Identity theft resources

I, and hopefully many or all of you, received a little pamphlet from the Federal Trade Commission about identity theft. I almost disregarded it, because I thought I knew all the steps to take. After skimming the pamphlet I realized I could've missed a few steps. Hence, I recommend folks check out the FTC's Deter-Detect-Defend program.

I also found some interesting facts about the cost of identity theft to victims. You can view the whole 2006 report HERE.

• In more than 50 percent of ID thefts, victims incurred no out-of-pocket expenses. (Out-of-pocket expenses include any lost wages, legal fees, any payment of fraudulent debts, and miscellaneous expenses such as notarization, copying, and postage.) 5 In the New Accounts & Other Frauds category, the median value of out-of-pocket expenses was $40.
• However, some victims do incur substantial out-of-pocket expenses. Ten percent of all victims reported out-of-pocket expenses of $1,200 or more. For the New Accounts & Other Frauds category, the top 10 percent of the victims incurred expenses of at least $3,000, and the top 5 percent incurred expenses of at least $5,000. One-quarter of victims in the New Accounts & Other Frauds category reported paying out-of-pocket expenses of at least $1,000.
• Victims of all types of ID theft spent hours of their time resolving the various problems that result from ID theft. The median value for the number of hours spent resolving problems by all victims was 4. However, 10 percent of all victims spent at least 55 hours resolving their problems. The top 5 percent of victims spent at least 130 hours.

Cow abuse, beef recalls and shady company presidents.

I spoke with my mom today and in her usual fashion, she told me some major, terrible news bite. Today's was that there was a huge beef recall. Much like when the pseudo-storm of the century was supposed to bury the Detroit area, I dismissed my mom's news bit as slightly exaggerated. Well, I was wrong.

According to an article in the latest Wall Street Journal, there's a lot of beef with a lot of beef, at least for me. The article reported that the following items were added to the recall. Both items I've enjoyed a lot in the past. The entire article is worth a read (Packaged-Food Companies Join Recall of Meat Products).

• Progresso Italian Wedding soup - General Mills is recalling 35,000 cases, which hold between 6-12 cans.
• Hot Pockets - Thank goodness I don't eat these (any more). Nestlé Prepared Foods said about 49,000 cases of Hot Pockets were affected. Flavors include Philly Steak & Cheese sandwiches as well as some Hot Pockets Croissant Crust Philly Steak & Cheese sandwiches that were sold in two-pack boxes.

So, another queer part of this story is that Steve Mendell, the president of the California company at the center of the recall, "failed to appear before a congressional food-safety hearing, and leading Democrats are now considering whether to subpoena him to testify."

There's related news items at the USDA's Newsroom, including a story about the Humane Society's video that was played at the same hearing that Mendell skipped.

The link to the video is here. It is very short, but also very graphic. I couldn't make it through 30 seconds. It was so terrible, that I almost didn't want to ever eat beef again.

One, last interesting note is that Michigan man John Dingell is the Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Book Review: Made to Stick

Made to Stick, By Chip and Dan Heath

Man, oh, man, this book was excellent. It was a recommendation by my library brother-in-arms, B-Money. This book is basically about making ideas stick in people's minds. How do you make people remember? How do you make people care? The book was great and it's value, for writers especially, is on par with On Writing Well. The book is VERY well-written (as it should be), clear, concise and it also provides little "clinics" to highlight good, bad and okay messages. Plus, there are a mountain of great anecdotes and examples.

The rest of this review contains the notes I took on the book. Highly, highly recommended for everyone that has a message: public relations, teachers, organizations, etc, etc. Pretty much everyone that needs to connect with others - meaning everyone.

Emotion chapter - If people are analytical, they are less charitable. If people are made to FEEL first, they're more charitable. Essentially, if one is asked to be analytical first, chances are they will care less. An excellent example is the Truth anti-smoking campaign versus Big Tobacco's anti-smoking campaign (big surprise, huh?). This example illustrates that helping teens rebel against "the man" (Truth campaign) is more effective than asking them to "Think. Don't smoke." (Big Tobacco's campaign). The Truth campaign has been successful in greatly reducing teenage smoking, because the campaign encourages teens to stick it to The Man (in this instance, Big Tobacco). In essence, sticking it to The Man is way cooler than thinking. Indeed.

