Hillary Clinton receives the largest number of military donations…from the Defense industry.

Vía: http://politicalinquirer.com/

The ever famed ‘Military-Industrial Complex’ has picked their candidate of choice: Hillary Rodham Clinton. When Hillary takes office, do not be prepared to see an anti-war populist of any sort. She is as establishment as Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson, ready to declare war on Iran at a moment’s notice. The defense industry sees this and, I think, has made a good investment. Well, good if you’re a defense contractor. The Huffington Post reported:

The defense industry this year abandoned its decade-long commitment to the Republican Party, funneling the lion share of its contributions to Democratic presidential candidates, especially to Hillary Clinton who far out-paced all her competitors.

An examination of contributions of $500 or more, using the Huffington Post’s Fundrace website, shows that employees of the top five arms makers - Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics — gave Democratic presidential candidates $103,900, with only $86,800 going to Republicans.

Senator Clinton took in $52,600, more than half of the total going to all Democrats, and a figure equaling 60 percent of the sum going to the entire GOP field. Her closest competitor for defense industry money is former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R.), who raised $32,000.

Insofar as defense workers making political donations reflect the interests of their employers, the contributions clearly suggest that the arms industry has reach the conclusion that Democratic prospects for 2008 are very good indeed. Since their profits are so heavily dependent on government contracts, companies in this field want to be sure they do not have hostile relations with the White House.

The strong support for Clinton indicates that a majority of defense industry executives currently believe Clinton is a favorite to win the Democratic nomination and, in November, 2008, the general election.

In the 2004 presidential race, defense company workers, almost all of them upper-level employees, gave George W. Bush $819,358, more than twice the $366,870 received by John Kerry. Similarly, in House and Senate races over the past 10 years, the defense industry has favored Republicans over Democrats by a 3-2 margin.

Republicans holding public office almost always provide much stronger support for weapons programs and other Pentagon spending than do Democrats.

In an unexpected development, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee and a decorated Vietnam War veteran, raised just $19,200, barely more than the $18,500 collected by Texas Representative Ron Paul (R.).

No other Democrat came near Clinton’s totals. Running second to her in the competition for Pentagon contractors’ cash was Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn), who raised $13,200, almost all from executives of General Dynamics which has a major submarine building facility in Groton, Conn.

Former Senator John Edwards (D-N. Car.) raised $12,200 and Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D) took in $10,000.

Clinton’s major industry benefactors - donors who gave the $4,600 maximum allowed by law — include Roger A. Crone, Boeing’s president of Network and Space Systems; Stanley Roth, Boeing’s Vice President for Asia, International Relations, $4,600; Anne Sullivan, a Raytheon attorney; William Lynn, Raytheon’s Senior Vice President for Government Relations; and Michele Kang, Northrop Grumman Vice President for health science solutions.

Battle brewing between Pirate Bay, recording industry over IFPI domain coup

Vía Arstechnica.com

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has taken up a new battle against pirates, but this one is different than previous legal pursuits. The UK-based organization acts as the worldwide arm for the music recording industry, but as widely reported, it apparently forgot to renew its .com top-level domain in time before it got snatched up by one of its top targets, The Pirate Bay. While the IFPI still retains control of ifpi.org, ifpi.com now points to a Pirate Bay page that reads: "International Federation of Pirates Interests." The two sides are now preparing for a fight over the domain, and we talked to the parties involved.

Screenshot of the current ifpi.com

The switch came about sometime last week, when Pirate Bay was given the domain by someone who had bought it after it expired some time ago, The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde told Ars. A quick look through Archive.org shows that the "real" IFPI has not been using the domain for some time—in March of this year, the domain was a parked page with a Google search box, and as recently as April, it was being used as a blog for the "free music community."

An account of the events from IFPI spokesperson Laura Childs appears to confirm this. "IFPI's website www.ifpi.org continues to operate as normal. The web site www.ifpi.com was acquired by a cyber-squatter who appears to have passed it on to an associate of The Pirate Bay," she told Ars. "IFPI has already taken legal action to get the domain returned. We have filed a complaint at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) under the dispute resolution procedure. This procedure is designed for classic cyber-squatting cases such as this which involve the use of a URL in bad faith."

Indeed, the WIPO introduced new dispute resolution procedures in 2002 to account for cybersquatting. The procedure involves a review by WIPO-appointed, independent panelists in order to enforce ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. If the panel decides that the domain was acquired or used in bad faith, then it can order the domain to be transferred to the party that registered the complaint. (For curious readers, a number of past cases and related decisions can be found on WIPO's website.)

Given WIPO and ICANN's definition of "bad faith"—which says that the domain cannot be used to cause confusion with the "Complainant's mark"—there's a decent chance of The Pirate Bay eventually losing control of the domain. But if Pirate Bay can fight back and prove somehow that it has no commercial interests or intent to confuse visitors with the "real" IFPI site, it might have a chance at succeeding.

"We have not done anything illegal or even immoral," Sunde told Ars. "I can't see why we shouldn't be able to keep the domain name. We're not going to bash IFPI on it, we're going to host our own IFPI on it," he said.

iTunes 7.4.1 already released -- free ringtone workaround is NOT ok

Vía: Engadget

Just thought we'd let the droves of paranoid upgraders know in on a small bit of good bad news. Yes, Apple did already release a new version of iTunes tonight, 7.4.1, and we tested to see if said update "fixes" the ringtone-renaming hack (if you really want to call it a hack) that lets users supply their own ringtones sans Apple's $0.99 fee. Breathe not so easy: it may be legal (probably), but the hack did not continue to work just fine for us. More below.

Update: So yes, our previous ringtones carried over and we were able to add new renamed ringtones to iTunes -- but our readers are right in that 7.4.1 DOES block the renamed ringtone workaround moving forward. Our initial syncs went unblocked, but only until we tried to add new ringtone files. Once you actually attempt to sync new renamed ringtone files, well, then you're in for a heap o' pain (see above).

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

VirtualBox 1.5: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Vía: Venture Cake

The new VirtualBox brings seamless virtualization to Linux. This puts Linux on par with the Mac - users can run their native desktop but still launch the odd Windows-only program when they need to. The VirtualBox manual doesn’t give much detail on the new feature, so here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of VirtualBox 1.5

Previously on VentureCake we’ve discussed using RDesktop’s seamless RDP to launch apps from a VM, but VirtualBox 1.5 makes the process a lot simpler:

• Install the virtualbox package
• Click Applications → System Tools → Innotek VirtualBox
• Make a VM, pop in a Windows CD and install.
• Windows, click Devices → Install Guest Additions, click Allow lots, and let Windows reboot.

That’s all. So how does it work?

The good

• Seamless virtualization just works (with one caveat - see below). Hit Ctrl L to launch seamless mode. The Windows desktop is replaced by the Windows taskbar sitting above the GNOME panel.
• Virtualbox has two windows - one with the VM controls (start, stop, edit settings, etc), and one with the VM itself. The control window can be closed with the VM still running, so you just have the Windows taskbar without any config tools shown. It’s simple and works well.
• Virtualbox provides packages for an insane amount of distros. You can update VirtualBox at the same time as all your other apps via their APT repositories. Something VMware (who still provide Workstation in RPM format only) could learn from.

The bad

• The VirtualBox manual doesn’t mention this, but seamless virtualization requires desktop effects (GNOME’s desktop effects, Compiz Fusion, etc) to be be disabled. Otherwise minimizing windows apps will leave bits of the Windows desktop around. Since more Linux distribution will be turning this on by default, this needs to be fixed. In Ubuntu 7.04, click System Preferences → Desktop Effects. Compositing is an increasingly important part of the Linux desktop in 2007, and something many distributions are turning on by default - this needs to be fixed.
• Windows apps show up on the Windows taskbar only, not the Gnome taskbar. More integration would be nice.
• We’ve had major probs with VirtualBox 1.5 networking. The manual mentions that in the default NAT mode ‘the virtual machine receives its network address and configuration on the private network from a DHCP server integrated into VirtualBox‘. But the VM doesn’t get a response via DHCP, there’s no dhcp process running on the host, and we can’t find any files relating to dhcp installed by the virtualbox package. The problems may be caused by upgrading from a previous Virtualbox release, but really, this shouldn’t be hard. Here it’s VirtualBox that could learn from VMware, who makes NAT networking a snap.
• There are no packages for the VirtualBox Open Source edition, and, oddly, it’s hard to find info about licensing the regular version for more than personal use. Hey VirtualBox, we’re happy to pay for business use - tell us where to send our money!

The Ugly

VirtualBox looks a little 1995. It’s a bit Gangsta’s Paradise, a bit Batman Forever, a bit, well, naff looking. If they can’t use GTK themes like every other app, they should at least make it prettier.

Overall

VMware server is more polished and has easier networking, but once your VM is up and working, seamlessness is an essential feature that makes VirtualBox the better platform for running that odd Windows app.

Now where’s a simple, good looking Xen GUI?

