What Atheist Do I Be?

Jim just took this quiz and posted his results, so I figured I'd do it, too.

I take serious issue with scoring "33% theist"!

You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future. Scientific Atheist 75% Angry Atheist 50% Apathetic Atheist 50% Agnostic 42% Militant Atheist 33% Theist 33% Spiritual Atheist 17% What kind of atheist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Nouveau Riche University

This morning I attended an introductory meeting (a.k.a., "sales pitch") for the "real estate investment college", Nouveau Riche (NRU). I had stumbled upon the company, quite randomly, a few months ago while perusing some of the local groups at Meetup.com, but until recently I just couldn't bring myself to take the time to check them out in any detail.

The first red flag to jump out about NRU, though, is that its founder, Jim Piccolo, was also the founder of the MLM company TruDynamics (a.k.a., Travel Dynamics). In my book, anyone who starts a network marketing company is not a trustworthy individual.

There's always a chance, though, that a person can reform, and I wasn't really doing much with my Saturday morning anyway, so I figured "what the hell?" and headed to one of their twice-weekly meetings. When I arrived I could tell immediately I was in the right place, since two of the cars parked there had huge wraparound signs on them, asking "Did you make $30K last month?" and, if you didn't, suggesting to call the supplied phone number.

Much of the content of the meeting itself can be found here, including the actual Powerpoint slide show used by the presenter. Several things struck me about the meeting, though. There were roughly 15 people there, including myself, but I'd say 10 or 11 of them had already either purchased the R2E2 or paid the full "Regents" tuition. This struck me as odd, but one thing they did seem to stress - especially when 4 of the attendees stood up to tell their own success stories since joining (one of the 4 strongly implied that her 19-year-old daughter would be skipping "regular" college and just attending NRU - yikes!) - was NRU's "community" aspect. Supposedly you won't ever be left out in the cold if you join up. I'm guessing many of the people there were enjoying the community? (Yes, it's true that at least some of the people were probably there in hopes of earning a commission on a sale.)

Another thing they stressed was the Investor Concierge service, which sounds pretty cool, but, as this website points out, the example property shown in the presentation used suspicious numbers, such as a 5.25% interest-only loan. For reasons I'll get to in a moment, I strongly suspect the Investor Concierge has a chronic shortage of properties - profitable or not (I'd suspect mostly not) - but a look at one of the "Last 20 Sold" houses using the site's guest account revealed something even more suspicious. Here's a screenshot of a Phoenix AZ property listing on the Investor Concierge site (click images for full size):


Here's the same property's details from the records of Transnation Title:


The discrepancies ought to be patently obvious. The Arizona Regional Multiple Lising Service corroborates Transnation Title's data (big surprise there!). No recent sale of 3302 W Acoma has taken place - at $139K or any other price. I'll let you draw your own conclusions, but I hope you're as disturbed as I am by the implications.

They also highlighted their "business opportunity" aspect - not surprisingly, invoking Kiyosaki's "cashflow quadrant" in the process. While it doesn't technically meet the definition of MLM, the "opportunity" certainly resembles it in many aspects. I'll skip going into any real detail, but the basic idea is that you, as a sales rep for NRU, bring in 2 paying customers, which will result in 50% commissions being paid to your trainer/sponsor/mentor person (the one who introduced the company to you). After that, the first two people those people bring in will result in a 50% commission being paid to you. It's not MLM, exactly, but it does suffer from the serious drawback of quickly creating too many sales people in a given region.

Think about that, for a moment. You might remember that old shampoo commercial: "They'll tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends, and so on, and so on..." That may work great for shampoo, but is such a scenario even remotely workable for real estate investing?

For sake of argument, let's grant that, say, 5 of the people with the big car signs really do, consistently, month in and month out, make $20K-30K selling NRU tuition packages. They claim that 98% of the people who sign up do so at the "Regents" level. That's an $8K commission to the person who signed them up. So, that's roughly 3 new "students" per salesperson signed up every month, or 3x5x12=180 new "real estate investors" recruited in a year by those 5 salespeople. Now, as you know, those 180 people were, in part, enticed to join NRU with the promise that they could each also make approximately $288K in a year. But to do that they'll have to bring in another 6,480 people. And what about those people? How easily do you think they'll each make $20K/month?

