Northbound

In the first installment of this (very little) series, I ran down some of my pet peeves about people who request loans through Prosper.com. In case you’re not familiar with Prosper, it’s an attempt to adapt the eBay model to personal finance. (It’s actually funded by venture capitalists affiliated with eBay.) Borrowers loan money direct from Prosper, but Prosper only loans money if there are enough lenders out there willing to bid on parts of the loan. So you not only have to fill out a loan application form, you have to write a description of why you want the loan, and that appears on the Prosper site. (Part three of this primer is here.)

I’m a lender there, although on a very small scale (two loans made, one loan pending). I browse through the listings, looking at the descriptions, and I make my decision on who to lend money to based on the information that I have. I have two main pieces of information — one that borrowers can control and one that they can’t. I have the borrower’s description, and a brief summary of their credit record. You can’t do much about your credit record if you’re a borrower — but you can do a lot with your description.

I don’t have any way to substantiate this, but poorly-written descriptions have got to be one of the top reasons why people don’t get their loan requests funded on Prosper. (The obvious #1 reason is borrowers with poor credit ratings asking for much lower interest rates than lenders are willing to finance.) In order to help people with their descriptions, here are some further hints for borrowers based on my personal observations of descriptions on Prosper:

1. Think about your user name. Prosper uses user names instead of real names for lots of reasons (privacy, identity theft, etc.) Your user name can say a lot more about you than you think. If you have a user name like “desperate1″ or “hardluck” or, I don’t know, “deadbeat71″, give some serious thought to changing it.

2. Think about your loan title. This is the very first thing that I see; it’s the link that I click on to read your posting. Speaking just for me, if I see the words “desperate”, or “help”, or references to “a fresh start” or “getting on my feet” or “second chance”, I’m not clicking. Period. As I said in the first column, the very last thing in this world you want to do is sound desperate, even if you are. This is not a charity; I am not going to loan you any money if all you can do is tell me how your life stinks. In the publishing world, you have this thing called an “elevator pitch”, what you say to an agent when they’re standing next to you in an elevator. Do that in your loan title. Use six or seven words to describe why you’re borrowing the money.

Example: The movie with the biggest buzz this summer was “Snakes on a Plane”. The title said it all — the movie was about snakes on a plane. Simple, economical, easy enough for anybody to understand. Make your title that simple and effective and I’ll click on it.

3. Think about how you come across. If you put your title or your description in ALL CAPS, there is no way, period, that I’m even going to consider it. Why? Because it’s unprofessional. There’s a longstanding etiquette rule on the Internet that anyone who uses ALL CAPS is shouting — and if you don’t know this, you come across very badly. Don’t use ALL CAPS under any circumstances. (Don’t use all small letters either, because that makes it look like a text message.) For the same reason, don’t use lots of exclamation marks or emoticons.

4. Be professional. This really ought to be #1. If you can’t be professional in your description, I’m not going to be interested. Think of the description like a business letter. You wouldn’t write a bank asking for a loan with two or three lines, badly typed, telling the bank how desperate you are. You have to put your best foot forward, and that means being professional. If you don’t know how to write like a professional, get help from someone who does. The writing laboratory at Purdue has some examples of business letters; there are lots of others available online. I’m not saying you have to use big words or sound pompous, but it should at least look as though you put some time and effort into your description. (And use correct grammar, and whatever you do, do not misspell words.)

5. Tell me about yourself. Who are you? (Go ahead and post a picture of yourself if you want.) What’s your life story? Why do you need the money? What are you going to do with it? This is what I want to know. I may turn you down based on what you tell me — I am not financing your vacation or helping you buy a bass boat — but I’d still like to know. Go into detail if it helps.

6. Tell me about your finances. This is key information because it tells me how you’re going to pay me back. The best descriptions for personal loans have detailed information about income, spending, and how much you can pay back. One of the factors I look at is how much of a monthly payment you’re making and how big a burden it is on your finances. If you can confidently point out that you earn enough to pay back the loan, I’ll be that much more likely to finance you.

7. Tell me about your business. If you’re trying for a business loan, tell me what you need the money for. Give me a summary of your business plan. How do you expect to earn enough money to pay me back? Have you been successful in running a business before?

8. Check your credit rating. If you have delinquencies and late payments, explain why. Maybe you had a divorce. Maybe you had identity theft. Maybe you had a bad patch when you were sick or unemployed. But I’m never going to know if you don’t tell me. If you don’t tell me why you’ve had problem paying bills before, I’m just going to assume that you can’t pay me back.

If I had to boil all this down to one sentence, it would be this: Think like a lender. Would you loan money to someone who presented himself or herself the way that you do in your description? What would you like to see in someone else’s loan description? What would you want lenders to know about you? Answer these questions, and you’re on your way to better borrowing.