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 12:39 pm and is filed under Virtualization, Desktop Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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An Open Letter to ISO

Vía:http://blogs.freecode.no/isene/2007/09/07/an-open-letter-to-iso/

Is it time to standardize ISO?

In light of the recent events relating to the standardization process of EOOXML, it seems appropriate to look into possible standardization of the process itself.

The DIS 29500 (EOOXML) process has revealed several shortcomings, both on the national level and on the level of ISO.

The organisations representing each country have very different procedures for determining the nation’s vote in ISO. Some countries will vote only if their technical committee is unanimous on the issue. Others will reach consensus defined by a 3/4 majority vote or even 2/3 majority. In some countries there is no vote and the technical committee is only advisory to the national standards organisation. Others yet have a two-stage process where the nations vote is determined through two committees. In short there is no standard for accepting a standard.

It seems ISO is not prepared for a politicized process where a big and influential commercial enterprise will use any means possible to push its own standard through to certification.

Committees are flooded by the vendor in support of the standard. Votes are bought and results are hijacked. Several national bodies have flawed and skewed procedures open for corruption.

The list is much longer, but a few examples should suffice:

Norway - originally a process decided by unanimity but altered on the fly
Sweden - voting seats bought and the result thus hijacked
Switzerland - process rigged in favor of the vendor, the chairman excluded the option of voting “reject” or “reject, with comments”
Portugal - process skewed by blaming on lack of available chairs
Malaysia - two committees voted unanimously “rejection with comments” and mysteriously overturned by the government to “abstain”

Even if this is the tip of an ice berg, the examples should warrant a thorough examination of the national processes.

The fact that ISO enforces no standard for national bodies opens the standardization process for manipulation or corruption. I strongly urge ISO to adopt a strict policy for its members detailing the rules for how a national body shall determine its vote in ISO and that it enforces such policy vigorously.

On the level of ISO, criticism has been raised against the fast track process. An investigation should be called to see if EOOXML was unduly put on the ISO Fast Track.

During the Fast Track, many new countries have joined as P-Members (Participating members) in the technical committee, the JTC1. Several of the countries have no credible track on standardization work, have joined very late in the process only to vote an unconditional “Yes” to a standard that has obvious room for improvement. It may be purely coincidental that the countries that came late in the process score much lower on the Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International. It is possible to corrupt the process by pressuring countries to join a process and vote without sufficient knowledge. I urge ISO to adopt a policy that P-members may not be accepted later than 3 months before the committee is to vote.

It may be time also to reevaluate the one country one vote principle. In ISO, the Chinese vote carries the same weight as that of Cyprus. In the JTC1/SC34 the late-comers includes Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Côte-d’Ivoire, Cyprus, Lebanon and Malta.

As for approving standards within the field of IT, ISO would greatly benefit from adopting the IETF requirment of two independent reference implementations for passing a standard. This should increase the quality of ISO’s IT standards.

The strength, integrity and scalability of ISO have been tested. The organizations agility and adaptability will now be measured. May ISO move quickly to fix its own PR and more importantly its own standardization process.

The publicity that ISO has been given through the DIS 29500 process is phenomenal. ISO and standardization in general has reached a peak in public awareness. I hope the organization will use this publicity to show strong integrity and potential.

The intent of this letter is to safeguard future standardization and to ensure that the processes scale in the face of increased pressure from large commercial interests.

4 Things that could help reduce risk of Prostate Cancer

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) came to the conclusion after a study of male mice that were fed a plant compound found in red wine called resveratrol. The findings were published Saturday in the online edition of Carcinogenesis. (Source: China)

The nutrients in red wine have shown anti-oxidant and anti-cancer properties. Other sources of resveratrol in the diet include grapes, raspberries, peanuts and blueberries.

In the study resveratrol-fed mice showed an 87 percent reduction in their risk of developing prostate tumors that contained the worst kind of cancer-staging diagnosis. The mice that proved to have the highest cancer-protection effect earned it after seven months of consuming resveratrol in a powdered formula mixed with their food.

Other mice in the study, those fed resveratrol but still developed a less-serious form of prostate cancer, were 48 percent more likely to have their tumor growth halted or slowed when compared to mice who did not consume the compound, according to the study.

This study adds to a growing body of evidence that resveratrol consumption through red wine has powerful chemoprevention properties, in addition to its apparent heart-health benefits, said lead study author Coral Lamartiniere, Ph.D., of UAB’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology.

Reduced Risk Prostate Cancer with Regular Ejaculation

An epidemiological study of 30,000 American men by Michael Leitzman, a cancer researcher at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, has found that men who enjoy an active sex life do not risk prostate cancer in later life.

There has been a suggested link with greater sexual activity and increased incidents of prostate cancer in previous scientific data because of the link with the male hormone testosterone and its effect on promoting cancer cell growth.

Leitzmann’s findings were that men who ejaculate between 13 and 20 times a month had a 14% lower risk of prostate cancer that men who ejaculated on average, between 4 and 7 times a month for most of their adult life.

Men who ejaculated upwards of 21 times a month had a 33% lower lifetime risk of prostate cancer than the baseline group. (Source: About)

Veggies could help reduce risk of prostate cancer

New evidence indicates that the risk of prostate cancer may be reduced by adding certain vegetables to one’s diet. (Source: Go)

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine found that men who ate broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and turnips were 40 percent less likely to be diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer, compared to those whose ate those vegetables less than once a month.

Men who ate cauliflower more than once a week were 52 percent less likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, and men who ate broccoli more than once a week were 45 percent less likely to be diagnosed with the disease.

The study is reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Fatty fish consumption slashes risk of prostate cancer by 43 percent

Men who eat just one serving of salmon per week reduce their risk of developing prostate cancer by 43 percent, compared to men who do not consume fish, according to new research published in the online edition of the International Journal of Cancer.

Researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm examined the dietary habits of nearly 1,500 men with prostate cancer and more than 1,100 men without the disease. They found that men who ate fatty fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids, such as salmon, at least once a week reduced their risk of prostate cancer by 43 percent, whereas men who did not eat fish of any kind experienced no risk reduction.

The researchers — led by Maria Hedelin — also believe that a certain gene may play an important role in the development of prostate cancer, as well as how fish oils benefit the body. A specific Cox-2 gene that is present in 60 percent of the population can influence the effectiveness of omega-3 fatty acid consumption, the researchers reported.

Men who carry the gene have a 72 percent reduced risk of prostate cancer compared to those who do not carry it, but eating fish high in omega-3 fatty acids can still benefit men who do not carry the gene, according to the researchers. (Source: NewsTarget)

Noam Chomsky: How Propaganda Works in the West

The American approach to social control

is so much more sophisticated and pervasive

that it deserves a new name

It not propaganda any more, it's “prop-agenda”

It's not so much the control of what we think,

but the control of what we think about

Remember, children. Propaganda works because

we don't know we're being propagandized

How could anyone suggest that in this

beacon of 'freedom and democracy',

the magnificent United States of Amnesia,

that we are programmed to to follow an ideology?

Propaganda for Dummies

In the West the calculated manipulation of public opinion to serve political and ideological interests is much more covert and therefore much more effective than a propaganda system imposed in a totalitarian regime.

Its greatest triumph is that we generally don't notice the influence of propaganda — or laugh at the notion it even exists.

We watch the democratic process taking place - heated debates in which we feel we could have a voice — and think that, because we have “free” media, it would be hard for the Government to get away with anything very devious without someone calling them on it.

The American approach to social control is so much more sophisticated and pervasive that it really deserves a new name.

It isn't just propaganda any more, it's “prop-agenda.” It's not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about.

And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false “intelligence” and selected “leaks”.

With the ground thus prepared, governments are happy if you then “use the democratic process” to agree or disagree — for, after all, their intention is to mobilise enough headlines and conversation to make the whole thing seem real and urgent.

The more emotional the debate, the better. Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

Keeping the People Passive & Obedient

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views.

That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

Since the voice of the people is allowed to speak out in democratic societies, those in power better control what that voice says — in other words, control what people think.

One of the ways to do this is to create political debate that appears to embrace many opinions, but actually stays within very narrow margins.

You have to make sure that both sides in the debate accept certain assumptions — and that those assumptions are the basis of the propaganda system. As long as everyone accepts the propaganda system, the debate is permissible.

One reason that propaganda often works better on the educated than on the uneducated is that educated people read more, so they receive more propaganda.

Another is that they have jobs in management, media, and academia and therefore work in some capacity as agents of the propaganda system — and they believe what the system expects them to believe.

By and large, they're part of the privileged elite, and share the interests and perceptions of those in power.

It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent.

This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and government malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest.

What is not evident (and remains undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature of such critiques, as well as the huge inequality of the command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance.

Propaganda & the Ruling Ideology

When a leading journalist or TV news presenter is asked whether they are subject to pressure or censorship, they say they are completely free to express their own opinions.

So how does thought control work in a democratic society? We know how it works in dictatorships.

Journalists are an integral part of the ruling ideology. They are so well 'integrated' that they can't see outside the ideological box they inhabit.