According to a recent article on azcentral.com, homeowners in the Metro Phoenix area who default on their mortgages get an average of 300 pieces of mail from foreclosure investors. Assuming your typical pre-foreclosure investor sends a "campaign" of 5 letters to one house, that means that there are somewhere around 60 people competing for each potential investment property. The competition has gotten so fierce that now some foreclosure sharks are sending oddly shaped colored envelopes with hand-written addresses - and even including pieces of Jolly Rancher candies inside! All in the hopes that their ad doesn't simply go straight to the trash, ignored. Nouveau Riche University wants to increase that number from 60 to 6,480 competitors, plus! Does that seem even remotely sustainable to you? Are you interested in being one of those 6000+ "investors" competing for investment properties? In what other industry (aside from MLM) are the "sales reps" actively working to undermine their own success by training their own competition?

In spite of the obvious mathmatical unworkability of NRU, their introductory meeting's sales pitch is definitely a slick presentation, and you can't help but get caught up in the warm and friendly atmosphere they, no-doubt, carefully cultivate. At the conclusion of the presentation they instruct you to immediately go and tell your sponsor-person if you're interested in signing up, learning more, or just want to leave. I told my Independent Student Advisor that I was somewhat interested in learning more, but that I still had a number of questions. Foremost in my mind at this point is why this person, who has been with NRU for about a year, doesn't appear to own any investment properties - at least not locally.

It probably goes without saying that I won't be plunking down any money for this "opportunity" any time soon.

A superb, must-read, critique of the whole Nouveau Riche phenomenon can be found at cockeyed.com.

UPDATE, 7/16/07: I received an email today from my independent student advisor contact, asking me to remove all mention of her from this post and the comments following. The ISA's contention was that the inclusion of this information is "disrespectful" and "unnecessary". I have agreed to remove all mention of her name - to protect against the possibility of unrelated future Google searches by, for example, potential stalkers - but I believe that the links to the public record are necessary. Anyone interested in the truth should be in favor of greater transparency, in my humble opinion. This is why I include links to both the Maricopa County records, and the AZ Corporation Commission records, since she claims not to own any investment properties by name.

As part of this update, I had to delete several of the comments from the comments thread. Those are reproduced here, with the ISA's name replaced by strings of X's.

KIWI said...
And by the way, XXXXXXXXXX DOES own several properties here and in Las Vegas! Please do not make assumptions about things you know nothing about.

7/02/2007

Einzige said...
Kiwi,

What's with the ALL CAPS? Do you think that by shouting at me you'll win others to your cause?

You say: I KNOW WHATEVER I SAY WON'T BUDGE YOUR STUBBORN MIND...

Quite the contrary, I am more than willing to listen to substantive arguments, consisting of logical analysis and the presentation of empirical evidence in support of your assertions. Unfortunately your comments so far have provided neither of those. Instead, you've simply made a number of bald assertions and insults to my character - while simultaneously ignoring the bulk of my complaints against NRU. Hardly persuasive stuff, I'd say.

WHY WOULD YOU THINK INTEREST ONLY IS BAD FOR A BUY AND HOLD?

I'll skip delving deeply into the details, but each potential loan is going to have its pluses and minuses, and should be evaluated on an individual basis. The main questions with respect to an interest-only loan should be: 1) How long is the interest-only period? and 2) When the reset comes, what are my best- and worst-case monthly payments going to be? I suppose there are situations where an interest-only loan is appropriate, but given the future's uncertainties, I'd prefer knowing what my payments are going to be.

Why don't you explain your thought process, rather than insult me for my apparent ignorance in this area?

And by the way, XXXXXXXX DOES own several properties here and in Las Vegas!

How do you know this? Note I didn't "assume" anything. All I said was that she doesn't seem to own any investment properties locally, based on Maricopa County records associated with her name and the name of the corporate entity I could find associated with her - I even provided a link to the relevant MC records! I didn't claim that this was definitive proof.

On the other hand, if she wants to convince potential recruits that NRU is an effective means of becoming a successful RE investor, she ought to make it easy for folks to find evidence that she actually is one herself. Don't you think?

What about you, Kiwi? Where are your investment properties? I'd like their full addresses, for starters. Maybe some rental agreements, too. Otherwise I think those of us who are incredulous are entitled to remain so.

