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'@SummerBreak' Web Series Fueled by Viewer Feedback
Though only 15 webisodes deep, social media's first reality series is already making some noise on Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and Instagram.
@SummerBreak, a daily web series that details the lives of high school seniors as they spend their final summer together before college, has so far amassed more than 115,000 Twitter followers and has bagged roughly 500,000 views on YouTube since its debut almost two weeks ago. This is a pleasant surprise for the show's producer, Billy Parks.
Viewers can currently track the show's nine stars — Nia, Ray, Trevis, Alex, Clara, Zaq, Lena, Kostas and Connor — 20 hours per day via social media mainstays. A crew of approximately 50 monitors the cast's tweets, videos and pictures with HootSuite and Dropbox tools.
Viewer Feedback Is Influencing the Show
Perusing YouTube comments and Twitter replies, you'll see that @SummerBreak has been receiving swaths of requests for longer episodes. The length of episodes so far have been shorter than five minutes each, with some barely longer than a minute. Parks told Mashable his team is taking this into account and will start making longer episodes.
"It's always a challenge when you're doing things in real time without the benefit of three or four months of editing and hindsight of storylines," Parks said. "The challenege is, 'How do we make sure we're telling a story that's going to follow all the way through?' So we have to pick bits and pieces. It's a different experience than what people are used to."
Initially, the production team thought that episodes should be kept short because the audience the show targets is primarily watching on mobile. But Parks has noticed that the completion rates for the YouTube videos have been "very high," so longer episodes are quickly becoming a priority.
@SummerBreak — the Chernin Group's latest foray into original digital programming with partners AT&T and BBDO — this week released some of the show's social media metrics: Stats reveal that the show and its cast are retweeted on an average of 1,300-plus times a day, and the engagement rate for promoted tweets is more than twice the average for Twitter's other entertainment clients. The @SummerBreak Tumblr has been viewed more than 6.5 million times.
Viewer engagement is affecting what goes on behind the scenes, influencing which characters and storylines are getting more airtime. It's not 100% "ask and you shall receive," Parks admitted. The team won't force characters or threads if they're out of the blue. The goal is always to balance authenticity with a cohesive narrative.
How Viewers Are Reacting to the Characters
@SummerBreak's first episodes have told the story of Zaq and Clara's interaction, Lena's new-found independence and Ray's romantic endeavors, but with storylines just starting to bubble, the nine cast members haven't been featured in equal parts. The ones getting early limelight, such as Ray, have been punching their social media interaction into high gear.
"People who tweet at me, they love it, they tweet positive to me," 17-year-old Ray told Mashable. "I always show love to the people who show me love, or I retweet them. I try to make everybody happy."
Ray noted that he's received the most interaction on Twitter and Instagram, but he said he gets more comments and likes on Instagram, where he has more followers. His Twitter account is "blasting up," too, he said. Most of the cast members are hovering around the 1,000-followers mark, give or take a couple hundred.
The cast members still have yet to reach the fame akin to people from such TV series as Real World, Jersey Shore and The Hills. And Ray said he hasn't really received much attention offscreen, aside from relatives and friends cracking good-natured jokes at the posse of cameras on his tail. A female YouTuber said his body looked weird in one of the cast bio clips, Ray recalled: "What the hell? How does my body look weird? It wasn't even really shown." The high schooler said he ignores the haters, but he'll engage with anybody else who tweets at him and has something constructive to add to the conversation.
Camera Life: 'Everybody Is Still Getting Used to It'
"Everybody is still getting used to it — all these young folks who are letting their lives be filmed," Parks said. "And now these guys are expected to be personal when they also see themselves which is a very new thing."
Ray conceded that he'd never really thought of being on TV and that it is a little odd watching himself onscreen — sometimes hours after something has just been filmed.
"I'm watching myself, but I don't even feel like it's me sometimes," he quipped.
Ray has shown people that he can be funny, he can make people laugh — but he said there's another side of him that isn't always funny. He wants to show people who he really is and what he's really about. He can be serious and emotional, too: "I'm not a jokester all the time."
But Ray's dad, a boxer, told him to always give the fans what they want. It's a mantra that Ray tries to follow, to give fans entertainment, something to enjoy watching — not simply boring YouTube clips. Of course, being on camera, secrets don't really remain secret, as evidenced by hot mics and girls-only chatter (see below).
But cast members talking about cast members is all part of it, Ray said. It's nothing novel — the talk is just amplified. One of the storylines involving Ray features him courting a romantic interest, Whitney. The @SummerBreak show has spotlighted a few meet-cutes — but nothing more. So when asked what would happen if Ray made a move, the girls got to talking.
RT @SummerBreak: "What if @RAYRAYisRAW tries to kiss you, what're you gonna do?" http://t.co/P68P1J4pBZ
— Louise Freeze (@RAYRAYisRAW) June 24, 2013
"Everybody talks behind someone's back — I don't think anything's gonna change," Ray said. "I wanted to see what she said. I was curious, 'What would you do?'"
The most recent episode focused on Ray, showcasing his reactions to some of his friends from back home "subtweeting" about him; it has served as a prime example of post-viewing, fan-cast interaction:
Hahaha never do RT @kiesharocks: @RAYRAYisRAW Don't let these heffas get you down Ray!
— Louise Freeze (@RAYRAYisRAW) June 27, 2013
That day will come sooner or later RT @viciosoBelleza: @RAYRAYisRAW omgg you are awesome ok!! just awesome ! i wish to meet you one day!
— Louise Freeze (@RAYRAYisRAW) June 27, 2013
My bad for blowing up timelines...just giving the love back, that I'm receiving!!!
— Louise Freeze (@RAYRAYisRAW) June 27, 2013
Summer is just getting started, though, so, according to the @SummerBreak team, there's sure to be more drama, more love, more fun. Looking ahead, Parks said: "The follower and fan base will grow as these guys get more comfortable with the cameras and are able to tell more personal stories."
Images, footage courtesy of YouTube, SummerBreak; Mashable composite


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Jeffrey Katzenberg's not just in the entertainment business, he's in the empire business. The CEO of Dreamworks Animation and Breaking Bad mega-fan offered to put up $75 million for just three more episodes of the hit AMC series, Variety reports.
Katzenberg tried to commission three 60-minutes episodes at $25 million a pop, he announced to other TV execs at Cannes. He planned to show the extra episodes as six-minute videos over 30 days online, and charge users 50-99 cents per viewing, according to Variety, and advertised the the endeavor as the "greatest pay-per-view television event for scripted programming anybody's ever done."
Since Breaking Bad cost $3.5 million per episode to make, Katzenberg's offer meant that the creators would have made more money from three episodes for him than they did from five years of the entire series.

subset: commoncrawl


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The red-band trailer for "Bad Teacher" is here, and it lives up the rumors that it'll be one of the summer's raunchier comedies.
Diaz got famous working blue is the Farrelly Brothers' "Something About Mary," and here again she shows an ease and comfort with all manner of foul language. Suffice it to say, the trailer is NSFW and loaded with "adult language."
Lest we come off as a bunch of scolds, the trailer is pretty funny. Diaz plays an unmotivated, pot-smoking teacher who hopes to make the new substitute, played by Justin Timberlake, her sugar daddy. He, of course, is attracted to her archenemy, played by Lucy Punch, while orbiting the action as one of Diaz's suitors is Jason Segel.
U.S. & World
"Bad Teacher" opens June 24.


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Image via Washington Post
In this morning's Washington Post, Rob Pegorano presents an interesting suggestion - one that challenges us to view Microsoft and Apple as two major companies auditioning for new roles in our lives.
We need to retire the term "MP3 player." Not only do the newest media gadgets from Apple and Microsoft play more music formats than MP3 -- in addition to showing photos and videos -- they also fill some roles once reserved for high-end smartphones. They can even replace an old transistor radio.
With regard to the new nano, Pegorano says the video camera is an "awkward addition."
Its lens is too easy to cover with a stray finger, and it deals poorly with low light and moving subjects. In good light, it can record decent clips, but their low resolution (640 by 480 pixels) and dull colors make them a better fit for YouTube than your HDTV.
It falls into a gap between simpler players like older Zunes and full-fledged, Internet-enabled gadgets such as Apple's iPod touch.
The same, of course, can be said of Apple. Instead of rushing sloppy updates or unimpressive upgrades just to make the MP3 players of yesterday a little flashier today won't cut it. And to many, that's what it seems Apple and Microsoft are only interested in doing for now.


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Lost and found pet turns out to be rare purebed cat
LAST week we had a phone call from one of the local pre-schools. They were concerned about a cat which had been loitering around the school for several days.
Not only did it seem to be homeless but they were quite alarmed by its appearance.
It was very small and thin and had lost most of its fur and they assumed that it was either gravely ill, undernourished, very old or all of the above.
So they scooped it up and brought the "poor pathetic specimen" into the clinic.
What they had found was a quite healthy, purebred devon rex female cat!
Devon rex are cute looking cats, in the same way that E.T. was a cute looking alien.
The breed is said to have originated in a litter born in a mine in Devon in 1960 with a unique mutation that resulted in very short curled fur and among other traits, disproportionately large radar-dish ears.
Also referred to as a cross between a cat, a dog and a monkey, they are highly intelligent, trainable like a dog, mischievous and people-oriented.
We christened her Sigourney and tended to a sore eye, then handed her on to her kindly foster mum, Helen.
Helen poured on the love whilst putting the word out for anyone who may have lost a devon rex.
After a few days Helen thought she would put up a notice on the local community noticeboard - Found: Small devon rex cat, please phone this number.
As she to pinned her sign on the board she was gobsmacked at the adjacent notice.