Their journalism is balanced, fair and tolerant of other points of view. But that is part of the 'value system' they are promulgating. 'Truth' is their version of the world.

To return to the original question. If one suggests there is censorship in the Western media, journalists immediately reply: “No one has been exerting any pressure on me. I write what I want.” And it’s true.

But if they defended positions contrary to the dominant norm, someone else would soon be writing editorials in their place.

Obviously it is not a hard-and-fast rule: the US press sometimes publishes even my work, and the US is not a totalitarian country. But anyone who fails to fulfil certain minimum requirements does not stand a chance of becoming an established commentator.

It is one of the big differences between the propaganda system of a totalitarian state and the way democratic societies go about things. Exaggerating slightly, in totalitarian countries the state decides the official line and everyone must then comply.

Democratic societies operate differently. The line is never presented as such, merely implied. This involves brainwashing people who are still at liberty.

Even the passionate debates in the main media stay within the bounds of commonly accepted, implicit rules, which sideline a large number of contrary views.

The system of control in democratic societies is extremely effective. We do not notice the line any more than we notice the air we breathe.

We sometimes even imagine we are seeing a lively debate. The system of control is much more powerful than in totalitarian systems.

Look at Germany in the early 1930s. We tend to forget that it was the most advanced country in Europe, taking the lead in art, science, technology, literature and philosophy.

Then, in no time at all, it suffered a complete reversal of fortune and became the most barbaric, murderous state in human history. All that was achieved by using fear:

Fear of the Bolsheviks, the Jews, the Americans, the Gypsies – everyone who, according to the Nazis, was threatening the core values of European culture and the direct descendants of Greek civilisation (as the philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote in 1935).

However, most of the German media who inundated the population with these messages were using marketing techniques developed by US advertising agents.

The same method is always used to impose an ideology. Violence is not enough to dominate people: some other justification is required.

When one person wields power over another – whether they are a dictator, a colonist, a bureaucrat, a spouse or a boss – they need an ideology justifying their action.

And it is always the same: their domination is exerted for the good of the underdog. Those in power always present themselves as being altruistic, disinterested and generous.

In the 1930s the rules for Nazi propaganda involved using simple words and repeating them in association with emotions and phobia.

When Hitler invaded the Sudetenland in 1938 he cited the noblest, most charitable motives: the need for a humanitarian intervention to prevent the ethnic cleansing of German speakers.

Henceforward everyone would be living under Germany’s protective wing, with the support of the world’s most artistically and culturally advanced country.

When it comes to propaganda (though in a sense nothing has changed since the days of Athens) there have been some minor improvements.

The instruments available now are much more refined, in particular – surprising as it may seem – in the countries with the greatest civil liberties, Britain and the US.

The contemporary public relations industry was born there in the 1920s, an activity we may also refer to as opinion forming or propaganda.

Both countries had made such progress in democratic rights (women’s suffrage, freedom of speech) that state violence was no longer sufficient to contain the desire for liberty. So those in power sought other ways of manufacturing consent.

The PR industry produces, in the true sense of the term, concept, acceptance and submission.

It controls people’s minds and ideas. It is a major advance on totalitarian rule, as it is much more agreeable to be subjected to advertising than to torture.

4,000 PEOPLE A WEEK TRYING TO LEAVE UK

BRITAIN is facing a mass exodus of people looking to escape the crime and grime of modern living.

The country’s biggest foreign visa consultancy firm has revealed that applications have soared in the last seven months by 80 per cent to almost 4,000 a week. Ten years ago the figure was just 300 a week.

Most people are relocating within the Commonwealth – in Australia, Canada and South Africa. They are almost all young professionals and skilled workers aged 20-40.

And many cite their reason for wanting to quit as immigration to these shores – and the burden it is placing on their communities and local authorities. The dearth of good schools, spiralling house prices, rising crime and tax increases are also driving people away.

Obtaining a visa to live abroad can cost as little as £1,500 for the right candidates. Plumbers, electricians, construction workers and doctors are famously in demand. The only obstruction to emigration from the UK is a criminal record, poor health, advancing age and being a “third country national”.

Liam Clifford, a former immigration control officer, set up globalvisas.com as a one-man band 12 years ago. He now employs 60 people and is in the process of opening new offices in both South Africa and Australia. Mr Clifford said: “It’s absolutely phenomenal. People are trying to get away to wherever they can, and most are successful.

“Ironically, one of the main reasons for leaving is the overstretch of services due to increasing immigration into the UK. People are looking for the better standard of living offered by other countries, as even the most idyllic villages in Britain are under pressure from rising populations

Skilled labour is obviously an advantage, but so is speaking the English language. Most countries are harder to get into if you don’t speak English. UK plc simply isn’t fighting hard enough to keep its people. Some are telling us they are fed up with living in this country. Even business people are saying they’ve had enough.

“They’re saying ‘I can’t put my children into the right school, but if I move abroad I can’. Most people are very patriotic and don’t want to leave. They’re almost terrified about it. But they say they just have to.

“It’s a shame people at the top don’t recognise they’re not doing enough to retain highly skilled workers in this country. A lot of them are quite young, and they’re not idle. They just can’t see a future for themselves in this country. They want to get married and settle down and buy homes, but they can’t see it happening here.

“And time and time again they are saying to us they don’t want to be seen as racist because they are quitting because of immigration. We tell them of course they’re not.”

According to the most recent Office of National Statistics figures, in 2005 the official number of people leaving UK shores was 352,000 – up from 249,000 in 1995. The majority – around 150,000 – migrated from London and the south east.

Among those who headed out were Simon Blood, 26, and Rachel Roberts, 23, who moved to Australia four months ago. The couple, from Stoke-on-Trent, are loving their new life in far north Queensland so much that they’ve decided it’s permanent.

Apart from family, football and a few television programmes, there’s nothing they miss about home. Embracing the warmest winter they’ve ever known – averaging 24C daily – both relish the commute to work which takes just five minutes, leaving plenty of time for walks on the beach.

Simon, a marketing executive, and Rachel, a nurse, followed their dream after seeing a newspaper advertisement for nursing recruits Down Under.

“It all went very smoothly,” said Simon. “It’s beautiful here and we’ve no plans to go back for good.”

94 of the Best Free Software Applications that are Better than Purchased Software

----------------------
Best Web Browser:
----------------------

Firefox is a favourite browser, being safer than IE and highly customizable. Automatic updates, faster browsing, better pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, an integrated search bar, and live bookmarks are just some features of this browser and countless add-ons you can install. Another popular browser is Opera which includes many of the same features as Firefox.

FireFox
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Opera
http://www.opera.com/

----------------------
Best Torrent Client:
----------------------

Azureus is a java bittorrent client offering multiple torrent downloads, queuing/priority systems (on torrents and files), start/stop seeding options and instant access to numerous pieces of information about your torrents. Azureus now features an embedded tracker easily set up and ready to use. uTorrent is a lightweight (Very) and efficient BitTorrent client that includes bandwidth prioritization, scheduling, RSS auto-downloading and Mainline DHT.

Azureus
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

µTorrent
http://www.utorrent.com/

--------------------------------------------
Best Multi Platform File Transfer Utility:
--------------------------------------------

Shareaza is a great program that connect to 4 P2P networks, EDonkey2000, Gnutella, BitTorrent and Gnutella2 (G2).

Shareaza
http://www.shareaza.com/

-----------------------------
Best IP Blacklist/Blocker:
-----------------------------

A must for anyone using P2P. PeerGaurdian integrates support for multiple lists, list editing, automatic updates, and blocking all of IPv4, TCP, UDP, ICMP, etc, making it the safest and easiest way to protect your privacy on P2P. Lite version is made to consume as little CPU and RAM as possible. It has no UI or options and consists of a single tray icon.

PeerGaurdian
http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/

PeerGuardian Lite
http://phoenixlabs.org/pglite/

------------------
Best FTP Client:
------------------

Two amazing FTP clients that each include a great deal of features are FileZilla and SmartFTP.

FileZilla
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/

SmartFTP
http://www.smartftp.com/

-----------------------
Best Chat Program:
-----------------------

Two that stand out are Gaim/Pidgin and Trillian, both are multi-platform. Gaim is compatible with AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise Messenger, and Zephyr networks. While Trillain is a skinnable chat client that supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and IRC. Trillain also includes many features not included in those chat programs.

Gaim/Pidgin
http://pidgin.im/pidgin/home/

Trillian
http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/

-----------------------------
Best AIM Virus Remover:
-----------------------------

AIM Fix was created to remove all known AIM viruses in one consolidated removal tool.

AIM Fix
http://www.jayloden.com/software.htm

--------------------------------
Best Phone Voice Software:
--------------------------------

These programs allow you to call people for free and talk with them, all you need are headphones and a microphone. Skype adds encryption and has excellent sound quality. An alternative to Skype is the Gizmo Project.

Skype
http://www.skype.com/

Gizmo Project
http://www.sipphone.com/

----------------------------
Best Download Manager:
----------------------------

The ones that work great are FlashGet, GetRight, and Free Download Manager. All split up files and increase the download by 100-600%, they can also resume broken downloads.

