Credit-Card Therapists

Fantastic article about the techniques credit-card companies and banks use to collect debt, and how they use information gleaned from credit-card use to increase their profits -

Santana had actually already sought permission from the bank to settle for as little as $10,000. It’s an open secret that if a debtor is willing to wait long enough, he can probably get away with paying almost nothing, as long as he doesn’t mind hurting his credit score. So Santana knew he should jump at the offer. But as an amateur psychologist, Santana was eager to make his own diagnosis — and presumably boost his own commission.

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” Santana told the man. Santana’s classes had focused on Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a still-popular midcentury theory of human motivation. Santana had initially put this guy on the “love/belonging” level of Maslow’s hierarchy and built his pitch around his relationship with his ex-wife. But Santana was beginning to suspect that the debtor was actually in the “esteem” phase, where respect is a primary driver. So he switched tactics.

“You spent this money,” Santana said. “You made a promise. Now you have to decide what kind of a world you want to live in. Do you want to live around people who break their promises? How are you going to tell your friends or your kids that you can’t honor your word?”

The man mulled it over, and a few days later called back and said he’d pay $12,000.

“Boom, baby!” Santana shouted as he put down the phone. “It’s all about getting inside their heads and understanding what they need to hear,” he told me later. “It really feels great to know I’m helping people in pain.”

Shakespeare at Bowl

Someone, god bless their soul, decided to rewrite all of The Big Lebowski as a Shakespearean play with fantastic results -

On our most holy Sabbath I am sworn
To keep tradition, form and ceremony.
The seventh and the last day rests the Jew;
I labour not, nor ride in chariot,
Nor handle gold, nor even play the cook,
And sure as Providence I do not roll.

It's a veritable treasure trove of possible Facebook status updates sure to amuse and confuse.

Book 1, Changing My Mind

Finished Zadie Smith's book of personal essays, Changing My Mind, yesterday. Thought it was fantastic in the way personal essays can be fantastic, i.e. able to explore subjects the reader may not be familiar with while keeping them engaged with the questions being explored. Having never read Their Eyes Were Watching God, I was still drawn to Smith uncovering what it means to personally identify with a book or her elucidation on what soulfulness is -

sorrowful feeling transformed into something beautiful, creative and self-renewing, and - as it reaches a pitch - ecstatic. It is an alchemy of pain...to be soulful is to follow and fall in line with a feeling, to go where it takes you and not to go against the grain.

She has an essay on the many voices of Obama that is online here, a piece on the death of her father and comedy here, and an article on E.M. Forster here.

My favorite essay in the book is the last on David Foster Wallace and Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. I've read it twice now and each time came away with a deeper appreciation of not only DFW, but also of Smith, who has the ability to make DFW more interesting, and the ability to write criticism that is art in its own right and not in relation to what it is commenting on. It's long, but anyone who enjoys DFW should set aside a little over an hour and go read this at Barnes & Noble. It's worth it.

Something I Like

That I came upon by accident

Fictional Reality

I'm about half-way through the 3hr documentary "Los Angeles Plays Itself", which is a video-essay of the city of Los Angeles using 191 movie clips to show the evolution and degradation of Los Angeles.



The picture above is of Bunker Hill in Los Angeles. LAPI documents the deterioration of the neighborhood from its idyllic family area of the 1940's in films like Shockproof, to the noirs of the 1950s like Kiss Me Deadly, with the area ending up as the post-apocalyptic wasteland of The Omega Man. It also shows the history of LA landmarks like the Pan-Pacific from its height hosting sporting events and presidential speeches and its appearance in movies like Suspense and Johnny Eager to its destruction, which is on display in Xanadu until, in the movie, it is resurrected as a roller disco. From this -



to this -



Thom Anderson, the creator, is real upset about the portrayal of his city and his bitterness really adds to his narration. Worth seeing if you can find a copy.

Texas Textbooks

Check out this article about the successful movement to alter school textbooks in Texas -

The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan...