After a double take and a couple of "No ways", there it was: LOST: Female devon rex cat, I am an indoor cat and don't know about cars and dogs, and am much loved, along with a photo, phone Paula!
So Sigourney, who until now had rarely ventured outdoors, has been reunited with her rightful owner.
One take-home message from this is that even if you have an indoor pet, microchipping is not only a legal requirement but a good idea!


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New Read: Half the Sky
This week at GlobalGiving many of us are reading the new book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Pulitzer- Prize winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.
While exposing the horrors women in the developing world face on a daily basis—gender-based violence like honor killings and genital mutilation, the sex trade, and high rates of easily preventable maternal mortality—the book also shows how changing the circumstances of just one woman can have a powerful ripple effect on her family and the community at-large. Through the work of our GlobalGiving project leaders, we're lucky enough to see the effects of empowering disadvantaged women first hand.
Consider this update posted earlier this year from a women's collective in Bihar, India who is looking to raise funds to help support their sewing centers that provide a community space and help women learn a valuable trade: "I was married two years ago and I am lucky because my husband is kind to me and gives me permission to go to the market and sewing centre. But some other members are not so lucky, but under pressure from all of us we get their husbands not to object to their wives coming to the centre. Here we are learning a useful skill but this is the only place we can meet as women in friendship and in mutual support. We are now stopping drunken behavior from the men, we have patrolled the village with 35 of us forcing the local drinking shop to close, now drunken beatings are a thing of the past and our village is more peaceful and we feel more secure."
We're so pleased that Kristof and WuDunn have brought this important issue to the forefront, and are humbled to be included in the book under "Four Steps You Can Take in the Next Ten Minutes." Right now we're featuring a great promotion; donate $100 to any GlobalGiving project and receive a copy of Half the Sky for free. Check out our Half the Sky page for some pre-selected projects that relate to the book.
If you've already had a chance to read the book, please share your thoughts! What story did you find the most compelling? Where do you think change needs to happen most urgently, and through what means?


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A half-hour after her boyfriend left her Irving condo on an icy night in January 1988, Marilyn M. heard pounding on her door. Thinking her boyfriend might have had car trouble, Marilyn opened the door and confronted a stranger who pushed his way into her home and dragged her to the bedroom, dousing the lights as he went. From 8:45 p.m. until 1:20 a.m., the man sexually assaulted Marilyn in the darkened bedroom, leaving only after she feigned sleep.
Marilyn later described her attacker as 5-foot-8 and stocky with a light complexion, sandy-brown hair, a scraggly beard, a scar on his cheek and several tattoos. He chain-smoked Marlboro Reds. During a brief period in the lighted bathroom, Marilyn studied a tattoo on his shoulder blade that depicted a woman with large eyes and cascading hair. The day after the assault, Marilyn worked with police to create a composite picture of her rapist and the tattoo.
Five months later, Gregory Wallis was buttering a piece of toast when Irving police came to his door and arrested him for aggravated sexual assault and burglary.
DNA exonerees
"You're crazy," Wallis said. At his arraignment, Wallis was baffled. "I was carefree," he says. "I thought I didn't have anything to worry about. They couldn't make it stick. [Rape] is just not in my nature."
At trial Wallis learned that Irving police had shown Marilyn five different photo lineups with no success. Then an informant in the jail saw a photo of the tattoo and identified Wallis.
Marilyn picked Wallis out of the last photo array and then identified the tattoo on his arm as that of her attacker. Wallis' tattoo showed a woman with long hair, but it was on his arm, not his shoulder blade. The scar on his face was not on his cheek but on his forehead. No physical evidence linked him to the crime.
"The only time I had seen this lady was when I went to court," Wallis says. The trial lasted three days; the jury took an hour to convict him.
Sentenced to 50 years in prison, Wallis left his wife and 2-year-old son behind. He had served 16 years when he learned from another inmate of a new law that would allow Wallis to seek a DNA test.
It took nearly three years, but a judge finally assigned a public defender to his case. A sophisticated DNA test on Marlboro cigarette butts at the scene proved that Wallis could not have been the rapist. After serving 18 years for a crime he didn't commit, Wallis was released.
Since 2001, when the option of discretionary DNA testing became available to inmates, 13 men in Dallas County have been exonerated. Given sentences as long as 50 years to life, these innocent men struggle with lost years and the legacy of prison etched on their souls.
Around the country, DNA testing has exonerated more than 200 people so far, and Dallas County has far more exonerations than any other county in the nation.
"Dallas is ground zero for criminal justice change," says Jeff Blackburn, an activist lawyer, founder and director of the Innocence Project of Texas, a nonprofit consortium of attorneys and law students who aid those who claim they have been falsely convicted. It's modeled after the Innocence Project founded by lawyer Barry Scheck at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York.
"[Dallas County's] small enough to make it work but big enough to make a difference," Blackburn says. "The only thing that's rare about Dallas is we have this objective benchmark."
The benchmark is the result of two factors: The county's private lab, the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences, had to preserve the evidence to maintain its accreditation, Blackburn says. And in case an appeals court gave a convicted felon a new trial, the Dallas District Attorney's Office wanted to maintain evidence to try to convict the accused again.
"This is a perfect storm of accidental facts," Blackburn says. "I can tell you, if 20 years ago the Dallas DA's Office thought those convictions would be endangered they would never have gotten into this system of saving samples."
Blackburn says wrongful convictions happen for three reasons: eyewitness misidentification because police do not use objective procedures; failure of prosecutors and police to turn over exculpatory evidence, which he calls "pervasive"; and bad defense attorneys.
But the problem goes much further than Dallas County.
A study of 290 non-capital cases tried in four cities in 2000 and 2001 was released this spring by Northwestern University. It concluded that juries got the verdict wrong in one out of six criminal cases. One-fourth of those defendants pronounced guilty by juries were actually innocent. Judges had an even higher rate of false convictions; 37 percent of those deemed guilty by judges after "bench trials" were actually innocent. The study also found that judges and juries agreed on the outcome in only 77 percent of the cases.
In 35 Dallas DNA cases approved for tests so far, 13 men were found innocent. What happened in the trials of these men? (One, Eugene Henton, pleaded guilty and received a four-year sentence rather than go to trial.) How did the system go so horribly wrong? The Dallas Observer obtained the trial transcripts of 10 cases—all sexual assaults—and combed through the proceedings to see what they have in common.
Knowing in hindsight that the man on trial is innocent adds to the shock when one sees how little evidence was needed to convict him. In most cases identification of the defendant by the victim was all it took for juries to overcome reasonable doubt. How could the victim be wrong about who attacked her?
In years past, the Dallas District Attorney's Office earned a reputation for caring more about convictions than justice. Many of the DNA exonerations date to the 1980s when legendary District Attorney Henry Wade still reigned. The county's chief prosecutor from 1951 to 1986, Wade hired top attorneys and set them loose to get the bad guys.
Former Judge Manny Alvarez was a prosecutor from 1985 to 1989. "As a prosecutor I never lost a case," says Alvarez, now a defense attorney. "It's not like we maliciously prosecuted people. I pled the ones that were weak and tried the high-profile cases." But he could win in those days taking the first 12 people who showed up for jury duty.
"These people wanted to believe you," Alvarez says. "All they needed was a leader to take them down this road. It's white hat versus black hat, good versus evil."
Black and white played a different role earlier in Wade's tenure. In 1986, The Dallas Morning News exposed a 1963 memo advising Dallas County prosecutors on picking juries: "Do not take Jews, Negroes, Dagos, Mexicans or members of any minority race on a jury, no matter how rich or well-educated."
Though the majority of prosecutors and police officers were honest, Alvarez says, a pattern would emerge over time with certain people who prevaricated or fudged the rules. "Yeah, it happens," Alvarez says. "Sure it does."
In 1984, a black engineer named Lenell Jeter won his freedom after being convicted of armed robbery by a Dallas jury. His co-workers insisted he hadn't done it and national publicity led the District Attorney's Office to reopen and ultimately dismiss his case.
That was followed by the 1989 exoneration of a black woman named Joyce Ann Brown. Convicted for armed robbery, Brown was released after the District Attorney's Office admitted it made a mistake and a key prosecution witness had lied on the stand.
The office's reputation took a national hit with the 1988 release of Errol Morris' documentary The Thin Blue Line, about the conviction and death sentence of Randall Dale Adams for the 1976 murder of a police officer. Three days before he was to be executed, Adams' sentence was commuted to life.
The documentary alleged that Wade's first assistant, Doug Mulder, withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense. Adams' attorney maintained Mulder manipulated key witnesses. Mulder denied that and said he'd simply "forgotten" to turn over a witness statement pointing to another man.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered Dallas County to grant a new trial, and then-District Attorney John Vance dropped the charges.
Then came the '90s. Under District Attorney Bill Hill, more than a dozen innocent people were sent to prison by the Dallas County District Attorney's Office during a fake drug scandal in which confidential informants planted billiard chalk on innocent people and testified they were dealing cocaine. The District Attorney's Office had a policy of not testing the evidence unless asked by defense attorneys and withheld or "missed" tests that showed the chalk was not cocaine.
Jeter, Brown, Adams, several dozen victims of the fake drug scandal and now 13 DNA-exonerated convicts and more expected—can it be coincidence?
"I think it was a win-at-all-costs mentality," says a criminal defense attorney who worked several years as a prosecutor under Wade. He asked not to be named. "It was a culture built around Doug Mulder. He was a very powerful first assistant. It was an environment of 'anybody can convict the guilty; it takes real talent to convict the innocent.' People actually said that laughing like 'yuk, yuk, yuk,' but it's nothing to yuk about."