There is a discussion of the overuse of terms and how people get desensitized. Some great examples are: relativity, unique and sportsmanship. I liked how one of the books anecdotes changed "sportsmanship" to "honoring the game", which is brilliant. Again, this little tweak helped a guy who's in charge of a coach's clinic to decrease technical fouls and bad (parental) behavior in a number of sports leagues in California. "Honoring the Game" is much more concrete and less cliche than "Be a good sport" or something like that.

Page 198 talks about how Texas had to figure out how to decrease roadside pollution. They came up with "Don't mess with Texas" and getting the attention of the macho, gun-wielding, truck-driving Texans. Roadside pollution decreased 29% in one year and 72% over the next five. Winner: Texas.

Stories chapter - This passage made me smile. It's about a guy that at first is upset because a group of business guys' attitude changes from crappy to open when they realize how good HIS idea is...

"...he thought a happier thought 'How wonderful! They've stolen my idea! It's become their idea!'"

This made me think of all types of things: plagiarism, blogging, web code and open source software. And it also made me think that, yes, if someone wants your idea, that means it must be pretty good. If someone is willing to make it theirs, it's sweet and essentially puts you in the drivers seat. Ideas start free and help you take off, start a project, business, etc. And then better ideas form.

One last interesting piece of info: there is almost no correlation that emerges between "speaking talent" and the ability to make ideas stick. The people who were captivating speakers typically do no better than others in making ideas stick. Basically, many good speakers can be mistaken for good bull****ers. A great example includes a bunch of Stanford kids who think they're sweet, but turns out their ideas are about as sticky as cooking oil.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in this book. There are so many fascinating stories and examples that this blog just can't do it justice. Read this book. Period.

Book Review: Gunslinger (Book 1 of the Dark Tower Series)

Gunslinger, by Stephen King
Disclaimer: this is not a thoughtful review. Sorry.

I began this series because the last series I read was Harry Potter. I really enjoyed the series format and wanted another to delve into. Enter the Undeterred Reader, a close buddy of mine. She praised the series and promised that I wouldn't be disappointed.

I finished the Gunslinger yesterday and, well, it's the first book. It was good, but left everything wide open and unanswered. That's the way the series cookie crumbles.

Everything about this book is strange and dream-like (or nightmarish, depending on how you look at it.) The characters are mysterious, but oddly enough, their development was satisfying. Dialogue is weird and terse. I've realized that to be a great fiction/screenplay writer, your characters have to have cryptic conversations, leaving plenty of room for misunderstanding. Such is life, no?

The story itself is basically the gunslinger traveling across the desert looking for the man in black. Along the way, he meets a kid who's displaced. Really displaced. Again, in the end, you don't know any more than in the beginning, but I'm still strangely intrigued. That could be partly due to the fact people RAVE that the second book is amazing, so I'm really looking forward to that. Additional note: incredible artwork! Very, very appropriate.

I can't give a recommendation because it's part of a series and I would or would not recommend that as a whole. Hence, I'll probably give the official thumbs up or down in like 3 years (well, maybe not that long.) Fear not, many a book shall be read in between.

U-M Library puts millionth digitized book online

The U-M Library has just put its millionth digitized book online. The Michigan Digitization Project is a partnership with Google that will digitize the Library’s entire printed collection. It will provide full-text access to works that are in the public domain, creating new ways for users to search and access U-M Library content. As a leader in digital archival and preservation efforts among research libraries, the U-M Library has been digitizing material for many years, but the partnership with Google allows the University to accomplish the task faster and on a scale that would not have been achieved alone. No other library has yet scanned this many books.

Read MORE.

Flus - who needs 'em?

Warning: this blog is not a pick-me-upper. It is all about disease, namely, the flu. Yes, the length and strength of any flu season is difficult to predict, but it looks like we've done an extra bad job this year. Plus, the bird flu is gaining steam as it pounds through Europe and appears in a human-to-human form in Indonesia, where the bird flu has killed a hundred. And for you history buffs, I've included a lil' piece on the 1918 flu pandemic. Have fun.


CDC: Flu Season Getting Worse

ATLANTA (AP) — The flu season is getting worse, and U.S. health officials say it's partly because the flu vaccine doesn't protect against most of the spreading flu bugs. The flu shot is a good match for only about 40 percent of this year's flu viruses, officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.