I got called an idiot (and worse, on the Giants fan board) for posting my 2006 NFL predictions, where I picked the final score for every single game this year, right up to and including the Super Bowl. (The Giants beat the Colts by one in my little world.) My predictions were pretty whacky, mostly because I was basing them on a random number generator — on the theory that it wouldn’t be much worse than what real-life predictions are.

Now here comes Peter King and the SI.com crew to make me look like a genius. Check out their “best-case predictions”:

At season’s start, every NFL club has playoff hopes, the optimism ranging from realistic expectations of 14-2 and home field advantage to wishful thinking about 8-8 and the sixth wild-card spot. Assuming 16-0 is out of the question, what’s the most your favorite club can hope for? SI looked at each team’s schedule to devise a best-case scenario — how the season could play out if all the key elements break right. The chart rates each game from -5 (certain loss) to +5 (sure win) and notes a handful of important matchups and calendar quirks that will make or break the season. The +1s are the games to watch — win those, and the hope becomes reality.

OK, here’s the chart for the Titans, showing an early-season win over the Jets, five straight losses, and wins late in the year over the Giants and Patriots.

And here’s the same chart for the Jets:

Notice that Peter King has both the Titans and the Jets winning the first week. Except that they play each other.

(If you look at the URL for the series, the words “everybody wins” appear, which gives you an idea.) Somebody (i.e., not me) needs to add up all the W’s and L’s and figure out just how unbalanced these projections are.

OK, it’s just for fun. But if you’re going to project, you should have the courage of your projections. Projecting a winning or near-winning season for every single team is a copout. And for Peter King, setting unreasonably high early-season expectations for the likes of the Cardinals (9-7) and Niners (8-8) is just mean.

Postrel:

D Magazine writer and Freakonomics ticket holder Teresa Gubbins informs me that the local Levitt-and-Dubner show’s been cancelled: “sniff sniff, the Grand Prairie stop of the Freakonomics tour just got cancelled. due to poor ticket sales.

Well, I could have told you that. This show, on the other hand, should do fine. (“If you’re making eighteen bucks an hour selling cars, and still don’t bother to show up for work, you might be from Grand Prairie.”)

Also — looks like they’ve cancelled Desmond Tutu, too. But there are lots of good seats available to hear Al Gore. So you got that going for you.

LaShawn Barber asks the question:

Christians, what would you do if some maniac held a gun to your head and asked you to deny Christ or die? Would you deny the Savior?

The context here is that faced by the kidnapped Fox News journalists released in Gaza:

“We were pushed down onto the dirt-covered concrete floor and we were forced to lie face down with our handcuffs on,” Centanni said. “Olaf was in the same room with me. Our shoulders were wrenched back, very painful.” Both of the men were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint, Centanni said.

“We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint,” Centanni told FOX News. “Don’t get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

Barber:

If I’m ever captured by Muslim maniacs or non-Muslim maniacs who gave me a choice between denying my Savior and death, I’d want to face death with all the dignity I had left. As a prideful person (for better or for worse), I don’t want to give my would-be murderers the satisfaction of breaking me, especially if they’re going to kill me anyway. And what is my life worth without Christ?

Would I want to live with the shame of not trusting him and denying him for the sake of living in this fallen world?

Just speaking for myself here, let me say, loud and clear, you betcha. Bring on the shame. If I’m captured by terrorists who tell me they’ll release me if I convert to their religion, I’m telling them exactly what they want to hear. If they tell me to deny Jesus, done. If that’s what gets me home to my wife in Jersey, that’s what I’ll do. I don’t have that kind of pride when it comes to my own personal safety. You want me to deny Christ? I’ll deny anyone you like. Tom Landry, Ronald Reagan, Grant Teaff, even John Wayne. You name it. I’ll tell you that I wear pink bunny rabbit slippers if it means you won’t shoot me dead. I’ll root for Texas A&M. Even Notre Dame. Don’t think I won’t.

More to the point, it’s very prideful — verging on the sinfully proud, in my view — for anyone to say that they wouldn’t do what Centanni and Wiig did, and to hold themselves up as exemplars. No one knows what he or she would do in that situation, and the journalists shouldn’t be faulted for what they did based upon someone else’s self-righteous estimation of what they would do.

As far as “living in this fallen world”, it’s true that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” It may be that God may call me to martyrdom for the faith — not that I expect this to happen, and I’m surely never going to seek it out. But if I’m going to be a martyr, it had better be for something more than just the casual whim of a hostage-taker. I’m willing to sacrifice myself for some things (he said, from the safety of his lunch-hour desk). But not in that situation, especially if a lie will see me through to safety.