He does not blame Dallas police for wrongful convictions.
"The prosecutors would take control of making it all come out right," he says. "The police were just foot soldiers. They bring a case, and then it's like, 'This asshole deserves to be hammered. What needs to be said or done that's going to lead to a conviction?' The masterminds on that were the prosecutors, but they had willing witnesses to work with. I think it's just Dallas. That's just the way it works."
The mindset and practices put in place years ago, like not testing drugs unless the case goes to trial, were still affecting the process in 2000. He calls it ironic that the DNA evidence, originally preserved in part just in case an appeal led to a retrial, is now exposing the truth.
Defense attorney Peter Lesser calls the conviction of innocent defendants "a combination of errors," including pressure on law enforcement to solve and punish heinous crimes. He believes there are far more innocent people convicted than guilty people acquitted.
"I'm not ready to say the reason we have all these exonerations is that the DA was looking to convict innocent people," Lesser says. "Some didn't have good lawyers. Sometimes you need better judges. The police get away with a lot of unethical stuff. For the system to work as it should work, everybody should be operating in good faith, and that's not always happening."
Lesser puts much of the blame on the district attorney's "closed file" system, in which prosecutors limit what information they give to the defense. The rules require that "exculpatory evidence" be turned over, but that's at the discretion of the prosecutor.
"When I walk into the District Attorney's Office in Hunt County, there's a package with all the discovery, all the reports," Lesser says. "They give me complete access to their files. If they don't give you the information you need, bad things happen. There may be something that, had a jury heard it, they might not have found him guilty in the first place. The problem is judges don't throw cases out and teach law enforcement a lesson. Things are better now, but back then, Dallas prosecutors liked to play trial by ambush."
Current District Attorney Craig Watkins has instituted an open-file policy, but Lesser says it comes with a 40-page explanation. "Now they are saying we can't do this, we're going to have to black out names," Lesser says. "The rules are stupid. There's one way to avoid the problem."
Open the files.
Lesser was involved in the '90s in an effort to help James Curtis Giles, convicted in the 1983 gang rape of a Dallas woman. He served a decade in prison before being released on parole. His appeals went nowhere. The District Attorney's Office blocked his efforts to get a DNA test.
Then the Innocence Project of New York unearthed evidence the prosecution had failed to disclose, that another man, James Earl Giles, lived near the victim. Prosecutors had failed to disclose that he was implicated in the crime and police had confused him with the other Giles.
While DNA can be a silver bullet that rips the guts out of a jury conviction in a sexual assault, what about cases in which DNA is not a factor, where there's no silver bullet? It's a haunting question: How many of those defendants are innocent?
On January 15, 1986, pregnant hospital worker Felicia W. left her home near Fair Park at 6:25 a.m. to catch her bus to work. Felicia heard steps behind her and glanced back to see a man striding toward her. The man grabbed her and put a knife to her throat. He pulled Felicia down the street, then pushed her to the ground on the driveway in front of a car. He kissed her breasts for five or so minutes before raping her. Then the man was gone as quickly as he had appeared.
Crying, Felicia ran to her apartment and told her husband what happened. They called police.
Felicia described her attacker as black, about 5-foot-7, 145 pounds, with short hair, wearing a light-colored jogging suit, black shoes and a dark hat over a stocking cap or plastic bag. Felicia was confident she would recognize him again. Although it was dark, Felicia claimed she had a good look at her assailant in the light of a streetlamp.
By 10:30 a.m., police arrested a 30-year-old parolee named Wiley Fountain.
That afternoon, Officer T.L. Pettiet showed Felicia a photo lineup: six men, all black, all supposedly matching the description given by Felicia within a couple of hours of the assault. She picked Fountain.
Fountain went to trial on September 8, 1986, in the court of Judge Faith Johnson. The lead prosecutor was Lana McDaniel, who would go on to become a judge. Defense attorney Mike Rodgers represented Fountain.
As per the "closed file" policy of District Attorney Wade, the defense had no prior access to important evidence like police reports, but Rodgers did learn before trial that there were no fingerprints, footprints or other physical evidence that tied Fountain to the rape.
During jury selection, the prosecutor asked potential jurors a key question: Could you convict a defendant on the basis of one witness? Those who said they could not were stricken from the jury.
On the stand, McDaniel queried Officer Pettiet about his search for the rapist. Pettiet described driving around the corner to another apartment complex looking for a man wearing a light jogging or warm-up suit and a blue baseball cap over a plastic bag or stocking cap. Within minutes, he'd found Fountain.
Q: Officer Pettiet, what went through your mind when you saw this man standing there on the sidewalk of these apartments on Junction Street?
A: That's got to be the suspect.
One of the other men standing with Fountain on the sidewalk, Ralph Dobbins, told the officer that earlier that morning he'd seen Fountain walking from his mother's house in Pleasant Grove, about five miles away, and had given him a ride. But Pettiet said Fountain seemed nervous and gave the officer a fake name and birth date.
Dobbins allowed Pettiet to search his vehicle, but Pettiet didn't find a knife or anything else that implicated Fountain. On cross-examination Rodgers asked Pettiet if he had looked for anyone else after he saw Fountain.
A: No.
Q: Is it unusual for black males to wear stocking caps or shower caps or whatever it is you're talking about?
A: No, they wear it quite often.
Q: And of course, jogging outfits or sweat suits aren't anything unusual, are they?
A: No.
Pettiet testified that he didn't bother to obtain a search warrant for Fountain's home. He didn't take pictures of the other men. He didn't ascertain whether Fountain had a driver's license or access to a vehicle. (Fountain had neither.)
The afternoon after the attack, a detective came to Felicia's apartment to show her photographs of six men and told her she didn't have to pick anyone, but to let him know if her rapist was among them.
McDaniel: Is there any doubt in your mind that this man over here that you identified in court is the same man who raped you on January 15?
Felicia: No.
But under Rodgers' cross-examination, Felicia testified that she never noticed Fountain had a mustache, even though he supposedly kissed her mouth and nuzzled her breasts. In fact she had told police her assailant had no facial hair.
Rodgers also pointed out that Fountain was the only man in the six-photo lineup dressed in a light jogging suit and cap.
Q: OK. So it wasn't just because of his face that you picked him out, it was because of his clothes too, right?
A: Yes.
The lineup was flawed even under standards used in 1986, tainting Felicia's memory of her attacker.
Rodgers got a detective to testify to all the ways Fountain did not match the description of Felicia. He wasn't wearing jeans under his sweat suit, as she had described. The sweatpants had a black stripe; Felicia had told police the rapist's pants had none. Fountain had no knife; she said he put a knife in his pocket but also described it as a butcher knife. Police didn't test Fountain's pants to see if they had seminal fluid on them.
Though Felicia told police she had talked to a woman immediately after the attack, the detective had made no effort to find the potential witness.
Because Felicia was pregnant, which created a "hostile environment" for sperm, the results of other blood tests that might have linked Fountain to the assault were negated. (DNA testing was not available.)
Fountain testified that at the time of the rape, he was home in bed. His cousin Fredrick Williams had woken him up that morning, and Fountain got out of bed about 7:30 a.m., when the teenager left for school. He left the house about 8:45 a.m. on foot.
As he was walking to the bus stop about a mile from his house, Dobbins offered him a ride. They went to a car wash, a convenience store to buy beer and then the apartments on Junction Street to get another friend.
Fountain said Pettiet arrived and "asked me my name and told me I looked like somebody he had been looking for." He gave the cop a fake name because "I had a fine downtown [for public intoxication] and I didn't have the money at the time to pay it."
Fountain testified that Pettiet never attempted to take a statement from him.
Fountain's mother, Florence Fountain, said her son had been home that evening when she went to bed. His cousin and Dobbins backed up Fountain's alibi, but their credibility was undermined because they both had criminal records.
"Come on, what's the theory here?" Rodgers asked. "Is the theory that Wiley Fountain got up from his house over here and took a taxi? In the middle of the night? Because I don't think the buses run then. How did he get home? Where are the blue jeans? Where's the knife?"
The prosecution didn't have a theory. They had an eyewitness, the victim. Fountain was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison. He served 16 years before a DNA test unlocked the door to his prison cell in 2002.
Prosecutor Lana McDaniel was later elected to a state district court bench; she's now Judge Lana Myers. She remembers how shocked she felt on learning about Fountain's exoneration.
"I really couldn't believe it," Myers says. "I wasn't convinced the DNA test was even correct. The victim was very good and very credible and she had no doubt."
She had no concerns about the police lineup. "I guess at the time it wasn't unusual to me," Myers says, adding that victims often would forget to mention a significant physical feature like facial hair.
Are they forgetting? Is it possible to make a positive identification when such a salient fact is left out?
Myers had never talked to Fountain, but she has apologized to two other men exonerated by DNA. After her election to the bench, Myers presided over hearings on their requests to have DNA tests; against the wishes of the District Attorneys office, Myers ordered the tests. At their exoneration hearings, Myers apologized to them on behalf of the state of Texas.
The conviction of Entre Nax Karage, sent to prison in 1994 and exonerated in 2005 for the murder of his 14-year-old girlfriend, was based on false testimony by police investigators. But in the dozen other exoneree cases, juries put their faith in the victims who identified their attackers.
Though experts have long understood the fallibility of witness identification, the system still operates much as it did decades ago.
"We know that eyewitness identification is unreliable, especially under stress," Lesser says. He calls that the single most common denominator in all wrongful convictions. "We know that techniques that police use for lineups can be suggestive. It's awfully hard for a jury when the witness can say, 'That's the man who raped me. His face is ingrained in my memory.'"