Spread Of 1918 Flu Pandemic Explained
ScienceDaily (2008-02-19) -- Researchers have explained why two mutations in the H1N1 avian flu virus were critical for viral transmission in humans during the 1918 pandemic outbreak that killed at least 50 million people. The team showed that the 1918 influenza strain developed two mutations in a surface molecule called hemagglutinin, which allowed it to bind tightly to receptors in the human upper respiratory tract.

Bird flu confirmed in dead swan
BBC -- Preliminary tests have confirmed the H5 avian flu virus in a sample from a swan found dead in Fife, health officials have revealed.

Indonesia reports 104th bird flu death
A 16-year-old Indonesian boy who died last week had bird flu, the health ministry said Saturday, bringing the toll to 104 in the nation worst hit by the disease.

Storytelling at themoth.org

I'm listening to this excellent episode of This American Life. The theme is "Tough Room" and there's 2 funny stories, a more serious story and what sounds like a stand up comedy routine. The first deals with The Onion, which is probably one of the funniest publications, print or otherwise, ever. The second is a story of a girl who tells tarro at age 15. The next is a story of two Mormon's trying to convert people in the middle of Manhattan. And finally, the last segment is a journalist who talks about how he got into and stayed in journalism. The last story includes one of the funniest stories I've ever heard come out of a newsroom.

At the end This American Life, the announcer said that you can find more audio stories at The Moth. The stories are from a whole, huge spectrum of speakers, ranging from top-notch authors to EMS workers to ex-smokers. As if I needed more podcasts in my life - sheesh! Pardon if I'm really behind on the times on this little online gem, but this was such a great find for me that I had to share.

Anywho, to listen to Malcolm Gladwell, senior staff writer at The New Yorker magazine, and the other stories, you'll have to download the podcast from iTunes (that's how I got it, anyway) or click on this link to figure out another way to get it free: http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Podcast.aspx.

To get a synopsis and more info on the show, go to This American Life: Episode 248, Tough Room.

Book Review: Bad News

Bad News, by Tom Fenton
The full title of this book is Bad News: the decline of reporting, the business of news, and the danger to us all. Although all things journalism interest me, this book did not. Here's my story...

First, it was primarily about television journalists (which sounds like an oxymoron). I think what Fenton tried to do was discuss broadcast news overall, but he bearly touched on radio or internet news. I've always had a bias for the print journalists out there and this book reenforced that sentiment. So, the subject matter was not my favorite.

The book was also slightly out of date which is more my fault for picking it up 3 years after publication. Generally, "better late than never" is a good rule to go by, but "never" would have been a better plan when it came to reading this book. There is some mention of Iran still producing nuclear arms, which turned out to be wrong. The author shows his age as he claims, essentially, that young people don't care about foreign news. Of course, mentions of blogs, online reporting and the like are almost non-existent in this book. I find it funny that Fenton bags young people when he doesn't even mention some of the most popular media outlets. He scoffs at the Daily Show and condescends more than a few times.

The writing was pretty bad. I thought maybe it was just kind of boring, but I longed for the ending and seriously thought it would never come. I was mostly skimming by the end. There was a lot of material to work through, especially some background on Russia, China, the Middle East and the variety of ways they're tied together (through oil, war, policy, etc). There was too much material and not enough good, engaging writing to put it all together. I'm still deciding if I learned anything new from it. Ironically enough, it seemed as though it was a bunch of print journalists' materials regurgitated into this guy's book.

Not only was the subject matter dated, but technical aspects of the writing were weak. I found a typo at the beginning of each chapter and I think I came across a misspelling as well. There were some good quotes from some big-time broadcasters, but far more were bad. They either went on too long or were spliced up by so many commas, one didn't know when to pause and when to think. I also didn't feel there were tons of facts to back up Fenton's claims. Finally, this book is chock full of questions. They're EVERYWHERE. I saw more question marks where I rather would have seen either answers or thoughtful insight.

I do not recommend this book. I'm actually reading a very nice contrast called Made to Stick, which talks about creating successful ideas. A lot of it is about writing and all of it provides better insights on ways the media could improve (even though that's NOT the main goal of the book). I will be sure to review that one, as well.

Fenton's book is more a book of complaints and questions that take the reader in rhetorical circles.