is no longer there. A good exfoliate will be the one which will contain Retin A, Renova or Retinols. Apart from using home remedies as defoliators, one should also go for professional peels once in a month.
2. Revitalize your skin with some good gels like Collagen and Elastin Gel by Clayton Shagal & Witch Hazel, which helps in replenishing and rejuvenating your skin. It also relieves your skin from sunburns. Other methods include a treatment with the Laser Genesis or a photo facial.
3. Make sure that you moisturize not only your face but your body to as it prevents wrinkles and helps in keeping your skin smooth which is an extra advantage. Also remember that creams replenish more deeply then lotions. Ponds cold cream is one of the best products.
4. De-Wrinkling your skin is another effective method that brings back life to your skin. Dermal fillers like Restylane and Juvederm helps adding volume, where Botox does the same too. Vaseline is one thing that can make you do away with Botox and likes.
5. Lips are an important part of our face and believe me, they can also look bad if not taken care of properly. Use good quality lip balms every now and then. A good lip balm will consist of Vitamin E and wax.
6. Hydration of your body is very important. Make sure you drink a lot of water, which actually accounts for half the weight you have.
7. Vitamins are important for a healthy skin. A glowing skin can only be assured with the intake of multivitamins.
1. Exfoliate your skin regularly so that your dry, flaky skin is no longer there. A good exfoliate will be the one which will contain Retin A, Renova or Retinols. Apart from using home remedies as defoliators, one should also go for professional peels once in a month.
2. Revitalize your skin with some good gels like Collagen and Elastin Gel by Clayton Shagal & Witch Hazel, which helps in replenishing and rejuvenating your skin. It also relieves your skin from sunburns. Other methods include a treatment with the Laser Genesis or a photo facial.
3. Make sure that you moisturize not only your face but your body to as it prevents wrinkles and helps in keeping your skin smooth which is an extra advantage. Also remember that creams replenish more deeply then lotions. Ponds cold cream is one of the best products.
4. De-Wrinkling your skin is another effective method that brings back life to your skin. Dermal fillers like Restylane and Juvederm helps adding volume, where Botox does the same too. Vaseline is one thing that can make you do away with Botox and likes.
5. Lips are an important part of our face and believe me, they can also look bad if not taken care of properly. Use good quality lip balms every now and then. A good lip balm will consist of Vitamin E and wax.
6. Hydration of your body is very important. Make sure you drink a lot of water, which actually accounts for half the weight you have.
7. Vitamins are important for a healthy skin. A glowing skin can only be assured with the intake of multivitamins.
What Are The Symptoms Of High Cholesterol?
Only a Blood Test Can Detect High Cholesterol
By Jennifer Moll, About.com
Heart disease has now surpassed cancer as the number one cause of death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. High cholesterol is one of the important components risk factors for heart disease. Unfortunately, there are no symptoms that are associated with high cholesterol. It is usually diagnosed through a routine blood test, and may come as a surprise to the person who is diagnosed, because he or she may feel OK otherwise.
In some cases, people may not find out that they have high cholesterol levels until they have had their first heart attack or stroke.
Although there are no symptoms associated with high cholesterol, it is the most modifiable risk factor for heart disease. This is why getting your cholesterol checked is extremely important.
Get Your Cholesterol Checked
The current guidelines recommend that everyone over the age of 20 should get their cholesterol checked at least once every five years. However, if you have a family history of high cholesterol, or you have been diagnosed with a chronic condition, such as diabetes or heart disease, you may consider checking your cholesterol more frequently. Once diagnosed, lifestyle modifications, and possibly medication, may lower your cholesterol. Even if you have not been diagnosed as having high cholesterol, there are many preventative measures that can be taken to reduce your cholesterol, as well as your risk for heart disease.
Sources:
Third Report of the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) Expert Panel on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults (PDF), July 2004, The National Institutes of Heath: The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
CDC. Deaths: Leading Causes for 2002. National Vital Statistics Reports 2005;53(17).
By Jennifer Moll, About.com
Heart disease has now surpassed cancer as the number one cause of death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. High cholesterol is one of the important components risk factors for heart disease. Unfortunately, there are no symptoms that are associated with high cholesterol. It is usually diagnosed through a routine blood test, and may come as a surprise to the person who is diagnosed, because he or she may feel OK otherwise.
In some cases, people may not find out that they have high cholesterol levels until they have had their first heart attack or stroke.
Although there are no symptoms associated with high cholesterol, it is the most modifiable risk factor for heart disease. This is why getting your cholesterol checked is extremely important.
Get Your Cholesterol Checked
The current guidelines recommend that everyone over the age of 20 should get their cholesterol checked at least once every five years. However, if you have a family history of high cholesterol, or you have been diagnosed with a chronic condition, such as diabetes or heart disease, you may consider checking your cholesterol more frequently. Once diagnosed, lifestyle modifications, and possibly medication, may lower your cholesterol. Even if you have not been diagnosed as having high cholesterol, there are many preventative measures that can be taken to reduce your cholesterol, as well as your risk for heart disease.
Sources:
Third Report of the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) Expert Panel on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults (PDF), July 2004, The National Institutes of Heath: The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
CDC. Deaths: Leading Causes for 2002. National Vital Statistics Reports 2005;53(17).
Top 10 Most Offensive Board Games and Card Games
My tolerance for game themes is fairly great, but some games push the envelope too far. Here are my picks for the most offensive board games and card games ever published. (All of the links will take you to the game's entry at BoardGameGeek.com except for Ghettopoly, which will take you to this site's resources for that game.)
1. Kablamo
This 2004 release rates at the top of the list because it tries to simulate the fun of pointing a gun at your own head and pulling the trigger. Nothing more needs to be said.
2. F*ck This!
The publishers boast that this game is "the rudest card game you've ever played," and it would be hard to argue the point. Players create phrases using 120 words "of profane, blasphemous, violent, sexual or scatalogical nature."
3. Pimps and Hos
It's just what it sounds like: Players are pimps, trying to earn cash via their prostitutes. The prostitutes can go to jail, fail health exams, and switch pimps.
4. PornStar
Quantity, not quality, is important here. Produce the most movies, manage your "stable" of stars the best, and you win the game. Avoiding pesky details like scripts will help.
5. Lunch Money
Punches, kicks, knives, humiliation and more are used by players as they try to steal each others' lunch money.
6. Ghettopoly
Definitely the best-known game on this list, Ghettopoly won national infamy in late 2003 when the NAACP criticized the game and Hasbro sued its makers. Playing pieces for this parody of Monopoly include a machine gun, a marijuana leaf and a 40-ounce bottle of beer.
7. Busen Memo
This memory game is assuredly not for children. The goal is to match the left and right breasts of 48 women.
8. Pain Doctors
The offensive nature of this board game can be summed up in two words: recreational surgery. Players try to do as much surgery on their patients as possible without sending them to the morgue.
9. Landlord
This card game of apartment management allows players to bomb their own buildings.
10. Capital Punishment
Players each control four criminals and win by putting all four in prison, on Death Row, or in the electric chair. You can use "liberal" cards to free other players' criminals -- hoping that they will commit violent crimes.
1. Kablamo
This 2004 release rates at the top of the list because it tries to simulate the fun of pointing a gun at your own head and pulling the trigger. Nothing more needs to be said.
2. F*ck This!
The publishers boast that this game is "the rudest card game you've ever played," and it would be hard to argue the point. Players create phrases using 120 words "of profane, blasphemous, violent, sexual or scatalogical nature."
3. Pimps and Hos
It's just what it sounds like: Players are pimps, trying to earn cash via their prostitutes. The prostitutes can go to jail, fail health exams, and switch pimps.
4. PornStar
Quantity, not quality, is important here. Produce the most movies, manage your "stable" of stars the best, and you win the game. Avoiding pesky details like scripts will help.
5. Lunch Money
Punches, kicks, knives, humiliation and more are used by players as they try to steal each others' lunch money.
6. Ghettopoly
Definitely the best-known game on this list, Ghettopoly won national infamy in late 2003 when the NAACP criticized the game and Hasbro sued its makers. Playing pieces for this parody of Monopoly include a machine gun, a marijuana leaf and a 40-ounce bottle of beer.
7. Busen Memo
This memory game is assuredly not for children. The goal is to match the left and right breasts of 48 women.
8. Pain Doctors
The offensive nature of this board game can be summed up in two words: recreational surgery. Players try to do as much surgery on their patients as possible without sending them to the morgue.
9. Landlord
This card game of apartment management allows players to bomb their own buildings.
10. Capital Punishment
Players each control four criminals and win by putting all four in prison, on Death Row, or in the electric chair. You can use "liberal" cards to free other players' criminals -- hoping that they will commit violent crimes.
Board and Card Games Timeline
The 50 most historically and culturally significant games published since 1800
Games have existed in some form throughout human history, but only have been commercially published with the goal of selling them to a wide audience since the 1800s. These are my picks for the most culturally and historically significant games published since 1800.
1800 - 1849
Kriegspiel (1824)
The Mansion of Happiness (1843)
1850 - 1899
The Checkered Game of Life (1860)
Crokinole (1876)
Tiddlywinks (1888)
1900 - 1919
Pit (1904)
Rook (1906)
Touring (1906)
1920 - 1939
Sorry! (1934)
Monopoly (1935)
1940-1949
Ethan Allen's All-Star Baseball Game (1941)
Chutes and Ladders (1943)
Scrabble (1948)
Candyland (1949)
Clue / Cluedo (1949)
Electric Football (1949)
1950 - 1959
APBA Baseball (1951)
Yahtzee (1956)
Concentration (1959)
Diplomacy (1959)
Risk (1959)
1960 - 1969
Football Strategy (1960)
Game of the States (1960)
Tactics II (1961)
Acquire (1962)
Password (1962)
Jeopardy (1964)
Twister (1966)
Facts in Five (1967)
1970 - 1979
Uno (1971)
Dungeons and Dragons (1973)
Dungeon (1975)
Cosmic Encounter (1977)
Hare and Tortoise (1979)
Stop Thief (1979)
1980 - 1989
Civilization (1980)
Empire Builder (1980)
Trivial Pursuit (1982)
Who Killed Roger Ellington? (1982)
Warhammer (1983)
Axis and Allies (1984)
Balderdash (1984)
Scotland Yard (1985)
Pictionary (1986)
Werewolf / Mafia (1986)
1990 - 1999
Adel Verpflichtet / By Hook or Crook (1990)
Magic: The Gathering (1993)
We the People (1994)
Settlers of Catan (1995)
2000 - present
Scene It? (2002)
Honorable Mentions
The games on the Honorable Mentions list didn't make it into the Top 50 for various reasons, but deserve to be mentioned as culturally and historically significant modern games.
Games have existed in some form throughout human history, but only have been commercially published with the goal of selling them to a wide audience since the 1800s. These are my picks for the most culturally and historically significant games published since 1800.
1800 - 1849
Kriegspiel (1824)
The Mansion of Happiness (1843)
1850 - 1899
The Checkered Game of Life (1860)
Crokinole (1876)
Tiddlywinks (1888)
1900 - 1919
Pit (1904)
Rook (1906)
Touring (1906)
1920 - 1939
Sorry! (1934)
Monopoly (1935)
1940-1949
Ethan Allen's All-Star Baseball Game (1941)
Chutes and Ladders (1943)
Scrabble (1948)
Candyland (1949)
Clue / Cluedo (1949)
Electric Football (1949)
1950 - 1959
APBA Baseball (1951)
Yahtzee (1956)
Concentration (1959)
Diplomacy (1959)
Risk (1959)
1960 - 1969
Football Strategy (1960)
Game of the States (1960)
Tactics II (1961)
Acquire (1962)
Password (1962)
Jeopardy (1964)
Twister (1966)
Facts in Five (1967)
1970 - 1979
Uno (1971)
Dungeons and Dragons (1973)
Dungeon (1975)
Cosmic Encounter (1977)
Hare and Tortoise (1979)
Stop Thief (1979)
1980 - 1989
Civilization (1980)
Empire Builder (1980)
Trivial Pursuit (1982)
Who Killed Roger Ellington? (1982)
Warhammer (1983)
Axis and Allies (1984)
Balderdash (1984)
Scotland Yard (1985)
Pictionary (1986)
Werewolf / Mafia (1986)
1990 - 1999
Adel Verpflichtet / By Hook or Crook (1990)
Magic: The Gathering (1993)
We the People (1994)
Settlers of Catan (1995)
2000 - present
Scene It? (2002)
Honorable Mentions
The games on the Honorable Mentions list didn't make it into the Top 50 for various reasons, but deserve to be mentioned as culturally and historically significant modern games.
Top 5 Online Gaming Sites for Board Games and Card Games
1. Games.com
Games.com is the official place to play many Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers and Hasbro games online. Their lineup includes Boggle, Clue, Monopoly, Scrabble and Yahtzee. They also offer traditional board games (Chess, Checkers), card games (Hearts, Rook), and arcade games (Asteroids, Missile Command).
2. BrettspielWelt
BSW is a site that offers the ability to play designer (aka German) games online. Games available include Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Can't Stop, Liar's Dice (Bluff), Ra, Web of Power and many more. This link takes you directly to BSW, but many first-time players will want to read one or all of the assistance guides available in "Related Resources" below, since the site is mostly in German. (There are plenty of English-speaking players to be found, however.)
3. ItsYourTurn.com
The thing that makes ItsYourTurn.com unique is that you only take one turn at a time -- so you and your opponents don't have to be online at the same time. Backgammon, Battleboats, Chess, Checkers, Go, Reversi and Sabotage (a Stratego-like game with some nice twists) are among the games available.
4. GameTable Online
Games available at this site include Battle Cattle, Cosmic Wimpout, Girl Genius - The Works, Kill Doctor Lucky, Sold!, Ursuppe, Witch Trial, and more.
5. Mind Sports Arena
Chess, Othello, Pente, and many other abstract games can be played here. A good place for fans of abstract games.
Games.com is the official place to play many Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers and Hasbro games online. Their lineup includes Boggle, Clue, Monopoly, Scrabble and Yahtzee. They also offer traditional board games (Chess, Checkers), card games (Hearts, Rook), and arcade games (Asteroids, Missile Command).
2. BrettspielWelt
BSW is a site that offers the ability to play designer (aka German) games online. Games available include Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Can't Stop, Liar's Dice (Bluff), Ra, Web of Power and many more. This link takes you directly to BSW, but many first-time players will want to read one or all of the assistance guides available in "Related Resources" below, since the site is mostly in German. (There are plenty of English-speaking players to be found, however.)
3. ItsYourTurn.com
The thing that makes ItsYourTurn.com unique is that you only take one turn at a time -- so you and your opponents don't have to be online at the same time. Backgammon, Battleboats, Chess, Checkers, Go, Reversi and Sabotage (a Stratego-like game with some nice twists) are among the games available.
4. GameTable Online
Games available at this site include Battle Cattle, Cosmic Wimpout, Girl Genius - The Works, Kill Doctor Lucky, Sold!, Ursuppe, Witch Trial, and more.
5. Mind Sports Arena
Chess, Othello, Pente, and many other abstract games can be played here. A good place for fans of abstract games.
Considering a Fixed Rate Loan?
Refinancing into a fixed rate loan might be a good idea if you borrowed up to your full repayment capacity when rates were low, or you can see you are going to have trouble making repayments if interest rates go any higher.
If you currently have a variable loan and are considering moving to a fixed then our Variable vs Fixed Rate Mortgage Calculator allows you to compare costs between the two types and test the effects of future interest rate rises on repayments.
Now is the time to make a decision before rates go any higher and problems start to occur. If you leave the decision to go fixed until you are in financial stress it may be too late and you will be rejected by lenders concerned about your repayment ability. Take the time now to assess your current financial situation and work out how your budget will cope if interest rates rise by another 1 or 2%.
If you are looking to buy a house or renovate then try to keep your borrowings as low as possible. Factor in increased rates to ensure you are not over committing yourself.
An option to consider is a split rate loan. Borrowers have the security of knowing that the fixed portion provides partial protection against rising rates while the variable portion means savings if rates fall. This is a compromise solution that helps provide a safety net for those whose budget may be tight.
Another strategy you can use to minimise the effect of rising interest rates is debt consolidation. If you haven't already, fold all your high interest debt like credit and store cards into your new fixed rate loan.
Decreasing the amount you owe now is the best protection strategy of all. If you can increase your repayment schedule or make voluntary repayments by depositing tax returns etc then you will provide yourself with an extra margin of safety if rates continue to increase. It may also pay to consider income protection insurance.
If you are thinking about refinancing, renovating or buying a house and are considering a fixed loan, discuss your options with a mortgage broker. Unlike banks who only promote their own products, a mortgage broker has access to lots of different loans and lenders and should be able to locate the best product for your needs, and there is no charge to you for their service. The lender pays.
The Home Loan Club (HLC) is an emerging online exchange that connects interested consumers to various professional mortgage services companies in its Australia wide network. Fill out the online form for a free no-obligation quote.
If you currently have a variable loan and are considering moving to a fixed then our Variable vs Fixed Rate Mortgage Calculator allows you to compare costs between the two types and test the effects of future interest rate rises on repayments.
Now is the time to make a decision before rates go any higher and problems start to occur. If you leave the decision to go fixed until you are in financial stress it may be too late and you will be rejected by lenders concerned about your repayment ability. Take the time now to assess your current financial situation and work out how your budget will cope if interest rates rise by another 1 or 2%.
If you are looking to buy a house or renovate then try to keep your borrowings as low as possible. Factor in increased rates to ensure you are not over committing yourself.
