The news was covering Cindy Sheehan’s protest outside of President Bush’s ranch and Bush supporters that came into town to protest the protesters. That’s all good.

As the camera panned across the Bush supporters, I noticed one was holding a sign entreating the anti-war crowd to “Repent Your Treasons”.

I don’t even remember what points were being made by the broadcaster because I was so fascinated by the thought processes that would go into making a statement like that. I figure this man must imagine a single linear chain of unquestionable authority cops, military, president, God. (Not necessarily in that order.)

To question one is an affront to all.

I just felt like doing a little mind-reading today.

Someone stole my Harley Davidson last night during the typhoon. Quite a professional job really. Lock was snapped, alarm removed and put neatly beside the cover and tie downs. I spent an hour in the local police office with three officers who seemed exhausted by the effort it took to fill out the report. Nice enough guys, though.

When we were done, they gave me this parting advice “We’ll do everything we can to find it, and we’ll be sure to call you if we do. There’s no need to contact us about it any more.”

How encouraging.

The other evening I was chatting with an extremely sexy young woman involved in what is politely called the “Personal Finance” industry. She was trying to sell me on a fraudulent managed trust that was “certain” to return “at least” 15% a year.

It turned out to be a frustrating evening for both of us.

New varieties of this financial bullshit arise every day, and there are armies of salespeople pushing them. The simple truth, however, is that if any of these schemes actually worked, these salespeople would be investing in them rather then trying to sell them to us.

Most people selling these “investments” know very little about finance, investing or tax laws. And why should they? Their job is to part you from your money not to invest it. They are compensated based on how much money they can convince people to invest. How much money their clients make is completely irrelevant. It’s all perfectly legal, but it’s a scam.

Anyway, the interesting thing is that when most salesmen are called on their bullshit, they shrug it off and occasionally will even admit the deceptions before changing the subject to sports.

Saleswomen, on the other hand, seem to really believe their own bullshit. You can jokingly point out the deceptions, inconsistencies and outright lies in what the firm is saying (never what she is saying, of course), but they just keep at it.

Why is it that men are content to simply rob you, while women need to convince themselves they are actually doing you a favor? The end result is the same in either case, but they must get something out of this self deception.

The reason most computer programs are confusing and hard to use is because they are written by programmers. Generally speaking, programmers are not some of nature’s better adapted creatures. In fact, you can tell a lot about the neuroses of a particular programmer just by using the UI they create.

A few minutes ago I was entering info on a web site. Apparently, I made a mistake on one of the fields because after I submitted the form I was was presented with the following error message

Number format invalid!!!!

That’s right, four exclamation points. It then cleared my info and made me start again. Clearly this guy has some major anger-management issues he needs to work through.

Equally bad are the programmers with decision anxiety. You know the ones. You tell the program to delete an entry and a message pops up asking

This entry will be deleted. Do you want to proceed?

Yes. Click.

Are you sure?

Am I sure?! Yes, damnit! Seriously, what are the odds of me having changed my mind in the last fraction of a second? Delete the damn record.

As much as we would like to deny it, our value and respectability as American citizens is determined primarily be our credit rating. More so than even a criminal record, a poor credit rating will prevent you from getting an apartment, finding a job or even getting a security clearance.

That being the case, last year Congress passed a law that gave American’s the right to see their own credit reports once a year without charge. Naturally, the credit reporting agencies, who make billions of dollars selling information about us to anyone who asks, were outraged and feel we should pay for the privilege.

Well, OK, no company likes to lose a source of revenue or provide an unprofitable service. However, the Self-Delusion Award goes to Equifax CEO, Thomas Chapman who stated.

“Our company felt, and still does … that it’s unconstitutional to cause a public company who has a fiduciary responsibility to return profit to shareholders to give away the product”

Unfortunately, Mr. Chapman declined to indicate precisely to which part of the Constitution he was referring. As far as I know there is nothing in the US (or any other) Constitution that prevents Congress from passing laws that may adversely affect corporate profits.