7/02/2007

UPDATE TWO (01/09/08): It seems that all of my ISA's promotional web sites for NRU and real estate investment are now defunct. This is certainly not evidence in favor of NRU.

Smith & Merritt: Waffle Your Way To Wealth

I'm beginning to like S&M's slogan. It's such an easy target.

Below is a scan of a refund letter sent to gthomp62, a commenter here on Die Eigenheit, signed by Kathryn Merritt herself. In it, she says that Smith & Merritt are "sorry", "embarassed", and, "most of all, deeply apologetic" about "unforeseen problems and issues" that "took longer to overcome" than they planned. They're also "truly sorry" and sad about the "anxiety, frustration, and inconvenience" they've caused.

The reason the refunds are late? The acquisition of S&M by College Partnership, which has a board of directors who are now in charge of managing and approving "the funds to be allocated and released to Smith and Merritt for past client services and refunds." I might be naïve about such things, but that sounds like bullshit to me. When one company acquires another it does so with the full knowledge and understanding that it has existing assets and liabilities, as well as pending agreements and obligations. Those things don't suddenly become null and void or change their terms just because their ownership has changed!

Oh, I love this quote (my emphasis):

We have begun putting a comprehensive plan in place to provide better and timelier information to you regarding refunds...As this is decided and we receive the information, we will be able to give you a better idea of the timing on your refund and when you can expect to receive it.

Not just the timing, you see, but also when you're going to get it, since "Nothing is more important than providing [the refund] you expect."

Whew! I'm sure everyone who got a copy of this letter feels better already.

Smith & Merritt: Scam Your Way To Wealth?

I called it.

I don't mean to toot my own horn, here, but back almost a year ago, when Smith & Merritt were endlessly assaulting my ears with their inane slogan, “Spend your way to wealth”, on the Howard Stern Show, I said this:

They don’t seem to have any “products” for sale—except a “Free Report and Consultation,” which has to be some sort of loss-leader designed to get you to buy the “real” (and no doubt “real expensive”) stuff, whatever that is.

Shortly after I wrote that and the post following it, the Smith & Merritt advertising contract with the Stern Show ended, and they promptly dropped off my radar screen.

I gave them no more thought, until recently, when the number of hits to my blog via Google searches for “Smith and Merritt” started spiking. Then the comments started trickling in. Most painting an incomplete picture of some sort of high-pressure sales scam designed to bilk people out of $9,995 (or $3,895... I'm not sure which) with the promise of “materials” and/or coaching sessions.

Now, think about this for a second. People are coming to S&M for some sort of financial education, which, presumably, they need because they aren't doing so well, financially, right? So what's the likelihood that these people are going to have $9,995 in ready cash to spend on the S&M program? Undoubtedly, “But I don't have that kind of money” is a common objection, and it seems S&M have a ready “solution” - something that, based on the comments in this post, they dubbed a “student loan”. Apparently they counsel their clients to do a balance transfer from their credit cards to their checking accounts, after which S&M withdraws the money from checking. I may be wrong about this, but I believe that such a setup makes it more difficult to dispute the charge if you feel you've been ripped off - otherwise why would S&M go through the trouble?

A check at the BBB website for S&M or the deceptively named “College Partnership” (their other company?), reveals a number of unresolved complaints that seem similar to the ones people have been leaving on Die Eigenheit. I'd like to quote at length from a very detailed comment left today:

