The infamous “they” say there is a sucker born every minute. What they don’t say is that every 30 seconds a scammer is born. As a writer, the majority of scams I face are writing and poetry scams that come in the form of publishing contests. Right now, the biggest poetry scam going can be found at Poetry.com—a fraudulent publishing company that turns 100% of the submissions into ‘semi-finalists’. Poetry.com’s... 

UPDATE: Winning speeches were selected on February 22, 2007. …so many worthy entries that picking just one winner seemed as churlish as Judi Dench’s role in Notes on a Scandal. So the staff at NPR.org picked five winners, along with a few runners-up, and recorded them reading their entries. … winners captured the spirit of the nominees’ characters, if not always their accents. The speeches were limited to 200 words,... 

Here’s a cool new contest from CBS. If you had 15 seconds to tell the world whatever you wanted to, what would you say? Limited time only. Winners will be announced Super Bowl Sunday, so hurry! Registration for the 15 Seconds contest is free. Would-be hopeful are being asked to submit 15-second videos to YouTube.com through the CBS.com website – or on YouTube.com directly, as long as participants read, accept and follow the...