FlashGet
http://www.flashget.com/index_en.htm

GetRight
http://www.getright.com/

Free Download Manager
http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/

----------------------------
Best Gmail File transfer:
----------------------------

There is a good program that allows you to use your Gmail space to upload your files and make backups of them.

Gmail Drive
http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm

--------------------
Best Email Client:
--------------------

Another from Mozilla, Thunderbird, is a full-featured email client, that includes a spam filter, anti-phishing protection, enchanced security, and auto updates and tons of add-ons you can download to further enhance it.

Thunderbird
http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/

------------------------
Best Blogging Poster:
------------------------

w.bloggar is a great blogging tool that includes a template and post editor that works with many blogging sites, including Blogger. Unlike other blogging tools, it doesn't require you to have your blog on an ftp site, but can log in and post.

w.bloggar
http://wbloggar.com/

------------------
Best IRC Client:
------------------

Other than the popular mIRC some outstanding IRC clients are IceChat and HydraIRC.

HydraIRC
http://www.hydrairc.com/

IceChat
http://www.hydrairc.com/

--------------------
Best IRC Add-on:
--------------------

NoNameScript is an amazing addon that's definitely worth installing over normal mIRC.

NoNameScript
http://www.nnscript.de/index.php?section=download

----------------------
Best Anti-Spyware:
----------------------

Some of the best are Spybot, Ad-Aware, Windows Defender, and Spyware Blaster. The first three are scanners each with their own special tools including realtime scanning, encrypted file deletion, and history eraser. Spyware Guard is more of a realtime scanner (Like Anti-Virus) of spyware while you're downloading. Spyware Blaster is not a scanner, but prevents spyware from installing on your computer, (Spybot includes a robust version of this). All four programs are recommended since each is not 100% efficient solution.

Spybot
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/

Ad-Aware SE Personal
http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/

Windows Defender
http://tinyurl.com/dyvaw

SpywareGuard
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareguard.html

Spyware Blaster
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

------------------
Best Anti-Virus:
------------------

A favourite is AVG from Grisoft, which includes updates, real time scanner, and an email scanner. Another good one is AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic which includes many of the same features. Do keep in mind that free anti virus clients are not up to par with paid ones according to testings. ClamWin is also one of the best, it's a port of the great Open Source ClamAV.

AVG
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1

AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic
http://www.free-av.com/

ClamWin
http://www.clamwin.com/

---------------
Best Firewall:
---------------

The best is ZoneAlarm which is simple for begginers and provides lots of features for more advanced users.

ZoneAlarm Free
http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/catalog/products/sku_list_za.jsp

--------------------
Best Anti-Rootkit:
--------------------

AVG Anti-Rootkit really helps stop find and remove those evil root kits from your system.

AVG Ant-Rootkit
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1

------------------------
Best Diagnostic Tool:
------------------------

Ultimate Boot CD is an amazing bootable CD to restore a crashed computer and can fix it. I've used it on many different PC's and Laptops!

Ultimate Boot CD
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

----------------------
Best Disk Cleaner:
----------------------

CCleaner, removed about 1.5 Gigs in unused application data and internet cache (which I thought was removed by the disk cleaner). This utility cleans out your PC's hard drive safely and even scans and removes obselete registry data, speeding up your system. You might want to turn off cookie deletion if you save your passwords for sites.

CCleaner
http://www.ccleaner.com/

--------------------
Best File Deleter:
--------------------

Eraser is an advanced security tool (for Windows), which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns.

Eraser
http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

----------------------
Best File Encrypter:
----------------------

Three stand out, GNU Privacy Gaurd, TrueCrypt, and Blowfish Advanced CS. GNU is a full replacement of PGP that is command line based, and not for beginnners. However, Blowfish Advanced CS offers multiple algorithms, efficient data compression, and safe key handling for content protection. TrueCrypt can create virtual encrypted disks, can encrypt an entire hard disk partition or a device, such as USB flash drive, and provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password.

Blowfish Advanced CS
http://www.hotpixel.net/software.html

TrueCrypt
http://www.truecrypt.org/

GNU Privacy Gaurd
http://www.gnupg.org/

Guide to GNU Privacy Gaurd
http://www.dewinter.com/gnupg_howto/english/GPGMiniHowto.html

--------------------------------------------
Best Md5 Checksum Creator/Checker:
--------------------------------------------

This open source utility is used to calculate the MD5 checksum of a file using L. Peter Deutsch's MD5 code. One of the most common uses is to make sure that a file that you have downloaded is not corrupt. Some websites post the MD5 checksum of a file on their download page. Once you have downloaded the file, use winMd5Sum to get the MD5 checksum of the file on your computer. Then make sure that the MD5 checksum from the web site is the same. If they are the same, then your file is exactly the same as the file on the website.

winMD5Sum
http://www.nullriver.com/index/products/winmd5sum

---------------------
Best File Unlocker:
---------------------

Unlocker is an Windows Explorer extension allowing you with a simple right-click on a file or folder to get rid of error message such as error deleting file or folder, cannot delete folder: it's being used by another person or program.

Unlocker
http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

---------------------
Best Image Editor:
---------------------

The GIMP and Paint.NET are the best. GIMP is more like Photoshop and there is a seperate version that make the GIMP interface appear more like Photoshop (to make it easier to use). Piant.NET replaces the simple MS Paint program and adds tons of features and includes some of the things Photoshop has.

The GIMP
http://www.gimp.org/

GIMP Shop
http://plasticbugs.com/?page_id=294

Paint.NET
http://www.getpaint.net/index2.html

------------------------------
Best Vector Image Editor:
------------------------------

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

INKSCAPE
http://www.inkscape.org/

------------------------------
Best Image Viewer/Editor:
------------------------------

IrfanView supports many formats of images and includes some plugins that allow it to view many other formats such as videos, flash, and some audio formats. Picasa, on the other hand, differs in being able to edit photos and searches your computer for photos. Another good one is FastStone Image Viewer which is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor.

IrfanView
http://www.irfanview.com/

IrfanView Plugin/Addons
http://www.tucows.com/preview/415586

Picasa
http://picasa.google.com/

FastStone Image Viewer
http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

--------------------------------
Best Digital Album Creator:
--------------------------------

InAlbum Lite is an easy you can use program to turn your digital photos into a great photo album slideshow. InAlbum Lite helps you turn your digital photos into stunning photo albums.

InAlbum Lite
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Authoring-tools/Digital-Album/InAlbum-Lite.shtml

-----------------------------------------------
Best 3-D Modelling/Animation/Rendering:
-----------------------------------------------

Blender is the open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback.

Blender
http://www.blender.org/

------------------------
Best Color Capturer:
------------------------

Color Schemer ColorPix is a useful little color picker that grabs the pixel under your mouse and transforms it into a number of different color formats. You can use the built-in magnifier to zoom in on your screen, click on a color value to copy it directly to the clipboard, and even keep ColorPix on top of all other apps and out of the way. Also, it doesn't require installation and is a tiny program.

Color Schemer ColorPix
http://www.colorschemer.com/colorpix_info.php

---------------------
Best Virtual Drive:
---------------------

If you ever wanted to run that .iso or any other CD image without having the CD or DVD in the drive just use DAEMON Tools. Do not install the adware toolbar!

DAEMON Tools
http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/download.php

---------------------------
Best DVD Descrambler:
---------------------------

Well the name says it all, DVD Decrypter allows you to copy DVDs to your hard drive and re-encode them to MPEG1 (VCD) or DivX. DVD Decrypter can also write most types of CD / DVD images via its 'ISO Write' mode. Also there's DVDFab HD Decrypter which copies entire DVD movie to hard disk, and removes all the protections (CSS, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs and Sony ARccOS) while copying. It also comes with full HD-DVD and Blu-Ray support (Removes AACS).

DVD Decryptor
http://www.filehippo.com/download_dvd_decrypter/

DVDFab HD Decrypter
http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm

---------------------------
Best DVD Compressor:
---------------------------

ratDVD takes a full featured DVD-9 movie and puts it into a highly compressed .ratDVD container format file of about 1.x GB in size - while preserving all the features of the original DVD.

ratDVD
http://ratdvd.ca/

-------------------------
Best CD/DVD Burner:
-------------------------

CDBurnerXP Pro is a fully featured DVD/CD burner and can create .iso's from them. It is very fast and meet all your needs.

CDBurnerXP Pro
http://www.cdburnerxp.se/

For you Ubuntu and Linux fans, without a doubt... K3b! (http://k3b.plainblack.com/)

----------------------------------
Best MPEG to DVD Converter:
----------------------------------

Got those mpegs from your digital video camera, off the web, etc. but always wanted to convert them into DVD's? Well DVDBuilder does exactly that, efficiently and painlessly for free.