When we signed up for this program, we understood that we would get sound financial advice. Being this was our first experience with financial coaching & the cost of the program, we had no other reason to assume we weren't going to get financial advice. The salesman used high-pressure sales tactics & a needless sense of urgency in selling us the program stating that even if we wanted coaching there was a chance we wouldn't get "accepted". From the sales call (we have detailed notes of the call) he stated we'd have "unlimited access" from the best people in the business which implied financial advisors, yet he NEVER told us that we would NOT get coaching from financial advisors or planners. Had we known this, we wouldn't have signed up for the program. We purchased on Aug 7, 2006 for $3895 for 3 months of coaching. Even though we had 72 hrs to cancel after purchasing we hadn't started any coaching to determine that our coaching was just a professional form of cheering rather than financial advising. The first two sessions focused on our abundance statement and not finances! We realized especially after the 3rd session (around the beginning of September 2006) that this was not the service we expected. Besides calling us late, our coach hadn't even reviewed our financial reports we had emailed to her & after talking with our coach on the phone she informed us that she was not LICENSED to give us financial advice & we discovered that she didn't have a strong financial background! We were then assigned another coach because he used to sell insurance & had a "strong" financial background, yet after tolerating 2 sessions with him, we made the decision to seek a refund. We contacted the head of coaching and explained our concern & over the course of a few weeks or so she kept meeting with a "committee" giving us the impression that a decision would be made as to our refund. However, we eventually received a letter from a "customer care" lady stating that we should continue coaching & later another letter that we were to continue with 6 more sessions due to "contractual responsibilities" (whatever that means) & then they would reevaluate our complaint. Knowing that the coaching does not advise like we originally understood, this is an unreasonable request. She mentioned in the letter that we needed to file an "official withdrawal" from the coaching program & other pertinent information, yet when we have called the SLC office to receive further instruction to get the form or other information, we have had no response. We have made numerous attempts to talk the salesman regarding the sale & others regarding a refund & neither has returned our calls. We filed a complaint with the BBB on March 1, 2007 & the information was sent apparently to California & was returned with a correspondence stating that he wasn't in charge of refunds. We filed a complaint with the SLC office. That BBB complaint came back unanswered.

If it wasn't clear before that Smith & Merritt is a company to avoid, it seems quite clear now.

Making Fortunes* in Foreclosures

*Once you've discarded your ethical compass

The Sale/Leaseback Technique

Find a distressed homeowner in a house with a decent amount of equity (I’ll admit that this particular scheme is a bit passé in today’s foreclosure market, given how little equity is out there right now). If at all possible, your homeowner should be a non-native English speaker and/or have the education level of a 6th grader.

Tell the homeowner(s) that you’re there to help them stay in the home. This’ll win you big points, as the prospect of losing their house has undoubtedly been weighing heavily on their minds. It's a sure bet that you’re not the only shark to have come along—except that all the others have probably been artlessly insulting them with lowball offers to buy the place.

Tell them that you’re going to bring their loan payments current—use a big word like “reinstate”—they’ll be impressed and appreciative. Explain that you’re going to “execute a Warranty Deed” for them. They won’t have a clue what that means, so be sure to gloss over the fact that this will transfer all beneficial, legal and equitable title interest in the “subject property” to you. Stress, instead, that you know in your heart that they are good and responsible people who’ve just hit a rough patch in their lives. You can just tell that in a couple years, when they’re back on their feet financially, they’ll be buying their home back and all will be as it was. To think otherwise is to be ruled by fear, paranoia, cynicism, and negativity. You’re not that way, and they shouldn’t be, either! The more you can pile on convincingly about things like “The Law of Attraction” and how your being there is proof that “someone upstairs must be looking out for them,” the better.

Meanwhile, you’ll have them sign a 2-year lease agreement with the following salient features (some of which you’ll want to downplay as much as possible):

• The Buyer (that’s you) will take over paying the current mortgage, as well as bringing the payments current.


• The Seller’s (that’s them) rental payment will be the original mortgage amount plus a monthly “service” fee, usually around 18-20% of their mortgage payment. More than likely, you’ll be able to stress to your homeowner(s) that even with this fee you’re going to be saving them money, since they’ll still be paying below market rent.


• Rent is due on the 1st, subject to a 5% late fee on the 4th, and, if not received by the 15th, puts the agreement into “default.”


• The Buyer agrees to sell the house back to Seller at the end of 2 years, as long as Seller is not in default, for the sum of a) the original cost of reinstatement of the loan; b) any and all escrow fees not already paid by Seller; and c) a “funding” fee of roughly 4% of the loan balance.


• At the Seller’s discretion, as long as they are not in default, the rental agreement and option to repurchase can be extended on a month-to-month basis beyond the 2-year mark.


• Any breach of the agreement by the Seller will constitute “default,” which immediately terminates all rights Seller has with regard to their option to repurchase. Once default has occurred, no remedies are available. “Seller understands and agrees that Buyer may seek recovery of subject property and all damages incurred, including but not limited to, court costs, legal fees, and any other remedy at law or equity from Seller resulting from Seller’s default.”