An option to consider is a split rate loan. Borrowers have the security of knowing that the fixed portion provides partial protection against rising rates while the variable portion means savings if rates fall. This is a compromise solution that helps provide a safety net for those whose budget may be tight.
Another strategy you can use to minimise the effect of rising interest rates is debt consolidation. If you haven't already, fold all your high interest debt like credit and store cards into your new fixed rate loan.
Decreasing the amount you owe now is the best protection strategy of all. If you can increase your repayment schedule or make voluntary repayments by depositing tax returns etc then you will provide yourself with an extra margin of safety if rates continue to increase. It may also pay to consider income protection insurance.
If you are thinking about refinancing, renovating or buying a house and are considering a fixed loan, discuss your options with a mortgage broker. Unlike banks who only promote their own products, a mortgage broker has access to lots of different loans and lenders and should be able to locate the best product for your needs, and there is no charge to you for their service. The lender pays.
The Home Loan Club (HLC) is an emerging online exchange that connects interested consumers to various professional mortgage services companies in its Australia wide network. Fill out the online form for a free no-obligation quote.
Pay Off Debt Now: 5 Steps To Getting Your Finances in Order
Pay Off Debt Now: 5 Steps To Getting Your Finances in Order
By Drew Harris
In our world of dizzying change, nothing is more true than the time honored statement that circumstances always change.
No where is this more true than with financial issues.
Have you ever borrowed money, or charged up the VISA card at Christmas, all the while telling yourself that you would pay everything off with a coming tax refund or bonus?
Sound familiar. And then what happens when the bonus money arrives?
Let me guess….circumstances changed, the car needed brakes (or the kids needed braces, etc), and the VISA debt and interest charges keeps piling up.
Unless you have a plan, you will always be caught in the unpredictable grip of “changing circumstances.”
This is a slippery slope that can very quickly become serious financial stress. Consider the fact that Americans are declaring bankruptcy at record rates. One in every 100 families is affected by a bankruptcy.
I was on this slope 10 years ago. Declaring personal bankruptcy and filing for divorce went hand in hand.
One of the most insightful moments of the process was preparing a written log for the trustee of all of our spending for the 5 years leading up to bankruptcy.
While all of the individual decisions made sense in the moments that they were made, they looked totally foolish in the context of the “bigger picture”
In other words, constantly changing circumstances drove us off our financial roadmap.
Consider this five step plan for getting on, and staying with, your financial roadmap.
Step No. 1: Make a list of what you owe & prioritize: Put all your bills in a pile. Then list your debts in order, starting with the largest balance first. Then prioritize your repayments (ie paying down the highest interest rate first).
Step No. 2: Eliminate credit cards and don’t roll over balances. Once paid off, notify the company that you want to close the account.
Step No. 3: Make a spending plan. Change your free-spending ways. Track the money that’s coming in and going out. Use a debit card instead of your credit card. Download your bank transactions into a computer program for easy categorizing.
Step No. 4: Be careful about the equity in your home. Billions of dollars worth of equity has been withdrawn from millions of homes in the last few years. But many people pay down credit cards only to charge them up again – and then you don’t have the safety net of the equity in your home.
Step No. 5: Get help. For some people, the problem of overspending is a psychological one. Spending can become a habit that’s as difficult to kick as alcohol, drugs or gambling. Sometimes, it’s due to circumstances they truly could not avoid: medical bills or divorce or loss of a job.
You can talk with a credit counselor on a private basis. It only appears on your credit report if you enter their debt repayment program.
During this holiday season, as you consider your finances, remember that Americans are now carrying $683 billion in revolving credit card debt. 47% of the people who paid less than the full amount on their credit card bills in a recent month, made only the minimum payment due.
The good news is that planning and professional help will definitely help you turn things around.
Case in point: I went from bankrupt with zero assets living in a boarding house, to gainfully employed, running my own home based business, with 2 houses and excellent re-established credit.
By Drew Harris
In our world of dizzying change, nothing is more true than the time honored statement that circumstances always change.
No where is this more true than with financial issues.
Have you ever borrowed money, or charged up the VISA card at Christmas, all the while telling yourself that you would pay everything off with a coming tax refund or bonus?
Sound familiar. And then what happens when the bonus money arrives?
Let me guess….circumstances changed, the car needed brakes (or the kids needed braces, etc), and the VISA debt and interest charges keeps piling up.
Unless you have a plan, you will always be caught in the unpredictable grip of “changing circumstances.”
This is a slippery slope that can very quickly become serious financial stress. Consider the fact that Americans are declaring bankruptcy at record rates. One in every 100 families is affected by a bankruptcy.
I was on this slope 10 years ago. Declaring personal bankruptcy and filing for divorce went hand in hand.
One of the most insightful moments of the process was preparing a written log for the trustee of all of our spending for the 5 years leading up to bankruptcy.
While all of the individual decisions made sense in the moments that they were made, they looked totally foolish in the context of the “bigger picture”
In other words, constantly changing circumstances drove us off our financial roadmap.
Consider this five step plan for getting on, and staying with, your financial roadmap.
Step No. 1: Make a list of what you owe & prioritize: Put all your bills in a pile. Then list your debts in order, starting with the largest balance first. Then prioritize your repayments (ie paying down the highest interest rate first).
Step No. 2: Eliminate credit cards and don’t roll over balances. Once paid off, notify the company that you want to close the account.
Step No. 3: Make a spending plan. Change your free-spending ways. Track the money that’s coming in and going out. Use a debit card instead of your credit card. Download your bank transactions into a computer program for easy categorizing.
Step No. 4: Be careful about the equity in your home. Billions of dollars worth of equity has been withdrawn from millions of homes in the last few years. But many people pay down credit cards only to charge them up again – and then you don’t have the safety net of the equity in your home.
Step No. 5: Get help. For some people, the problem of overspending is a psychological one. Spending can become a habit that’s as difficult to kick as alcohol, drugs or gambling. Sometimes, it’s due to circumstances they truly could not avoid: medical bills or divorce or loss of a job.
You can talk with a credit counselor on a private basis. It only appears on your credit report if you enter their debt repayment program.
During this holiday season, as you consider your finances, remember that Americans are now carrying $683 billion in revolving credit card debt. 47% of the people who paid less than the full amount on their credit card bills in a recent month, made only the minimum payment due.
The good news is that planning and professional help will definitely help you turn things around.
Case in point: I went from bankrupt with zero assets living in a boarding house, to gainfully employed, running my own home based business, with 2 houses and excellent re-established credit.
How Does A Home Equity Loan Work?
When you have need of cash for a large project or purchase, you may be able to use the equity that you have built up in your home. The longer that you have lived in your home the more equity you would have. Equity simply refers to the cash value that has accumulated in your home since you have been making regular payments over time. Here are some things you need to know about a home equity loan before you apply.
How Much Cash Is Available?
In order to determine just how much cash may be available in your home, you will need to do a little calculation. Start with the current value of your home (not the purchase price), and subtract how much you still owe on your mortgage. This will give you the amount of the total equity you have in the house.
Once you have the total amount of equity, you want to remember that you do not want to have a loan value of more than 80% of the value of your home. If you take more than this, you will need to pay Private Mortgage Insurance.
A Second Mortgage
Generally, a home equity loan is a second mortgage that gives you your equity in a lump sum. As a second mortgage, the interest rate will be higher than with a first mortgage. So, you will need to decide if you want to refinance your first mortgage, or just get a second mortgage. Both ways will give you access to the equity in your home.
They also come available as either a fixed rate mortgage, or as an adjustable rate mortgage. This gives you some flexibility, but be sure that you know the difference when you go to apply.
Repayment Options For Your Loan
Repaying your home equity loan usually means that you have a shorter time period than you would have if it were a first mortgage. Typically, you will have up to fifteen years to repay it. Some lenders may not give you this much time if your credit rating is not so good, and some may give you longer if it is good.
Purposes of a Home Equity Loan
This is one good reason why you may want to get a home equity loan. You can use the money for any purpose you want. If you just want to take a long vacation to that far away tropical place you have wanted to go all your life, or continue your education or pay for your son or daughter's college, buy a boat, reduce indebtedness, or whatever - it is there for you to use.
A Secured Loan
A home equity loan is secured by the home itself. This means that if you should for some reason default on the payments that the lender can foreclose on your home. This requires that you take careful thought about the matter of a home equity loan and do not get one if you are not sure you can make the payments. Getting the cash you want is great - but keeping your home is even better.
Be sure to look around and compare the features of home equity loans before you select one. There is a variance in interest rates and features - which you will see quickly as you start to compare some of them. There are regular closing costs and other expenses that you will incur with getting the loan.
How Much Cash Is Available?
In order to determine just how much cash may be available in your home, you will need to do a little calculation. Start with the current value of your home (not the purchase price), and subtract how much you still owe on your mortgage. This will give you the amount of the total equity you have in the house.
Once you have the total amount of equity, you want to remember that you do not want to have a loan value of more than 80% of the value of your home. If you take more than this, you will need to pay Private Mortgage Insurance.
A Second Mortgage
Generally, a home equity loan is a second mortgage that gives you your equity in a lump sum. As a second mortgage, the interest rate will be higher than with a first mortgage. So, you will need to decide if you want to refinance your first mortgage, or just get a second mortgage. Both ways will give you access to the equity in your home.
They also come available as either a fixed rate mortgage, or as an adjustable rate mortgage. This gives you some flexibility, but be sure that you know the difference when you go to apply.
Repayment Options For Your Loan
Repaying your home equity loan usually means that you have a shorter time period than you would have if it were a first mortgage. Typically, you will have up to fifteen years to repay it. Some lenders may not give you this much time if your credit rating is not so good, and some may give you longer if it is good.
Purposes of a Home Equity Loan
This is one good reason why you may want to get a home equity loan. You can use the money for any purpose you want. If you just want to take a long vacation to that far away tropical place you have wanted to go all your life, or continue your education or pay for your son or daughter's college, buy a boat, reduce indebtedness, or whatever - it is there for you to use.
A Secured Loan
A home equity loan is secured by the home itself. This means that if you should for some reason default on the payments that the lender can foreclose on your home. This requires that you take careful thought about the matter of a home equity loan and do not get one if you are not sure you can make the payments. Getting the cash you want is great - but keeping your home is even better.
Be sure to look around and compare the features of home equity loans before you select one. There is a variance in interest rates and features - which you will see quickly as you start to compare some of them. There are regular closing costs and other expenses that you will incur with getting the loan.
Should You Pay In Cash?
Articles and books on personal finance generally pack in as many tips as possible in an effort to make at least a couple essential ones stick. This shotgun approach is worth it if it helps readers learn to pay themselves first, spend less than they make, and so on, but saying too much sometimes means explaining too little.
In this article we'll focus on just one technique to improve your finances by taking a close at how making purchases with cash can contribute to your ability to budget, save and invest.
A Plastic Paradise
With the proliferation of plastic alternatives to hard currency, some people consider carrying cash a throwback.
To be fair, plastic is much sexier than a piece of colored paper with a dead president staring vaguely into the distance. Some banks even allow you to customize the graphics that appear on the credit card/debit card or choose from a range of designs and colors the company is marketing. (To learn more on plastic purchases, check out Understanding Credit Card Interest, Take Control Of Your Credit Cards and Credit, Debit And Charge: Sizing Up The Cards In Your Wallet.)
There is also the security advantage with debit and credit cards. Debit cards are protected by your personal identification number (PIN) and credit cards by your signature (and for some cards, a PIN number too). Cash is only protected by your ability to defend it should someone else want to take it from you.
Moreover, cards are as widely accepted as cash - with the exception of a few mom and pop shops. And yet, from a personal finance view, cash is almost always the better choice for making a purchase. Here's why:
1. Overpaying
One of the drawbacks of credit and debit cards is that they encourage you to spend more than you intend to by giving you easy access to more capital. With cash, spending more than you intended requires going to a bank or ATM to get more and then going back to the store to complete the purchase. For most people, this provides time to reconsider whether their budgets can handle any extra strain.
Generally speaking, only carrying the cash you are prepared to pay for a given product will prevent you from buying the next level up and paying for features you don't need. This works for small-scale purchases, but buying a computer or a car can involve large amounts of cash that probably shouldn't be carried around. If a check can't be used, a debit card is better than a credit card because you are spending money you have rather than money you don't. (To find out more, see Your First Checking Account.)
2. Over-Shopping
Just as cards encourage overpaying for one item, they also allow you to buy more items than you mean to. Stores are set up to make products appealing in order to persuade shoppers to buy more. Sometimes a shopping list isn't enough to protect you from impulse buys.
According to the article “Cards Encourage You to Overspend” on Soundmoneytips.com, people will spend more with a credit card compared to cash. In fact, a Dunn & Bradstreet study found that people spend 12-18% more when using credit cards than when using cash. And McDonald's found that the average transaction rose from $4.50 to $7 when customers used plastic instead of cash.
So what can you do to avoid this? Only carrying enough cash to buy the things on your list can limit the damage. This is the best way to keep shopping within your budget. If you are motivated, you will find discounts or cheaper alternatives to your regular brands to make that cash go further and maybe earn yourself a luxury item. (To learn how to save money, see Six Months To A Better Budget and The Beauty Of Budgeting.)
3. Cash Vs. Credit Cards
Cash, for the purposes of this article, is strictly limited to money you have already earned and is sitting there for you to use. Using your Visa to take a cash advance and then carrying the cash with you will not solve the essential problem of using high-interest debt to cover your expenses.
Cash has one very clear advantage over using a credit card: If you buy something on your credit card and end up carrying a balance, or only make the minimum payment each month, you will incur interest at a rate of 15% or more of your purchase (which can have you paying $15 or more for every $100 you spend). If you save up enough cash for the same purchase, you are giving yourself the equivalent of a 15% discount by not using your card. (Before you even sign up for a card, make sure you know what you're getting into. To learn more, see How To Read Loan And Credit Card Agreements.)
4. Cash Vs. Debit Cards
If this article were only dealing with cash as a better alternative to credit cards, no one would dispute it. In contrast, debit cards seem to enjoy a protected status despite the overkill on ATM fees and foreign ATM fees. Forgetting the fees, a debit card's main failure is that is trivializes purchases. Being a square of plastic, it is hard to tell how much of your money is flowing through your debit card.
For most people it becomes a matter of $2 here, $6 there, another $4 over here and so on until they give up keeping track of how much has been spent in a day - let alone a month. Then it's a shock to their systems when the monthly statement comes and it's far too late to do any good. With cash, you can see the damage as it is done and hopefully curtail your spending before it gets out of control
Conclusion
Using a credit or debit card offers more security than cash in most cases. For large purchases, carrying cash is often not an option and writing a check or getting a bank draft may be more trouble than it is worth for some. Furthermore, if a debit card is used responsibly, it is an ideal replacement for cash. A credit card can also be a convenient tool, but it's only a fair substitute for cash when the balance is paid in full at the end of each month. Otherwise, your ultimate reward for paying with your credit card will be paying off an even bigger debt.
If you struggle to avoid overspending, shopping with cash is one way to stick to your budget and limit impulsive spending.
In this article we'll focus on just one technique to improve your finances by taking a close at how making purchases with cash can contribute to your ability to budget, save and invest.
A Plastic Paradise
With the proliferation of plastic alternatives to hard currency, some people consider carrying cash a throwback.
To be fair, plastic is much sexier than a piece of colored paper with a dead president staring vaguely into the distance. Some banks even allow you to customize the graphics that appear on the credit card/debit card or choose from a range of designs and colors the company is marketing. (To learn more on plastic purchases, check out Understanding Credit Card Interest, Take Control Of Your Credit Cards and Credit, Debit And Charge: Sizing Up The Cards In Your Wallet.)
There is also the security advantage with debit and credit cards. Debit cards are protected by your personal identification number (PIN) and credit cards by your signature (and for some cards, a PIN number too). Cash is only protected by your ability to defend it should someone else want to take it from you.
Moreover, cards are as widely accepted as cash - with the exception of a few mom and pop shops. And yet, from a personal finance view, cash is almost always the better choice for making a purchase. Here's why:
1. Overpaying
One of the drawbacks of credit and debit cards is that they encourage you to spend more than you intend to by giving you easy access to more capital. With cash, spending more than you intended requires going to a bank or ATM to get more and then going back to the store to complete the purchase. For most people, this provides time to reconsider whether their budgets can handle any extra strain.
Generally speaking, only carrying the cash you are prepared to pay for a given product will prevent you from buying the next level up and paying for features you don't need. This works for small-scale purchases, but buying a computer or a car can involve large amounts of cash that probably shouldn't be carried around. If a check can't be used, a debit card is better than a credit card because you are spending money you have rather than money you don't. (To find out more, see Your First Checking Account.)
2. Over-Shopping
Just as cards encourage overpaying for one item, they also allow you to buy more items than you mean to. Stores are set up to make products appealing in order to persuade shoppers to buy more. Sometimes a shopping list isn't enough to protect you from impulse buys.
According to the article “Cards Encourage You to Overspend” on Soundmoneytips.com, people will spend more with a credit card compared to cash. In fact, a Dunn & Bradstreet study found that people spend 12-18% more when using credit cards than when using cash. And McDonald's found that the average transaction rose from $4.50 to $7 when customers used plastic instead of cash.
So what can you do to avoid this? Only carrying enough cash to buy the things on your list can limit the damage. This is the best way to keep shopping within your budget. If you are motivated, you will find discounts or cheaper alternatives to your regular brands to make that cash go further and maybe earn yourself a luxury item. (To learn how to save money, see Six Months To A Better Budget and The Beauty Of Budgeting.)
3. Cash Vs. Credit Cards
Cash, for the purposes of this article, is strictly limited to money you have already earned and is sitting there for you to use. Using your Visa to take a cash advance and then carrying the cash with you will not solve the essential problem of using high-interest debt to cover your expenses.