Eyewitness memory is "trace evidence, malleable and contaminatable, like blood on the ground," says Professor Roy Malpass of the University of Texas-El Paso. "Some of the procedures that law enforcement uses actually contaminate the memory."
Each time the victim or witness is shown a suspect's photograph, it destroys the usefulness of any subsequent pictures, Malpass says. Does the victim remember the suspect from memory, from the photo, from the lineup, a pretrial hearing, at trial?
Gary Wells, professor of psychology at Iowa University, has studied eyewitness identification for more than 30 years. "It has two properties," Wells says. "It's readily believed by judges and juries, especially if the witness indicates they are confident or certain of their ID. But it's also highly unreliable. Even without DNA, we could have predicted about three out of every four [false convictions], maybe a bit higher, would be cases with mistaken identification."
Once convicted, except for DNA evidence these men had virtually no hope of being freed.
"I don't see courts doing very much about [witness misidentification]," Wells says. "They are not sure what to do. I think courts could be more critical, more demanding of the standards that this kind of evidence needs to pass before it's admitted at trial. In the long run, the solution is going to be in reforming police practices and how they do these lineups."
Wells has been pressing police departments to use only double-blind lineups, shown to the victim by an officer who doesn't know who is the suspect and who are fillers. That eliminates unconscious cues from investigators.
The filler photos should be chosen by an officer of the same race, since such an officer is likely more sensitive to differences in features, Malpass says, and the strength of the witness' response should be recorded.
Wells says the police should never do a photo lineup until they have developed enough other evidence that indicates they are on the right track. "They should have pretty good evidence before they put an innocent person in jeopardy," Wells says.
Wells has met with the Dallas Police Department and says they are "eager" to set up a double-blind system. "I don't think they want this [false convictions] to repeat itself."
On July 24, 1985, Sharon L., 38, was shaken awake about 6 a.m. by a stranger standing over her, his exposed penis thrust in her face and one of her own steak knives at her throat. He had slipped in through an unlocked sliding door on the balcony of her second-floor apartment in Garland.
The man raped Sharon and shut her in a closet. She waited a few minutes and, hearing nothing, opened the door.
Police arrived by 6:35 a.m. Sharon described the man as white, about 5-foot-8, 140 pounds, athletic, tanned and with very blond hair. He'd been wearing no shirt, just light-colored or white jeans.
While she was talking to the officer, Sharon's phone rang. "Who is there with you?" She recognized the rapist's voice.
That began a bizarre series of phone calls from the rapist, who said he lived in her complex and had been watching her from his apartment. He told Sharon that about 1 a.m., he had climbed a tree to her second-floor balcony and entered the apartment sliding door, which she had left open.
"I am sorry of the way it happened, the way I did it. I love you very much. Will you see me again?" But he also said if she went to police he'd kill her.
Sharon did a composite sketch and, at the encouragement of police, taped his phone calls, which continued for a month.
In late August, a Garland detective showed Sharon six photos. She didn't pick out any of the men. Later that afternoon, Sharon was shown a live lineup with the same six people. This time Sharon picked out 24-year-old David Shawn Pope.
Pope, who had no criminal background, went to trial on February 4, 1986. Officer William David Thurman testified that he had been on patrol at 6:30 a.m. on August 28 when he saw Pope on foot in the Eastgate Apartments.
A house painter, Pope had been evicted from the apartment complex for not paying rent. On August 28, Pope told Thurman he was living off and on with a friend and out of his car and had taken a shower at the complex gym that morning.
Thurman called another officer, who thought Pope resembled the description of the rape suspect. When Pope consented to a search of his vehicle, police found a pair of white pants, a knife and other things in the trunk.
At first, Sharon didn't pick Pope out of the photo array, which all but screamed he was the suspect: Five men were photographed in front of blue backdrop wearing white overalls. Pope was photographed in a T-shirt, standing in front of a tile wall at the jail. But Sharon said she wasn't sure.
When she viewed the live lineup a few hours later, Sharon realized it was the same six people. She asked if she could hear them speak. She picked out Pope, the only one with a tan and blond hair.
Sharon testified that she was "shaking because, you know, I recognized him and I felt all the fear and the death as when I was standing right next to him."
But as defense attorney Curtis Glover would point out, the detectives, feeling her identification was tentative, put Sharon in a room and told her she needed to make a "definitive statement."
After being alone for a half-hour, Sharon emerged to say she was "positive" he was the rapist.
At trial, Larry Howe Williams, an officer with the Houston Police Department, presented "spectrographic" comparisons of the defendant's voice reading into a tape recorder and the tapes made of the rapist's repeated calls.
Williams had no college degree but had taken a two-week training course. He showed how the recordings made similar zigzags on a paper drum and testified that the tapes of the "unknown" matched David Pope. There was no possibility of inaccuracy.
The prosecution also offered a pioneer in voice identification, who likened voiceprints to fingerprints.
The defense called an expert on voice analysis who testified that voice spectrographic analysis was "useless" because it had never been scientifically proven. But the jury was left with the impression that the match was "scientific."
After he was evicted, Pope lived with Craig Furche and his parents in Garland. Both father and son Furche were painting contractors. Pope worked for the son.
The night before the rape, Furche and Pope had gone to see the newly released movie Back to the Future. Furche remembered it because Pope had already seen the movie and liked it so much he wanted to see it again; he had to borrow money from his boss until payday. Then the two went home, went to bed and got up the next day to work. Pope couldn't have been in Sharon's apartment.
Pope testified in his own defense, saying that he'd bought the white pants found in the truck at a garage sale without trying them on, thinking they'd be good painter's pants. They turned out to be much too small for him, as he demonstrated to the jury. The steak knife in the trunk was with a bunch of other utensils and household goods from his move.
Prosecutor Kimberley Gilles connected the personal data the rapist had given Sharon on the tape recordings: that he was 24 and went to Eastfield Community College, just like Pope. But the rapist had also said he was 20 and several other ages. And Pope went to Richland Community College, not Eastfield. Gilles waved away that discrepancy by saying the two schools were in the same community college system.
The jury took little time to convict. Sentenced to 45 years in prison, Pope was pardoned in 2001.
Spectrographic analysis still is not considered reliable enough for court. Instead of comparing the defendant's voice to the tape, Wells says, police should have provided the expert with recordings of five other male voices and asked which voice matched the perpetrator's phone calls.
"Police say, 'We know this guy did it,'" Wells says. "'What we need is for somebody to throw some electronic measurements on this so you can come into court and say it's the same guy.'"
Wells calls this the "CSI effect," in which juries regard forensic evidence such as bite marks, hair and fiber samples, and other techniques as more scientific than they really are.
DNA is the only forensic tool that came from scientists, Wells points out. "It's not scientists actually doing the work," he says. "It may be a cop with a biology degree, but it's a cop. The co-opting of forensic science has played well in the courtroom."
The TV show CSI has had one positive impact, says Judge Myers, by raising jurors' expectations about the thoroughness of police investigations. In the 13 Dallas DNA exonerations, once the victims identified suspects, little effort was expended to gather more physical evidence.
"As a judge, I've seen in the last five years that police are doing a lot more than what they had done in the past as to collection of physical evidence," Myers says. "Jurors expect it in light of CSI. They are more skeptical."
Prosecutors still query potential jurors: If it comes down to the testimony of one witness, could you convict? Myers says more jurors are saying no.
On the morning of Saturday, April 26, 1981, Carol C. woke to being rolled over and straddled by a man with a knife. She struggled for the knife but after her attacker cut her several times, Carol stopped. He raped her and within five minutes disappeared.
The police arrived at her Oak Lawn apartment within 10 minutes to find Carol covered with blood.
At Parkland hospital, a doctor stitched up Carol's hand and gave her a rape exam. Carol, who was white, described the man to police as black, average build, in his 20s, with a short Afro and regular features. Though the room was dark, she'd seen him with the light from a clock radio.
Her attacker had removed a screen, broken a pane and unlocked a window. He left muddy footprints on the carpet near the window but no fingerprints.
Two days later, an officer came to her apartment with a photo array of six black males. She studied the photographs and after about 10 minutes picked one: Larry Charles Fuller, who lived about a mile from Carol's apartment and had a criminal record for an armed robbery. He'd done his time and had been released in 1978.
Carol then asked if she could see a more recent picture.
A week later, a detective went to the home of Fuller and his girlfriend. He asked Fuller if he could take his picture. The detective didn't explain what the charges were; he simply said the picture could exclude Fuller. Fuller agreed.
The detective showed Carol another photo array. Both arrays included Fuller. She again picked Fuller.
"I was very slow in identifying him," Carol said at an examining trial, "because I didn't want to identify an innocent man."
Carol had told police she didn't remember her rapist having facial hair; Fuller had a beard.
An artist, Fuller, 32, went to trial on August 24, 1981, before Judge Marvin Blackburn.
Fuller's girlfriend, a bank teller, testified they'd gone to bed about 1:30 a.m., then woke and had sex early in the morning. There was no physical evidence against him. Tests of the rapist's semen showed that the rapist could have been Fuller and 20 percent of the black male population.
Fuller took the stand in his own defense and insisted he wasn't guilty. None of that overcame Carol's identification. Fuller was convicted. Prosecutor Jim Jacks asked for a maximum sentence.
"He cannot be rehabilitated, because the first step to being rehabilitated is to admit that you have made a mistake and that you need help," Jacks said. "He has not done that. He will not do that, apparently." Sentence: 50 years.
Fuller maintained his innocence. After years of appeals, his request for a post-conviction DNA test was granted by Judge Lana Myers. Announcing the dismissal of the case against him in 2006, Myers apologized on behalf of the state of Texas to Fuller from the bench.