Now, given that your homeowner has already demonstrated an inclination towards financial irresponsibility and an inability to handle the original mortgage amount, how likely do you think it is that they’re going to make it the full 2 years plus, paying 20% more per month? Even if, by some slim chance, they do, how likely is it that they’ll also have saved up the several thousand dollars they’ll need to buy the house back from you?

In other words, done correctly, this technique allows you to purchase the equity of a home for 10 to 20 cents on the dollar!

The Risks

Since Arizona Courts have ruled in the past that sale/leasback schemes can be considered equitable mortgages, the above may be actionable under various Federal and State statutes, including but not limited to the Truth in Lending Act, the Fed's Regulation Z (esp. 226.2(a)(11) and the Homeownership and Equity Protection Act of 1994), the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, and (if you’re in Arizona) the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act.

The Virtual Realty Funding Company (on whom this summary of the scam is based) is currently being sued by the Arizona Attorney General's Office for fraud.

A Thinking Blogger Award!

Dikkii has been kind enough to grace Die Eigenheit with a Thinking Blogger Award. I am quite flattered and can't help but feel a teensy bit unworthy. I'll try to get over it, though.

The rules require me to tag 5 other blogs (that haven't yet been tagged) that make me think. In no particular order, these are...

David D. Friedman's Ideas

I can always count on Dr. Friedman to present an issue in a way that cuts right through all the extraneous garbage and exposes its most important parts to a withering scrutiny.

The No God Zone

While I tend to find the ubiquitous typos distracting, this blog's surprisingly wide range of topics and irreverent style keeps me coming back for more.

Rightwatch

Narrowly focused, updated infrequently, and written anonymously, this blog is still always worth checking in on, as it aims to expose the seedier elements of the "libertarian" movement. Actually, I strongly suspect that Rightwatch and No God Zone are written by the same person.

The Fly Bottle

If only we all could be as brilliant as Will Wilkinson!

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

I love graphs of stuff. I love economics. Mish's blog has plenty of both, with lots of informative analysis thrown in for good measure. A decent amount of controversy in the comments, too.

Matthew Chan No Longer Hosting Burley Forums

Die Eigenheit has just been paid a visit by Matthew Chan, who informed me that the John Burley discussion groups at the MasterMind Forums have been moved here.

Although this has, for the time being, broken all of my links to the individual posts there, at least everything hasn't been thrown down the memory hole. I should get around to the annoying task of fixing the links sooner or later.

Mr. Chan would like it to be known that he doesn't consider himself a "guru" or a "Burleyist", though I can't recall ever applying either of those labels to him.

The Market is Smarter Than You

Was there really a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda?

Though I have my doubts, I'm certainly not in a position to be definitive with an answer. However, This book, by Stephen F. Hayes of the Weekly Standard, argues that there was.

Given the book's premise, the polarized 1-star/5-star reviews on its Amazon page are hardly surprising, and, I would argue, don't really provide much information about book's content. There is, however, a ready guide available for understanding its real value--one that I've touched on in another context before--its used price: 1 cent.

This ranks The Connection alongside such classics as Bankruptcy, 1995, and Unfit For Command.

Viva la Price System!

Six Seconds That Changed The World

Via Against Monopoly and many thanks to Jim Lippard for bringing it to my attention.

This video details the unlikely history and sad implications behind an extremely influential B-side drum break from 1969.

Enjoy!

Why Own When You Can Rent?

You see the ads everywhere, and the idea seems at the core of American culture. Talk to any Realtor and you’re bound to get a half dozen reasons why owning is better than renting. The Searchlight Crusade has a whole series of persuasive articles arguing that now is the best time to buy in San Diego. Implicit in his analysis is an estimate of future appreciation rates, which are anybody’s guess.

I used to own 4 houses. My parents have been part-time real estate investors since I was a young kid. I guess, at bottom, I buy into all this “buy versus rent” crap, myself, as I’ve recently been seriously thinking of buying something—anything—so that I’m not just “throwing my money away.”

But, really, is it true that owning is always and everywhere better than renting? It seems a foregone conclusion that buying a home in Phoenix in 2000 was a good idea (though at the time, of course, things were far from clear-cut). What about now? Sadly, certain knowledge about the future is impossible. Nonetheless, it seems unlikely that the price trends of the past 6 years are going to continue unabated.

