I am not making this up

Yesterday I was waiting in the customer service line at Price Chopper to buy a 10-trip bus pass, since the fare was just raised to $1.50 and I never seem to have any change. Not to mention 10 trips cost only $13. The woman in front of me, who I would guess was from Trinidad or Guyana, was sending a $650 Western Union money order to Lagos, Nigeria ($689 total cost, including service fee). It was a very slow transaction.

I spent the time trying to think of any possible reason this deal might be legitimate, and whether ethics or courtesy demanded that I chime in. Of course, the answers are none and no. At the end she asked the cashier not to tell anyone she had been there. The cashier returned a look of extreme puzzlement, raised her palms, and said "none of my business". Since I made no such pledge, I'm sharing my story.

That's two posts in one day!

Faking Suicide

Samuel Israel III is missing. He may have jumped off a bridge or faked his own suicide. His car was found on the bridge, keys still inside. He wrote "suicide is painless" on the windshield. He left a bottle of pills in the car. This is complete overkill. I think the removal of any two of these four clues would have more convincing. For example; car not on bridge,nothing scrawled on windshield, but keys in car and bottle of pills in glovebox.

Sub Prime Mortgages

A few years back, I was living in Pennsylvania, working at a community college and in the process of buying my first house. The offer process was irritating as hell, the owner wanted to raise the purchase price and pay my closing costs and do a number of shifting balances of things, and I was refusing, and people were getting irritated with me.
Then came the mortgage brokers.
The first one arrived, late, and pulled out a wad of papers, including a credit report. He started by shaking his head.
"Ok, you have some late cell phone bills. I can help you, but we have to clear these things up."
He leaned back in the chair and folded his hands in front of his face and stared at me.
"I don't have a cell phone."
He ignored me and kept talking. He set up his "best plan" and then his "second best plan". The first was an adjustable rate mortgage (so my payments would be so low, he said, 200 dollars a month!) with a second mortgage for ten grand with some cash back feature "for all the repairs you'll obviously need."
The second plan was also and ARM with a second mortgage but this one was zero down! I'd pay a little more in the long run, but probably not, that's so far down the line he was sure, he said, I wouldn't be living in a 'starter home' at that point. I could do this tomorrow! Please just sign here! He handed me a pen and I refused.
I got the guy out of my house and called my brother Frank.
"Classic sub-prime lending," he told me.
"Frank, it's like charging part of the loan on a credit card. That's insane," I told him.
"Well, understandable," he said. But then he added, "For comparison's sake, though, interest rates in the 1980's were higher."
I was determined not to be sub-primed into eternity. The seller was getting irritated, the realtor told me. She wanted my loans to be done. I just needed to get on with this. I could be sued. I needed to find a mortgage.

The next loan guy pulled up to my apartment in a shiny silver VW Bug and brought in his fancy satchel; we sat down at my kitchen table. He set up a pile of papers and pulled out his orange calculator and set it on the table. I pulled out my trusty TI-83 plus graphing calculator and set it on the table with a thud. He laughed. "What is that?" he said.
"Scientific calculator," I replied.
He started tapping on the calculator. He proudly showed me the number on the screen: 201.40.
"That can be your payment!"
I asked him to show me how he arrived at such a number.
"Why wouldn't you want to pay 200 dollars a month for a home? You pay so much more now for this... this small apartment."
"Because in five years I'd be paying over a thousand a month and I don't want that."
He replied quickly, "But who is to say where you'll be in five years? Certainly you'll be in a better job, making more money! Then you can just sell your house and buy and even better house and guess what? Pay 200 dollars a month for that one! And that one might have a pool! And be fancier!"
I showed him the door.
I'm not in this crisis they are voting on now and and am not sure how I feel about it. Thoughts?

The Secret

My employer recently opened a Wellness Center. (Considering my employer is the state Department of Health, this is arguably several decades behind the curve). There have been a series of lunchtime discussions and activities related to dieting, stress relief, aging gracefully, tai chi, and the like. None of this caught my attention until I saw a listing for The Secret: Come see what the excitement is all about!

In case you're not in on The Secret, it is the most audacious of our contemporary cultural snake-oil pitches, a book that promises absolutely everything effortlessly, cloaked in a Da Vinci Code-style conspiracy theory. This is the path to success THEY don't want you to know about!

It has something to do with your brain waves interacting with everyone else's brain waves so as to bring you whatever it is you wish for. Lots of jargon from both classical and quantum physics are thrown about haphazardly, along with quotes from "Ph.D."s and "M.D."s. Need money, health, love? Just tune your mental frequencies.

Seeing a chance to play my own very small version of Clarence Darrow or John E. Jones III, I decided to attend. In truth, I'm not that argumentative by nature. Ever since taking on the entire first grade in a debate over the existence of Santa Claus - and losing - I've known there is no effective counterargument to "it's magic". But I work for a scientific institution. We prosecute quacks and faith healers, not hire them.

In addition to myself, there were eight people at the discussion. All were women, and all but one older. Several declared themselves devoted fans of the book, others merely curious. One woman who seemed somewhat confused said that she was just trying to find the exercise room she had heard about. Not the same as a Wellness Center, not at all.

The fans of the book told stories about how The Secret had helped them personally. One said she was trying to launch a business selling handmade handbags, and The Secret was bringing her steady contacts and potential customers. Another said The Secret had reduced the amount of junk mail and bills, while increasing her personal mail and gifts. Yet another talked about how she no longer worried about finding a parking space, because all she had to do was visualize an empty one.

This was even weirder than I expected, but I held my tongue until my turn came around. I introduced myself as a skeptic, though as soon as this word left my mouth it sounded horribly wimpy, as if all I needed was just a bit more evidence. My plan was to focus on just one point relevant both to public health and to my own expertise: cancer. I said I thought it was dangerous to be promoting the idea that positive thinking was an adequate substitute for medical prevention and treatment, particularly considering where we worked.

"Well, that's one way of interpreting the book," replied the discussion leader, the one with the special parking powers, "but the book doesn't say that exactly. Have you even read it?"

I had foreseen this technicality, so I took a calculated risk. Flipping through the book, it took me about fifteen seconds to find the section on how The Secret meant not needing to see your doctor again. It helped that the book is thin and the type is large. I said that the chances of spontaneous remission of untreated terminal cancer were on the order of one in a million.

"Ah, but they aren't zero, are they?"

I conceded that they were not. If you like those odds, I'll give them to you. You can't argue with magic.

For one person, the author, The Secret has worked pretty much as planned. It was number one on the best seller lists for months, and even now, a year later, it's #4 at Amazon.com.

Amish miracle heaters

This is a remarkable scam even by the feeble journalistic standards of Parade magazine: Amish-made portable fireplaces without any of the "flames, fumes, smells, ashes, or mess" of a real fireplace. And they're absolutely free if you call within 48 hours!

Needless to say, they are ordinary Chinese-made electric space heaters encased in a wooden box with flame artwork, and they're closer to $400 with shipping. Since thousands of customers will be fleeced by this offer in the weeks ahead, look for increased traffic on the blog as they begin to look for answers.