"I expected bitterness from him," Myers says. "And he didn't have that. He came back with forgiveness. He said God had a plan, and he never lost his faith. It had made him strong, and he held no grudges. I was really having a hard time trying to conduct the hearing."
Crying, Myers got down from the bench and hugged him.
The knock woke 35-year-old Billy Smith from sleep on the couch in his sister's apartment in 1986. At the door, the apartment manager asked to talk to Smith, so he stepped out on the second-floor walkway. The manager asked Smith if he'd heard anything unusual that night. Smith said no and went back to bed, only to be awakened by police pounding on the door and shouting, "Open up!"
They arrested Smith for aggravated sexual assault, taking with them some of Smith's clothes and a kitchen knife.
The manager's common-law wife had been standing below to identify Smith, who had just moved in. She would testify that Smith confronted her in the complex's laundry room, dragged her to a vacant field and raped her.
As a young man, Smith had used drugs, stolen a car and served time for robbery. But he'd started going to Alcoholics Anonymous and church and was getting a job the next day.
Even Smith's parole officer testified on his behalf, saying he didn't find the accuser credible and that the manager's statements didn't match the accuser's. Only the victim's identification linked him to the crime.
Smith says his court-appointed attorney did little for him.
"He never once went to the scene of the crime to get any information," Smith says. "My attorney never talked to my sister or alibi witnesses.
"The day I got my verdict he had some kind of doctor's appointment," Smith says. Nor did the attorney attend court when Smith was sentenced to life in prison.
Smith served "19 years, 11 months and 7 days" in prison. His mother and six other close family members died while he sat in a cell. Even after a DNA test proved Smith had not deposited the semen in the victim, Dallas prosecutors fought his release, saying they needed another sample from the victim to be sure.
Smith now is 55, a muscular man with a close-cropped head and beard showing flecks of gray. A leather eyeglass case in the pocket of his blue shirt is tooled with the name Al-Amin, the name Smith took after converting to Islam in prison in order to survive the anger, the gangs and his own bitterness.
"After the first two years, I contemplated suicide at least once a year," Smith says.
When he was released in July 2006, Smith didn't have bus fare. No one would give him a job; he still has received no monetary compensation. Smith isn't bitter at the loss of 20 years of his life, but he can't get excited about being out of prison.
"Something has been taken from you," Smith says. "I know now how easy it is to be accused of something."
Poor legal representation is a major reason the innocent get convicted, says Blackburn of the Innocence Project of Texas. In many cases the defendants are indigent and can't afford experienced lawyers.
"Every lawyer who practices at the courthouse knows this dirty little secret," Blackburn says. "You don't get appointed [to represent indigent clients] if you aggressively defend clients. You won't be paid enough to fight aggressively. Judges are typically byproducts of the prosecutor's office, and no judge ever got re-elected acquitting people."
Blackburn is on a crusade for Texas to build up a strong public defender system. "These are horrible human stories we are talking about. Being in prison for something you didn't do is hell on earth. All these DNA cases do is show us how wrong the whole system is."
Moments after Sharon G. stopped her minivan at a Garland stoplight on February 23, 1999, a strange man opened the door, pointed a gun and told her to drive. It was about 9:30 p.m., and Sharon G. was on her way to visit a friend.
The man directed her to a vacant lot. He forced her to give him oral sex, then pushed Sharon G. to the ground and raped her.
The stranger then told her to drive back to the area where he'd gotten into the car, climbed out and disappeared on foot.
Sharon G. described her attacker as white, about 6-foot-3 and on the heavy side, 200 pounds at least. He had been wearing a dark T-shirt under a brown tweed-type sport coat, dark baggy jeans and black tennis shoes. He had not been wearing glasses, had a large scar on the right side of his face and smelled bad. He had rough hands and had been wearing a distinctive ring in the shape of Texas.
A Garland police officer heard about the assault as he started his shift that night. He drove around the area and about 2 a.m. slowed down when he saw a man rummaging in a vehicle at an apartment complex. The man looked up "like a deer in the headlights," the officer said, then shut the door and entered one of the apartments.
The next morning, Garland police talked to the man, Andrew Gossett, 39. The apartment belonged to his girlfriend's daughter. Gossett lived with his parents.
After Gossett's parents gave police permission to search their home, they confiscated a dark T-shirt, baggy camouflage pants, a blue plaid flannel shirt, black tennis shoes and a brown winter coat.
A Wal-Mart stocker who had just gotten into the company's management training program, Gossett gave a voluntary statement, saying he'd spent the night with his girlfriend.
No physical evidence linked Gossett to the crime: no fingerprints on the car, no seminal fluid. Police found no tweed coat, Texas-shaped ring or gun. But a detective handling his first sexual assault put together a photo array. Sharon G. picked out Gossett, who had five DWIs and a conviction for methamphetamine distribution.
His defense attorney located a surveillance tape from a nearby convenience store that showed Gossett entering about 10:15 p.m. wearing a white T-shirt, glasses and camouflage pants, not jeans. He stood all of 5-foot-8 and weighed 140 pounds. He was wearing glasses; Sharon G. said her attacker didn't have on spectacles.
But Sharon G. insisted Gossett was her rapist.
On February 10, 2000, Gossett was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Over breakfast at a Garland diner, Gossett looks small and pensive.
He says talking to police led to his own destruction. "It hurt me more than it helped me," Gossett says. "They put words in my mouth. I didn't ask for an attorney."
Gossett passed a polygraph and voluntarily gave police a DNA sample, but the test was "inconclusive."
In 2001, Gossett wrote to the Innocence Project in New York. One of their attorneys told Gossett a more sophisticated test was available.
On an icy day in January, Gossett went to the Dallas County courthouse and learned that the test cleared him. New District Attorney Craig Watkins was there to shake his hand and apologize.
Watkins has since apologized to more exonerees. He lobbied the Dallas County Commissioners Court to get funds to hire veteran defense attorney Michael Ware to focus on the 400 people who have petitioned his office for post-conviction DNA tests. Ware is teaming with 30 students from Texas Wesleyan School of Law, under the aegis of the Innocence Project of Texas, to examine each case to see if testing could confirm or deny their guilt.
Gossett has still received no compensation or a pardon.
Though Gossett has reunited with his girlfriend, they have no money and no place to live. He can't get hired because his pardon hasn't come through. Blackburn sent him $1,000, but a doctor's bill took $500.
"Seems like I'm still paying for it," Gossett says.
Greg Wallis spent 18 years in prison as a result of his wrongful conviction for the rape of Marilyn M.. "I missed my boy growing up," he says. "I lost my wife, my first love." They managed to reconcile and are now back together, but like all the exonerees, Wallis carries with him the memory of harrowing experiences in prison.
So does Keith Edward Turner, who went to prison in 1983 at age 22 for rape after the victim swore she would never forget his face.
Ten years after he was paroled, in 1999, Turner was told he'd have to wear a monitor, register as a sex offender and put a sign in his yard.
A sign, a label of "monster," even though he was innocent.
After seeing a story on post-conviction DNA exonerations on Court TV, Turner began writing letters. The Innocence Project said his case was too old. Finally, in 2005, Turner marched into the courtroom of the judge who had sentenced him.
"I told him that they were listing me as a sex offender and a rapist and I wasn't guilty," Turner says. "The judge told me I needed to get an attorney."
Turner said he had four kids and no money to hire a lawyer, so the judge appointed an attorney and an investigator.
After Turner passed a polygraph, which cost him $250, prosecutors agreed to the DNA test. Then the amazing news: "They had kept the evidence in the same spot for 21 years," Turner says. "That was just the Lord. When he got ready to do it, he preserved it for everything to be possible."
The Lord or Henry Wade.
Turner got the news of his exoneration on December 23, 2005. Turner's mother had died six months after he went to the penitentiary. After he got the report that the DNA didn't match, he took it to her grave. "I told her she didn't need to worry about me," Turner says.
Judge Manny Alvarez tried to right the wrongful conviction of a woman for child abuse in a trial that happened in his own court. It cost him his job.
In March 2006, Alvarez had gone to the courthouse and talked to Greg Wallis—the exoneree he had prosecuted—and apologized. Wallis told him he had no hard feelings, he understood Alvarez had a job to do.
Now a defense attorney, Alvarez says lawyers today have more tools to ensure the right suspect is charged, but not every case can be solved with DNA.
When he presided over the 2005 child abuse trial of Maria Hurtado, 26, in a "shaken baby" case, Alvarez says, he kept expecting her attorney John Read to present a defense, to answer obvious questions, to rebut the prosecution's evidence.
"He did no cross-examination," Alvarez says. "There were no witnesses called. There were CPS records that favored her. Read is a good lawyer, but in this trial he wasn't worth a damn."
At the end of the two-day trial, Alvarez had serious doubts about Hurtado's guilt. But the jury convicted her and sentenced her to eight years in prison. So Alvarez began looking into the case himself.
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"The evidence showed the baby had acute over-hemorrhaging," Alvarez says, "meaning there was new blood over old blood," indicating long-term problems. The baby had had seizures and convulsions in her first two months. "What was so convincing to me, if she had been shaken, there would have been bruising or broken ribs. There was nothing along those lines."
Alvarez was accused of overstepping his bounds as a judge for investigating and releasing Hurtado on her own recognizance. He lost his race for re-election. But Hurtado got a new trial. "They worked the case and presented it as it should have been, and she was acquitted," Alvarez says. "Do I say something and take the heat? There was no better feeling than when that jury came back with a 'not guilty' verdict."
Maybe more prosecutors should be willing to fade the heat, he says. When the fake drugs were resulting in convictions, someone should have screamed, Wait a minute!