There is, however, another way to look at the problem—one that doesn’t require gazing into crystal balls or reading tea leaves. It’s a “back of the envelope” technique that you’re also not likely to learn from your typical Realtor or real estate guru, either, even though it can tell you quickly and unequivocally whether a given property is a “good deal” or not.

In a nutshell, the idea is to take a property you are interested in and compare the monthly cost of renting it with the monthly cost of owning it at 80% LTV. If it’s cheaper to rent it then the house is overpriced. If it’s cheaper to own it, then buy it!

Let’s take a look at some actual Phoenix area properties and see what we find.

Here is a home in Avondale renting for $1,150/month. A substantially similar home down the street sold in January for $255,000. Monthly housing costs as an owner for this home, then, would be $1,583 ($1,263.00 principle and interest payments on a $204,000 loan at 6.3%, plus $55 HOA fees, plus $70, plus $195 taxes).

In other words, if you were to put 20% down on a house in that neighborhood with the intent to rent it out, you’d be subsidizing your renter to the tune of almost $5,200/year—and that’s before any expenses.

One hopes that the owner of the actual rental isn’t faced with such a situation. However, what can be said with certainty is that their return on equity is unacceptably low—unless the property’s value is appreciating a lot faster than $5,200 yearly. This was the case the last few years, but who can say it will continue that way much longer?

Here is a condo in Phoenix renting for $1,190/month that would cost you $1,462/month ($1,219 monthly payments on a $197,000 loan at 6.3%, plus $135 HOA, plus $108 taxes) to own. Were you maybe wondering why there were so many condo conversions recently? There’s your answer. What apartment building owner wants to lose $272/month on every unit they own? What could you do with an extra $3,300 a year?

Suzette wants to “make a deal” on a lease-to-own condo in Chandler—with a current asking price of $264,000. Let’s be generous and assume a market rent of $1,300/month. In that case, any “deal” that involved paying more than $220,750 would be a bad one (unless you’re Suzette, I mean).

Here is a 3 bedroom house in Scottsdale you can rent for $1950/month today. To buy it today, on the other hand, would cost you $2,602 a month ($2,352 principle and interest payment on a $380,000 loan at 6.3%, plus $100 insurance and $150 taxes). Whoever ends up renting that place should kiss their landlord’s feet, as they are basically being given a $7800/year gift.

What can we take away from this analysis? First off, I think it’s fairly clear that pretty much no one in Phoenix is making money as a landlord right now (I mean to say: specifically when calculating a return on equity). Secondly, people who say it’s a “buyer’s market” don’t know what they’re talking about. Thirdly, something’s gotta give! There’s no way real estate investors are going to continue to lose money hand over fist over the long term. Either housing prices have got to come down or rents have to go up. I imagine that the future is going to see some combination of those two things.

Meanwhile, I’m gonna keep renting—and putting the money I’ll be saving into something likely to provide a much higher return.

Love and Marriage Redux

I have decided to readdress the marriage issue a second time, partially because I failed to mention the Alternatives to Marriage Project in the prior post, but also because, to my dismay, no one aside from Jim even attempted to answer directly any of the many questions I asked (and Jim's answer was a weak one, in my opinion). I can only guess that my questions were all misconstrued as rhetorical. So, this time I think I'll use more direct language, which will hopefully encourage a more fruitful discussion.

Marriage is, at best, meaningless. At worst, marriage is a superstition on a par with a belief in wood sprites. Marriage and commitment (...and love ...and cuddling ...and financial support ...and sex, etc.) are not identical, and I believe that people who conflate these things are making a category mistake. Contrary to Jim's assertion, people's primary motivations for marriage don't include avoiding getting hassled by hospital staffs (or I should say this is true at least for the vast majority of people who aren't robots).

On Valentine's Day, Howard Stern announced his engagement to Beth Ostrowsky, his sweetheart of more than 6 years. He received dozens of congratulatory phone calls about the engagement. I truly do not understand why (and, by the way, none of the people congratulating him brought up tax savings or avoiding hassles in hospitals). How will marriage improve their relationship? (By the way, that is not a rhetorical question). Is Howard, perhaps, afraid that without the marriage contract, BethO might leave him? Is perhaps fear the primary reason for marriage, then?