Cash has one very clear advantage over using a credit card: If you buy something on your credit card and end up carrying a balance, or only make the minimum payment each month, you will incur interest at a rate of 15% or more of your purchase (which can have you paying $15 or more for every $100 you spend). If you save up enough cash for the same purchase, you are giving yourself the equivalent of a 15% discount by not using your card. (Before you even sign up for a card, make sure you know what you're getting into. To learn more, see How To Read Loan And Credit Card Agreements.)
4. Cash Vs. Debit Cards
If this article were only dealing with cash as a better alternative to credit cards, no one would dispute it. In contrast, debit cards seem to enjoy a protected status despite the overkill on ATM fees and foreign ATM fees. Forgetting the fees, a debit card's main failure is that is trivializes purchases. Being a square of plastic, it is hard to tell how much of your money is flowing through your debit card.
For most people it becomes a matter of $2 here, $6 there, another $4 over here and so on until they give up keeping track of how much has been spent in a day - let alone a month. Then it's a shock to their systems when the monthly statement comes and it's far too late to do any good. With cash, you can see the damage as it is done and hopefully curtail your spending before it gets out of control
Conclusion
Using a credit or debit card offers more security than cash in most cases. For large purchases, carrying cash is often not an option and writing a check or getting a bank draft may be more trouble than it is worth for some. Furthermore, if a debit card is used responsibly, it is an ideal replacement for cash. A credit card can also be a convenient tool, but it's only a fair substitute for cash when the balance is paid in full at the end of each month. Otherwise, your ultimate reward for paying with your credit card will be paying off an even bigger debt.
If you struggle to avoid overspending, shopping with cash is one way to stick to your budget and limit impulsive spending.
7 Ills That Don’t Need Pills
In the April 2008 issue of the Harvard Health Letter, researchers explained how seven common conditions can be managed without medication. In many cases, the nonpharmacological approach can do as much or more than pills.
Arthritis: Combine weight loss with exercise, and you may have less pain and more mobility -- especially if the exercise that doesn't put any load on the joints, such as swimming, reduces pain.
Cholesterol: Adding soluble fiber to your diet can reduce levels of LDL cholesterol.
Cognitive decline: Memory training can help you stay sharp, and physical exercise can do even more.
Depression: Regular physical activity has a potent antidepressant effect.
Diabetes: Exercise makes muscle more receptive to the insulin, and eating fewer sweets and simple carbohydrates helps control blood sugar levels.
High blood pressure: Lose weight, get more exercise, and eat less sodium.
Osteoporosis: Weight-bearing exercise causes bone tissue to get stronger and denser. Extra vitamin D and calcium are key for your diet.
Sources:
Live Science March 25, 2008
Arthritis: Combine weight loss with exercise, and you may have less pain and more mobility -- especially if the exercise that doesn't put any load on the joints, such as swimming, reduces pain.
Cholesterol: Adding soluble fiber to your diet can reduce levels of LDL cholesterol.
Cognitive decline: Memory training can help you stay sharp, and physical exercise can do even more.
Depression: Regular physical activity has a potent antidepressant effect.
Diabetes: Exercise makes muscle more receptive to the insulin, and eating fewer sweets and simple carbohydrates helps control blood sugar levels.
High blood pressure: Lose weight, get more exercise, and eat less sodium.
Osteoporosis: Weight-bearing exercise causes bone tissue to get stronger and denser. Extra vitamin D and calcium are key for your diet.
Sources:
Live Science March 25, 2008
A Big Belly Boosts Your Risk of Dementia
A big belly in your 40’s can boost your risk of Alzheimer's disease decades later.
Previous research has already showed that obesity raises your chances of developing dementia, but a new study found a separate risk from storing fat in the abdomen. Even people who weren't overweight were endangered.
Abdominal fat, sometimes described as making people apple-shaped rather than pear-shaped, has been linked to a higher risk of diabetes, stroke and heart disease. Now dementia can be added to that list.
Previous research has already showed that obesity raises your chances of developing dementia, but a new study found a separate risk from storing fat in the abdomen. Even people who weren't overweight were endangered.
Abdominal fat, sometimes described as making people apple-shaped rather than pear-shaped, has been linked to a higher risk of diabetes, stroke and heart disease. Now dementia can be added to that list.
WHAT ARE PROBIOTICS?
Probiotics
by K. J. Theodore
PROBIOTICS are a dietary supplement that increase the population of the 'good' bacteria (micro flora), which are needed in the intestinal tract in order to process food properly. The use of probiotics as a daily supplement has become a popular routine in the commercial poultry industry, particularly following antibiotic treatment. One commonly known probiotic is called Lactobacillus Acidophilus, and is naturally occurring in some food such as yogurt. But direct application through a liquid or powdered form mixed into drinking water is the most effective route.
Good bacteria also help fight off the bad bacteria that passes through the system, before it has a chance to take hold. Introducing probiotics into the digestive system everyday to ward off bacterial infection is known as 'selective exclusion'.
Selective exclusion is a very good way to keep your birds healthy and disease resistant throughout their life. I use probiotics in my own flock, along with a vitamin and mineral supplement on a daily basis. I also use probiotics before, during, and after both showing and breeding. For showing, the probiotics help the birds ward off most illnesses they could become exposed to in that environment. For breeding, one benefit is the tendency of the laying hens to drink more water, when the water is treated with flavored probiotics. Both breeding and showing are very stressful times in your birds' lives, and the vulnerability to disease increases during those times. The use of probiotics helps to reduce that vulnerability.
During times of stress or the use of antibacterials (antibiotics), hormonal changes can occur, causing the pH of the small intestine to rise. This allows existing bad bacteria to take a foothold in the lining of the intestine because of the deterioration of the protective mucus lining. Because of this, the 'villi' (little fingers), which normally exist in the small intestine, can be lost. Villi slow the movement of food as it passes through so that nutrients can be absorbed through the intestinal wall. The term 'going light' can occur when villi are lost. Increasing good gut bacteria through the use of probiotics will compete against the bad bacteria, change the pH environment, allow nutrient absorption, and prevent infection. Probiotic treatment has also shown an ability to stimulate appetite - a valuable thing when trying to maintain the weight of an ailing bird.
If you're not inclined to use probiotics on a daily basis, then at least consider their use immediately following antibiotic treatment. When your bird is treated with antibiotics, all bacteria are killed off - good and bad. Treating with probiotics immediately after the use of antibiotics, help to repopulate the gut with the good bacteria. In many cases, this can ward off a secondary infection, such as E Coli. E. Coli has been shown to exist in virtually all manure samples, but only becomes a problem when the digestive environment is friendly to its reproduction.
Here are two ways you can introduce probiotics into your birds' diet. If you have a very small flock, GNC (in most shopping malls), sells a flavored liquid version of L. Acidophilus. I've used that at the rate of .7cc per bantam per day in their drinking water. If you have a large flock, consider a powdered version that you also mix into the drinking water. This version is better because it contains several other beneficial bacteria besides the L. Acidophilus. (Of all of the beneficial bacteria though, L. Acidophilus is the most important.) First State Veterinary Supply, which advertises in the Poultry Press, has a good powdered product, but I would call the other suppliers as well to see if they carry an equivalent product.
by K. J. Theodore
PROBIOTICS are a dietary supplement that increase the population of the 'good' bacteria (micro flora), which are needed in the intestinal tract in order to process food properly. The use of probiotics as a daily supplement has become a popular routine in the commercial poultry industry, particularly following antibiotic treatment. One commonly known probiotic is called Lactobacillus Acidophilus, and is naturally occurring in some food such as yogurt. But direct application through a liquid or powdered form mixed into drinking water is the most effective route.
Good bacteria also help fight off the bad bacteria that passes through the system, before it has a chance to take hold. Introducing probiotics into the digestive system everyday to ward off bacterial infection is known as 'selective exclusion'.
Selective exclusion is a very good way to keep your birds healthy and disease resistant throughout their life. I use probiotics in my own flock, along with a vitamin and mineral supplement on a daily basis. I also use probiotics before, during, and after both showing and breeding. For showing, the probiotics help the birds ward off most illnesses they could become exposed to in that environment. For breeding, one benefit is the tendency of the laying hens to drink more water, when the water is treated with flavored probiotics. Both breeding and showing are very stressful times in your birds' lives, and the vulnerability to disease increases during those times. The use of probiotics helps to reduce that vulnerability.
During times of stress or the use of antibacterials (antibiotics), hormonal changes can occur, causing the pH of the small intestine to rise. This allows existing bad bacteria to take a foothold in the lining of the intestine because of the deterioration of the protective mucus lining. Because of this, the 'villi' (little fingers), which normally exist in the small intestine, can be lost. Villi slow the movement of food as it passes through so that nutrients can be absorbed through the intestinal wall. The term 'going light' can occur when villi are lost. Increasing good gut bacteria through the use of probiotics will compete against the bad bacteria, change the pH environment, allow nutrient absorption, and prevent infection. Probiotic treatment has also shown an ability to stimulate appetite - a valuable thing when trying to maintain the weight of an ailing bird.
If you're not inclined to use probiotics on a daily basis, then at least consider their use immediately following antibiotic treatment. When your bird is treated with antibiotics, all bacteria are killed off - good and bad. Treating with probiotics immediately after the use of antibiotics, help to repopulate the gut with the good bacteria. In many cases, this can ward off a secondary infection, such as E Coli. E. Coli has been shown to exist in virtually all manure samples, but only becomes a problem when the digestive environment is friendly to its reproduction.
Here are two ways you can introduce probiotics into your birds' diet. If you have a very small flock, GNC (in most shopping malls), sells a flavored liquid version of L. Acidophilus. I've used that at the rate of .7cc per bantam per day in their drinking water. If you have a large flock, consider a powdered version that you also mix into the drinking water. This version is better because it contains several other beneficial bacteria besides the L. Acidophilus. (Of all of the beneficial bacteria though, L. Acidophilus is the most important.) First State Veterinary Supply, which advertises in the Poultry Press, has a good powdered product, but I would call the other suppliers as well to see if they carry an equivalent product.
YouTube Offers Video Stats
YouTube Offers Video Stats
Thursday, March 27th, 2008;
-- Janet Meiners |
Want to learn more about your YouTube videos? Like who’s watching, where they live, and how many people are watching your videos? YouTube released YouTube Insight, a free video analytics tool.
--You can learn:
--how many people have viewed your video
--what day of the week you get the most views
--where people live who are watching your video
--insight into popularity of your video
This is a long-awaited and welcomed addition to YouTube. It’s ideal for marketers or advertisers who want to see what is working and what is not (and lets more people game the system and manipulate results!).
The information lacking is about search engine traffic, how long someone spends watching your video, and information about what links people clicked to find your video. YouTube hints that there are more stats coming.
To find stats on your video, click under the “About this Video” button under “My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos.”
Thursday, March 27th, 2008;
-- Janet Meiners |
Want to learn more about your YouTube videos? Like who’s watching, where they live, and how many people are watching your videos? YouTube released YouTube Insight, a free video analytics tool.
--You can learn:
--how many people have viewed your video
--what day of the week you get the most views
--where people live who are watching your video
--insight into popularity of your video
This is a long-awaited and welcomed addition to YouTube. It’s ideal for marketers or advertisers who want to see what is working and what is not (and lets more people game the system and manipulate results!).
The information lacking is about search engine traffic, how long someone spends watching your video, and information about what links people clicked to find your video. YouTube hints that there are more stats coming.
To find stats on your video, click under the “About this Video” button under “My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos.”
The Secret To Promoting Sites With Articles
Publishing articles on the Internet is a tremendous way to increase the number of inbound links to your site. As articles are assimilated into search engine indexes, they also begin to act as landing pages generating traffic for your site. Whenever possible, you should publish articles to promote your site.
Article Content
The content of your articles should be directed to the most basic elements of your product or service. Whenever possible, try to write “how to” or “introduction to” articles. Topics like these will garner the biggest interest and be picked up by other sites. Articles that cover finer points of a subject work as well, but you should expect a smaller readership.
Article Tone
Your articles should be packed with information, not sales pitches. When writing articles, one tends to concentrate on how to get potential readers to visit your site. This approach is a mistake. You have to think of both the readers AND webmasters that will be looking for articles.
Image you are a Webmaster that needs content for your site. You go to one of the article directories looking for material to add to your site. Are you going to select articles that are sales pitches designed to take your visitors to another site? No. You are going to select articles that provide your visitors with some valuable information. Don’t write sales pitches!
Links
Articles are a great way to quickly build the link counts for sites. The search engines universally appear to like them, a rare event these days. So, what’s the best strategy for using links in your articles?
The best linking strategy for articles involves putting not more than two links in your byline. This is admittedly a personal preference, but I find more than two links looks “clunky” and many depositories won’t allow any more than two.
Regardless, the two links in the byline of your articles should go to two distinct pages of your site. The first might be to your home page, while the second goes to a page that is related to the subject of the article. With each new article, you should change the links to new pages. This allows you to build link popularity for both your home page and internal pages of your site. I have found Google, in particular, heavily favors sites that multiple pages with high link counts.
HTML v. Text Links
With some depositories, you have the opportunity to place html code in your bylines. This, of course, lets you avoid typing out the URLs for your site pages, but should you? I would encourage you to type out the URLS for one reason. It is important to make it as easy as possible for Webmasters to republish your article on their site. Don’t make them figure out the domains of your hyperlinked text, particularly sub-domains.
In Closing
I have used article campaigns to market many sites. As long as you go about it correctly, you should be able to do the same thing for your site.
Halstatt
Article Content
The content of your articles should be directed to the most basic elements of your product or service. Whenever possible, try to write “how to” or “introduction to” articles. Topics like these will garner the biggest interest and be picked up by other sites. Articles that cover finer points of a subject work as well, but you should expect a smaller readership.
Article Tone
Your articles should be packed with information, not sales pitches. When writing articles, one tends to concentrate on how to get potential readers to visit your site. This approach is a mistake. You have to think of both the readers AND webmasters that will be looking for articles.
Image you are a Webmaster that needs content for your site. You go to one of the article directories looking for material to add to your site. Are you going to select articles that are sales pitches designed to take your visitors to another site? No. You are going to select articles that provide your visitors with some valuable information. Don’t write sales pitches!
Links
Articles are a great way to quickly build the link counts for sites. The search engines universally appear to like them, a rare event these days. So, what’s the best strategy for using links in your articles?
The best linking strategy for articles involves putting not more than two links in your byline. This is admittedly a personal preference, but I find more than two links looks “clunky” and many depositories won’t allow any more than two.
Regardless, the two links in the byline of your articles should go to two distinct pages of your site. The first might be to your home page, while the second goes to a page that is related to the subject of the article. With each new article, you should change the links to new pages. This allows you to build link popularity for both your home page and internal pages of your site. I have found Google, in particular, heavily favors sites that multiple pages with high link counts.
HTML v. Text Links
With some depositories, you have the opportunity to place html code in your bylines. This, of course, lets you avoid typing out the URLs for your site pages, but should you? I would encourage you to type out the URLS for one reason. It is important to make it as easy as possible for Webmasters to republish your article on their site. Don’t make them figure out the domains of your hyperlinked text, particularly sub-domains.
In Closing
I have used article campaigns to market many sites. As long as you go about it correctly, you should be able to do the same thing for your site.
Halstatt
Types of Web Site
As web platforms and software grow at exponential rates, site owners are faced with a plethora of potential features. So, what is out there?
Web site features are limited only by imagination. Here is a brief categorization of some of the major fields of web site features, including stores, auctions, forums, articles, directories, news, and entertainment.
Stores
Online stores can be used to sell products on web sites and also easily interact as a point of sale service.
Catalogs
Catalog type ecommerce sites provide listings of categorized products that can be purchased for a fixed amount. Usually a shopping cart is employed which allows visitors to select multiple items for purchase.
Auctions
Auctions like EBay allow visitors to bid on items, whereas the highest bidder wins. These auctions have a time limit and also sometimes have a buy now button. A buy now button is a button that allows a bidder to end the auction and guarantee purchase by paying a set fixed price.
Forums
Forums are message boards that allow your visitors to post messages on your web site and interact with other visitors. An advantage of forums is that can they can bring visitors back to your site time and time again to post and follow conversations. If done correctly, forums can also provide large amounts of content for search engines to spider. The down side of forums is that they can make your site look bad if no one is using them, and it can be tricky to get people to use them. Also, it is wise to have forums moderated so that people play nice and don't trash talk your own site.
Articles
Articles are a concise way to convey information and provide a reason for web surfers to come to your site. In addition to providing a valuable resource to your web visitors, articles also provide content for search engine bots to spider. Adding articles to a site is essential in many SEO strategies.
Directories
Directories categorize other web sites, businesses or just about anything. Some directories are huge, like Yahoo!, while others may be very small and specific only to a small target audience. Smaller directories can often be quite useful to web visitors, particularly if the directory includes editor reviews, ratings and/or recommendations.
News
News sites generally have articles on current events. They are generally updated often and have search functions by which archives can be retrieved. An advantage of a news site is that often audiences return daily. A disadvantage is the need to constantly update the site.
Entertainment
Video - Video can be delivered over the Internet in a variety of ways. Some of the most popular methods are Flash, Windows Media Player, and Quick Time, though there are many others. Short clips are generally broadcast over the Internet due to bandwidth restrictions, yet as broadband penetration continues to increase more and more sites are broadcasting full-length shows and movies.
Music - Like video, music can be broadcast in a variety of forms. Many band sites are now allowing downloads of their songs in MP3 format or samples. This can be a huge promotional tool.
