Modern credit card agreements: 29 pages of “tricks and traps”

Elizabeth Warren, the TARP Oversight Chair was on the Rachel Maddow's show discussing the aggressive anti-consumer practices of credit card companies, and warning that the credit card industry is about to try to kill federal efforts to regulate the industry. She reminds us that in 1980 a credit card agreement was only about a page long. Now credit card agreements are 30 pages long, full of "tricks and traps."

MADDOW: Are you worried that the [credit card] industry's going to be about to kill [credit card reform legislation] in the crib? Reporting is that it's their top priority to get rid of it. WARREN: My gosh! I have to tell you, it's like they're stampeding in the halls already in Washington. the Gucci loafers. These guys have built up a huge war chest, they've been interviewing public relations firms to see who can come up with the next Harry And Louise ad to explain to the American people why they're better off with credit cards that nobody can read, hundreds of pages of mortgage documents that nobody can read...the idea is you're better off with how things are...forget all that stuff the happened over the last few years. And we promise to keep things up just like we did before. I just can't believe they're trying to sell that to the American people.
You can read much more on this topic at Jason Linkins' post at Huffpo's new Lobby Blog.

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Good enough is good enough

I’m enjoying my newly and consciously chosen path: things don’t need to be perfect. Not that I ever really was a perfectionist. But especially when it comes to consumer purchases, I’m much less a perfectionist than I ever was. Here are a couple cases in point. The rear (electric) window of our ten year old car no longer goes up and down. My immediate thought was to have it fixed. I got an estimate: $270. Gad. My wife and I decided that we can do without that window going up and down (even though my daughters (who sit in the back) would prefer that it work. $270 is a lot of allowance money. I asked the repair guy how much it would cost to make the window permanently stay up (because it kept sliding down). He said that he could do it for $100. I turned down that offer, went home and glued it shut. Far from perfect, though quite satisfactory. A friend visited today. The lock on her car’s passenger-side door was broken. She said: “Passengers can get into the car on the other side.” She added that not fixing minor things is a big time saver. Why make appointments and burn hours fixing something that isn’t really a priority? These car stories won’t resonate for may people. I’ve known dozens of people who freak out if there is even a single little scratch on their car. Nor would they ever try to fix it themselves. They will run it to the dealer, especially if someone else was at fault. A man accidentally collided with our other car 6 months ago. I suggested that I find a body shop that could bang it into shape, but said that I didn’t want it to be “like new.” After all, the car is 8 years old. I found a shop that straightened out the bends and sprayed over the scrapes for $400, instead of getting a “like new” job that would have cost $1,500. It’s good enough for me. There are days when I intend to get x number of things done. I’ve found that my life goes much more smoothly if I let some of those things drop off the list, unaccomplished.

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What’s in a Type?

One of my peeves against anti-evolutionists is those moderates who fully accept gene drift and mutations for short term changes (breeds, "micro-evolution") but not longer term changes (species, types, "macro-evolution"). Try to pin one of those people down on a definition of species and type, and one can always show them an observed example of something that crossed the line, or else multiple species that are obviously different but on the same side of their line. But this post is broader than that. For example, Pluto was a planet. Everyone knew that. Recently it was demoted to dwarf-planet. There are groups still dedicated to its reinstatement as a planet, like the Society for the Preservation of Pluto as a Planet. My presumption is, because that's what they were taught in their youth, therefore it's "As God Intended". Nothing changed in the sky, nor in our understanding of how things work. But a category changed and our world shook. Well, at least the world of those of us who noticed. What of moons? An excellent article is here: Meet our Second Moon! We now have two moons? And in my lifetime, the origin of our main moon changed from an unlikely captured or even less likely co-congealed object to a reasonable and most probably ejected one. I remember being disturbed when the moon count around Jupiter went from 12 (the 19th century standard) to 63 (care of Voyager etc). The count varies depending on how you define "moon". One has to be broadly accepting of both size and ballistic classification to accept 3753 Cruithne as a moon of the Earth, but it is there. Speaking of the moon, here is an incredible new way to see our moon up close (with pan and zoom) taken from ground based cameras. Things change. As I have mentioned many times on this blog, most people are hung up on the misconception that words accurately define things. The thinking that, if you have a name for it, then you understand the thing. You get the collector's fallacy: The confusion of the joy of matching names to things with the understanding of the things themselves. Knowing the names of thousands of birds (or bugs or species or stamps or diseases) and accurately matching them to the subjects is useful. But it is not complete in terms of understanding the similarities and differences. That is what is meant by the quote "Biology without evolution is but stamp collecting". One cannot understand things without also understanding the relationship between things (species, astronomical objects, populations, etc) and knowing the latest (most complete, so far) underlying set of theories (scientific definition, not vernacular). Humans are better than most other creatures at recognizing patterns. We regularly see patterns in random observations: Pareidolia. Any set of words will be an incomplete definition of any object. Defining a class of things is even more nebulous. Do species change over time? Certainly, given either enough time or a precise enough definition. How many moons are in the solar system? Good question. Define "moon", and show me the latest ballistic data on the 100,000 largest object so far discovered inside of the Oort Cloud. By the time I have an answer, something will have changed.