DVDBuilder
http://www.keronsoft.com/dvdbuilder.html

-----------------------------------
Best Video Player/Codec Pack:
-----------------------------------

The K-Lite Mega Codec Pack will play every video file on this planet. Also GSpot is a video codec identification utility - identifies which video codec and audio compression method is used on .avi files, whether the matching codec is installed, so you can direct download only the ones you need.

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack
http://www.codecguide.com/about_mega.htm

K-Lite Codec Pack Full (Less features)
http://codecguide.com/features_full.htm#full

GSpot
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/GSpot.htm

------------------------------------------
Best Video Player/Streaming Server:
------------------------------------------

VLC is a portable cross-platform, multimedia player that also streams audio/video across your network. MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, etc. And DVDs, VCDs. It can stream unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

VLC media player
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

---------------------
Best Audio Player:
---------------------

Winamp and foobar2000 comes out on top as the best audio players. ml_ipod is a plugin that uses Winamp to support your iPod. Winamp DSP Enhancer increases the quality and depth of your bass and treble, but not just making them louder but by filtering out any distortions and other bad stuff. foobar 2000 s an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats. Not to mention it's tiny size.

Winamp
http://www.winamp.com/

ml_ipod (Version 5.2 of Winamp alreday has had iPod support built in.)
http://mlipod.sourceforge.net/

DSP Enchancer
http://download.nullsoft.com/customize/component/2001/10/8/P/Enhancer.exe

foobar2000
http://www.foobar2000.org/

For you Ubuntu/Linux fans my all time favourite is Amarok! (http://amarok.kde.org/)

Audacity is a free and gull featured audio editor and recorder. As for grabbing audio from CDs , Exact Audio Copy is the solution, although it's not for beginners.

Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Exact Audio Copy
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

-------------------------
Best Audio Converter:
-------------------------

Often called the Swiss army knife of audio, dBpowerAMP is able to convert between audio formats whilst preserving ID Tags.

dBpowerAMP Music Converter
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

-------------------------------
Best XviD/DivX Converter:
-------------------------------

AutoGK is an amazing program that converts Xvid and DivX formats of video to many others, at the same time compressing them and it includes many other features.

AutoGK
http://www.autogk.me.uk/

--------------------------------
Best Movie Cover Searcher:
--------------------------------

Have those "back up" DVDs but no covers? Well, no fear, iCover searches its 6 databases and the internet for over 13,000 movie covers that you can download for free.

iCover
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Other-VIDEO-Tools/i-Covers.shtml

iCover Site (French)
http://www.i-covers.net/

(Google translate: http://www.google.com/translate_t)

------------------
Best iPod Utility:
------------------

Forget iTunes, YamiPod gives you full control of your iPod and offers many other features to you.

YamiPod
http://www.yamipod.com/main/modules/home/

------------------------------
Best Hard Drive Analyser:
------------------------------

JDiskReport is an amazing program that provides many different graphs and information on what's stored on your computer.

JDiskReport
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/index.html

-----------------------------
Best Software Collection:
-----------------------------

TheOpenCD includes many freeware programs and open source programs that are essential to anyone.

TheOpenCD
http://theopencd.org/

--------------------
Best HTML Editor:
--------------------

NVU, is a great HTML editor similar to Dreamweaver and Frontpage. Also, BlueFish editer is a very stable robust solution that focuses on editing dynamic and interactive web sites.

NVU
http://www.nvu.com/

BlueFish
http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/

-----------------------------
Best CSS Menu Designer:
-----------------------------

CSS Menu Designer is a good tool to automatically create beautiful CSS menus that you can customize to your needs.

Best CSS Menu Designer
http://www.highdots.com/css-tab-designer/

---------------------
Compression Tool:
---------------------

Although there's many, a few stand out, mainly 7-Zip and IZArc. 7-Zip supports: 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB. IZArc supports many files including: 7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BIN, BZ2, BZA, C2D, CAB, CDI, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA, IMG, ISO, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MDF, MBF, MIM, NRG, PAK, PDI, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP, ZOO. Both also include many other features.

7-Zip
http://www.7-zip.org/

IZArc
http://www.izarc.org/

-----------------------------
Best Benchmarking Tool:
-----------------------------

EVEREST Home Edition is a freeware hardware diagnostics and memory benchmarking solution for home PC users. It offers the world's most accurate hardware information and diagnostics capabilities, including online features, memory benchmarks, hardware monitoring, and low-level hardware information. Sadly, this free version has been discontinued, since they want to make some money on their corporate version (Which is understandable).

EVEREST Home Edition
http://www.filehippo.com/download_everest_home/

--------------------
Best Office Suite:
--------------------

The best by far is OpenOffice.org. It includes many of the same features as MS Office and then some!

OpenOffice.org
http://www.openoffice.org/

--------------------------
Best Multi-Coding Tool:
--------------------------

For those computer programmers, PHP Designer 2005 and Notepad++ are great programs that include syntax highlighting and syntax folding. PHP Designer supports: PHP, HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, Perl, JavaScript, VB, C#, Java & SQL. Notepad++ supports C, C++, Java, C#, XML, HTML, PHP, Javascript, RC resource file, makefile, ASCII art file (extension .nfo), doxygen, ini file, batch file, ASP, VB/VBS source files, SQL, Objective-C, CSS, Pascal, Perl, Python, Lua, TCL, Assembler, Ruby, Lisp, Scheme, Properties, Diff, Smalltalk, Postscript and VHDL. And that's the tip of the iceberg for both programs, they contain tons of features.

Notepad++
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

PHP Designer 2005
http://www.download.com/PHP-Designer-2005/3000-7957-10353130.html

PSPad
http://www.pspad.com/en/

---------------------
Best AutoIt Editor:
---------------------

This custom made version of SciTE has syntax highlighting and syntax folding, autocompleting, and intellisense.

SciTE
http://www.autoitscript.com/

--------------------
Best PDF Reader:
--------------------

Foxit Reader is small (1.5MB), so it downloads quickly. It doesn't need any installation, so you can start to run it as soon as you've downloaded it.

Foxit Reader
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

-------------
Best Linux:
-------------

Ubuntu and Kubuntu are two of best and most well known linux distros out there and include a barrage of programs. Another good one is Damn Small Linux, which is 50mb and can run off your USB flash drive.

Ubuntu
http://www.ubuntu.com/

Kubuntu
http://www.kubuntu.org/

Damn Small Linux
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

-----------------------------------------
Best Tutorial/Presentation Creation:
-----------------------------------------

Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, mouse movements, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users.

Wink
http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

-------------------------------
Best Windows CD Creator:
-------------------------------

AutoStreamer works as a totally automated slipstreamer. Basically, all it really needs is a source that being an original Windows CD or a local share and a Service Pack file. Using this you can create another Windows CD that includes the newest service pack and all the hotfixes.

AutoPatcher
http://mhtools.knoware.nl/raptor/autopatcher.html

AutoStreamer
http://mhtools.knoware.nl/raptor/autostreamer/AutoStreamer.exe

Ducks: Symbols Of Versatility

If you are lucky enough to live in a part of the world that is also a home to ducks, you will no doubt be familiar with the image of their cute feathery bottoms sticking up in the air as their heads disappear under the surface of the water. Perhaps you’ve even taken a moment to wonder what they see in their underwater world, and if they will resurface with a fish or a water bug in their beaks. As we observe them, we see that ducks are denizens of three worlds—the world of air, the world of water, and the world of earth. As such, they have adapted themselves to be able to swim, fly, and walk, and they seek and find nourishment in more than one place. They are symbols of versatility and can inspire us to explore our own ability to adapt and find nourishment in a variety of places.

Ducks are able to float, swim, and dive into the water, fishing for food. They can walk on the ground, eating vegetation and bugs, and they fly in the air to travel long distances relatively quickly. Equipped with feet that are equally good at paddling and walking, as well as wings to fly, ducks seem comfortable in just about any natural environment. Next time you see a duck bottom, you might be inspired to examine your own ability to both float on the surface and to dive beneath it. In many traditions, water symbolizes the emotions—to duck our heads into our emotions means we are able to surrender our minds to our hearts, to go into the watery realm of feeling and see what there is to see, often coming to the surface with nourishment and treasure.

At the same time, we share the duck's ability to get solid ground under our feet by connecting to the earth on which we live simply by walking on it. And finally, when we reside in our spirits, we fly above the mental, emotional, and material realms, free of all the ties that bind us to this earth, traveling faster and farther than we ever thought possible.

55 Essential Articles Every Serious Blogger Should Read

After blogging for some time now, I’ve encountered countless articles that have truly helped to refine many aspects of my blog. This includes the visual structure, layout and types of advertising and affiliate programs utilized, plug-ins implemented for ease of use, search engine optimization and overall productivity, and much more.

Many of these articles would have been helpful before starting my own blog, but I also doubt that I would have been successful in putting most of these tips to use right away. Like me, I’m sure many of you are always looking for ways to improve your blogs. And since blogs are constantly growing and changing, it’s always a good time to do whatever you can to make your blog the very best.

With that said, here are 55 essential articles I’ve come across that have positively influenced my blog decision-making and will undoubtedly help you too. I’ve also included a select few of my own past articles that are of relevance in order to “pay it forward.”