Games - The Internet has provided gamers a huge variety of options. Games can cost any where from free, to pay as you go, to a one time payment to subscription fees. Game sites often have loyal followings that come back time and time again, making the audience prime for advertising.
E-Print - Stories, blogs and articles are all ways people use web sites to share their ideas with written word. Many sites provide downloads of printable posters, petitions or coupons, blurring the line between print and Internet.
Many sites will utilize many of these different web site features to create powerful and complete media experiences. Many businesses have yet to fully explore the possibilities of their web sites and the Internet. As television, print and radio collide, the Internet's role in business, information and entertainment will only increase. By using different types of web site features, many web sites will gain huge advantages over their competition.
Web site features are limited only by imagination. Here is a brief categorization of some of the major fields of web site features, including stores, auctions, forums, articles, directories, news, and entertainment.
Stores
Online stores can be used to sell products on web sites and also easily interact as a point of sale service.
Catalogs
Catalog type ecommerce sites provide listings of categorized products that can be purchased for a fixed amount. Usually a shopping cart is employed which allows visitors to select multiple items for purchase.
Auctions
Auctions like EBay allow visitors to bid on items, whereas the highest bidder wins. These auctions have a time limit and also sometimes have a buy now button. A buy now button is a button that allows a bidder to end the auction and guarantee purchase by paying a set fixed price.
Forums
Forums are message boards that allow your visitors to post messages on your web site and interact with other visitors. An advantage of forums is that can they can bring visitors back to your site time and time again to post and follow conversations. If done correctly, forums can also provide large amounts of content for search engines to spider. The down side of forums is that they can make your site look bad if no one is using them, and it can be tricky to get people to use them. Also, it is wise to have forums moderated so that people play nice and don't trash talk your own site.
Articles
Articles are a concise way to convey information and provide a reason for web surfers to come to your site. In addition to providing a valuable resource to your web visitors, articles also provide content for search engine bots to spider. Adding articles to a site is essential in many SEO strategies.
Directories
Directories categorize other web sites, businesses or just about anything. Some directories are huge, like Yahoo!, while others may be very small and specific only to a small target audience. Smaller directories can often be quite useful to web visitors, particularly if the directory includes editor reviews, ratings and/or recommendations.
News
News sites generally have articles on current events. They are generally updated often and have search functions by which archives can be retrieved. An advantage of a news site is that often audiences return daily. A disadvantage is the need to constantly update the site.
Entertainment
Video - Video can be delivered over the Internet in a variety of ways. Some of the most popular methods are Flash, Windows Media Player, and Quick Time, though there are many others. Short clips are generally broadcast over the Internet due to bandwidth restrictions, yet as broadband penetration continues to increase more and more sites are broadcasting full-length shows and movies.
Music - Like video, music can be broadcast in a variety of forms. Many band sites are now allowing downloads of their songs in MP3 format or samples. This can be a huge promotional tool.
Games - The Internet has provided gamers a huge variety of options. Games can cost any where from free, to pay as you go, to a one time payment to subscription fees. Game sites often have loyal followings that come back time and time again, making the audience prime for advertising.
E-Print - Stories, blogs and articles are all ways people use web sites to share their ideas with written word. Many sites provide downloads of printable posters, petitions or coupons, blurring the line between print and Internet.
Many sites will utilize many of these different web site features to create powerful and complete media experiences. Many businesses have yet to fully explore the possibilities of their web sites and the Internet. As television, print and radio collide, the Internet's role in business, information and entertainment will only increase. By using different types of web site features, many web sites will gain huge advantages over their competition.
ASP vs. PHP
When building web sites, ASP and PHP are very popular languages. Here’s my opinion on whether ASP or PHP is best.
ASP v. PHP
Both ASP and PHP are languages used to build Dynamic Web sites that can interact with Databases and exchange information. ASP (Active Server Pages) is from Microsoft and is used with IIS (Internet Information Server) that runs on Microsoft Servers. PHP (Personal Home Pages) is from Rasmus Lerdorf, who originally designed this parsing language which was later modified by different people. It runs on Unix and Linux servers and it also has an NT server version.
There are a lot of differences between ASP and PHP.
Cost
To run ASP programs one needs IIS installed on a Windows platform server, which is not free. PHP programs run on Linux, which is free. Even the connectivity of the database is expensive in the case of ASP as MS-SQL is a product of Microsoft that needs to be purchased. PHP generally uses MySQL, which is freely available.
Speed
If we compare the speed of ASP and PHP then PHP has an upper hand. PHP code runs faster than ASP. ASP is built on COM based architecture, which is an overhead for the server whereas PHP code runs in its own memory space.
Platform Compatibility
PHP programs can run on various platforms like Linux, Unix, Windows and Solaris whereas ASP is mainly associated with Windows platforms. However, ASP can run on a Linux platform with ASP-Apache installed on the server.
Additional Costs
Many of the tools used in PHP are free of cost and since PHP is open source a lot of code can be found in open source forums. PHP has inbuilt features like ftp, email from a web page or even encryption mechanisms but in ASP such features are not built in and some additional components are required. Therefore an additional cost is incurred for such components.
Base Language
PHP is based on C++ language and the syntax used in PHP is quite similar to C/C++. C/C++ is still considered the best programming language by many programmers and people who love this language would surely feel more comfortable with the syntax of PHP. ASP on the other hand has a more Visual Basic kind of syntax that again is closely related to only Microsoft products. So, it depends on a person-to-person which language he or she is comfortable
Database Connectivity
PHP, being extremely flexible, can connect to various databases, the most popular being MySQL. ASP mainly uses MS-SQL.
Conclusion
Both languages have their advantages specific to users. Some would argue that both the languages have their own importance and depending on the user's requirements the language and the platform can be chosen. If we talk about developing a discussion board then ASP is equally capable but many feel the best discussion boards are developed in PHP. If a user is looking for some e-commerce application development then many would call ASP the ideal choice. This does not mean that PHP cannot provide e-commerce solutions, only that many people choose ASP.
From my perspective, PHP is an all around better choice than ASP.
ASP v. PHP
Both ASP and PHP are languages used to build Dynamic Web sites that can interact with Databases and exchange information. ASP (Active Server Pages) is from Microsoft and is used with IIS (Internet Information Server) that runs on Microsoft Servers. PHP (Personal Home Pages) is from Rasmus Lerdorf, who originally designed this parsing language which was later modified by different people. It runs on Unix and Linux servers and it also has an NT server version.
There are a lot of differences between ASP and PHP.
Cost
To run ASP programs one needs IIS installed on a Windows platform server, which is not free. PHP programs run on Linux, which is free. Even the connectivity of the database is expensive in the case of ASP as MS-SQL is a product of Microsoft that needs to be purchased. PHP generally uses MySQL, which is freely available.
Speed
If we compare the speed of ASP and PHP then PHP has an upper hand. PHP code runs faster than ASP. ASP is built on COM based architecture, which is an overhead for the server whereas PHP code runs in its own memory space.
Platform Compatibility
PHP programs can run on various platforms like Linux, Unix, Windows and Solaris whereas ASP is mainly associated with Windows platforms. However, ASP can run on a Linux platform with ASP-Apache installed on the server.
Additional Costs
Many of the tools used in PHP are free of cost and since PHP is open source a lot of code can be found in open source forums. PHP has inbuilt features like ftp, email from a web page or even encryption mechanisms but in ASP such features are not built in and some additional components are required. Therefore an additional cost is incurred for such components.
Base Language
PHP is based on C++ language and the syntax used in PHP is quite similar to C/C++. C/C++ is still considered the best programming language by many programmers and people who love this language would surely feel more comfortable with the syntax of PHP. ASP on the other hand has a more Visual Basic kind of syntax that again is closely related to only Microsoft products. So, it depends on a person-to-person which language he or she is comfortable
Database Connectivity
PHP, being extremely flexible, can connect to various databases, the most popular being MySQL. ASP mainly uses MS-SQL.
Conclusion
Both languages have their advantages specific to users. Some would argue that both the languages have their own importance and depending on the user's requirements the language and the platform can be chosen. If we talk about developing a discussion board then ASP is equally capable but many feel the best discussion boards are developed in PHP. If a user is looking for some e-commerce application development then many would call ASP the ideal choice. This does not mean that PHP cannot provide e-commerce solutions, only that many people choose ASP.
From my perspective, PHP is an all around better choice than ASP.
The Texas Clemency Memos
As the legal counsel to Texas Governor George W. Bush, Alberto R. Gonzales—now the White House counsel, and widely regarded as a likely future Supreme Court nominee—prepared fifty-seven confidential death-penalty memoranda for Bush's review. Never before discussed publicly, the memoranda suggest that Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise Bush of some of the most salient issues in the cases at hand
by Alan Berlow
The Texas Clemency Memos
On the morning of May 6, 1997, Governor George W. Bush signed his name to a confidential three-page memorandum from his legal counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, and placed a bold black check mark next to a single word: DENY. It was the twenty-ninth time a death-row inmate's plea for clemency had been denied in the twenty-eight months since Bush had been sworn in. In this case Bush's signature led, shortly after 6:00 P.M. on the very same day, to the execution of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded thirty-three-year-old man with the communication skills of a seven-year-old.
Washington's death was barely noted by the media, and the governor's office issued no statement about it. But the execution and the three-page memo that sealed Washington's fate—along with dozens of similar memoranda prepared for Bush—speak volumes about the way the clemency process was approached both by Bush and by Gonzales, the man most often mentioned as the President's choice for the next available seat on the Supreme Court.
During Bush's six years as governor 150 men and two women were executed in Texas—a record unmatched by any other governor in modern American history. Each time a person was sentenced to death, Bush received from his legal counsel a document summarizing the facts of the case, usually on the morning of the day scheduled for the execution, and was then briefed on those facts by his counsel; based on this information Bush allowed the execution to proceed in all cases but one. The first fifty-seven of these summaries were prepared by Gonzales, a Harvard-educated lawyer who went on to become the Texas secretary of state and a justice on the Texas supreme court. He is now the White House counsel.
Gonzales never intended his summaries to be made public. Almost all are marked CONFIDENTIAL and state, "The privileges claimed include, but are not limited to, claims of Attorney-Client Privilege, Attorney Work-Product Privilege, and the Internal Memorandum exception to the Texas Public Information Act." I obtained the summaries and related documents, which have never been published, after the Texas attorney general ruled that they were not exempt from the disclosure requirements of the Public Information Act.
Gonzales's summaries were Bush's primary source of information in deciding whether someone would live or die. Each is only three to seven pages long and generally consists of little more than a brief description of the crime, a paragraph or two on the defendant's personal background, and a condensed legal history. Although the summaries rarely make a recommendation for or against execution, many have a clear prosecutorial bias, and all seem to assume that if an appeals court rejected one or another of a defendant's claims, there is no conceivable rationale for the governor to revisit that claim. This assumption ignores one of the most basic reasons for clemency: the fact that the justice system makes mistakes.
A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence.
The case of Terry Washington was typical. Gonzales devoted nearly a third of his three-page report on Washington to the gruesome details of the crime. He informed Bush that the victim, Beatrice Huling, was a twenty-nine-year-old restaurant manager, and wrote, "An autopsy determined she suffered 85 stab wounds, seven of which were fatal, and was eviscerated." But the summary refers only fleetingly to the central issue in Washington's clemency appeal—his limited mental capacity, which was never disputed by the State of Texas—and presents it as part of a discussion of "conflicting information" about the condemned man's childhood. (The page containing this discussion is missing from the copy of the summary signed by Bush, raising the possibility that he never actually saw it before authorizing Washington's execution.) Most important, Gonzales failed to mention that Washington's mental limitations, and the fact that he and his ten siblings were regularly beaten with whips, water hoses, extension cords, wire hangers, and fan belts, were never made known to the jury, although both the district attorney and Washington's trial lawyer knew of this potentially mitigating evidence. (Washington did not testify at his trial or his sentencing.)
Gonzales's lack of attention to Washington's mental retardation is particularly surprising because demand was growing nationwide to ban executions of the retarded, and because the most highly publicized case of a retarded defendant, that of Johnny Paul Penry, was even then playing itself out in Texas courts. The miscarriages in the Washington case were also precisely the kind of thing Bush claimed to want to be told about. "I don't believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own," he wrote in his autobiography, A Charge to Keep (1999), "unless there are new facts or evidence of which a jury was unaware, or evidence that the trial was somehow unfair." Such information had indeed come to light in Washington's case, yet Gonzales's memorandum did not tell Bush about it.
Not only did Gonzales ignore Washington's mental limitations, but he didn't mention that Washington's trial lawyer had failed to enlist a mental-health expert to testify on Washington's behalf (although he was entitled to one under a 1985 Supreme Court ruling), which in a death-penalty case clearly suggests ineffective counsel. Nor did he mention that ineffective counsel and mental retardation were in fact the central issues raised in the thirty-page clemency petition. Gonzales noted only that the petition had been rejected by the Board of Pardons and Paroles, a body that one federal judge condemned in 1998 for its tendency to rule on clemency appeals without any investigation or discussion among its members.
Gonzales declined to be interviewed for this story, but during the 2000 presidential campaign I asked him if Bush ever read the clemency petitions of death-row inmates, and he equivocated. "I wouldn't say that was done in every case," he told me. "But if we felt there was something he should look at specifically—yes, he did look from time to time at what had been filed." I have found no evidence that Gonzales ever sent Bush a clemency petition—or any document—that summarized in a concise and coherent fashion a condemned defendant's best argument against execution in a case involving serious questions of innocence or due process. Bush relied on Gonzales's summaries, which never made such arguments.
Did Gonzales reserve the most important issues and documents in the Washington case for a more extensive oral briefing of the governor? Only he and Bush know. It is highly unlikely, however, given that Gonzales usually presented an execution summary to the governor on the day of an execution and that, as he has acknowledged, his briefings typically lasted no more than thirty minutes—far too little time for a serious discussion of a complex clemency plea. Bush's appointment calendar for the morning of Washington's execution shows a half-hour slot marked "Al G—Execution."
All governors claim that they agonize over death penalty decisions. During his time in office Bush made numerous statements to this effect, among them "I take every death penalty case seriously and review each case carefully" and "Each case is major, because each case is life or death." In his autobiography he wrote, "I review every death penalty case thoroughly" and added, referring to his legal staff, "For every death penalty case, they brief me thoroughly, review the arguments made by the prosecution and the defense, raise any doubts or problems or questions." Bush always maintained that this review provided what he called a "fail-safe" method for ensuring due process and certainty of guilt. Asked about the governor's handling of capital cases, Johnny Sutton, Governor Bush's adviser on criminal-justice policy, told The New York Times in May of 2000, "This is probably the most important thing we do in state government."
But Gonzales's execution summaries belie these assurances of thorough and judicious review. The memoranda seem attuned to a radically different posture, assumed by Bush from the earliest days of his administration—one in which he sought to minimize his sense of legal and moral responsibility for executions. Bush repeatedly cited a Texas statute that says a governor may do nothing more than grant a thirty-day reprieve to an inmate unless the Board of Pardons and Paroles has recommended a broader grant of clemency. Admittedly, the governor's clemency authority is far more limited in Texas than in, for example, Illinois, where Governor George Ryan unilaterally commuted the death sentences of 167 men and women last January, shortly before leaving office. Nevertheless, Bush's failure to intervene was governed as much by personal choice as by legal limitation. Had Bush wanted to commute a sentence or otherwise prevent an execution, he unquestionably could have done so. Members of the BPP are appointed by the governor to six-year rotating terms. By the end of his governorship Bush had appointed all eighteen members. If he or Gonzales had had any serious doubts about a particular case, even on the morning of a scheduled execution, Bush could easily have prevailed on the board to reconsider the matter—to conduct an investigation, hold hearings, interview witnesses, or do whatever else was necessary to resolve those doubts.
In fact, on one highly controversial occasion, in 1998, Bush intervened with the board before it had a chance to make a recommendation to him. Henry Lee Lucas had been convicted of nine other murders (for which he was serving six life sentences, two seventy-five-year sentences, and one sixty-year sentence) but had also confessed falsely to hundreds more. After the 1984 trial at which Lucas was sentenced to death, it became apparent that he hadn't even been in Texas when the victim had been murdered; investigations by two successive state attorneys general subsequently concluded that Lucas had been wrongly convicted. Concerned that Lucas was about to be executed for a crime he hadn't committed, Bush's office let the BPP know that Bush was unwilling to see that happen. The BPP soon recommended (with a 17-1 vote) commutation to life in prison, which Bush then approved. Explaining his decision, Bush noted that the jurors at Lucas's trial "did not know" certain facts that came out only after trial. Gonzales could have raised a similar concern in his Terry Washington summary, but didn't.
At the outset of his administration Governor Bush presented a standard for clemency that all but ensured that few if any death sentences would be seriously examined. "In every case," he wrote in A Charge to Keep, "I would ask: Is there any doubt about this individual's guilt or innocence? And, have the courts had ample opportunity to review all the legal issues in this case?" This is an extraordinarily narrow notion of clemency review: it seems to leave little, if any, room to consider mental illness or incompetence, childhood physical or sexual abuse, remorse, rehabilitation, racial discrimination in jury selection, the competence of the legal defense, or disparities in sentences between co-defendants or among defendants convicted of similar crimes. Neither compassion nor "mercy," which the Supreme Court as far back as 1855 saw as central to the very idea of clemency, is acknowledged as being of any account.