"I was part of the system. Every time I go to a conference, that's the first thing out of their mouths," Alvarez says. "When all this stuff was happening, nobody said, 'Hey, this is bullshit.' As a prosecutor, your job is to seek justice, not convict people. It starts from the top and works its way down."
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There is a bill in Congress to prohibit the use of the word "French" by U.S. citizens - French fries would have to become freedom fries; French toast, freedom toast; French Canadians, Freedom Canadians. This at least is the claim of a satirical Web site linked to by Patriots On Parade, one of several Web sites put together by New York City high school students as part of the sixth annual Digital Day Camp, the brainchild of a non-profit organization that focuses on new media education, Eyebeam.
Each year, Digital Day Camp picks a theme; this year, it was civil disobedience. In particular, the program focused on alternative methods of disagreement and protest among many communities. This year's projects included a spoof on homeland security, Homelandschmecurity, which features a satirical cast of fictional super heroes like "Duct Tape Man," "Gas Mask Man," "Detention Center Man" and " Shoe Inspection Man"; Classism Stinks, which includes man-in-the-street interviews about sanitation issues, and photographs of garbage, with the goal of highlighting the difference in garbage problems between rich and poor neighborhoods; and Sweatcampwhich uses a comic approach to probe child labor and sweatshops.
At a time when the music industry is filing lawsuits against 12-year-olds for downloading songs from the Internet, it is refreshing to learn of an organization that channels teen online savvy into activism and political engagement.
Another form of engagement by a New York non-profit is the mighty MOUSE, which teaches technology skills to public school kids. Since 1997, MOUSE -- "Making Opportunities for Upgrading Schools and Education" - has created "MOUSE Squads," as they are known, in some three dozen New York City public high schools and middles schools, recruiting and training students to set up and run a technology "help desk" in their schools. The help desks provide tech support for about 22 hours a week.
Almost a third of Squad members are girls and almost three quarters of MOUSE Squad students are Latino, Asian and African American. MOUSE is particularly interested in promoting young women's interest in technology. In addition to the MOUSE Squads, there are 1,500 volunteer tech professionals who have worked a collective 40,000 hours to put 50,000 teachers and students online in the past year.
Some of MOUSE's recent projects include building a community technology center in Washington Heights and installing computers and a technical training program in 14 schools in Central Harlem. The organization also ran a city-wide online newspaper contest for teams of high school students, in partnership with Bell Atlantic, The NY Times, iXL and Small World Entertainment.
MOUSE has also helped the city save over $400,000 for 36. "In these difficult economic times," said Councilmember Gale Brewer, a champion of the program, " MOUSE Squads not only save the city money that it would otherwise have to spend on outside technical support, but the program also teaches critical jobs skills that are absolutely essential in this new economy."
There are many other worthy tech programs for youth:
Computers for Youth is an organization that aims to improve the educational, social and economic prospects for low-income students and their families by providing them with home computers and the skills to use them.
Change for Kids is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving children's education in New York City's most under-funded public schools.
Voluntech aims to promote the equitable distribution of technology by bringing together volunteer technology experts with non-profit organizations, schools, and community groups.
City Kids aims to engage and develop diverse young people to effect positive change in their lives, their communities, and the world. Their programs include CyberLinks which exposes youth to emerging computer technology.
Persholas provides career skills and rigorous on-site training for future computer technicians.
Laura Forlano is a doctoral student studying communication technology policy at Columbia University.


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Paris, 7 June 2010
Imagine working 40 years beside a colleague and contributing the same amount to the same defined contribution (DC) plan every month, but he receives 100% of his final salary in retirement while you receive less than 40%. The difference: you retired three years later.
Welcome to the future of defined contribution payouts as depicted in a newly-released Working Paper, "Assessing Default Investment Strategies in Defined Contribution Pension Plans". The report is produced by the OECD and sponsored by Allianz Global Investors, a leading global investment management firm. According to the report, future retirees can expect dramatic fluctuations in fortunes between members of a cohort unless they adopt investment strategies that reduce the impact of market shocks. Similar strategies should also become the default for individuals who make no active investment choice.
Allianz Global Investors supported the OECD with underlying research and expertise to produce the report, including a background paper conducted by risklab, an analytical-focused subsidiary of Allianz Global Investors.
"As defined contribution plans become the primary retirement savings vehicle for individuals, there is increasing demand for research focused on creating sustainable retirement income from these plans", said Brigitte Miksa, Head of Allianz Global Investors' International Pensions Group. "This report provides critical insight for policymakers and the financial industry as they look to ensure the financial security of all individuals throughout their retirement."
There is a strong push to make participation in DC plans mandatory or, as in the United States, to enroll workers automatically. However, with many plan participants lacking the knowledge or ability to choose from the variety of investment strategies available to them, the default investment or preset option is an important consideration for policymakers. The better the design, the greater the possibility that individuals will enjoy financial security in retirement without being reduced to old-age poverty or requiring future support from governments due to market downturns.
"As a result of the financial crisis, the OECD last year called for carefully designed regulations to limit investment risks in default options and help avoid situations where older workers and retirees are exposed to major losses of retirement income," says Juan Yermo, Head of the OECD Private Pensions Unit, and co-author of the OECD report.
The current report also reveals that the success of an investment strategy in ensuring a secure retirement can depend on the type of the benefit payout. "We found that life-cycle strategies do best when benefits are paid as life annuities and are less valuable when benefits are paid according to a predefined logic that might use up a part of the capital," says Pablo Antolin, a lead author of the OECD report. "On the other hand, dynamic strategies work better with predefined withdrawals, though a mixture of life-cycle and dynamic strategies may be required when benefits are to be paid through a combination of predefined withdrawals and deferred life annuities bought at the time of retirement."
The Working Paper conveys the following:
The OECD concludes that regulators may find life-cycle strategies easier to explain to the public and therefore more suitable as default investment strategies. However, it acknowledges that sophisticated investors may prefer dynamic investment strategies, especially, as argued in the Allianz Global Investor study, since they can protect the retiree even better in case of equity shocks short before retirement. "What emerges from our results is that it's better to give up on some of the upside potential to limit extreme losses on the downside," says Pablo Antolin. "Policymakers should provide guidance on the specific glide-path of default investment strategies, taking into account the design of the payout phase and the role of the DC plan in the overall pension system."
Download the full text of the Working Paper (PDF)
Download the background paper by risklab Assessing Investment Strategies for Defined Contribution Pension Plans under various Payout Options
For further information, journalists are invited to contact Pablo Antolin (Tel. + 33 1 45 24 90 86 or ) or Juan Yermo (Tel. + 33 1 45 24 96 62 or +33 646 22 50 12), OECD Financial Affairs Division.
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Nationally acclaimed and Grammy Award-winning Latin funk orchestra Grupo Fantasma will perform at the LBJ Student Center Ballroom at Texas State University at 7:30 p.m. March 31 as part of the university's Encore Performing Arts Series.
Tickets for the event are $5 for students, $15 general admission and $40 VIP Lounge access. The VIP ticket price is for ages 21 and up only and includes two drinks, full private bar with service, appetizers, exclusive lounge area admittance with easy access to the dance floor and a special meet-and-greet with the band.
Austin-based Grupo Fantasma formed in 2000 and has been praised as one of the most important independent acts in the Latin genre since. It has continually created one of the most unique musical voices to come out of the United States in the last decade. In 2011, the group won its first Grammy Award for "El Existential," the band's latest album.
"Considering the homegrown effort we've built over the last decade, including the immense undertaking and process of producing this album all by ourselves, it feels unbelievable to finally go home as winners," said band guitarist Adrian Quesada.
The group, which includes several Texas State alumni, draws inspiration from a number of different musical influences such as cumbia, salsa, old-school funk, reggae and more.
The Encore Performing Arts Series is coordinated through the College of Fine Arts and Communication and offers an annual selection of guest artists that compliment the outstanding array of college-wide art, music, theatre, and dance student and faculty offerings at Texas State with performances by nationally and internationally renowned artists.
For more information on the event or to purchase tickets, please visit www.encoreseries.txstate.edu/. To learn more about Grupo Fantasma, visit the band's website at www.grupofantasma.com.
— FROM TEXAS STATE NEWS SERVICE/KRISTINA KENNEYEmail | Print


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Making Tübingen/Stuttgart your home and not just your work place as quickly as possible is the aim of the Welcome Service. The Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems wants to welcome you by assisting you in settling in. You are becoming not just part of an institute but of a community.
Here we try to answer general question on all topics that concern everyone who comes to Tübingen/Stuttgart: directions, bus lines, dealing with authorities (visa, residence permit, etc.), house hunting, and becoming a PhD student:
NEVER transfer any money or send any personal data or documents to anyone who has advertised an apartment before seeing the place! This is a popular scam! Please be very alert if an ad sounds too good to be true! It is common to pay a deposit AFTER you have seen the place/signed the contract, never before.


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Pulled Pork Recipe
Due to some complications at my previous residence—including a nosy neighbor who was convinced I was burning down the hood every time I fired up the smoker—it's been over two years since I've made pulled pork, a shame that's hard to live down. With my new digs has come confidence, and this past weekend I smoked up two beautiful pork butts.
Brined in a molasses-and-salt mixture then rubbed down, the pork butts started smoking over a combination of oak and applewood at 10 p.m. on Saturday night and emerged from the smoker 16 hours later. So tender, they began falling apart as I lifted them out. After an hour's rest, they were easily pulled, piled high on a bun, and topped with North Carolina-style vinegar sauce (adapted based on your comments). Pulled pork is one of the few foods I openly brag about making incredibly well—this experience solidified that claim even further. Smoky, spicy, and juicy, the meat was everything pulled pork should be.