Blogging Basics: Getting Started

1. Can You Make a Living Blogging? (Graywolf SEO)
2. Five Beginner’s Blogging Tips (John Chow)
3. The First 7 Days of Blogging (Pronet Advertising)
4. Put on Your Game Face (Pronet Advertising)
5. How to “Announce” a Blog (Blog Traffic School)
   

Building Meaningful Content

6. How to Use Social News Aggregators as a Source for Content Ideas (Dosh Dosh)
7. 5 Ways to Building a Better Blog (Pronet Advertising)
8. Bring Your A-game to Write for Blogs (Freelance Switch)
9. What Are You Learning from Leading Edge SEO Bloggers? (Graywolf SEO)
10. How Great Headlines Score Traffic (Copyblogger)
11. 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas that Work (Copyblogger)
12. Declaring War on Blogger Apathy (ProBlogger)

Increasing Traffic & Retaining Readers

13. How to Market Your Blog in 2007 (ProBlogger)
14. 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic (SEOmoz)
15. Five Steps to a Truly Unique Blog That Attracts Readers and Revenue (Copyblogger)
16. 10 Simple Ways to Retain Blog Readership (Matt Huggins)
17. How to Get Traffic for Your Blog (Seth Godin)
18. 10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers (Copyblogger)
19. How to Develop “Stickyness” to Your Blog (Blogging Tips)
20. A Very Simple Way to Increase Your RSS Subscribers & MyBlogLog Community Members (Dosh Dosh)

Linkbaiting, SEO, & Social Networks

21. 12 Different Types of Links and How to Get Them (Stuntdubl)
22. 101 Ways to Build Links in 2006 (SEOBook)
23. 66 Ways to Build Links in 2007 (Brandon Hopkins)
24. Getting Noticed by A-list Bloggers vs. Getting on Digg Front Pages (Digital Inspiration)
25. Do You Digg This Headline? (Copyblogger)
26. Why Too Many Little Icons Can Easily Distract Your Visitors (Pronet Advertising)
27. How to Generate Targeted Site Traffic Without Search Engines (Scoreboard Media Group)
28. Linkbait, Reports of My Death Are Greatly Exagerated (Graywolf SEO)
29. SEP Advice: Linkbait and Linkbaiting (Matt Cutts)
30. Blogging SEO Basics (Matt Huggins)
31. Search Engine Optimization for Blogs (ProBlogger)
32. 8 Simple SEO Tips for Blogs (JohnTP)
33. How to Enhance Your Blog’s SEO and Attract Relevant Traffic in One Easy Step (Technosailor)
34. Is it OK to Write for Digg? (Copyblogger)
35. Get Your Blog Out of the Google Supplemental Index (Not So Boring Life)

Building a Community

36. 5 Simple Ways to Encourage Blog Participation (Matt Huggins)
37. 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog (ProBlogger)
38. 10 Quick Methods to Increase Blog Comments (Legal Andrew)
39. Top 5 WordPress Plugins That Help Increase Comments (JohnTP)

Blog Monetization

40. 8 Tips to Optimize AdSense Units (Daily Blog Tips)
41. Google AdSense Tips, Tricks, and Secrets (Graywolf SEO)
42. Why AdSense is Not Suitable for All Blog Topics (ProBlogger)
43. Make Money from Your Blog (Matt Huggins)
44. Six Powerful Blog Strategies that will Rapidly Increase Your Affiliate Referrals (Dosh Dosh)
45. 10 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on Your Blog (ProBlogger)
46. 10 Ways to Make Your Blog More Attractive to Advertisers (ProBlogger)

Miscellaneous Blogging Advice

47. 27 Lessons Learned on the Way to 3000 Visits a Day and 2200 RSS Subscribers (Pick the Brain)
48. 10 Ways to Become a Better Blogger (TechRepublic)
49. 101 Steps to Becoming a Better Blogger (LifeHack.org)
50. The 5 Deadly Sins of Blogging (Pronet Advertising)
51. 10 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid (John Chow)
52. 10 Reasons Why Blogging is Like Dating (Romance Tracker)
53. 6 Lessons Britney Spears Can Teach You About Blogging (Kumiko’s Cash Quest)
54. Why Everything You Think You Know About Blog Architecture is Wrong (Pearsonified)
55. Help! I’m Addicted to Checking My Blog’s Stats! (ProBlogger)

Vía: Mat Huggins

Inmigration

Ten million gallons of toxic gunk trapped in the Brooklyn aquifer is starting to creep toward the surface. How scary is that?

(Photo: Jeff Riedel)

On a foggy October day in 2002, Basil Seggos first saw the sheen on the surface of the water. He and his colleagues had launched an old wooden-hulled oyster boat from the Dyckman marina in Inwood, and headed south, down the Harlem and East rivers. They were on a mission to document fishing and crabbing spots on the riverfront so that local anglers could be warned not to eat their catch. When Seggos’s boat reached the mouth of Newtown Creek, the finger of water that separates Brooklyn from Queens, they decided to sail into the creek to check out its unnatural landscape—miles of waste-processing plants, gasoline-storage facilities, and abandoned refineries. The boat passed floating auto parts, crumbling bulkheads, and rusting pipes spewing filthy-looking water. Then, about a mile in, Seggos saw it: oil coating the surface of the water from shore to shore and extending upstream for another half-mile or so. “It was everywhere, all over the shoreline.” Officially, Seggos was running an outreach program for Riverkeeper, RFK Jr.’s environmental organization, and the organization’s protocol in situations like these is to stop and call the state Department of Environmental Conservation hotline. The call is supposed to provoke an immediate reaction, but no one showed up. The next day, Seggos called again. “We’d never even heard of a spill there before,” says Seggos. “But they told me they already had an open case on it and they were handling it.”

What Seggos discovered—or rediscovered—wasn’t an oil spill, exactly. Rather, it was a mix of gasoline, solvents, and associated poisons bubbling up from the very ground: a thin dribble that betrays the presence of a supertanker’s worth of the stuff submerged in the age-old geology of Greenpoint. It’s actually more than a century’s worth of spills, leaks, and waste dumped by oil companies that has pooled into a vast underground lake, more than 55 acres wide and up to 25 feet thick. First discovered by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1978, the Greenpoint spill has been estimated at anywhere between 17 million and 30 million gallons—three times more oil than the Exxon Valdez spill. That makes it the largest known oil spill in American history.

Seggos had stumbled upon a long-forgotten industrial accident, decades in the making. It soon became an obsession. Over the next thirteen months, he dug through old news clippings and contacted state and local officials. He attended community meetings and organized local activists into the Newtown Creek Alliance. And he tried to understand how it was that a giant oil spill remained so little known in the thriving neighborhood right above it. What he learned, mostly through Freedom of Information Act requests, was that Mobil—the company that had likely spilled most of the oil—had quietly agreed with state officials to assume responsibility for the necessary cleanup. In return, the state wouldn’t make any more demands: no timetables, no fines, no set outcomes. Both sides could avoid a bitter, costly, and potentially embarrassing court battle. And by keeping it quiet, there would be no public panic—or costly liability.

Alarmed, Riverkeeper initiated a lawsuit in January 2004 against ExxonMobil (Mobil merged with Exxon in 1999) in order to force the company to clean faster and more thoroughly. This triggered a round of private lawsuits: Two of the nation’s best-known tort lawyers trekked to Greenpoint to represent the Polish immigrants, secretaries, carpenters, and police officers who live there—not to mention the young creative class that has been gentrifying the area for over a decade. Even the state, which tolerated the situation for almost 30 years, has gotten into the act: It is threatening to sue now, too.

At the crux of all the lawsuits is the impact of this huge subterranean reservoir—on human health, on the environment, and on Greenpoint’s property values. In ExxonMobil’s view, the pile-on is mere opportunism by lawyers and politicians beating up on a company that’s already committed to cleaning up a mess that may not even be its fault: After all, it’s not clear where all the oil came from, and whenever this happened, environmental standards were different then. On the other side of the aisle are the activists, tort lawyers, and now the attorney general. The activists and the A.G. insist there are better and faster ways to clean it up. The tort lawyers, meanwhile, are working to put a price on the damage it might be causing: $58 billion, by one law firm’s estimate.

To see the extent of the problem, imagine a viscous tar-colored blob stretching amoebalike through the Earth. It starts where Meeker Avenue hits Newtown Creek, seeping out into the waterway. From there it extends south and steadily deeper under the Brooklyn soil, reaching a depth of about 40 feet. It’s contained from below by the groundwater in the Brooklyn-Queens aquifer: The oil is repelled by the water, so the muck “floats” on top. Like the Blob in the eponymous Steve McQueen movie, it keeps changing shape and moving—bulging south beyond the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, slithering north toward Greenpoint Avenue, ballooning west to at least Monitor Street. This black lagoon fills the nooks and crannies in the gravel, sand, and silt that characterize the soil of the area, pooling in pockets that range from just centimeters thick to natural vats that are 25 feet deep. The contaminated zone encompasses at least 55 acres of northern Brooklyn—an area roughly the size of Tribeca.