At one point Howard made the odd statement that by getting married he was "giving up other pussy." How is that? Hadn't he already done that six years earlier? I honestly do not understand this--unless, in truth, marriage consists primarily in making the statement, "I promise to give you half of my assets, plus additional future income, if I ever have sex with someone other than you, or even if I decide at some later date that I no longer want to be with you."

Do people really find that to be a romantic sentiment?

(Non-religious) people who want to defend marriage need to explain:

1) Why forcing someone to stay with you past the point they would in the absence of a marriage contract should ever be considered a good thing. Why would that situation ever be preferable to one where it's clear that the couple is together out of love and shared values?
2) Exactly what it is that marriage gives you that you absolutely cannot get outside of marriage.
3) Why those few legal rights marriage conveys to a couple are so damned important - and yet no one ever mentions them, really, when they talk about marriage.

Love and Marriage

Why do we have marriage contracts, but not friendship contracts?

Why is asking someone to marry you any different than what Calvin is asking Hobbes in the above cartoon?

I confess to not understanding marriage’s allure. Some might conclude from this that I must not be much of a romantic. However, I would counter that perhaps my misunderstanding is due to a genuine romanticism on my part. After all, what is the defining characteristic of “marriage”? It’s not love. It’s not commitment. Love and commitment are beautiful, romantic things to be cherished and encouraged—and even celebrated and announced publicly to friends and family—but these things are not the same as marriage.

Marriage—stripped of its religious aspects, which, as an atheist, I of course find utterly meaningless—is simply a contract, isn’t it? And not just any contract. It’s a contract designed to make it difficult and expensive for one party to leave the other. Why would anyone do that—especially to someone they love? How is binding someone to you, even if only figuratively, in any way romantic? Why create a situation in which there is any doubt about the motivations behind your spouse’s (for lack of a better word) sticking by you?

Thoughts on this issue are encouraged and appreciated. You can find more food for thought in this essay written by the egoist John Beverley Robinson in 1889.

Publish or Profit?

Whenever someone tells you that he or she knows how to beat the market consistently, please feel free to raise an incredulous eyebrow. When that person follows up such a claim with an offer to show you how to do it... for a fee, make sure you've still got your wallet as you move a safe distance away.

The reason why is a concept I have touched on before: competitive markets are very efficient at driving down "abnormal" profits.

The Unknown Professor agrees with me on this, and in this post he points out an interesting recent paper that is yet more evidence for the validity of the efficient markets hypothesis.

Colby Wright, the paper's author, wondered why a financial economics researcher who thinks he's found a legitimate exploitable anomaly would tell anyone about his discovery instead of simply keeping the information to himself and taking full advantage of the profit opportunity. Wright hypothesized that researchers without established track records and with fewer published papers would be more likely to write about market anomalies than those researchers with strong reputations and long publishing careers, because writing about an anomaly would help a newer researcher establish their reputation (and the veteran researcher would rather keep the opportunity to himself). The evidence, according to Wright, bears this out.

For more detail, see the post at Financial Rounds, or read the original paper.

Rowing Stats

These are my current best rows for the Concept 2 indoor rower 2007 season. The rankings are as of today and will definitely change (and I will, hopefully, clock some better rows between now and the end of May). If you're lucky enough to have a Concept 2 rower and the absolutely awesome RowPro software for it, you can download my ranking rows from the Concept 2 ranking lists. Great Fun!

Distance	Time		Standing	Date
2000M	07:30.1		613 of 1125 54%	1/7/2007
5000M	19:15.2		439 of 1164 38%	1/8/2007
6000M	23:41.5		168 of 345 49%	5/14/2006
7445M	30:00.0		406 of 891 46%	1/3/2007
10000M	41:52.3		561 of 872 64%	12/24/2006

Help!

Can anybody give me some pointers on how to fix the header code of my blog so that my Earthrise image is not obscured by that green block?

Thanks.

What does God explain?

When guys like Will Wilkinson are writing brilliant stuff like this it really kills my desire to blog much at all, at least when it comes to the heavy philosophical topics. Given the law of comparative advantage, I should leave the philosophizing to Will (and others) and I'll stick to, uh..., something else I haven't quite figured out, yet.

