Spin-doctoring and entertainment
09.23.07 (10:01 pm) [edit]On 60 Minutes today they had Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Boy did he ever look like a fish out of water. Sometimes the interviewer would ask him some very direction questions like "do you plan on making a nuclear bomb" or "are you sending weapons into Iraq" and he as the interviewer put it, he'd "dance" around the question, w/out answering it. If you ask me, he danced with 2 left feet. This is not without its predictability. Clearly he thought he'd make better connections with the west by doing this interview, but even more clearly he belongs to a political universe that has never known democracy or the free press. He needs to learn about spin-doctoring, smooth-taking, and good old brown-nosing. Here's what I think he did wrong:
- Firstly, he should have dictated better terms for the interview. No matter what your political power is, you always have the power of veto over an interview if the interviewer insists on asking questions you don't like. So he should have told the 60 Minutes guys to make their questions less direct, and not give them the luxury of returning with complaints about his answers.
- None of this was the first thing that came to my mind watching the interview. My first thought was boy is this frustrating! He needs to know how to make his answers more entertaining. In this dumbed-down age you need to use your charm (or whatever charm your advisors instill in you) to make your audience like you. If you have opened yourself up to taking a direct question requiring a yes or no answer, you have to appear to give a yes or a no, but then also give your answer a bouquet of baloney.
Advance fee scams
09.17.07 (11:00 pm) [edit]Just the other day my 11-year-old niece was stung by an advance fee fraud. Fortunately, the sting wasn't very deep, in that the scammers didn't get any money, but my niece must have been very disappointed. This has woken me up to rather a lot of advance fee scams I've come across over the years. It seems to be a very popular formula, and I was given the impression that this one was legal (although I'm not sure I believe that) which makes me wonder why these things aren't even more popular. Here are some of the ones I've come across:
Nigerian 419
Everyone knows about this one... well, almost everyone, or it wouldn't work. Someone needs to ship millions from an African country into an off-shore bank account (your account) and just needs a few measly 1000 to get it started.
Loan fees
I saw this on a news magazine. You apply for a loan, and pay a fee. You're turned down for the loan, but they fee is not refundable. At this point they stonewall you. According to the report, a fee on a loan application is never appropriate.
Modelling fee scam
There's what happened with my niece. They told her she was perfect, and that she's exactly what they are looking for, and exactly what The Bay or whatever is looking for, she'd be a star, make a really big wad of cash and just needed 300$ to get started. My brother-in-law had the unenviable task of waking her up and refusing the fund the scam. Of course, she was all stary-eyed and wasn't ready to hear this. In the end, he managed to get out of it without looking like a bad guy, and the crooks didn't get anything out of her.
Other occupational service scams
I could have got stung by this one. It was the summer of 2003. I had my B.Eng for half a year now, and was having a hard time getting someone to hire me in this post-dot COM bust. It was very frustrating. So here I was throwing around resumes, cold calling, checking job postings, and combing Monster.ca when I get a call. Some guy from an employment agency is giving me tips on my resume and showing a great deal of interest. I could tell he felt that he could make some money off of me, so why didn't these other employers think so? Then he says "gimme 1500$". Ah-ha! A guarantee of a job is worth 1500$; even a fair chance at a job is worth 1500$, but this didn't seem right at all. I never did find out if this was a scam, but it might have been something in between a scam and a very worthwhile service. I don't regret my decision.
Lottery scams
I heard on the radio the other day that there are several hundred telemarking scams running out of Montreal. The only example I was given of a scam here was one where the scammer cold calls Americans, tells them they won the lottery, and need to send a small fee to receive it. Apparently a lot of seniors fall for this one.
For me, the bottom-line is a pretty small one: if someone tells you that you are worth a great deal of money, and asks for a very small percentage to unlock your potential, then don't expect that start-up money to come from my bank account. If I represent a lot of capital that isn't money, then the capital that is money should come from elsewhere.