The record suggests that what Bush described in his autobiography as "a fair hearing and full access to the courts" meant in reality nothing more than that a case had received some sort of legal attention at all state and federal levels. In the case of Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman executed in Texas in more than a hundred years, Bush wrote to at least two constituents that he had refused to grant a reprieve precisely because "the courts, including the United States Supreme Court," had "reviewed the legal issues in this case" and denied all appeals. But clemency is a political act, not a judicial one. By eliminating "legal issues" from executive consideration, Bush in effect refused to address what were often the condemned person's strongest claims. Indeed, the fact that courts have rejected a defendant's legal claims arguably places an added burden on a governor—as the conscience of the state and the literal court of last resort—to conduct a scrupulous review. This is especially true in Texas, where more than a third of executions in the United States since 1976 have occurred; where half of all capital cases are overturned on appeal because of errors during trial; where seven innocent men have been freed from death row, including one under Bush; where, according to The Dallas Morning News, nearly a quarter of the condemned were represented by attorneys who had been disciplined for professional misconduct; and where 30 percent of those executed under Bush between his inauguration in 1995 and June 11, 2000, according to the Chicago Tribune, were represented by attorneys who presented no mitigating evidence or only one witness during the sentencing phase of the trial. Given this environment, Gonzales's neglect of mitigating evidence in the clemency-review process is highly problematic.
But the real problem with citing thorough court review as a standard for denying clemency is that none of the 152 executions Bush approved would have landed on his desk had the cases not already passed through all the courts. To assert—as Bush did—that defendants have "full access to the courts" does not establish any sort of guideline for ensuring due process; it merely describes the judicial process.
Although Terry Washington's guilt was never seriously disputed, in at least two other capital cases profound doubts about guilt were raised by the defense but virtually ignored by Gonzales. In the case of David Wayne Stoker, for example, Gonzales devoted just eighteen sentences to the extraordinarily complex circumstances of the crime, leaving out essentially all the mitigating evidence and failing to address a multitude of questions about both the evidence against Stoker and his due-process rights. Ronnie Thompson, a key state witness, initially told the police, and then the court, that Stoker had confessed to a 1986 murder. But following Stoker's conviction Thompson recanted, explaining that he'd lied in court because the prosecutor had threatened to bring a perjury charge against him if he didn't stick to his original account. Bush should have been told that. During Stoker's trial, in 1987, Thompson's wife, Debbie, left him to move in with Carey Todd, the prosecution's chief witness; she got a piece of the Crime Stoppers reward that Todd received for naming Stoker. Gonzales failed to mention that drug and weapons charges against Todd were dropped the very day he testified against Stoker; and that Todd thus had an apparent motive for setting him up. Gonzales also failed to mention that a state investigator, a police officer, and Todd all lied in court about what Todd received for his testimony; that the jury wasn't told about Todd's possible motive for framing Stoker; and that James Grigson, a psychiatrist who testified that Stoker was a sociopath who would "absolutely" be violent again (thereby making him eligible for a death sentence), had never even examined Stoker. Grigson, whose expert testimony has helped send dozens of men to death row, earning him the nickname Dr. Death, had been expelled from the American Psychiatric Association two years before the Stoker case was reviewed by Gonzales and Bush, because his testimony had repeatedly been found to be unethical. Another expert medical witness against Stoker, Ralph Erdmann, had relinquished his medical license in 1994 after pleading no contest to seven felonies tied to falsified evidence and botched autopsies. A special prosecutor's investigation of Erdmann concluded that he falsified evidence in at least thirty cases, and that if "the prosecution theory was that death was caused by a Martian death ray then that was what Dr. Erdmann reported." All this information was in the public record, yet Gonzales mentioned none of it in his memorandum to Bush.
Stephen Latimer, who represented Stoker in his clemency appeal, told me recently that he received a call from Gonzales's office about a week to ten days before the execution, advising him that there would be no reprieve. The timing is significant, because Gonzales's execution summary is dated June 16, 1997, the day of Stoker's execution. If that decision had been made a week or more before Bush even read the summary, it is fair to ask whether Bush was actually in the loop or—as many suspected—had simply made clear to both Gonzales and the BPP that he wasn't interested in commutations.
The handling of Stoker's clemency appeal was not unusual. Consider the case of Billy Conn Gardner, whose death-penalty case was plagued by issues of incompetent counsel, dubious witness testimony, and unheard mitigating evidence.
Gonzales's report to Bush gave no sense of these circumstances. It matter-of-factly described the robbery of a high school cafeteria in Dallas, during which Gardner, wearing a stocking to obscure his face, allegedly shot and fatally wounded Thelma Row, sixty-four, a cafeteria worker. Also in the cafeteria at the time was Paula Sanders, a co-worker who had told her husband, Melvin, that several thousand dollars in daily cafeteria receipts were processed in a back room at the school. Melvin, who drove the getaway car, claimed that he had persuaded Gardner to participate.
Paula, who knew Gardner, said that she could provide no description of the assailant, because her back was turned. Before Row died, however, she had been able to describe a man with a "bony face ... and a two-inch goatee." Gonzales didn't tell Bush that the state was unable to produce a single witness who recalled ever seeing Gardner with a goatee, or that two witnesses to the shooting—Carolyn Sims and the school custodian, Lester Matthews—described a man with reddish-blond hair, whereas Gardner's hair was black. Matthews nevertheless positively identified Gardner as the killer, and Gonzales accepted this testimony at face value—although Matthews didn't know Gardner, admitted to having seen the killer for only three or four seconds, and didn't actually identify him until his third police interview, three months after the crime. Also missing from Gonzales's memo were the facts that only after prosecutors threatened to bring other charges against Melvin Sanders did he finger Gardner as the murderer, and that in exchange for this testimony Sanders received complete immunity from prosecution for the murder and probation for pending forgery and firearms charges. The state also agreed not to prosecute Paula Sanders.
Gonzales told Bush in his summary that Paula "testified that she was unaware of the robbery plans"; but he neglected to mention that she had received several phone calls only minutes before the robbery and shooting, and that according to Carolyn Sims (whose name is absent from Gonzales's report), she appeared "nervous and upset" after taking these calls. Sims was not deposed until years after the trial, during Gardner's habeas corpus appeal. More important, Gardner's lawyer never interviewed Paula Sanders and met with Gardner only once before jury selection, for fifteen minutes, raising an obvious suggestion of ineffective counsel—which Gonzales also dismissed with no discussion.
The case is a disconcerting tangle of speculation and uncertainty. What Gonzales should have made clear to Bush during the clemency review is that the case involved many unanswered and troubling questions. Gardner was put to death on February 16, 1995.
The Gonzales memoranda suggest that Gonzales was rarely, if ever, prompted to delve deeply into the cases he was reviewing for Bush. In his summary of the case of Carl Johnson, for example, dated September 18, 1995, the day before Johnson's execution, Gonzales failed to mention that Johnson's trial lawyer had literally slept through major portions of the jury selection. His memo on Irineo Tristan Montoya, dated June 18, 1997, the day of Montoya's execution, omits the single most important issue in the case: an alleged violation of international law, which had been brought to Bush's attention by, among others, the U.S. Department of State. His memo on Bruce Edwin Callins, dated May 21, 1997, the day of Callins's execution, fails to note that Callins's appeal to the Supreme Court generated the most famous death-penalty dissent in the past quarter century, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, a longtime death-penalty supporter.
Karla Faye Tucker's 1998 clemency review is one of the few in which any evidence exists of a significant discussion between Bush and Gonzales, and the only instance in which Gonzales is known to have provided any documentation beyond the execution summary. Bush cites the Tucker case as evidence of his compassion and his attentiveness to the process of clemency review. Gonzales has said that he and Bush began discussing Tucker's case months before the execution. Bush's autobiography devotes fifteen pages to Tucker. He writes that he anguished over his decision and had difficulty sleeping the night before her execution, and that signing off on it "was one of the hardest things I have ever done"; in the moments leading up to Tucker's execution he "felt like a huge piece of concrete was crushing me as we waited."
Why should Bush have been so tormented by assenting to Tucker's execution? According to the Bush standard for clemency, her case wasn't even worthy of consideration. Tucker didn't claim that she was innocent of murdering Jerry Lynn Dean and Deborah Thornton with a three-foot-long pickax in 1983. She said that she had been treated fairly by the courts and deserved her punishment. What helps to explain Bush's concern, of course, is that Tucker's case was the most highly publicized of any during his tenure as governor. In prison Tucker had become a born-again Christian, like Bush. Her execution was opposed by, among others, one of Bush's daughters and a slew of otherwise ardent death-penalty supporters, including Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who became convinced that she was remorseful, repentant, and rehabilitated. Nevertheless, dozens of Texas death-row inmates could claim similar conversion experiences, remorse, and repentance; and dozens had compelling claims regarding innocence or due process.
More than anything else, the Tucker case illustrates how Bush sought to deny responsibility for executions. "I could not convert Karla Faye Tucker's sentence from death to life in prison [without the BPP]," Bush stated, citing Texas law. Gonzales made the same point in a letter to the papal nuncio in Washington, who before the BPP made its recommendation had written Bush on behalf of the Pope to solicit clemency for Tucker: "Ms. Tucker's sentence can only be commuted by the Governor if the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends a commutation of sentence." Of course, Bush did intervene in the subsequent Lucas case before hearing from the BPP.
Gonzales did not tell the papal nuncio that even after the BPP denied clemency the governor could have invoked a thirty-day reprieve to postpone this or any other execution. Bush didn't use this power because he had no interest in impeding the BPP, which was infamous for rubber-stamping executions. In a December 1998 district court hearing on a lawsuit brought by the death-row inmate Joseph Stanley Faulder (in whose trial a principal state witness was promised more than $10,000 by the prosecutor to testify), Judge Sam Sparks concluded, "It is abundantly clear the Texas clemency procedure is extremely poor and certainly minimal." Sparks found that "none of the members" of the BPP read clemency petitions in their entirety; that "a flip of the coin would be more merciful than these votes"; and that the board provided no rationale whatsoever for its clemency recommendations. "There is nothing," Sparks said during the hearing, "absolutely nothing that the Board of Pardons and Paroles does where any member of the public, including the governor, can find out why they did this."
Alberto Gonzales told me in 2000 that in his execution briefings he always presented Governor Bush with a "detailed factual background of what happened," along with "other outstanding facts or unusual issues." Yet a close examination of the written execution summaries he prepared for Bush certainly raises questions about the thoroughness of Gonzales's approach—and, ultimately, given the brevity of the summaries and the timing of their arrival at the governor's office, about the level of attention Bush could possibly have devoted to the clemency process. In his summaries of the cases of Terry Washington, David Stoker, and Billy Gardner, Gonzales did not make Governor Bush aware of concerns about ineffective counsel, essential mitigating evidence, and even compelling claims of innocence. These were all matters of life or death, requiring in-depth explanation and discussion, that no attorney in Gonzales's position should leave out of a written case summary or save for a thirty-minute oral briefing—especially if both are to be delivered on the very day of a scheduled execution. In a state where the criminal-justice system has erred with well-documented regularity, this was a grave failing.
by Alan Berlow
The Texas Clemency Memos
On the morning of May 6, 1997, Governor George W. Bush signed his name to a confidential three-page memorandum from his legal counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, and placed a bold black check mark next to a single word: DENY. It was the twenty-ninth time a death-row inmate's plea for clemency had been denied in the twenty-eight months since Bush had been sworn in. In this case Bush's signature led, shortly after 6:00 P.M. on the very same day, to the execution of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded thirty-three-year-old man with the communication skills of a seven-year-old.
Washington's death was barely noted by the media, and the governor's office issued no statement about it. But the execution and the three-page memo that sealed Washington's fate—along with dozens of similar memoranda prepared for Bush—speak volumes about the way the clemency process was approached both by Bush and by Gonzales, the man most often mentioned as the President's choice for the next available seat on the Supreme Court.
During Bush's six years as governor 150 men and two women were executed in Texas—a record unmatched by any other governor in modern American history. Each time a person was sentenced to death, Bush received from his legal counsel a document summarizing the facts of the case, usually on the morning of the day scheduled for the execution, and was then briefed on those facts by his counsel; based on this information Bush allowed the execution to proceed in all cases but one. The first fifty-seven of these summaries were prepared by Gonzales, a Harvard-educated lawyer who went on to become the Texas secretary of state and a justice on the Texas supreme court. He is now the White House counsel.
Gonzales never intended his summaries to be made public. Almost all are marked CONFIDENTIAL and state, "The privileges claimed include, but are not limited to, claims of Attorney-Client Privilege, Attorney Work-Product Privilege, and the Internal Memorandum exception to the Texas Public Information Act." I obtained the summaries and related documents, which have never been published, after the Texas attorney general ruled that they were not exempt from the disclosure requirements of the Public Information Act.
Gonzales's summaries were Bush's primary source of information in deciding whether someone would live or die. Each is only three to seven pages long and generally consists of little more than a brief description of the crime, a paragraph or two on the defendant's personal background, and a condensed legal history. Although the summaries rarely make a recommendation for or against execution, many have a clear prosecutorial bias, and all seem to assume that if an appeals court rejected one or another of a defendant's claims, there is no conceivable rationale for the governor to revisit that claim. This assumption ignores one of the most basic reasons for clemency: the fact that the justice system makes mistakes.
A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence.
The case of Terry Washington was typical. Gonzales devoted nearly a third of his three-page report on Washington to the gruesome details of the crime. He informed Bush that the victim, Beatrice Huling, was a twenty-nine-year-old restaurant manager, and wrote, "An autopsy determined she suffered 85 stab wounds, seven of which were fatal, and was eviscerated." But the summary refers only fleetingly to the central issue in Washington's clemency appeal—his limited mental capacity, which was never disputed by the State of Texas—and presents it as part of a discussion of "conflicting information" about the condemned man's childhood. (The page containing this discussion is missing from the copy of the summary signed by Bush, raising the possibility that he never actually saw it before authorizing Washington's execution.) Most important, Gonzales failed to mention that Washington's mental limitations, and the fact that he and his ten siblings were regularly beaten with whips, water hoses, extension cords, wire hangers, and fan belts, were never made known to the jury, although both the district attorney and Washington's trial lawyer knew of this potentially mitigating evidence. (Washington did not testify at his trial or his sentencing.)
Gonzales's lack of attention to Washington's mental retardation is particularly surprising because demand was growing nationwide to ban executions of the retarded, and because the most highly publicized case of a retarded defendant, that of Johnny Paul Penry, was even then playing itself out in Texas courts. The miscarriages in the Washington case were also precisely the kind of thing Bush claimed to want to be told about. "I don't believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own," he wrote in his autobiography, A Charge to Keep (1999), "unless there are new facts or evidence of which a jury was unaware, or evidence that the trial was somehow unfair." Such information had indeed come to light in Washington's case, yet Gonzales's memorandum did not tell Bush about it.
Not only did Gonzales ignore Washington's mental limitations, but he didn't mention that Washington's trial lawyer had failed to enlist a mental-health expert to testify on Washington's behalf (although he was entitled to one under a 1985 Supreme Court ruling), which in a death-penalty case clearly suggests ineffective counsel. Nor did he mention that ineffective counsel and mental retardation were in fact the central issues raised in the thirty-page clemency petition. Gonzales noted only that the petition had been rejected by the Board of Pardons and Paroles, a body that one federal judge condemned in 1998 for its tendency to rule on clemency appeals without any investigation or discussion among its members.
Gonzales declined to be interviewed for this story, but during the 2000 presidential campaign I asked him if Bush ever read the clemency petitions of death-row inmates, and he equivocated. "I wouldn't say that was done in every case," he told me. "But if we felt there was something he should look at specifically—yes, he did look from time to time at what had been filed." I have found no evidence that Gonzales ever sent Bush a clemency petition—or any document—that summarized in a concise and coherent fashion a condemned defendant's best argument against execution in a case involving serious questions of innocence or due process. Bush relied on Gonzales's summaries, which never made such arguments.
Did Gonzales reserve the most important issues and documents in the Washington case for a more extensive oral briefing of the governor? Only he and Bush know. It is highly unlikely, however, given that Gonzales usually presented an execution summary to the governor on the day of an execution and that, as he has acknowledged, his briefings typically lasted no more than thirty minutes—far too little time for a serious discussion of a complex clemency plea. Bush's appointment calendar for the morning of Washington's execution shows a half-hour slot marked "Al G—Execution."
All governors claim that they agonize over death penalty decisions. During his time in office Bush made numerous statements to this effect, among them "I take every death penalty case seriously and review each case carefully" and "Each case is major, because each case is life or death." In his autobiography he wrote, "I review every death penalty case thoroughly" and added, referring to his legal staff, "For every death penalty case, they brief me thoroughly, review the arguments made by the prosecution and the defense, raise any doubts or problems or questions." Bush always maintained that this review provided what he called a "fail-safe" method for ensuring due process and certainty of guilt. Asked about the governor's handling of capital cases, Johnny Sutton, Governor Bush's adviser on criminal-justice policy, told The New York Times in May of 2000, "This is probably the most important thing we do in state government."
But Gonzales's execution summaries belie these assurances of thorough and judicious review. The memoranda seem attuned to a radically different posture, assumed by Bush from the earliest days of his administration—one in which he sought to minimize his sense of legal and moral responsibility for executions. Bush repeatedly cited a Texas statute that says a governor may do nothing more than grant a thirty-day reprieve to an inmate unless the Board of Pardons and Paroles has recommended a broader grant of clemency. Admittedly, the governor's clemency authority is far more limited in Texas than in, for example, Illinois, where Governor George Ryan unilaterally commuted the death sentences of 167 men and women last January, shortly before leaving office. Nevertheless, Bush's failure to intervene was governed as much by personal choice as by legal limitation. Had Bush wanted to commute a sentence or otherwise prevent an execution, he unquestionably could have done so. Members of the BPP are appointed by the governor to six-year rotating terms. By the end of his governorship Bush had appointed all eighteen members. If he or Gonzales had had any serious doubts about a particular case, even on the morning of a scheduled execution, Bush could easily have prevailed on the board to reconsider the matter—to conduct an investigation, hold hearings, interview witnesses, or do whatever else was necessary to resolve those doubts.