Brine recipe adapted from Alton Brown.
- Rated:
- For the brine:
- 3/4 cup molasses
- 1/2 cup kosher salt
- 2 quarts cold water
- About 1 cup of your favorite dry rub
- 1 pork butt
- Hickory and apple wood chunks, or other smoking woods of your choice
Trim the fat cap to 1/4 inch thick and cut off any hard pieces of fat from the pork butt.
In a saucepan, add the molasses, salt, and 1/2 quart of water. Stir over medium meat just until all the salt is dissolved. Pour mixture into your brining vessel, add the rest of the water, and stir to combine. Completely submerge the pork butt in the brine and then place in the refrigerator and allow to brine for 12 hours.
Remove the pork butt from the brine and pat dry with paper towels. Rub entire pork butt liberally with the dry rub. Wrap the rubbed pork butt in aluminum foil and place back in the refrigerator for another 12 hours.
Remove the pork from the fridge while you start the smoker. Fire up your smoker to 225°F. When at temperature, add wood chunks and the pork butt. Smoke until an instant read thermometer reads 190°F when inserted into the pork, about 14 to 16 hours.
Remove the pork and allow it to rest for at least an hour to cool down. Pull the pork using your hands or two forks and serve.
This Recipe Appears InSerious Entertaining: A Real Deal Barbecue Feast
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Christmas is a big production, but they don't roll credits at the end of it. Still, with the home a wasteland of gift wrap and packaging, and the light slowly receding outside, it's a good moment to reflect on 2009.
This past week Kotaku recapped the year that was in video games, on subjects both naughty and nice. And before we know it, seven days will have passed, and we'll all begin working on another 365-chapter story of video games, how they're made, and who plays them.
For now, we invite you to revisit these retrospectives. And we thank you for choosing to spend a part of this holiday with Kotaku. From all of us, happy holidays, and a very merry Christmas to you.
2009 in Review
The Controversies
The Shows That Were
The Sports Video Game Report
The Disappointments
The Year, NSFW
The Trailers
Featured Stories
One Man's Year Making Assassin's Creed II
The Man Who Never Wanted To Make 'The Citizen Kane of Games'
The Batman-Maker Who Didn't Know The Meaning Of GOTY
Motion-Control Gaming Grabs The Spotlight


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LITTLE ROCK — The membership of the next state House of Representatives on Thursday elected Republican Davy Carter of Cabot as its next House speaker.
Carter defeated fellow GOP Rep. Terry Rice of Waldron by a vote of 52-45. Carter will be Arkansas' first Republican House speaker since Reconstruction.
The vote came after the membership rejected Democratic Rep. Darrin Williams as its leader. A bid to confirm a vote from March that put the Little Rock Democrat in line to become the state's first black House speaker next year failed in the wake of the Nov. 6 general election that gave Republicans a majority in the Legislature for the first time since the end of the Civil War.
The election gave 51 of the House's 100 seats to Republicans, 48 to Democrats and one to a Green party member. A recount in a northeastern Arkansas House district was concluded Thursday with the results confirming the election of the Republican candidate, John K. Hutchison of Harrisburg.
A secret-ballot vote Thursday by incoming House members on whether to affirm the vote by which Williams was elected speaker-designate resulted in Williams losing the title. Forty-eight members voted to affirm the vote and 49 voted not to affirm it.
Rice was the only Republican candidate for speaker when the House voted in March, but Carter presented himself Thursday as new contender. In an emotional speech asking his colleagues for their vote, Carter promised to work hard and be inclusive.
"I promise you I will work with each and every one of you. I promise I will listen to you and really listen to you, your concerns, and everybody's going to be involved," he said. "It takes every single one of us to make this work."
Carter, the chairman of the powerful House Revenue and Taxation Committee under outgoing House Speaker Robert S. Moore Jr., a Democrat, had let it be known around the Capitol he was open to considering Democrats for House leadership positions — a notion that Rice addressed in his speech.
"If I am elected speaker, I want you to understand this: I will consistently select House leadership on the basis of individual abilities and leadership qualities and, please hear me, not on party affiliation," Rice said.
After the vote, Carter told reporters he had been asked to run for speaker. He did not specify who made the request, but said he believed people wanted him to run because he is a good fit to lead a House that is almost evenly divided between parties, requiring an ability to bring people together.
"I'm committed to working with a diverse membership body for the best for the collective citizens of the state of Arkansas," he said. "I think it was that trust, that respect, with the returning membership that drove this."
Carter said a looming Medicaid shortfall and tax reform will be the top two issues of the session that begins in January.
"Those are going to, at some point, collide, and that will likely be the heart of the session," he said.
Williams told reporters he would support Carter. Asked if he regretted losing the chance to be the state's first black speaker, he said, "This was never about me."
Rep.-elect Fred Smith of Crawfordsville, the House's lone Green Party member, said he voted for Williams, then voted for Carter over Rice.
"It was just the best political fit," Smith said, adding he thought Carter would be better able to work with Democrats and Republicans during the next session.
"I thought he was very humble today and hope he will work with both parties," he said.
Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Hot Springs, who will be the House majority leader in the next session, declined to say how he voted. He said he did not believe the contest over the speaker's race signaled a rift in the party.
"I think Republicans can come together and work together. We have vigorous debates and we vote and we move on from there," he said. "I don't think the speaker's vote changes anything on our agenda or the policies we will be pushing."
Rep. Mark Biviano, R-Searcy, said he expected Republicans to unite behind Carter, whom he described as "confident and well respected."
"I think we'll all come together at the end of the day to work real hard and do what's right, and I don't think that will be an issue," he said.
Reporter Rob Moritz contributed to this report.


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Nissan tops 2013 green brand list
Dubai, June 17, 2013
Leading Japanese car maker Nissan has been named one of the world's greenest brands for 2013 in Interbrand's third annual Best Global Green Brands report.
Noted for its leadership in zero emissions mobility with the Nissan LEAF 100 per cent electric vehicle, Nissan was ranked fifth place overall out of 50 brands that were selected, said a statement from the auto major.
Nissan moved up 16 positions from its 2012 showing and was named the "top riser" in this year's report, which was released today by the leading brand consultant.
The Interbrand green brand report ranks brands based on a company's environmental practices and customers' perceptions.
Automotive brands took four of the top five positions. Reaching the top ten in only its second year of being chosen for the Interbrand top green brands roster, Nissan rapidly improved on last year's 21st place result, said the Interbrand report.
Cited in this year's report was the Nissan LEAF 100 per cent electric vehicle's positive effect on perceptions of the brand, and an array of eco-friendly actions such as plans to cut vehicle weight by 15 per cent starting in 2017, and Nissan's collaboration with Daimler and Ford for the development of fuel-cell cars to be launched by 2017.
Nissan said it aims to contribute proactively to the sustainable development of mobility and society while seeking profitable growth.
Accordingly, one of the key pillars of Nissan's corporate and environmental strategies is to maintain its leadership in electric vehicles, the auto giant said in its statement.
To that end, with over 65,000 Nissan LEAFs sold as of May 2013, it is the best-selling EV in history.
"This recognition as a top global green brand is another step forward in Nissan's commitment to reduce its environmental impact and communicate proactively about its corporate activities and innovative products to consumers," it added.
Meanwhile, Kia Motors said it has been named 37th in Interbrand's list, a debut for the Korean car manufacturer in the annual ranking of sustainability and environmental performance of the world's 100 most valuable brands.
This latest recognition by Interbrand follows hot on the heels of Kia's recent introduction to the 100 Best Global Brands 2012 rankings, in which Kia placed 87th.
According to the 50 Best Global Green Brands 2013 study, Kia has placed eco-management at the forefront of its brand management strategy alongside its emphasis on quality and design management since 2006.
Under this initiative, Kia has made huge strides in improving the performance of its vehicles, with a strong focus on enhancing fuel efficiency and a long-term aim for zero-emission vehicles. As a result of its efforts, Kia continues to be perceived as a leader in the environmental sustainability sector.
"In our view, the best green brands are those that are not only vital, relevant, powerful and pioneering, but also profitable, ethical and ecologically responsible. We applaud Kia Motors' efforts aimed at sustainability in all facets of its global operations that have enabled the company to be named as one of our Best Global Green Brands 2013," said Jez Frampton, Global CEO of Interbrand.-TradeArabia News Service


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I try to teach the boys to eat slow. Enjoy their food. Chew thoroughly. And try not to scarf and inhale their food down like daddy. I didn't exactly mean for Elliott to eat his ramen one noodle at a time since it takes about an hour to eat it that way. But I realized that one hour of time with my boys watching them eat is one hour well spent in a life of love. And one hour I will never, ever regret in the end...
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Posted by Ka`iana at 9:28 PM
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Middlebury man faces sentencing in Chris Donovan campaign finance scandal
NEW HAVEN >> A Middlebury man who owned two roll-your-own tobacco shops in Waterbury is facing sentencing for his role in a campaign financing plot surrounding former state House Speaker Chris Donovan's failed congressional campaign.
Paul Rogers is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in federal court in New Haven. He pleaded guilty in January to devising a scheme to bribe a public official, conspiring to make false statements to the Federal Election Commission and impeding the agency's enforcement of federal campaign finance laws.
Prosecutors say Rogers and others schemed to hide the source of $27,500 in contributions to Donovan's congressional campaign last year, in hopes of trying to block state legislation that would harm the roll-your-own tobacco industry. Rogers is among eight defendants convicted in the case.
Donovan wasn't charged and denied wrongdoing.


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Golden Signatures (Mar, 1952)
Golden Signatures
By E. R. Kurnik
Whenever great men take pen in hand, they create valuable historical documents, avidly sought after by America's autograph collectors.