Newton Creek. (Photo: Jeff Riedel)

The thick, dark ooze is a hydrocarbon cocktail: part degraded gasoline, part fuel oil, part naphtha—the chemical from which napalm takes its name. All of it is toxic. Dig seven or eight feet down—the typical depth of a basement—and in some parts you’ll find benzene vapor, a known carcinogen, at concentrations as high as 1,560 parts per million. That’s more than 100 times the short-term (fifteen-minute) exposure limits set by OSHA for industrial workers. More recently, PCEs (perchloroethylenes) and TCEs (trichloroethylenes), suspected carcinogens that are able to dissolve in water, have been found in the underground oil plume—not to mention the Queens water supply. Whether the plume is the source of the contamination is a matter of dispute.

The good news is that the toxic goop saturating the sandy soil is at least partly capped by a semi-permeable clay layer, the natural legacy of Brooklyn’s 10,000-year-old geology. But the oil can still travel laterally. Experts advising some of the residents suing say they’ve found the stuff beyond the contaminated zone, leading them to believe the lagoon may be much larger—up to 30 million gallons—and encroaching deep into the residential side of Greenpoint. The oil companies have removed 9 million gallons so far. So depending on whose experts you believe, there could still be more than 20 million gallons of toxins sloshing around down below.

The disputed facts are the centerpiece of a lawsuit filed against ExxonMobil in 2004 by Riverkeeper and eight members of the Newtown Creek Alliance. But while Seggos has been instrumental in pushing the issue back into the public consciousness—mostly by highlighting the health risks the spill poses—he’s not the first to have noticed that something was amiss on the shores of Newtown Creek. The problem’s roots stretch back over a hundred years.

During the industrial boom of the 1890s, local activists calling themselves the Fifteenth Ward Smelling Committee paddled up the creek seeking the polluters responsible for the foul stenches wafting from the once-pristine waterway. They had plenty to choose from: glue-makers and fertilizer processors produced plenty of noxious by-product. But the oil refineries were the worst offenders: Workers transferring oil and solvents from one part of the plant to another inevitably spilled; storage tanks leaked; and the process of distilling oil to make kerosene, paraffin wax, naphtha, gasoline, and fuel oil left all sorts of junk. “If roughly 5 percent of the initial crude petroleum consumed by the refineries ended up as coke residue, gas, or other loss, as the contemporary literature suggested,” writes historian Andrew Hurley, “each of New York’s petroleum districts would have produced the equivalent of 300,000 gallons of waste material each week during the 1880s.” What couldn’t be resold or burned up was simply dumped on the ground or into the water. There were more than 50 refineries in Greenpoint in 1870, and by 1892, Standard Oil owned most of them.

At the time, Newtown Creek was one of the busiest waterways in the country, and the most hazardous: Fires routinely broke out at the refineries, sometimes burning down entire factories and leaving the chemical remains to soak into the soil. In 1919, twenty acres of the Standard Oil refinery, storing 110 million gallons of oil, went up in smoke. The oil that didn’t burn sunk into the ground. Given the natural order of things, one would expect this oil eventually to drain into the creek and escape into the ocean—but it didn’t. Instead, it slowly moved away from the creek and backed up into Brooklyn. That’s because until about 60 years ago, Brooklyn relied on its own wells for drinking water. And the borough pumped so much of its groundwater to the surface that it reversed the natural slope of its underground water table, tilting it away from the creek and toward the Brooklyn Navy Yard, near where the municipal water pumps were diligently sucking. And so the oil, slinking above the water table, flowed with it, filling the interstitial spaces where the groundwater had once been. By the forties, the aquifer was so depleted that seawater had begun to infiltrate it, making it useless. So in 1949 Brooklyn switched to water piped down from the Catskills.

One year later, on October 5, a vast underground explosion centered at Huron Street and Manhattan Avenue sent 25 manhole covers shooting into the Greenpoint sky, where they reached elevations as high as three stories. This was the first clue that anything was amiss. An investigation revealed that gasoline was leaking into the neighborhood’s sewer system, but at the time no one thought to measure the amount of manhole propellant that had not ignited. Meanwhile, with the municipal water pumps in mothballs, Brooklyn’s aquifer slowly started filling back up. By the late seventies, the water table had rebounded to its natural level. And the oil that floated on top of it reversed its flow. It now moved toward what was once again the lowest point: Newtown Creek.

Basil Seggos, the founder of the Newton Creek Alliance. (Photo: Jeff Riedel)

Then, in September 1978, a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter noticed an iridescent glaze spreading out over the narrow waterway. The oil under Greenpoint had reemerged. That sparked the first investigation into how much oil from the refineries had leaked into the ground over the years. The Coast Guard’s 1979 study is the source of the 17 million–gallon, 55-acre estimate. From the condition of the oil, the Coast Guard also figured that most of it dated to around 1948, and its high concentration of naphtha, a solvent used at the Mobil refinery until it closed in 1965 but not used by other oil companies in the area, suggested that the primary source of the spill was Mobil Oil. Mobil is a direct descendent of Standard.

In 1979, the Coast Guard recovered close to 100,000 gallons of oil and solvents from the creek, declared its job of protecting the national waterway complete, and then handed over the cleanup responsibility to the city and the state. Those authorities then pressured Mobil and the other oil companies with storage facilities in the area (Amoco, which is now BP, and Paragon Oil, which is now Chevron) to do something—anything—about the oil still surfacing in Newtown Creek. So the companies worked with the Coast Guard to create a simple system of containment booms and recovery basins to catch the oil still seeping into the water. But no one was required to do anything about the vast lake of oil underground until 1990, when Mobil formally agreed to start pumping it out—albeit very slowly. Best-case scenario: The reservoir wouldn’t be dry until 2026. And until Seggos came along, that was the most anyone could expect.

A vast underground explosion sent 25 manhole covers shooting into the Greenpoint sky.

The lawsuits that ExxonMobil is fighting right now are the result of a perfect storm of rising environmental awareness, rising real-estate values in Greenpoint, and Seggos’s diligence. He spent much of 2003 sending Freedom of Information Act requests to the DEC. He learned that, despite a danger that seemed obvious to Seggos, no one had ever tested the neighborhood to find out whether toxins from the oil had made their way up through the soil. So in 2005, Riverkeeper drilled a test hole in industrial Greenpoint and analyzed the soil itself. They found dirt so polluted with methane and benzene that had they dug it out with a shovel and tossed it on the ground, they could have been found guilty of the illegal dumping of toxic waste. Riverkeeper immediately informed the state. “They were furious,” says Seggos of the state officials. “They told us never to drill again.”

Finding carcinogens just a few feet down was, for Seggos, the smoking gun. It connected the anecdotes he was hearing about cancer clusters in Greenpoint to the blob below. But he also realized that the fight was more than a small nonprofit was equipped to handle. So he alerted the Los Angeles–based firm of Girardi & Keese, which flew in Erin Brockovich to whip up about 60 Greenpoint residents at the Swinging Sixties Senior Center. “I’m here to get people motivated,” she told the crowd in December 2005. “Nothing but good can come from this.” Marc Bern of the Manhattan-based personal-injury firm Napoli Bern Ripka apparently agreed. He also made the pilgrimage to Greenpoint, pitching to about 100 people at an American Legion hall, a short stack of retainer contracts at his side. He is claiming $58 billion in damages.

The giant numbers made the papers and focused the state’s attention on the problem: The DEC also made the trek out to Greenpoint, but the department came with representatives of the oil company at its side. In January 2006, in the packed Princess Manor catering hall on Nassau Avenue, DEC officials assured a raucous crowd that the companies were doing everything possible to clean up the neighborhood. Health studies weren’t necessary; residents had no cause to worry.

That didn’t satisfy the audience. “If this was anywhere in Manhattan, you would be acting much quicker, I’m sure,” scolded Irene Klementowicz, the president of Concerned Citizens of Greenpoint, during the question-and-answer period. But the most searing comment came at the very end: “About 30 times tonight, people have asked questions of the oil companies, and you, the state, have answered them,” a well-dressed man called out angrily. “We get the impression that the DEC works for the oil companies, not for the people,” he shouted to exclamations and applause.

The dramatic show of public outrage—not to mention an election—did the trick. When state officials returned to Greenpoint in September, it was evident that the state had been shamed into changing its tune. Lawyers from the attorney general’s office, which in June had started its own investigation, all but apologized for past inaction and assured the crowd that a brand-new team was on the job. The DEC admitted there were toxic vapors below buildings, pavement, and soil and that they could migrate into indoor air. The department implored residents to let the state test their homes for toxins. This time, the A.G.’s lawyers promised, they would make ExxonMobil fix any problems they found. “I work for Eliot Spitzer,” said Bob Hernan, an assistant attorney general who had been recently assigned to the case. “As some of you know, we’re not shy about suing people.”

