exposing the timeshare sales pitch

When you buy a house or car, you have access to four invaluable resources: personal experience, third-party counsel, competitive bids, and time. From childhood you’ve grown up among home and car owners. As you enter the market you glean wisdom from family and friends, from magazines or real estate agents. Competing offers lend you a sense of fair prices and how the market works. You take time to make a reasoned decision.

Timeshares are similar to homes because they’re real estate (albeit an unusual type), and similar to cars in terms of cost. But when people buy timeshares, they generally do so during a sales presentation in which they enjoy none of the resources above. They lack personal experience with timeshare ownership, they’re unable to consult third parties for advice, they have no competitive bids on the table to compare, and they’re expected to accept an offer on the spot.

Considering the amount of money involved and its potential long-term impact on personal finances, a more rational decision-making process is in order.

Over years of enduring timeshare presentations in exchange for free or reduced lodging, gift cards and other rewards, my wife and I have enjoyed picking apart the following threads common to all of them. Bluegreen, Fairfield — the methods are the same:

cell phone signals linked to male infertility

The good news is, overpopulation will no longer be a threat.

The bad news is, if you’re a surgeon who specializes in vasectomies, it’s time to find another field.

Start your denial engines, everyone:

DailyMail: Men who use mobile phones face increased risk of infertility

Men who use mobile phones could be risking their fertility, warn researchers.

A new study shows a worrying link between poor sperm and the number of hours a day that a man uses his mobile phone.

Those who made calls on a mobile phone for more than four hours a day had the worst sperm counts and the poorest quality sperm, according to results released yest at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine annual meeting in New Orleans.

Doctors believe the damage could be caused by the electromagnetic radiation emitted by handsets or the heat they generate.

open letter to grocery stores

I can tell you easily enough what I’ll be buying in the next year. Fifty gallons of whole milk and of soy milk. Fifty boxes of Frosted Mini Wheats. Fifty loaves of bread. Thirty bunches of bananas. Thirty pounds of ground beef. Thirty pounds of sliced ham and of sliced turkey. Thirty dozen eggs.

There’s no mystery about any of this. In the next year I’m going to need food, and a lot of that food is always the same.

So why can’t I buy in bulk?

montezuma’s continuing revenge

Eventually we will all wake up and realize that smoking is a terrible revenge delivered to us by the Native Americans in return for the theft of their land. That day is coming. Smoking’s realities will far outweigh its attractions, and finally it will be considered about as acceptable as public nose picking.

Tobacco companies dread that day, of course — and they’re not above using deception and exploitation to delay its arrival.

Consider, for example, the fact that cigarette manufacturers have increased the amount of nicotine in cigarrettes by ten percent over the last six years:

wedding splurge

She was catering her niece’s wedding, and she brought in Chick-Fil-A.

My wife and I were helping prepare the food. The Chick-Fil-A was easy enough: just set the platter at the end of the buffet and pry off the lid. We whispered to each other about the questionable etiquette of serving fast food as the main meat at a wedding reception, but it was already done.

Then the guests arrived. They picked their way down the buffet and inevitably, one by one, reached the final platter, looked at each other, and said in disbelief, “This is — this is Chick-Fil-A! It’s Chick-Fil-A!” Then their fingers shoved aside the vegetables and cheeses to make more room on their plates, and they grabbed chicken by the fistful, as if they were getting away with something.

We had to keep bringing out more Chick-Fil-A platters. You’d have thought those nuggets were pure gold.

double-take at the pump

Gas was $1.25 a gallon in Maryland. We wondered how we’d ever afford it.

In North Carolina we’d been enjoying 85 cents a gallon, and could find even lower prices when we slipped across the border to South Carolina. Our cheapest fill-up was at 69 cents a gallon. This was 2001.

paying not to watch movies

Yes, there’s such a thing as too much entertainment.

The article below is an intriguing read on motivation and movie-watching, especially as it provides Netflix-derived data on a phenomenon we’re all familiar with: you know you should watch a movie X (Amistad, Hotel Rwanda, etc.), but you’re simply never in the mood:

the pseudonymous mask

Gil Schwartz is a corporate executive at CBS. Stanley Bing is a Fortune columnist who satirizes corporate life.

And as the world discovered a few years ago, Gil Schwartz is Stanley Bing.