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Longitudinal study tells us what makes people happy

What makes people happy? On quite a few occasions, I've posted at DI with regard to ideas that I learned through reading various books and articles (a search for "happiness" in the DI search box will give you dozens of articles). What does that reveal about me, I wonder? Today, I had the pleasure of reading an extraordinarily thoughtful article on this same topic: "What Makes Us Happy?" by Joshua Wolf Shenk appears in the June 2009 edition of The Atlantic. You'll find an abridged edition of the article here. Shenk's article is anchored by the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest running longitudinally study of mental and physical well-being in history. It was begun in 1937 in order to study "well-adjusted Harvard sophomores (all male), and it has followed its subject for more than 70 years." The study was originally known as "The Grant Study," in that it was originally funded by W.T. Grant. Despite all odds, the study has survived to this day--many of the subjects are now in their upper 80's. Along the way, the study was supplemented with a separate study launched in 1937 dedicated to studying juvenile delinquents in inner-city Boston (run by criminologists Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck). You'll enjoy Joshua Shenk's work on many levels. He writes with precision, providing you with a deep understanding of the featured longitudinal studies. You will also enjoy his seemingly effortless ability to spin engaging stories (there are dozens of stories within his article) and his exceptional skill at crafting highly readable prose. I'm writing this post as a dare, then. Go forth and read Shenk's article and I guarantee that you will be thoroughly enriched and appreciative. The Atlantic also provided a video interview of George Vaillant, now 74, who since 1967 has dedicated his career to running and analyzing the Grant Study. As you'll see from Shenk's article, Vaillant is an exceptional storyteller himself. The Atlantic article, then, might remind you of one of those Russian dolls, and that is a storyteller telling the story of another storyteller who tell stories of hundreds of other storytellers. For more than 40 years, Vaillant has not only gathered reams of technical data, but he has poured his energy into interviewing the subjects and their families and melding all of that data into compellingly detailed vignettes of the subjects. Telling stories is not ultimately what the study was supposed to be about, of course, and Vaillant also tells us what those stories mean for the rest of us. Truly, what makes people happy? Vaillant offers answers that you will be tempted to immediately apply to your own situation. Vaillant has a lot to say about "adaptations," how people respond to the challenges they face in life. As a Shenk explains,

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I am judgmental

There's too many people out there actually get to know them all. While I'm walking down the street, or through a park or through a store, I pass by hundreds of faces and there is no way that I could possibly have enough time to get to know all of these people. In the grocery store, for example, I might pass four or five different people while walking around a single corner of an aisle. There's no time to get to know all these people and I find it impossible to walk past them without conjuring up an instant impression of who they are. Therefore, I am confessing that I am consciously and unremittingly judgmental. It's not that I categorize people by "race" or gender. That would be stupid, given that there's so many different kinds of people of every "race" or either gender. Nor do I judge people by what seems to be their social economic status. I know many people who work blue-collar jobs who are as smart as anyone I've ever met. I have friends who drive old cars when they could afford new cars. Or who wear unpretentious clothing by careful conscious design. I know people who walk, take public transportation or bicycle because they prefer to get around that way. I know people who shop frugally even though they could afford almost anything at all. I know people who are sharp as can be, even though they don't sound like it when they speak. Therefore, how is it that it is possible to be judgmental in good conscience?

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