In fact, on one highly controversial occasion, in 1998, Bush intervened with the board before it had a chance to make a recommendation to him. Henry Lee Lucas had been convicted of nine other murders (for which he was serving six life sentences, two seventy-five-year sentences, and one sixty-year sentence) but had also confessed falsely to hundreds more. After the 1984 trial at which Lucas was sentenced to death, it became apparent that he hadn't even been in Texas when the victim had been murdered; investigations by two successive state attorneys general subsequently concluded that Lucas had been wrongly convicted. Concerned that Lucas was about to be executed for a crime he hadn't committed, Bush's office let the BPP know that Bush was unwilling to see that happen. The BPP soon recommended (with a 17-1 vote) commutation to life in prison, which Bush then approved. Explaining his decision, Bush noted that the jurors at Lucas's trial "did not know" certain facts that came out only after trial. Gonzales could have raised a similar concern in his Terry Washington summary, but didn't.
At the outset of his administration Governor Bush presented a standard for clemency that all but ensured that few if any death sentences would be seriously examined. "In every case," he wrote in A Charge to Keep, "I would ask: Is there any doubt about this individual's guilt or innocence? And, have the courts had ample opportunity to review all the legal issues in this case?" This is an extraordinarily narrow notion of clemency review: it seems to leave little, if any, room to consider mental illness or incompetence, childhood physical or sexual abuse, remorse, rehabilitation, racial discrimination in jury selection, the competence of the legal defense, or disparities in sentences between co-defendants or among defendants convicted of similar crimes. Neither compassion nor "mercy," which the Supreme Court as far back as 1855 saw as central to the very idea of clemency, is acknowledged as being of any account.
The record suggests that what Bush described in his autobiography as "a fair hearing and full access to the courts" meant in reality nothing more than that a case had received some sort of legal attention at all state and federal levels. In the case of Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman executed in Texas in more than a hundred years, Bush wrote to at least two constituents that he had refused to grant a reprieve precisely because "the courts, including the United States Supreme Court," had "reviewed the legal issues in this case" and denied all appeals. But clemency is a political act, not a judicial one. By eliminating "legal issues" from executive consideration, Bush in effect refused to address what were often the condemned person's strongest claims. Indeed, the fact that courts have rejected a defendant's legal claims arguably places an added burden on a governor—as the conscience of the state and the literal court of last resort—to conduct a scrupulous review. This is especially true in Texas, where more than a third of executions in the United States since 1976 have occurred; where half of all capital cases are overturned on appeal because of errors during trial; where seven innocent men have been freed from death row, including one under Bush; where, according to The Dallas Morning News, nearly a quarter of the condemned were represented by attorneys who had been disciplined for professional misconduct; and where 30 percent of those executed under Bush between his inauguration in 1995 and June 11, 2000, according to the Chicago Tribune, were represented by attorneys who presented no mitigating evidence or only one witness during the sentencing phase of the trial. Given this environment, Gonzales's neglect of mitigating evidence in the clemency-review process is highly problematic.
But the real problem with citing thorough court review as a standard for denying clemency is that none of the 152 executions Bush approved would have landed on his desk had the cases not already passed through all the courts. To assert—as Bush did—that defendants have "full access to the courts" does not establish any sort of guideline for ensuring due process; it merely describes the judicial process.
Although Terry Washington's guilt was never seriously disputed, in at least two other capital cases profound doubts about guilt were raised by the defense but virtually ignored by Gonzales. In the case of David Wayne Stoker, for example, Gonzales devoted just eighteen sentences to the extraordinarily complex circumstances of the crime, leaving out essentially all the mitigating evidence and failing to address a multitude of questions about both the evidence against Stoker and his due-process rights. Ronnie Thompson, a key state witness, initially told the police, and then the court, that Stoker had confessed to a 1986 murder. But following Stoker's conviction Thompson recanted, explaining that he'd lied in court because the prosecutor had threatened to bring a perjury charge against him if he didn't stick to his original account. Bush should have been told that. During Stoker's trial, in 1987, Thompson's wife, Debbie, left him to move in with Carey Todd, the prosecution's chief witness; she got a piece of the Crime Stoppers reward that Todd received for naming Stoker. Gonzales failed to mention that drug and weapons charges against Todd were dropped the very day he testified against Stoker; and that Todd thus had an apparent motive for setting him up. Gonzales also failed to mention that a state investigator, a police officer, and Todd all lied in court about what Todd received for his testimony; that the jury wasn't told about Todd's possible motive for framing Stoker; and that James Grigson, a psychiatrist who testified that Stoker was a sociopath who would "absolutely" be violent again (thereby making him eligible for a death sentence), had never even examined Stoker. Grigson, whose expert testimony has helped send dozens of men to death row, earning him the nickname Dr. Death, had been expelled from the American Psychiatric Association two years before the Stoker case was reviewed by Gonzales and Bush, because his testimony had repeatedly been found to be unethical. Another expert medical witness against Stoker, Ralph Erdmann, had relinquished his medical license in 1994 after pleading no contest to seven felonies tied to falsified evidence and botched autopsies. A special prosecutor's investigation of Erdmann concluded that he falsified evidence in at least thirty cases, and that if "the prosecution theory was that death was caused by a Martian death ray then that was what Dr. Erdmann reported." All this information was in the public record, yet Gonzales mentioned none of it in his memorandum to Bush.
Stephen Latimer, who represented Stoker in his clemency appeal, told me recently that he received a call from Gonzales's office about a week to ten days before the execution, advising him that there would be no reprieve. The timing is significant, because Gonzales's execution summary is dated June 16, 1997, the day of Stoker's execution. If that decision had been made a week or more before Bush even read the summary, it is fair to ask whether Bush was actually in the loop or—as many suspected—had simply made clear to both Gonzales and the BPP that he wasn't interested in commutations.
The handling of Stoker's clemency appeal was not unusual. Consider the case of Billy Conn Gardner, whose death-penalty case was plagued by issues of incompetent counsel, dubious witness testimony, and unheard mitigating evidence.
Gonzales's report to Bush gave no sense of these circumstances. It matter-of-factly described the robbery of a high school cafeteria in Dallas, during which Gardner, wearing a stocking to obscure his face, allegedly shot and fatally wounded Thelma Row, sixty-four, a cafeteria worker. Also in the cafeteria at the time was Paula Sanders, a co-worker who had told her husband, Melvin, that several thousand dollars in daily cafeteria receipts were processed in a back room at the school. Melvin, who drove the getaway car, claimed that he had persuaded Gardner to participate.
Paula, who knew Gardner, said that she could provide no description of the assailant, because her back was turned. Before Row died, however, she had been able to describe a man with a "bony face ... and a two-inch goatee." Gonzales didn't tell Bush that the state was unable to produce a single witness who recalled ever seeing Gardner with a goatee, or that two witnesses to the shooting—Carolyn Sims and the school custodian, Lester Matthews—described a man with reddish-blond hair, whereas Gardner's hair was black. Matthews nevertheless positively identified Gardner as the killer, and Gonzales accepted this testimony at face value—although Matthews didn't know Gardner, admitted to having seen the killer for only three or four seconds, and didn't actually identify him until his third police interview, three months after the crime. Also missing from Gonzales's memo were the facts that only after prosecutors threatened to bring other charges against Melvin Sanders did he finger Gardner as the murderer, and that in exchange for this testimony Sanders received complete immunity from prosecution for the murder and probation for pending forgery and firearms charges. The state also agreed not to prosecute Paula Sanders.
Gonzales told Bush in his summary that Paula "testified that she was unaware of the robbery plans"; but he neglected to mention that she had received several phone calls only minutes before the robbery and shooting, and that according to Carolyn Sims (whose name is absent from Gonzales's report), she appeared "nervous and upset" after taking these calls. Sims was not deposed until years after the trial, during Gardner's habeas corpus appeal. More important, Gardner's lawyer never interviewed Paula Sanders and met with Gardner only once before jury selection, for fifteen minutes, raising an obvious suggestion of ineffective counsel—which Gonzales also dismissed with no discussion.
The case is a disconcerting tangle of speculation and uncertainty. What Gonzales should have made clear to Bush during the clemency review is that the case involved many unanswered and troubling questions. Gardner was put to death on February 16, 1995.
The Gonzales memoranda suggest that Gonzales was rarely, if ever, prompted to delve deeply into the cases he was reviewing for Bush. In his summary of the case of Carl Johnson, for example, dated September 18, 1995, the day before Johnson's execution, Gonzales failed to mention that Johnson's trial lawyer had literally slept through major portions of the jury selection. His memo on Irineo Tristan Montoya, dated June 18, 1997, the day of Montoya's execution, omits the single most important issue in the case: an alleged violation of international law, which had been brought to Bush's attention by, among others, the U.S. Department of State. His memo on Bruce Edwin Callins, dated May 21, 1997, the day of Callins's execution, fails to note that Callins's appeal to the Supreme Court generated the most famous death-penalty dissent in the past quarter century, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, a longtime death-penalty supporter.
Karla Faye Tucker's 1998 clemency review is one of the few in which any evidence exists of a significant discussion between Bush and Gonzales, and the only instance in which Gonzales is known to have provided any documentation beyond the execution summary. Bush cites the Tucker case as evidence of his compassion and his attentiveness to the process of clemency review. Gonzales has said that he and Bush began discussing Tucker's case months before the execution. Bush's autobiography devotes fifteen pages to Tucker. He writes that he anguished over his decision and had difficulty sleeping the night before her execution, and that signing off on it "was one of the hardest things I have ever done"; in the moments leading up to Tucker's execution he "felt like a huge piece of concrete was crushing me as we waited."
Why should Bush have been so tormented by assenting to Tucker's execution? According to the Bush standard for clemency, her case wasn't even worthy of consideration. Tucker didn't claim that she was innocent of murdering Jerry Lynn Dean and Deborah Thornton with a three-foot-long pickax in 1983. She said that she had been treated fairly by the courts and deserved her punishment. What helps to explain Bush's concern, of course, is that Tucker's case was the most highly publicized of any during his tenure as governor. In prison Tucker had become a born-again Christian, like Bush. Her execution was opposed by, among others, one of Bush's daughters and a slew of otherwise ardent death-penalty supporters, including Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who became convinced that she was remorseful, repentant, and rehabilitated. Nevertheless, dozens of Texas death-row inmates could claim similar conversion experiences, remorse, and repentance; and dozens had compelling claims regarding innocence or due process.
More than anything else, the Tucker case illustrates how Bush sought to deny responsibility for executions. "I could not convert Karla Faye Tucker's sentence from death to life in prison [without the BPP]," Bush stated, citing Texas law. Gonzales made the same point in a letter to the papal nuncio in Washington, who before the BPP made its recommendation had written Bush on behalf of the Pope to solicit clemency for Tucker: "Ms. Tucker's sentence can only be commuted by the Governor if the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends a commutation of sentence." Of course, Bush did intervene in the subsequent Lucas case before hearing from the BPP.
Gonzales did not tell the papal nuncio that even after the BPP denied clemency the governor could have invoked a thirty-day reprieve to postpone this or any other execution. Bush didn't use this power because he had no interest in impeding the BPP, which was infamous for rubber-stamping executions. In a December 1998 district court hearing on a lawsuit brought by the death-row inmate Joseph Stanley Faulder (in whose trial a principal state witness was promised more than $10,000 by the prosecutor to testify), Judge Sam Sparks concluded, "It is abundantly clear the Texas clemency procedure is extremely poor and certainly minimal." Sparks found that "none of the members" of the BPP read clemency petitions in their entirety; that "a flip of the coin would be more merciful than these votes"; and that the board provided no rationale whatsoever for its clemency recommendations. "There is nothing," Sparks said during the hearing, "absolutely nothing that the Board of Pardons and Paroles does where any member of the public, including the governor, can find out why they did this."
Alberto Gonzales told me in 2000 that in his execution briefings he always presented Governor Bush with a "detailed factual background of what happened," along with "other outstanding facts or unusual issues." Yet a close examination of the written execution summaries he prepared for Bush certainly raises questions about the thoroughness of Gonzales's approach—and, ultimately, given the brevity of the summaries and the timing of their arrival at the governor's office, about the level of attention Bush could possibly have devoted to the clemency process. In his summaries of the cases of Terry Washington, David Stoker, and Billy Gardner, Gonzales did not make Governor Bush aware of concerns about ineffective counsel, essential mitigating evidence, and even compelling claims of innocence. These were all matters of life or death, requiring in-depth explanation and discussion, that no attorney in Gonzales's position should leave out of a written case summary or save for a thirty-minute oral briefing—especially if both are to be delivered on the very day of a scheduled execution. In a state where the criminal-justice system has erred with well-documented regularity, this was a grave failing.
Skin Deep
Skin Deep
By Rusty Rockets
The scourge of racism has led to the marginalization of citizens and caused untold misery, suffering, and injustice. But social and political action along with improved education has left little room for bigotry to flourish. In fact, recent studies show that perceived racial differences are only skin deep, and that the concept of race is a baseless concoction. But if this is true, then why is there still a prevalent fear of the Other? Sure, these fears may not manifest in the same way that they used to, but nevertheless, some scientists believe that racism is a hardwired, instinctual function of the brain.
The idea that racism is a product of human evolutionary development must be a comforting thought for those who have a proclivity toward racist behavior. It's tantalizing because it absolves such people of having to be responsible for their bigoted worldview. Like a lawyer who attempts to get his client pardoned on the grounds of diminished responsibility, so might the racist blame evolution for their expressions of racism. While blaming evolution for racism may be a popular argument among creationists looking to discredit evolution, those looking to displace the guilt associated with their racial prejudice, and some scientists (whatever their motivation), what is the evidence for such a claim?
Humans love to categorize and class objects and people; it just seems to be in our nature. Think of the three most common ways in which the state, our neighbors, work colleagues, and even dating websites categorize people: age, sex, and race. While many people may be hostile toward being pigeonholed on principle, because it's a dehumanizing practice, the process of categorization is itself not inherently racist. Rather, it's the generalizations linked to such classifications that ultimately leads to racial stereotyping. Racial stereotyping has produced systemic racism of a type that many people may not be aware, because it is racism created through lazy thinking, or no thinking at all. Time and again researchers have shown that racism is still present in this insidious form, with perpetrators either ignorant of their prejudices, in denial of them, or are savvy enough not to advertise their racist views.
In one study, researchers from the University of Chicago found a link between police force size and whites' fears of crime in areas where blacks had a significant presence. The researchers claimed that a significantly increased police force – often as much as 15 percent larger – in neighborhoods where blacks made up to a quarter of the population was linked to whites' fears of crime. Another study on racial biases among doctors, published in Springer's Journal of General Internal Medicine in August of this year, is equally revealing. Interviewing 220 doctors from four academic medical centers in Boston and Atlanta, Alexander Green, from the Harvard Medical School, found that doctors revealed an unconscious, or "implicit," preference toward treating white rather than black Americans. Using Implicit Association Tests (IATs), Green found that doctors unconsciously stereotyped blacks as less cooperative, and more troublesome to treat. “Implicit biases are primarily unconscious and do not imply overt racism," explains Green. "They do however remind us that implicit biases may affect the behavior even of those individuals who have nothing but the best intentions, including those in medical practice.”
Many a commentator has heralded the Internet as the great equalizer between peoples, irrespective of race, color, or creed. But Northwestern University's Eszter Hargittai, author of "Whose Space: Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites," argues that cyberspace may be no different to real life when it comes to racial identity. “Everyone points to that wonderful New Yorker cartoon of the dog at the computer telling a canine friend by his side that ‘on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog,’” says Hargittai. “In reality, however, it appears that online actions and interactions should not be viewed as independent of one’s offline identity.”
Hargittai's foray into cyberspace revealed that a person's choice of social networking sites (SNS) is apparently related to their race, ethnicity, and their parent's education level. “That race, ethnicity and the education level of one’s parents can predict which social network sites a student selects suggests there’s less intermingling of users from varying backgrounds on these sites than previously believed,” says Hargittai. The study, published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, shows that Facebook is the SNS of choice among whites, Hispanic students prefer Myspace, and that Asian and Asian-Americans are less likely to use Myspace, and instead use the less-popular Xanga and Friendster. Hargittai's findings fly in the face of intuitive ideas that the Internet breaks down racial, ethnic, educational, and economic barriers, and may in fact contribute toward a two-tier system. “In a two-tier system, some college students cultivate lots of networks and social capital while others benefit considerably less from this important part of the college experience,” says Hargittai.
That such apparently unconscious racist thoughts and actions prevail throughout society seems to suggest a solid case for hardwired prejudice. That is, while the bad old days of an overt "whites only" policy could be dismissed as consciously constructed segregation, more recent types of racism seem to be "unconscious," below-the-surface manifestations. But do these cases of unconscious racism suggest that racism is a product of evolution?
The answer is "no," for a number of reasons. If people are looking to find some kind of ancestral, genetic reason for their prejudice – as some scientists did as late as the end of the last century – they're going to be very disappointed. Referring to research conducted by the evolutionary psychology founders John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, scientist and author Matt Ridley, author of Nature Via Nurture, writes: "Back in the African Stone Age race was worse than useless as an identifier, because most people would never have met somebody of a different race. Noticing people's sex and age, on the other hand, would make good sense as these were reliable if approximate predictors of behavior." The upshot of all this, says Ridley, is that Tooby and Cosmides were puzzled that "race should keep popping up as a natural classifier," when only the ability to discern age and sex are likely to have been the result of evolutionary pressures, if at all.