Move over, Scott Adams — the Pointy-Haired Boss has his own story to tell:

pandora’s database

Same old same old: Bush is evil Bush is the devil Bush needs to be beheaded yadda yadda yadda.

Bloggers are funny. Is the same thing really worth saying four million times? ("YES!" the resounding throng cries out. "Killthebeast cuthisthroat spillhisblood …")

Here's a different take on the story of the day. But first, the report:

CNN: Bush says US not 'trolling through personal lives'

President Bush said Thursday the government is "not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans" with a reported program to create a massive database of U.S. phone calls.

buying gas for the future

This is just too smart:

CNN: Gas for two bucks? Go to the fuel bank

Most motorists are feeling the pain as gasoline creeps toward, or over, $3 a gallon — but not Art Altrichter.

"This feels pretty good!" Altrichter said as he filled the tank of his Ford F-150 pickup for $2.03 a gallon on Thursday, when the average here was $2.73. "Right now, to be a few pennies over $2, when it's as high as it is? That's a real deal."

A year ago, the retired milk truck driver bought 500 gallons of gas at First Fuel Banks, locking it in at the then-current price of $2.03 a gallon. He taps that reserve whenever gas rises above that mark. If the retail price drops below $2.03, he can leave his reserve alone and buy elsewhere.

a lesson in corporate babble

What Baltimore Gas & Electric says, in a pamphlet received in the mail yesterday:

What is electric deregulation and how does it affect me?

A number of states — including Maryland — have changed the laws and regulations that govern the electric industry. These changes are part of deregulation. This doesn't mean there are no regulations. It means competition and customer choice has occurred on the electric supply side of the industry.

That's the entire, unedited question and answer. Deregulation will affect me by … well … by the occurrence of competition and customer choice, apparently.

Now here's what BG&E really means, from a Baltimore Sun article published 8 Mar 06:

plagiarism has its price

Update on there's always another plagiarist: Kaavya Viswanathan has lost her book deal. Her current book, already being pulled off the shelves, will not be republished. Further, her newspaper articles are being investigated for plagiarism:

CNN: Harvard author faces further allegations of borrowing

A Harvard University student's "chick lit" novel has been permanently withdrawn and her two-book deal canceled, publisher Little, Brown and Co. announced Tuesday, as allegations of literary borrowing proliferated against Kaavya Viswanathan's "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life."

"Little, Brown and Company will not be publishing a revised edition of 'How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life' by Kaavya Viswanathan, nor will we publish the second book under contract," Michael Pietsch, Little Brown's senior vice president and publisher, said in a statement.

virtual atm

Imagine an ATM card that pulls cold hard cash money out of your Monopoly winnings.

That's not far off from what the intrepid folks at Project Entropia have cooked up. Last November seedlings reported on a real estate investor who spent $100,000 real dollars on a virtual space resort.

Now earnings in this online game can be converted into real dollars at any ATM machine:

BBC: Cash card taps virtual game funds

A real world cash card that allows gamers to spend money earned in a virtual universe has been launched.

Gamers can use the card at cash machines around the world to convert virtual dollars into real currency.

volume wins

Low prices through high volume. That's the winning strategy Apple is using in online music sales — and despite their objections, somehow the record labels have agreed:

CNN: Apple wins iTunes pricing battle

Apple Computer said that it has renewed contracts with the four largest record companies, ensuring that songs will still be sold at 99 cents each, according to a news report Tuesday.

The record companies had been pushing Apple to allow different pricing for tracks, especially the ability to charge higher prices for new material from top-selling artists, said the Financial Times.

Everybody wins. Apple stays in the lead, record label profits soar, musicians compete on a level playing field, and consumers continue to enjoy unprecedented access to music.

Gotta love Apple.

there’s always another plagiarist

Yet another plagiarism scandal has hit the news — this time over young adult fiction. In the tradition of should i thank these people?, I would like to express my professional appreciation to Kaavya Viswanathan for serving as a real-world example for my high school students:

Rediff.com: Kaavya Viswanathan takes a break from Harvard

Harvard University does not know how to deal with its student Kaavya Viswanathan just yet.

Viswanathan, who was born in Chennai and raised in Scotland before her parents migrated to America, is the most scrutinised author and student in the US following her admission that she had 'internalized' some passages for her novel from two-bestselling novels she read when she was in high school.