Plaintiff Sebastian Pirozzi lost his leg to bone cancer at 14. (Photo: Jeff Riedel)

Two main issues form the backbone of today’s disputes over Greenpoint’s oil spill. The first is the oil’s effect on the health and safety of Greenpoint residents. Although people don’t drink the groundwater in Brooklyn anymore, in recent years scientists have come to understand that carcinogenic vapors can rise up through soil and into the air and enter buildings through cracks in their foundations. What is that doing to the people who live and work in them? Then there’s the related question of what it does to the value of the property sitting on top of all that vaporous oil.

“One of our big concerns is the danger to the community from the contamination,” says Dan Estrin, of the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic, which is representing Riverkeeper and local activists in their lawsuit. “Vapor intrusion is a major issue. Benzene is just really nasty stuff. We know if you breathe this stuff in over a period of time, you’re going to get cancer. Along with concerns about the environment and endangering wildlife, there are lots of concerns about people breathing in these vapors.”

In fact, the Williamsburg-Greenpoint area has an overall lower cancer rate than much of the rest of New York City. Still, the neighborhood has historically had among the highest incidence of certain cancers, including leukemia in children and stomach cancer in adults. (Benzene is a known cause of leukemia.) And there is anecdotal evidence of cancer clusters: Sebastian Pirozzi, who grew up in Greenpoint, lost his leg to bone cancer at 14. Several of his old neighbors have had the same disease. “It’s not a coincidence,” Pirozzi says. “It can’t be. There are many cancers that can be caused by different things, but bone cancer is different. It’s rare.” Tom Stagg, a retired detective on the border of the contaminated zone, is also convinced. He’s been tracking the number of people with cancer on the block he grew up on. So far, he’s counted 36. Twenty-five, including several children, have passed away. Stagg’s own father died of pancreatic cancer at 53. “It’s not normal,” he says. “I’m sure it’s because of the oil spill.”

The thick, dark ooze is a hydrocarbon cocktail: part degraded gasoline, part fuel oil, part naphtha—the chemical from which napalm takes its name.

ExxonMobil, in its defense, points to a layer of clay underneath the residential portion of Greenpoint that, the company argues, stops the toxic vapors from migrating to the surface. The theory is hotly disputed by other geologists, who argue that the clay is not continuous, and thus is permeable. At this point, the evidence favors ExxonMobil. Last summer, ExxonMobil-funded geologists drilled test wells in Greenpoint, seven to eight feet deep. According to their data, the soil at that level is toxic only in the industrial section, near the creek. The attorney general’s office is also looking for evidence of toxic vapor, but so far has not found benzene inside any of the 52 homes it’s tested (although it did find TCEs in at least one, and PCEs in another). There’s a third batch of tests in the works, this one paid for by attorneys for the plaintiffs: Their results aren’t in yet. However, California-based hydrogeologist Mark Zeko, who is doing that testing, is confident he’ll find the vapor he’s looking for: “Just driving by the excavations down the street, I could smell the hydrocarbons,” he says.

For now, the tests and studies and analyses are ongoing. The A.G. is in discussions with ExxonMobil and will decide whether to go forward with a lawsuit in the next few weeks. Riverkeeper’s suit is largely on hold until that’s decided. But the tort lawyers are pressing on, because even if there is no good evidence that subsoil toxins have migrated into people’s homes, there’s still real money involved: Just the fear of cancer can damage property values. There are plaintiffs like Deborah Spiroff, a 36-year-old artist who invested her life savings in a three-family townhouse on Morgan Avenue. She later learned that her house was smack in the middle of the oil plume. “You can’t tell me that my property value has not decreased,” she says. In a sense, she’s the perfect plaintiff: articulate and afraid. But here too, ExxonMobil counters forcefully. As ExxonMobil’s lawyer, Peter Sacripanti, put it: “If I told you we were going to drill down to the groundwater under Park Avenue, you wouldn’t want to drink that water. But does that affect the value of property on Park Avenue? I don’t think so.” Apartment prices grew faster in Greenpoint than anywhere else in Brooklyn last year—jumping 65 percent.

Officially, ExxonMobil claims there hasn’t been any real harm done. It’s a negotiating stance, but it seems to be backed up by the steadfast belief of ExxonMobil officials that there is no moral crime here. They are being asked to undo the actions (or inactions) of their distant predecessors, some of which date back to a time when industrial waste was barely regulated and people didn’t necessarily know its contents were toxic. After all, the aromatic and fiercely carcinogenic benzene that may now be vaporizing into Greenpoint basements was used as aftershave lotion until the early-twentieth century. Sacripanti reminded me, “A century ago, no one monitored releases or oil spills. So no one really knows where this oil came from.” ExxonMobil didn’t become the most profitable company in the country by handing tort lawyers a blank check.

THE CONTAMINATED ZONE: It's at least 55 acres— an area roughly the size of Tribeca. 1. Health Risks: The subsoil near the water is so saturated with toxins that you can light it on fire. 2. Property Damage: Carcinogenic vapor from the spill may be making its way through the soil and into people's homes. 3. Environmental Damage: Containment booms now capture the ooze that's seeping into the water, but Newton Creek is still too polluted to sustain life. Illustration by Jason Lee

But if it did, could anyone honestly fill in the dollar amount? No one really knows what the consequences of Greenpoint’s oil spill have been—or will be. It’s like the dust from 9/11, the chemicals dumped at Love Canal, the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, or even global warming. Do we ever really know their costs? Perhaps twenty years from now epidemiological studies will reveal a link between living in Greenpoint and dying of cancer. But even that is merely correlation, not causality. The result is a generalized state of fear that has come to characterize our time. It’s as if the more information we have, the more we realize how little we know for sure. So even if the impact of Greenpoint’s oil spill turns out to be fairly benign, the fear it’s already generated is an impact in itself—an anxiety that might even be monetized by clever lawyers. But in the long run, what is going to happen to Greenpoint will probably be similar to what has already happened to that other great dumping ground, New York Harbor. The fish have returned, but they’re still not safe to eat. Mercury, PCBs, and other poisons still remain entombed in the riverbed, slowly leaching into the environment.

Twelve years after ExxonMobil finally completed its oil-sucking infrastructure, the company says it’s Hoovered 7 million gallons out of the ground. In February, I took a tour of the extraction system—the elaborate maze of underground pipes, eleven petroleum recovery wells, fifteen storage tanks, and 200 groundwater monitors set out across Greenpoint. It’s a pretty impressive setup, a “dual-pump free-product recovery system” that works like this: A groundwater pump extracts water from the aquifer, lowering the water table and creating a “cone of depression.” Then the “free” oil—meaning oil that has escaped the refinery’s clutches—drains into the “cone” to get pumped out and ultimately re-refined, while the groundwater extracted in the process is filtered and discharged into Newtown Creek.

The containment system designed to recover the oil that continues to leak into the creek is less impressive. Just as the Coast Guard discovered in 1978, and Seggos rediscovered in 2002, there is still a rainbow sheen swirling atop the water—but now it’s lassoed by what looks like a deflated yellow plastic tube snaking its way along the shore, and a short black fencelike barrier floating beyond that. Oil absorbers, like a chain of floating white socks, bob on the surface just behind them. They’ve turned muck-brown from the petroleum.

Critics like Seggos want ExxonMobil to step up its pumping in order to create cones of depression large enough to reverse the oil spill’s direction of flow and stop the seepage into Newtown Creek completely. ExxonMobil’s experts disagree, saying that the current setup works just fine. Furthermore, they argue, there is a law of diminishing returns at work: The greater the number of cones of depression created, the less efficient any single cone gets. (Right now, though, that question is moot, because ExxonMobil has temporarily shut down the whole pumping operation after the attorney general claimed the company wasn’t sufficiently cleaning the groundwater before discharging it.)

At the expected rate of pumping, it will take at least twenty years to suck out the rest of Exxon’s “free product” from the ground. And even then, there will still be the problem of the soil left behind: a layer of sandy earth saturated with benzene, toluene, xylenes, methane, tetrachloroethene, and the like. There’s another pumping technique—“air sparging”—that’s proved to reduce benzene and other vaporous contaminants. Air is injected below the saturated soil in order to vaporize trapped hydrocarbons, and is then vacuumed out through strategically placed wells. It’s very expensive, but ExxonMobil argues that it’s not using that technology because it’s not the right method. “Vapor extraction is not appropriate at this time because we don’t want to leave a residual,” says Barry Wood, a spokesman. “Our objective is to first recover as much product as technically possible.”

The truth is that it will be impossible to remove all of the nasty chemicals lurking under Greenpoint. In 1979, the Coast Guard’s engineers concluded that only about 50 percent of the oil and solvents from this spill could ever be cleaned up, though another 20 percent might dissolve or wash away over time. That would leave 30 percent of it trapped under the neighborhood forever. Of course, remediation technology has improved in the past 30 years. But the only way to really scrub the contaminated zone is to dig the whole mess up and replace it with fresh dirt. And you can’t really do that in Greenpoint without condemning the neighborhood.