Anyway, I particularly like Will's approach to the definition of an atheist, here:

...[I]f something plays a role in our best explanation of some phenomenon, you should believe it exists. Otherwise, not. God, for instance, is the best explanation for nothing. That’s why you shouldn’t believe in God, or the posits of string theory. (People...who hesitate to call themselves atheists because they cannot “prove” nonexistence are simply confused about ontological commitment. If [one's estimate of the probability] p for “God exists” is so low (”vanishingly unlikely”), then God must play no role in [one's] economy of explanation, which is all there is to being an atheist. You don’t just get to decide whether or not you are one.)

I see little to disagree with in any of the rest of the post, either (or the whole blog, for that matter).

I rarely find myself feeling envious of another man's genius, but Will Wilkinson is definitely one of the few exceptions. Perhaps in part it's because he's got a really hot girlfriend who seemed (at last check, anyway) to be totally nuts about him. Some guys have all the luck!

I Caught a Virus

I tend to be a party pooper and not participate in these things, but the complete absurdity and randomness of this blogging virus amused me. I'm always a sucker for the non sequitur. Plus, it's not like I've been flush with topics to write about, lately, so here goes...

Dikkii has tagged me with the following task:

- Grab the nearest book...
- Name the book and the author...

Title: Environmental Gore: A Constructive Response to Earth in the Balance
Editor: John A. Baden
Author of the page in question: Richard S. Lindzen
Year book published: 1994

- Turn to page 123...
- Go to the fifth sentence on the page...
- Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog...

Moreover, according to many studies by economists, agronomists, and hydrologists, there would be little difficulty adapting to such warming if it were to occur. Many aspects of the "catastrophe" scenario have already been largely discounted by the scientific community. For example, fears of massive sea level increases accompanied many of the early discussions of global warming, but these estimates have been steadily reduced by orders of magnitude, and now it is widely agreed that even the potential contribution of warming to sea level rise would be swamped by other more important factors.

- Tag three more folks...

Jim Lippard
Steve
Akuwa

I won't take it personally if any of you decide not to pick up the baton.

How People Die

The other day I was randomly wondering how many people die every year from slipping in the shower. Figuring that the answer must be available on the internet somewhere I went in search. Well, I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for, but thanks to the NCHS (.pdf) I found a bunch of equally interesting stuff.

The number one killer of the 2,442,923 Americans who died in 2003 was cardiovascular disease, which took 901,753 souls. Cancer was a distant second, at 554,643. Diabetes killed another 73,965. Those numbers, I think, are indicative of our aging population. Young people don’t generally die from those diseases, and when you’re old the likelihood that your death will be due to something else is pretty low.

In 2003, 44,059 people were killed by motor vehicles - 26,963 more than the 17,096 people who were murdered (67.8% of which - 11,599 - were killed by guns). I think the number of gun homicides is interesting in light of the number of people killed by accidental falls (all falls, not just falls in the shower) - 16,926.

And who knew that 2,766 people died from complications in surgery? Yikes!

A Steep Cliff

Normally I would post this sort of stuff up over at The Lippard Blog, but Jim's got it converted over to Blogger Beta and consequently I can't access it any longer.

I've been tracking Maricopa County's Notices of Trustee Sales for the past few months. As you can see, during that time the number has been climbing precipitously, and in an unprecendented fashion.

November's count was 1486.

It would seem, now, that the question is no longer "Is there a housing bubble?", but "How big is the pop going to be?"

No More Static Beats???

Static Beats has terminated its webcast indefinitely. This is sad news, though not entirely unexpected, given that the webcast was free and the site itself didn't seem to have any real means of revenue generation.

The site's owner has sort of feebly suggested charging a monthly subscription, which I'd probably go for, but it's not clear if the webcast would still be free for everyone, whether you subscribe or not. That does seem to be what they are proposing, though, which may go a long way toward explaining why they've only had 4 volunteers so far. In economics this situation is known as the "free rider problem." If you can get something while having someone else pay for it then why pay for it yourself?

Another possible solution might be for Static Beats to charge artists for inclusion in the webcast. It is an effective advertising method for them. I would never have heard of Bluetech, MD, Modeselektor, Automat, etc., without the webcast, after all. On the other hand, this will result in the webcast's content being determined by commercial considerations instead of the tastes and whims of Shimone/Justes, effectively eliminating its appeal in the process. Not good.

Anyway, I hope it all gets worked out somehow. I'm lost without my static beats!