In fact, fears and anxieties associated with racial prejudice are learned behaviors, and not genetic. As one study conducted by Princeton University researchers Mary Wheeler and Susan Fiske shows, racial prejudice often arises from negative encounters with another race and these negative experiences are then generalized toward the whole race. "We react that way to harmless strangers of another race – unless we trouble to think of them as unique individuals," says Fiske. From the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that they've conducted on the amygdala, Wheeler and Fiske argue that this kind of prejudice only occurs when people are "thinking about the faces [of other races] categorically and superficially." Wheeler and Fiske accept that we all have a tendency to categorize strangers, but this shortcut can be overridden with a little extra thought. "We think this way about strangers on a bus. But the amygdala and stereotype response depends on exactly how you think about your seat-mate on the bus," says Fiske.
The current trend in thinking is that racial prejudice can be reversed as a result of greater social integration with people from other races. Researchers from Harvard University say that while the group or tribal "pull" may have evolutionary roots, it is unlikely that this pull is related to race. "Our cultural surroundings tell us about the identity and qualities of other social groups, and this may be linked to an evolutionary predisposition to learn to fear members of social groups other than our own." The Harvard team doesn't factor in racial prejudice as an evolutionary trait for the same reasons that Tooby and Cosmides don't, which makes them optimistic about curbing racial prejudice, claiming that the "predisposition to fear members of another race may be changed by close personal contact."
Supporting these findings is the claim that teaching children about racism early leads to improved attitudes toward racial fairness and equality. University of Austin at Texas researchers claim that educating students, aged between 6 – 11 years of age, on "non-violent" topics such as racially biased hiring practices and racial segregation led students to value racial fairness more than those children not exposed to such lessons.
It seems that society is gradually turning its back on early scientific rationales for racism, as we begin to realize that we are not as different as we once thought, and that categorizing people by race is not inevitable.
By Rusty Rockets
The scourge of racism has led to the marginalization of citizens and caused untold misery, suffering, and injustice. But social and political action along with improved education has left little room for bigotry to flourish. In fact, recent studies show that perceived racial differences are only skin deep, and that the concept of race is a baseless concoction. But if this is true, then why is there still a prevalent fear of the Other? Sure, these fears may not manifest in the same way that they used to, but nevertheless, some scientists believe that racism is a hardwired, instinctual function of the brain.
The idea that racism is a product of human evolutionary development must be a comforting thought for those who have a proclivity toward racist behavior. It's tantalizing because it absolves such people of having to be responsible for their bigoted worldview. Like a lawyer who attempts to get his client pardoned on the grounds of diminished responsibility, so might the racist blame evolution for their expressions of racism. While blaming evolution for racism may be a popular argument among creationists looking to discredit evolution, those looking to displace the guilt associated with their racial prejudice, and some scientists (whatever their motivation), what is the evidence for such a claim?
Humans love to categorize and class objects and people; it just seems to be in our nature. Think of the three most common ways in which the state, our neighbors, work colleagues, and even dating websites categorize people: age, sex, and race. While many people may be hostile toward being pigeonholed on principle, because it's a dehumanizing practice, the process of categorization is itself not inherently racist. Rather, it's the generalizations linked to such classifications that ultimately leads to racial stereotyping. Racial stereotyping has produced systemic racism of a type that many people may not be aware, because it is racism created through lazy thinking, or no thinking at all. Time and again researchers have shown that racism is still present in this insidious form, with perpetrators either ignorant of their prejudices, in denial of them, or are savvy enough not to advertise their racist views.
In one study, researchers from the University of Chicago found a link between police force size and whites' fears of crime in areas where blacks had a significant presence. The researchers claimed that a significantly increased police force – often as much as 15 percent larger – in neighborhoods where blacks made up to a quarter of the population was linked to whites' fears of crime. Another study on racial biases among doctors, published in Springer's Journal of General Internal Medicine in August of this year, is equally revealing. Interviewing 220 doctors from four academic medical centers in Boston and Atlanta, Alexander Green, from the Harvard Medical School, found that doctors revealed an unconscious, or "implicit," preference toward treating white rather than black Americans. Using Implicit Association Tests (IATs), Green found that doctors unconsciously stereotyped blacks as less cooperative, and more troublesome to treat. “Implicit biases are primarily unconscious and do not imply overt racism," explains Green. "They do however remind us that implicit biases may affect the behavior even of those individuals who have nothing but the best intentions, including those in medical practice.”
Many a commentator has heralded the Internet as the great equalizer between peoples, irrespective of race, color, or creed. But Northwestern University's Eszter Hargittai, author of "Whose Space: Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites," argues that cyberspace may be no different to real life when it comes to racial identity. “Everyone points to that wonderful New Yorker cartoon of the dog at the computer telling a canine friend by his side that ‘on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog,’” says Hargittai. “In reality, however, it appears that online actions and interactions should not be viewed as independent of one’s offline identity.”
Hargittai's foray into cyberspace revealed that a person's choice of social networking sites (SNS) is apparently related to their race, ethnicity, and their parent's education level. “That race, ethnicity and the education level of one’s parents can predict which social network sites a student selects suggests there’s less intermingling of users from varying backgrounds on these sites than previously believed,” says Hargittai. The study, published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, shows that Facebook is the SNS of choice among whites, Hispanic students prefer Myspace, and that Asian and Asian-Americans are less likely to use Myspace, and instead use the less-popular Xanga and Friendster. Hargittai's findings fly in the face of intuitive ideas that the Internet breaks down racial, ethnic, educational, and economic barriers, and may in fact contribute toward a two-tier system. “In a two-tier system, some college students cultivate lots of networks and social capital while others benefit considerably less from this important part of the college experience,” says Hargittai.
That such apparently unconscious racist thoughts and actions prevail throughout society seems to suggest a solid case for hardwired prejudice. That is, while the bad old days of an overt "whites only" policy could be dismissed as consciously constructed segregation, more recent types of racism seem to be "unconscious," below-the-surface manifestations. But do these cases of unconscious racism suggest that racism is a product of evolution?
The answer is "no," for a number of reasons. If people are looking to find some kind of ancestral, genetic reason for their prejudice – as some scientists did as late as the end of the last century – they're going to be very disappointed. Referring to research conducted by the evolutionary psychology founders John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, scientist and author Matt Ridley, author of Nature Via Nurture, writes: "Back in the African Stone Age race was worse than useless as an identifier, because most people would never have met somebody of a different race. Noticing people's sex and age, on the other hand, would make good sense as these were reliable if approximate predictors of behavior." The upshot of all this, says Ridley, is that Tooby and Cosmides were puzzled that "race should keep popping up as a natural classifier," when only the ability to discern age and sex are likely to have been the result of evolutionary pressures, if at all.
In fact, fears and anxieties associated with racial prejudice are learned behaviors, and not genetic. As one study conducted by Princeton University researchers Mary Wheeler and Susan Fiske shows, racial prejudice often arises from negative encounters with another race and these negative experiences are then generalized toward the whole race. "We react that way to harmless strangers of another race – unless we trouble to think of them as unique individuals," says Fiske. From the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that they've conducted on the amygdala, Wheeler and Fiske argue that this kind of prejudice only occurs when people are "thinking about the faces [of other races] categorically and superficially." Wheeler and Fiske accept that we all have a tendency to categorize strangers, but this shortcut can be overridden with a little extra thought. "We think this way about strangers on a bus. But the amygdala and stereotype response depends on exactly how you think about your seat-mate on the bus," says Fiske.
The current trend in thinking is that racial prejudice can be reversed as a result of greater social integration with people from other races. Researchers from Harvard University say that while the group or tribal "pull" may have evolutionary roots, it is unlikely that this pull is related to race. "Our cultural surroundings tell us about the identity and qualities of other social groups, and this may be linked to an evolutionary predisposition to learn to fear members of social groups other than our own." The Harvard team doesn't factor in racial prejudice as an evolutionary trait for the same reasons that Tooby and Cosmides don't, which makes them optimistic about curbing racial prejudice, claiming that the "predisposition to fear members of another race may be changed by close personal contact."
Supporting these findings is the claim that teaching children about racism early leads to improved attitudes toward racial fairness and equality. University of Austin at Texas researchers claim that educating students, aged between 6 – 11 years of age, on "non-violent" topics such as racially biased hiring practices and racial segregation led students to value racial fairness more than those children not exposed to such lessons.
It seems that society is gradually turning its back on early scientific rationales for racism, as we begin to realize that we are not as different as we once thought, and that categorizing people by race is not inevitable.
Fat Gets A Makeover
Fat Gets A Makeover
by Kate Melville
Body fat doesn't just, er, make you fat. It also acts as a repository for all sorts of potentially nasty substances; like PCBs and other environmental pollutants. That's why rapidly shedding those extra pounds isn't always a good idea, as a whole slew of chemicals can be released back into the body, potentially overwhelming the body's ability to deal with them.
While fat does a good job of sequestering away junk from the environment, it appears that it may do even more important work in keeping the body's own chemical cocktail in balance. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), have found that fat droplets - tiny balls of fat that exist in most cells - appear to regulate excess proteins in the body. Excess and misshapen proteins are the culprits in Mad Cow Disease and are believed to be behind a number of other diseases.
The new study, published in Current Biology, found that the fat keeps extra proteins out of the way until they are needed, so that they don't cause harm within the cell. "We were surprised to find that these droplets appear to be a mechanism for cleaning up excess proteins before they cause trouble," said UCI biologist Steven Gross. "Obviously, everything in the body should be balanced. There is no doubt that huge amounts of fat tax your system in a lot of ways. But there now appears to be growing evidence that fat is also important for keeping us healthy."
Gross and his team used fruit flies in their experiments because of strong similarities between the fat droplets in the flies and in mammals. Using mass spectrometry to examine the droplets, they were surprised to find histones (a protein that is used by the cell to fold DNA within the nucleus) present. Even though histones appear to serve no purpose outside the nucleus, the scientists found that 50 percent of all the histones present in the cell were in the fat droplets. Intriguingly, the amount of histones in the droplets dropped as the embryo moved from early development to later stages, indicating that the histones moved from the droplets to the nucleus as they were needed. The researchers speculate that the fat droplets act as a "warehouse" where the proteins are stored until needed by the nucleus of the cell.
Gross hypothesizes that the fat droplets serve this purpose not just for histones, but for other excess proteins as well. "In prion diseases, such as Mad Cow Disease, for example, proteins in the brain are misshapen," Gross explained. "They become abnormal, clump together and accumulate on brain tissue. Although we have no evidence yet that fat droplets could help with this, prion diseases are one area in which we can explore further to see if these droplets are helping keep excess bothersome proteins out of the way."
Source: University of California, Irvine
by Kate Melville
Body fat doesn't just, er, make you fat. It also acts as a repository for all sorts of potentially nasty substances; like PCBs and other environmental pollutants. That's why rapidly shedding those extra pounds isn't always a good idea, as a whole slew of chemicals can be released back into the body, potentially overwhelming the body's ability to deal with them.
While fat does a good job of sequestering away junk from the environment, it appears that it may do even more important work in keeping the body's own chemical cocktail in balance. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), have found that fat droplets - tiny balls of fat that exist in most cells - appear to regulate excess proteins in the body. Excess and misshapen proteins are the culprits in Mad Cow Disease and are believed to be behind a number of other diseases.
The new study, published in Current Biology, found that the fat keeps extra proteins out of the way until they are needed, so that they don't cause harm within the cell. "We were surprised to find that these droplets appear to be a mechanism for cleaning up excess proteins before they cause trouble," said UCI biologist Steven Gross. "Obviously, everything in the body should be balanced. There is no doubt that huge amounts of fat tax your system in a lot of ways. But there now appears to be growing evidence that fat is also important for keeping us healthy."
Gross and his team used fruit flies in their experiments because of strong similarities between the fat droplets in the flies and in mammals. Using mass spectrometry to examine the droplets, they were surprised to find histones (a protein that is used by the cell to fold DNA within the nucleus) present. Even though histones appear to serve no purpose outside the nucleus, the scientists found that 50 percent of all the histones present in the cell were in the fat droplets. Intriguingly, the amount of histones in the droplets dropped as the embryo moved from early development to later stages, indicating that the histones moved from the droplets to the nucleus as they were needed. The researchers speculate that the fat droplets act as a "warehouse" where the proteins are stored until needed by the nucleus of the cell.
Gross hypothesizes that the fat droplets serve this purpose not just for histones, but for other excess proteins as well. "In prion diseases, such as Mad Cow Disease, for example, proteins in the brain are misshapen," Gross explained. "They become abnormal, clump together and accumulate on brain tissue. Although we have no evidence yet that fat droplets could help with this, prion diseases are one area in which we can explore further to see if these droplets are helping keep excess bothersome proteins out of the way."
Source: University of California, Irvine
The Healing Magic of the Film Festival
This past weekend, the 33rd annual Seattle International Film Festival kicked off in Seattle, the annual collection of a few hundred films from all the corners of the world’s many film producing countries to the Northwest for my ecstatic perusal. As far as film festival’s go, I’ve always had a sort of reversed mental image in which grand premiers and galas are held every night within a central theater in which directors and movie stars from around the world arrive.
Technically, this only occurs in three or four film festivals around the world, and it often only occurs for a small handful of films participating in the film festival. I generally have no idea what a festival like Sundance or Cannes feels like to attend as I’ve never been, but I do know that in Seattle, the festivities are much more reserved, much less apparent, and for those not participating, only mildly obnoxious.
With the highest per capita movie attending city in the nation, Seattle has managed to wrangle together the biggest film festival in the country on an annual basis, this year consisting of 405 films. However, the festival is not privy to the kind of exciting new world premiers that Cannes gets, because so few people know about it. Wong Kar Wai’s first English language film for example, the opening film in that world famous French festival, will not make its North American debut for months to come.
It doesn’t help either that SIFF starts at the tail end of Cannes, crossing over its tail end and losing whatever international recognition it might be able to muster up in the first place. But, lasting for almost a full month, SIFF is the kind of city wide event that any movie adoring public would just gobble up. And we do. It’s a long time coming each year, but when that first schedule arrives with it’s 400+ movies, I sit down and start sorting through them, looking for the next big feature that I’ll be able to say I saw way before anyone else.
What is it about the film festival atmosphere then that so captures the hearts and minds of a city and gets everyone so involved? It’s not the prospect of so many new films. To be truthful, most of the best films screening at SIFF will be screened in a few weeks at any of the dozen or so art house theaters scattered throughout the city. Once again, this is a big movie going city. No, it’s more of a dedication to the manner in which you’re seeing these films. When you walk up to the theater, wait in the ridiculously long lines, pull out your special SIFF tickets and sit down in a packed house to a film that very few if any people have seen in America yet, it’s a special feeling.
My first film this year for example was this beautiful French compilation film called Paris Je T’aime. Comprised of 18 short films by internationally renowned directors like the Coen Brothers, Alfonso Cuaron, and Gus Van Sant, each film was a speech on love and the nature of love in Paris. It was not only a great movie, but a fun movie and the place was sold out. I had bought my tickets on the day the schedule showed up, so I was set, but more than 300 people stood in the reserve line to get extra tickets, and that’s not including the pass holders who got turned away. To make a long story short, this was a popular film and with most films at SIFF getting 2 screenings, it was amazing how quickly it sold out.
Sitting in that tiny Capital Hill theater, watching a film with no previews, personally introduced by a staff member, was a great deal of fun and the kind of thing I look forward to every year, and despite that massive line, Paris Je T’aime opens in a regular run in a University District theater this Friday. It was all for the experience.
What I’m trying to get to here is that the point of a film festival is not to show off the best new films from around the world (though that is a great side effect), nor to posh up the city with a bunch of overindulgent stars and directors. It’s about the film goers, the people who make these films popular by spending their money to see them. It’s about the experience of going to a movie, the spectacle of sitting down with a few hundred people and watching a film as though you’re the only people on the planet doing so.
There’s something to be said for the blockbuster atmosphere, standing in line with millions of others to watch the next chapter in the world beloved series of pirate, superhero, or green ogre films too, but it’s just not the same. And when you pay that much money and sit with that many people to see a film that just plain fails, you might become a slight bit jaded to the movie industry. To which I say, go to a film festival if you can; it will reignite your passion for the cinema.
Technically, this only occurs in three or four film festivals around the world, and it often only occurs for a small handful of films participating in the film festival. I generally have no idea what a festival like Sundance or Cannes feels like to attend as I’ve never been, but I do know that in Seattle, the festivities are much more reserved, much less apparent, and for those not participating, only mildly obnoxious.
With the highest per capita movie attending city in the nation, Seattle has managed to wrangle together the biggest film festival in the country on an annual basis, this year consisting of 405 films. However, the festival is not privy to the kind of exciting new world premiers that Cannes gets, because so few people know about it. Wong Kar Wai’s first English language film for example, the opening film in that world famous French festival, will not make its North American debut for months to come.
It doesn’t help either that SIFF starts at the tail end of Cannes, crossing over its tail end and losing whatever international recognition it might be able to muster up in the first place. But, lasting for almost a full month, SIFF is the kind of city wide event that any movie adoring public would just gobble up. And we do. It’s a long time coming each year, but when that first schedule arrives with it’s 400+ movies, I sit down and start sorting through them, looking for the next big feature that I’ll be able to say I saw way before anyone else.