In the run-up to the 1994 election, Leininger’s political action committee, Texans for Governmental Integrity, sent out glossy flyers suggesting that one Democratic incumbent—a retired Methodist schoolteacher and grandmother of five—was a pawn of the “radical homosexual lobby” who wanted to push steroids and alcohol on children and advocated in-class demonstrations on “how to masturbate and how to get an abortion!”

...

The ultraconservatives argued that they were too light on basics like grammar and too heavy on reading comprehension and critical thinking. “This critical-thinking stuff is gobbledygook,” grumbled David Bradley...

I can't find these people too funny considering the implications this could hold for other states -

And when it comes to textbooks, what happens in Texas rarely stays in Texas. The reasons for this are economic: Texas is the nation’s second-largest textbook market and one of the few biggies where the state picks what books schools can buy rather than leaving it up to the whims of local districts, which means publishers that get their books approved can count on millions of dollars in sales. As a result, the Lone Star State has outsized influence over the reading material used in classrooms nationwide, since publishers craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers. As one senior industry executive told me, “Publishers will do whatever it takes to get on the Texas list.”

...

This was not unusual: while publishers occasionally produced Texas editions, in most cases changes made to accommodate the state appeared in textbooks around the country—a fact that remains true to this day.

The article explains that the influence of Texas has historically been balanced by the "liberal-pull of California", but California won't be buying any new textbooks until 2014 because of the state's budget crisis.

More David Simon

For those who thought the Vice interview with David Simon is too short is the original 79pg proposal for The Wire. I haven't read it yet, but I can tell you that McNulty is listed as McArdle through the entire thing, which would have completely ruined the show had they not changed the name.

And here's McSweeney's transcript of David Simon's commentary for He's Just Not That Into You:

You can decide for yourself whether or not the title cards should be there. I'm not sure I'm fully decided about them. He's Just Not That Into You is really about subtext. There's lots going on under the surface. The characters talk incessantly about whether or not they should get married, so what are they not talking about? Bingo—they're not talking about the fact that the local media and advertising industry is collapsing, or that no one is paying any attention to the changing demography of Baltimore. There's a humor and a pathos in that omission. I think it adds a desperately needed levity to a few of the more cynical exchanges. It's almost like Greek tragedy, that in their blindness to their surrounding community these characters are digging each other's graves. Where's the collective guilt here? It's completely absent, and that's what should distress you, not the resolution of the crisis in their relationship.

The BAC limit

A South Dakota woman blew .708 last month. In March of last year, a Poland man lived to forget the tale of how he had a BAC of 1.23.

The instructor in my driver's ed. course told us of a man who lived in the Wisconsin northwoods who drank a half-liter of whiskey every morning for breakfast. This man, according to my instructor, could no longer bring his BAC below the legal limit without risk of dying so he got an equivalent of a doctor's note saying the police could not arrest him for merely having a BAC over .08. I doubt this is true, but I like to believe it - otherwise my excuse, "I'll die if I stop drinking!", would sound ridiculous.

Counting Books

Keith Law read 86 books last year. Since my mom bought me a Kindle for Xmas I need a different way to advertise my reading habits then reading at Starbucks and Barnes & Noble so I'll keep track of all the books I read this year on the blog. We'll see if this goal can keep my interest long enough for me to reach the double-digits.

Currently reading:
The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons
Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman
Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith

Any suggestions?

Prospective Superheroes

Tape Measure Man -

Watermelon Smile

Most uncomfortable Youtube...

Depression Christmas

murderhiking

Funniest thing I've seen in the past hour -

Doin' Dirt Is A Part Of Livin'

I skim off the top like a politician. 2 mash-ups using Dead Prez -





It surprises me that rap-rock sucked so bad cause some of my favorite remixes use indie rock as the beat. I haven't spent much time listening to it yet, but Blakroc (the guys from The Black Keys with rappers like Q-Tip, RZA, Raekwon, Mos Def...) might turn out to be an exception.