AT the National Antique Show held in . New York City recently, a New Jersey housewife presented a bundle of letters for evaluation. She had found them in her attic. Sigmund Rothschild, well-known appraiser, looked them over carefully.
"Madam," he said excitedly, "these letters are a very important historical find."
Six of them proved to have been written by Abraham Lincoln's wife Mary to Abram Wakeman. Rothschild valued them at more than $100,000.
Naturally, finds of such magnitude are quite rare. But smaller autograph discoveries are constantly being made. For America's thousands of autograph collectors make it their business to find out all they can about autographs and thus spot valuable signatures, documents and letters. And even if they don't come up with a $100,000 find, this rapidly growing hobby brings them vast enjoyment and mental stimulation.
Autograph prices range from 40 cents for a Betty Grable signature to $260,000 for a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps you never thought of that document as an autograph but among real collectors an autograph may refer to a handwritten letter, a signed manuscript or document, a signed photograph or just a signature.
Let's start with low-priced autographs. Among signatures and signed photographs the following values are listed by a leading autograph dealer: General Douglas Mac-Arthur, $3.50; Ingrid Bergman, $1.50; Fred M. Vinson, $3.00; Enrico Caruso, $.50; Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, $1.50.
The above prices are partially determined by the nature of the autograph— whether it's a plain signature, a greeting or a signed photograph. Other factors that determine the value are the popularity of the person who wrote it, the contents, the rarity, condition, time and circumstance of the writing.
What are the big-money autographs? Back in 1927 a Mamaroneck, N. Y., family cleaning out the barn, came across a letter signed by Button Gwinnett and two other signers of the Declaration of Independence. The lucky family received $51,000 for that piece of paper.
Why? Because Button Gwinnett's signature is the second rarest among the signers of the Declaration. The rarest of all is Thomas Lynch, Jr.'s. Current prices for Lynch, Jr. or Gwinnett range from $2,000 to $10,000. If you have a complete set of signatures of the signers of the Declaration, count yourself fortunate. There are only 36 complete sets, valued at up to $200,000. So, count yourself wealthy, too.
Uncover any of the following autographs and you'll be able to take it easy for a while: a letter written by William Henry Harrison during the 30 days that he was President of the United States; any writing of Captain John Smith; original manuscripts of Herman Melville or Edgar Allan Poe.
Skipping across to Europe, if you can dig up autographs of Moliere, Michelangelo, Luther or Beethoven you're a lucky collector. Currently the National Arts Foundation of New York City is searching for Mozart manuscripts that were stolen during World War II from caskets stored near Salzburg, Austria. The Foundation is offering a reward for any information leading to their recovery and stands ready to purchase any of the missing material and to return the manuscripts to the Mozarteum, a museum. The chances of your discovering an original letter written by Shakespeare are slim, but if you do, you'll be able to name your price and retire. So far his signature has been found only on legal documents.
If you come across something that looks as if it might really be valuable, what should you do? Well, contact any autograph dealer who specializes in the field. When there is big money at stake, consult with one of these experts rather than a dealer who handles other items such as antiques, as well. You can check the reliability of an autograph firm by consulting a university librarian or the head of your nearest historical society. If they cannot advise you, write to the Librarian of Congress in Washington. Then, when you have chosen your dealer, send your find to him by registered mail. Usually it isn't too helpful to describe the autograph in a letter since a dealer can't judge accurately without examining the original.
The National Society of Autograph Collectors at 285 Madison Ave., New York 17, N. Y., can also help you with your autographs. Annual membership in the Society is $5, which includes quarterly issues of the Autograph Collectors' Journal. You may write to the Society concerning your finds and they will refer you to the dealer or collector whom they believe would be interested.
Sometimes letters of unknowns have considerable value simply because they shed light on certain periods of history. A baker from Atlanta, Ga., found some letters recently which had been written by his grandfather, a Confederate soldier. His ancestor was not a famous man but the letters painted a vivid, authentic picture of life at the front during the Civil War. They brought a tidy sum.
There is always a demand for new source material that sheds light on some phase of our country's history. Perhaps one of your ancestors took part in a famous Indian fight or helped to explore western territory. If you have letters that describe such adventures and the territory in which they took place, you have material that may bring you handy cash. Since the N.S.A.C. keeps a record of the specialization of each member, it's easy to contact fellow collectors if you want to sell or trade your finds.
Holographs-letters written entirely by hand—are usually worth more than typewritten ones or letters written by secretaries and signed by the individual. Ordinary holographs of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and President Truman might bring from $100 to $500 each, whereas signed, typed letters by these presidents may not be worth more than $10. President Truman's letter calling the Marines "the Navy's police force" with "a propaganda machine comparable to Stalin's" was recently bought by a Chicago insurance man and enriched the Marine Corps League to the tune of $2,500. An equally high price was paid by a Connecticut man for President Truman's letter to Paul Hume, the Washington music critic.
A George Washington letter of routine content is worth about $100 but one written while he was encamped at Valley Forge may bring between $200 and $1,000. If you can dig up some of his writing pertaining to either his inaugural or farewell address, you might ask between $2,500 and $5,000 for it In your search for valuable documents and letters, you should also be on the lookout for handwritten material that bears no signature. Before Washington decided on the inaugural address which he delivered, he wrote a much longer version of it in longhand. That draft of his planned address had 62 pages and so far only 16 pages and four fragments have been discovered. The manuscript was handed out, page by page, by historian Jared Sparks in answer to requests he received. So, if you should come across a 9-by-6-1/2 inch page in the handwriting of the first president, it might well be part of that valuable manuscript.
A signed photograph of Joseph Stalin was recently sold for $85. There are a great many Hitler autographs but they are worth little at present because of their abundance. Generally, a hero's autograph is much more de- sirable than a villain's although a letter of Benedict Arnold in which he gave a truthful account of his treason brought $2,850.
How do you go about acquiring a collection if you have no large amount of money to spend? Well, there's a man in Baltimore, Md., who has an unusual and widespread collection, geographically speaking. For years he has been writing to kings and queens, statesmen and scientists all over the globe in an effort to acquire their autographs. He doesn't just ask for their signatures—he compliments them for some achievement and asks their opinions on matters of political or scientific significance. And he has a very high percentage of replies. Because these celebrities often answer his comments or questions in detail, their autographs are of considerably more value than mere signatures.
It's not a recommended practice, but some autographs can be acquired by trickery. Franklin D. Roosevelt, for instance, used to ignore all requests for autographs. One fan didn't give up so easily. Taking advantage of F. D. R.'s weakness for bargains in postage stamps, he wrote to the late president, offering him a choice collection for a nominal fee. Roosevelt promptly responded with a check for the stamps and the autograph fiend was able to cash the check for considerably more than its face value.
Sometimes city, state and federal government bureaus are seized with spring cleaning fever and rashly destroy papers and documents which would be priceless to posterity. Walter Fetter, a Philadelphia business man, attended the disposal sale of 40 tons of miscellaneous papers taken from the Philadelphia custom house. The papers had supposedly been examined for possible valuable material. But, though Fetter was only a neophyte collector, he knew that there might be real valuables lurking in the mass of doomed papers. So he bought a load of them cheaply and sure enough, after careful scrutiny, he came upon several letters and documents whose value was about ten times the purchase price of the whole lot.
How much should you pay for collector's items? Well, you can familiarize yourself with current prices by asking some of the dealers for copies of their catalogs. Usually they are free or else there is only a nominal charge for them. Another source which you may find helpful is a yearly publication called American Book-Prices Current which lists the auction prices of books and autographs that were traded in the U. S. during the year. You can probably locate this book in your public library.
And watch out for forgeries. If someone offered you letters written by Cleopatra to Julius Caesar, by Lazarus to Saint Peter, by Alexander the Great to Aristotle, what would you think? In the middle of the nineteenth century a forger by name of Vrain Lucas produced more than 25,000 of such autographs and managed to sell many of them. Lucas took the trouble to mix special inks and to make the letters look very ancient but the paper he used came from local French mills and most surprising of all, they were written in modern French!
Experts give this advice: Don't deal with strangers where big values are involved but do business with dealers whose reputations are established. Good forgeries can usually be spotted only by the experts but you may be able to detect facsimiles made by rubber stamps. A quick test is the application of one of the standard liquid ink eradicators to the tail of the signature. Usually you can also tell a rubber stamp from a good signature because the stamp leaves a uniformity of ink not left by a pen.
It sometimes happens that collectors have authentic articles and don't realize it. A Virginia college boy recently bought an address by Thomas Jefferson, supposedly copied by a contemporary. After careful scrutiny, the boy discovered that the speech was actually in Jefferson's own handwriting and thus worth considerably more than the original purchase price.
Not an autograph collector, but a shrewd student of the field was the late Bernard Shaw. Like all great and wealthy men, Shaw was constantly being bothered by requests for handouts from people whom he knew only slightly or not at all. Shaw was not noted for his philanthropy and managed to disregard these letters completely without a twinge of conscience. But he was far from hard-hearted.
For instance, one real friend, whom Shaw knew to be destitute, would never stoop to the level of begging for money from his friend. Shaw realized this and periodically, would drop him a simple innocuous note, asking after his health.
The shrewd Shaw, having checked on the market value of his letters, knew that his friend could sell them for a substantial sum of money. And best of all, it only cost Bernard Shaw a postage stamp!
So, don't despair because you can't afford to buy the Declaration of Independence or the British Magna Carta. There are other autograph treasures to be found. They may be filed away in your attic, in a trash pile or in some office cabinet. But rest assured that astute autograph collectors are already out hunting for these golden signatures. •