What is it about the film festival atmosphere then that so captures the hearts and minds of a city and gets everyone so involved? It’s not the prospect of so many new films. To be truthful, most of the best films screening at SIFF will be screened in a few weeks at any of the dozen or so art house theaters scattered throughout the city. Once again, this is a big movie going city. No, it’s more of a dedication to the manner in which you’re seeing these films. When you walk up to the theater, wait in the ridiculously long lines, pull out your special SIFF tickets and sit down in a packed house to a film that very few if any people have seen in America yet, it’s a special feeling.
My first film this year for example was this beautiful French compilation film called Paris Je T’aime. Comprised of 18 short films by internationally renowned directors like the Coen Brothers, Alfonso Cuaron, and Gus Van Sant, each film was a speech on love and the nature of love in Paris. It was not only a great movie, but a fun movie and the place was sold out. I had bought my tickets on the day the schedule showed up, so I was set, but more than 300 people stood in the reserve line to get extra tickets, and that’s not including the pass holders who got turned away. To make a long story short, this was a popular film and with most films at SIFF getting 2 screenings, it was amazing how quickly it sold out.
Sitting in that tiny Capital Hill theater, watching a film with no previews, personally introduced by a staff member, was a great deal of fun and the kind of thing I look forward to every year, and despite that massive line, Paris Je T’aime opens in a regular run in a University District theater this Friday. It was all for the experience.
What I’m trying to get to here is that the point of a film festival is not to show off the best new films from around the world (though that is a great side effect), nor to posh up the city with a bunch of overindulgent stars and directors. It’s about the film goers, the people who make these films popular by spending their money to see them. It’s about the experience of going to a movie, the spectacle of sitting down with a few hundred people and watching a film as though you’re the only people on the planet doing so.
There’s something to be said for the blockbuster atmosphere, standing in line with millions of others to watch the next chapter in the world beloved series of pirate, superhero, or green ogre films too, but it’s just not the same. And when you pay that much money and sit with that many people to see a film that just plain fails, you might become a slight bit jaded to the movie industry. To which I say, go to a film festival if you can; it will reignite your passion for the cinema.
PS2 Game Rentals – The Best Places to Rent PS2 Games
Renting video games has never been so appealing as it does in this day in age. Many video game rental clubs offer PS2 game rentals, amongst many other console games, to the public for one low monthly price. Today, we will be investigating into which rental clubs offer the best quality and selection when it comes to your favorite PS2 games.
As of 2006, there are 3 online video game rental companies that stand out amongst the rest of the pack. If your into video gaming, you might have heard of them. Gottaplay, GameFly, and Intelliflix are currently our nations leading chain of video game rentals. Below, we will be evaluating each of the 3 companies when it comes to PS2 game renting
PS2 Game Rental Reviews
Gottaplay PS2 Rentals
Gottaplay rental company is fast becoming one of the hottest online video game rental companies in the US, trailing right next to GameFly . They are the first online company of their kind that offers phone support to all their customers, along with a massive game selection. Gottaplay has a large selection of PS2 games within their arsenal. Here are some of the stats that we came up with when reviewing this company
1. PS2 Game Selection : Roughly 700 PS2 titles
2. New Release Titles: All new releases were available as soon as they hit the local stores. Roughly around 75 new releases at the time of publishing this article.
3. Classic Game Titles : Many PS2 classics were included such as Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and other great titles of the past, present and future.
4. Hard-to-Find Games : Many games that we never even knew about were included within their selection. If you want to play a game with little or no popularity, Gottaplay has this covered as well.
5. PS3 Titles- Gottaplay will carry the most current PS3 titles once released.
GameFly PS2 Rentals
GameFly has been the online leader within the video game rental realm for quite some time. With a large selection of game rentals available reaching at over 5,000 titles, this company doesn't seem to be losing its edge when it comes to what they do best. One thing is for sure, when it comes to PS2 rentals, they cover the market with quality and selection. Lets take a better look:
1. PS2 Game Selection : Roughly 800 PS2 titles
2. New Release Titles: New releases are always available. Roughly around 60 new releases at this current time.
3. Classic Game Titles : Many PS2 classics are included, but the selection is not quite as comprehensive as Gottaplay's.
4. Hard-to-Find Games : With their large diverse selection of PS2 titles, hard to find games were easily found within their database. You'll find a great selection of "when did this come out" type of games.
5. PS3 Titles- GameFly will be one of the first rental companies to stock PS3 games once available.
Intelliflix PS2 Rentals
Intelliflix is looking to cover a wide variety of markets including movies, video games, and adult movies. Although they do cover a large area of rentals, they do not dominate within any particular market. Their plans are great for families that would like a one-stop-shop type of policy. When it comes to PS2 renting, they do carry a great selection of newer games, although their game selection isn't nearly as comprehensive as the other two mentioned above. They are still worth their weight in gold and worth mentioning for any PS2 game fanatic. Here is what we dug up.
1. PS2 Game Selection : Roughly 475 PS2 titles
2. New Release Titles: New releases are always available. Roughly around 50 new releases currently.
3. Classic Game Titles : There were a few PS2 classics available, but this company mainly focuses on their newer game titles. If your highly fond of classic PS2 titles, you may want to try GameFly or Gottaplay.
4. Hard-to-Find Games : There were a few scattered hard-to-find titles located within their database.
5. PS3 Titles- Intelliflix will also carry PS3 titles once released. I think any company serious about game rentals will have these titles covered.
The #1 Rated Online Video Game Rental Club Review Guide in the US.
As of 2006, there are 3 online video game rental companies that stand out amongst the rest of the pack. If your into video gaming, you might have heard of them. Gottaplay, GameFly, and Intelliflix are currently our nations leading chain of video game rentals. Below, we will be evaluating each of the 3 companies when it comes to PS2 game renting
PS2 Game Rental Reviews
Gottaplay PS2 Rentals
Gottaplay rental company is fast becoming one of the hottest online video game rental companies in the US, trailing right next to GameFly . They are the first online company of their kind that offers phone support to all their customers, along with a massive game selection. Gottaplay has a large selection of PS2 games within their arsenal. Here are some of the stats that we came up with when reviewing this company
1. PS2 Game Selection : Roughly 700 PS2 titles
2. New Release Titles: All new releases were available as soon as they hit the local stores. Roughly around 75 new releases at the time of publishing this article.
3. Classic Game Titles : Many PS2 classics were included such as Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and other great titles of the past, present and future.
4. Hard-to-Find Games : Many games that we never even knew about were included within their selection. If you want to play a game with little or no popularity, Gottaplay has this covered as well.
5. PS3 Titles- Gottaplay will carry the most current PS3 titles once released.
GameFly PS2 Rentals
GameFly has been the online leader within the video game rental realm for quite some time. With a large selection of game rentals available reaching at over 5,000 titles, this company doesn't seem to be losing its edge when it comes to what they do best. One thing is for sure, when it comes to PS2 rentals, they cover the market with quality and selection. Lets take a better look:
1. PS2 Game Selection : Roughly 800 PS2 titles
2. New Release Titles: New releases are always available. Roughly around 60 new releases at this current time.
3. Classic Game Titles : Many PS2 classics are included, but the selection is not quite as comprehensive as Gottaplay's.
4. Hard-to-Find Games : With their large diverse selection of PS2 titles, hard to find games were easily found within their database. You'll find a great selection of "when did this come out" type of games.
5. PS3 Titles- GameFly will be one of the first rental companies to stock PS3 games once available.
Intelliflix PS2 Rentals
Intelliflix is looking to cover a wide variety of markets including movies, video games, and adult movies. Although they do cover a large area of rentals, they do not dominate within any particular market. Their plans are great for families that would like a one-stop-shop type of policy. When it comes to PS2 renting, they do carry a great selection of newer games, although their game selection isn't nearly as comprehensive as the other two mentioned above. They are still worth their weight in gold and worth mentioning for any PS2 game fanatic. Here is what we dug up.
1. PS2 Game Selection : Roughly 475 PS2 titles
2. New Release Titles: New releases are always available. Roughly around 50 new releases currently.
3. Classic Game Titles : There were a few PS2 classics available, but this company mainly focuses on their newer game titles. If your highly fond of classic PS2 titles, you may want to try GameFly or Gottaplay.
4. Hard-to-Find Games : There were a few scattered hard-to-find titles located within their database.
5. PS3 Titles- Intelliflix will also carry PS3 titles once released. I think any company serious about game rentals will have these titles covered.
The #1 Rated Online Video Game Rental Club Review Guide in the US.
The most popular audio standard on the web – Mp3
MP3 or MPEG -1 Audio Layer is an open standard to compress audio files about one twelfth of the disk space of the original audio track and providing the nearest sound quality to an original CD. This is the reason why it has become the standard scheme to compress music on the web or internet. Reduced size of music files and availability of various free mp3 player software has made it easy to distribute music and other audio recordings online.
Advantages of MP3
Many digital audio formats have been developed by companies such as Microsoft, Lucent, and Yamaha which have restrictions on their technology that could be used by outside developers. But as of now MP3 has all the momentum to distribute music.
As there are no security features with Mp3 files, millions of these files are easily posted and passed around the web each day. These files are so small that these files could be easily downloaded or attached to an email while sending to any of your friends.
Another reason is our listening habits that force the people to use mp3. You can collect all your favorite songs, bands or styles as per your preference and store it into your computer hard disk. Next you can put all the songs in the play list and send it to the CD burner for recording. Later you are free to listen it anywhere with the help of portable mp3 players.
Also an upcoming area for mp3 is web casting or audio streaming. Unlike mp3 downloads, streamed mp3 files are not stored in the computer hard disk but are broadcasted like traditional radio and receiver (mp3 player for instance).
These are the few reasons you would start dabbling in mp3 but there are many ethical and legal issues which you need to consider before you start making mp3 downloads.
For more information visit our recommended website freedownloadmp3song.info
Advantages of MP3
Many digital audio formats have been developed by companies such as Microsoft, Lucent, and Yamaha which have restrictions on their technology that could be used by outside developers. But as of now MP3 has all the momentum to distribute music.
As there are no security features with Mp3 files, millions of these files are easily posted and passed around the web each day. These files are so small that these files could be easily downloaded or attached to an email while sending to any of your friends.
Another reason is our listening habits that force the people to use mp3. You can collect all your favorite songs, bands or styles as per your preference and store it into your computer hard disk. Next you can put all the songs in the play list and send it to the CD burner for recording. Later you are free to listen it anywhere with the help of portable mp3 players.
Also an upcoming area for mp3 is web casting or audio streaming. Unlike mp3 downloads, streamed mp3 files are not stored in the computer hard disk but are broadcasted like traditional radio and receiver (mp3 player for instance).
These are the few reasons you would start dabbling in mp3 but there are many ethical and legal issues which you need to consider before you start making mp3 downloads.
For more information visit our recommended website freedownloadmp3song.info
Top 3 Reasons to Buy World of Warcraft Gold for Sale
As one of the most popular video games, World of Warcraft, also known as WoW, makes millions of video game lovers crazy. It’s not strange that many people around always say their friends have been addicted in it because these game players keep on playing it on a daily basis. They scarified the time they should spend on study, meeting friends and etc and enjoy their life in the virtual gaming world. Yes, it’s true this game is really fantastic, but if we look at this video game itself, we have to admit that it’s very difficult to play, that’s maybe another reason why so many people keep on playing it, because these individuals want to conquer it every time they are frustrated in this virtual gaming world.
Whenever the WoW players are frustrated when they are defeating enemies or overcoming multiple challenges, they have to seek for assistance. When this moment comes, they usually buy proper weapons so that they could keep leveling up their characters but not fall to defeat. So numerous individual players end up buying world of warcraft gold. Buying world of warcraft gold has many benefits, especially when the game payers are power leveling their gaming their characters. To make their characters as powerful as they could be, buying world of warcraft gold for sale to purchase the weapons they need in the game is always the right methods they choose. And also this is a great feeling for many world of warcraft players and world of warcraft gold has helped many players eliminate the problem when they spend a lot of time trying to pass a certain point.
Another reason to buy world of warcraft gold is game players could finish the buying process just in a few minutes online. It’s very simple, make a search "world of warcraft gold", review the websites who offer world of warcraft gold, compare the price and then put it into the shopping cart and in several minutes the world of warcraft will be delivered to you. and then you could play world of warcraft with extra world of warcraft gold and advanced weapons right away.
The third reason to buy world of warcraft gold is the price for world of warcraft gold is low. Compared to the time you spend in the game to make your characters step into a higher level, the money you spend on buying world of warcraft gold is deserved. And furthermore, the price of world of warcraft gold is reasonable because it usually depend on where it is being purchased or collected from. You could image what a gamer will feel when they overcome the challenges immediately after they spend a little money on world of warcraft gold. And I believe, except these reasons mentioned above, there are many other reasons and benefits when it comes to buying world of warcraft gold because the gaming experience is different for each individual. If you are playing world of warcraft and likely to find an easy and fast way to power level your characters in order to beat your enemies, just buy cheap world of warcraft gold now.
Victor Wilson is one dedicated trader selling world of warcraft gold for cheap.
Whenever the WoW players are frustrated when they are defeating enemies or overcoming multiple challenges, they have to seek for assistance. When this moment comes, they usually buy proper weapons so that they could keep leveling up their characters but not fall to defeat. So numerous individual players end up buying world of warcraft gold. Buying world of warcraft gold has many benefits, especially when the game payers are power leveling their gaming their characters. To make their characters as powerful as they could be, buying world of warcraft gold for sale to purchase the weapons they need in the game is always the right methods they choose. And also this is a great feeling for many world of warcraft players and world of warcraft gold has helped many players eliminate the problem when they spend a lot of time trying to pass a certain point.
Another reason to buy world of warcraft gold is game players could finish the buying process just in a few minutes online. It’s very simple, make a search "world of warcraft gold", review the websites who offer world of warcraft gold, compare the price and then put it into the shopping cart and in several minutes the world of warcraft will be delivered to you. and then you could play world of warcraft with extra world of warcraft gold and advanced weapons right away.
The third reason to buy world of warcraft gold is the price for world of warcraft gold is low. Compared to the time you spend in the game to make your characters step into a higher level, the money you spend on buying world of warcraft gold is deserved. And furthermore, the price of world of warcraft gold is reasonable because it usually depend on where it is being purchased or collected from. You could image what a gamer will feel when they overcome the challenges immediately after they spend a little money on world of warcraft gold. And I believe, except these reasons mentioned above, there are many other reasons and benefits when it comes to buying world of warcraft gold because the gaming experience is different for each individual. If you are playing world of warcraft and likely to find an easy and fast way to power level your characters in order to beat your enemies, just buy cheap world of warcraft gold now.
Victor Wilson is one dedicated trader selling world of warcraft gold for cheap.
What is an Auto Loan?
What is an Auto Loan?
by John Mussi
An Auto loan is basically another name for a car loan. An auto loan is an agreement between a lender and a borrower in which the lender gives the borrower money and the borrower promised to pay back the amount of the loan and the interest. Auto loans are only offered for the purpose of purchasing a vehicle.
Auto loans are the most popular type of loan that people apply for. Auto loans, as the name suggests, are unsecured loans specifically designed for the purchase of a vehicle.
An auto loan is a type of credit offered by a bank or other lender for the specific purpose of buying a vehicle. You then pay back the loan over a set period of time.
If you are taking out an auto loan it is very important that you find out the Annual Percentage Rate (APR) that the lender is offering. This is the yearly charge for the loan, a low APR means a cheaper loan.
The payments you make consist of both the principal amount of the loan plus interest. With this type of loan you own the vehicle from the time you buy it. Auto loans are form of personal loan of which there are several basic types with slightly different conditions attached.
Auto loans can be seen as the riskiest of loans from the lender's point of view. This is because an auto loan is for an asset that depreciates very quickly. Thus you will find that auto loans have generally a higher rate of interest than any other type of loan.
One of the advantages of getting an auto loan is that when you get it before you go to the dealer, you can negotiate as a cash buyer. Often you will save money when you negotiate from a cash buying position.
The main disadvantage of an auto loan is that, like any other loan, it must be paid back. Before you get a loan, make sure you are capable of making the monthly payments. You can seriously damage your credit if you default on an auto loan.
About the Author
John Mussi is the founder of Direct Online Loans who help UK homeowners find the best available loans via the www.directonlineloans.co.uk website.
by John Mussi
An Auto loan is basically another name for a car loan. An auto loan is an agreement between a lender and a borrower in which the lender gives the borrower money and the borrower promised to pay back the amount of the loan and the interest. Auto loans are only offered for the purpose of purchasing a vehicle.
Auto loans are the most popular type of loan that people apply for. Auto loans, as the name suggests, are unsecured loans specifically designed for the purchase of a vehicle.
An auto loan is a type of credit offered by a bank or other lender for the specific purpose of buying a vehicle. You then pay back the loan over a set period of time.
If you are taking out an auto loan it is very important that you find out the Annual Percentage Rate (APR) that the lender is offering. This is the yearly charge for the loan, a low APR means a cheaper loan.
The payments you make consist of both the principal amount of the loan plus interest. With this type of loan you own the vehicle from the time you buy it. Auto loans are form of personal loan of which there are several basic types with slightly different conditions attached.
Auto loans can be seen as the riskiest of loans from the lender's point of view. This is because an auto loan is for an asset that depreciates very quickly. Thus you will find that auto loans have generally a higher rate of interest than any other type of loan.
One of the advantages of getting an auto loan is that when you get it before you go to the dealer, you can negotiate as a cash buyer. Often you will save money when you negotiate from a cash buying position.
The main disadvantage of an auto loan is that, like any other loan, it must be paid back. Before you get a loan, make sure you are capable of making the monthly payments. You can seriously damage your credit if you default on an auto loan.
About the Author
John Mussi is the founder of Direct Online Loans who help UK homeowners find the best available loans via the www.directonlineloans.co.uk website.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