Of course, circumstances change outcomes. I (likely) wouldn’t deny Christ if I knew that my interlocutor would kill me regardless of what I said. I (likely) wouldn’t deny Christ if I knew my captors wouldn’t let me go — check out Mark Bowden’s Guests of the Ayatollah for good examples of courage in the face of captivity. But in that situation? I’d do as Peter did, and deny my Lord and Savior. I might — as he did — weep bitterly once I got home, but I’d be comforted, as he was, that I would have more opportunities to serve Him in the world.

Because, if you do — even if you’re way the hell out in Inner Mongolia – it’ll get on the Web.

A woman in Hohhot, the capital of north China’s Inner Mongolia region, crashed her car while giving her dog a driving lesson, the official Xinhua News Agency said Monday.
No injuries were reported although both vehicles were slightly damaged, it said.

The woman, identified only be her surname, Li, said her dog “was fond of crouching on the steering wheel and often watched her drive,” according to Xinhua.

I mean, if she had done this fifteen years ago, before this whole Interweb thing got out of control, only her friends and family would have been able to make fun of her. And maybe people in the next town. And in Outer Mongolia. Maybe Tibet. But that would have been it. The worst thing about the Internet (if you’re the kind of person that makes mistakes) is that the stupidest things you say and do are not only preserved forever, but can be transmitted worldwide at a moment’s notice.

I’m struck by the response that Malcolm Gladwell gives to one of his critics of his recent article on birthrates and pensions (which I criticized as well):

“Gladwell” does not attribute Irish success to falling birth rates. David Bloom and David Canning do. Gladwell is a journalist. Bloom and Canning are two exceedingly prestigious economists at Harvard, who are considered world experts in the field of demography and economics. Gladwell was impressed by them. He talked to them. He read their work. He was convinced by them. But he didn’t make this argument up on the back of his journalistic notepad. And to neglect the true source of this argument is to trivilize and demean it. This is not Gladwell v. Jane Galt; journalist v. blogger. It’s world experts v. blogger. Just so we are clear on this. And acknowledging the origins of this idea means that you can’t depose of the dependency ratio argument just by dismissing Gladwell. You may actually have to read Canning and Bloom.

I just wish he’d continued on in that vein:

So, nuts to you, Jane! Neener-neener-neener! I am Gladwell! You can’t criticize my article because I’m just reporting what world-famous economists have to say! Got that? World-famous economists. And I’m not just throwing around the term “world-famous” here. Bloom and Canning are, like, way more famous than even Original Ray’s World-Famous New York Pizza. Now that’s famous.

Gladwell. I am Gladwell. Bow before me.

I mean, what a load. I’m not allowed to argue with what Gladwell’s analysis because he’s just a reporter? This is the Internet. I’m allowed to do anything I want. If Gladwell can get a piece published in the New Yorker explaining scientific theory, I have every right to criticize his explanation. And he’s got every right to argue his point of view. Instead, what he does is make the logical fallacy of the appeal to authority: the economists I based my article on are world-famous people, smarter than you, how dare you criticize them?

Specifically, it is fair to criticize Gladwell for not bringing up the supply-side argument that lower taxes affected the rise of the Irish economy. Obviously, supply-side theory (which Gladwell dismisses as “quaint” without ever offering an argument) doesn’t explain everything, but clearly Gladwell’s sources looked into it as part of their article; why not mention it? (Especially if the birthrate hypothesis weakens the supply-side hypothesis, as Gladwell seems to argue.)

Anyway, there’s all sorts of different ways for Gladwell to argue this point. He chose the neener-neener-neener route. I don’t disrespect him for this, I’ve been known to go all neener-neener-neener myself. But it’s not the most honorable argument you can make, and, well, it’s the lazy approach.

UPDATE: Steve Sailer estimates that Gladwell made $25,000 for his article. (Hey, New Yorker editors, I’d do it for half.)

From the NYT corrections page:

A front-page article yesterday about the crash of a jet that took off from the wrong runway at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Ky., misstated the position of that runway in relation to a longer runway. The runways intersect, but they are not perpendicular.

I know, it’s not about me. But I’m proud anyway.

Right now. I’m serious. Go read this outstanding interview with the great Mark Helprin, and then you can go about the rest of your day.

I finished Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, over the weekend. I’m not going to do a review here — I could, but I’m not going to. It’s one of those novels that isn’t about what it’s about — on the surface, it’s about a dystopian future where second-class clones routinely have their organs harvested, but it’s actually about loneliness and alienation within a social strata; the ethical and surgical implications are secondary when they aren’t ignored. Having said that, the writing is lovely, if you care about such things.

I mention Never Let Me Go to mention the first chapter (which, annoyingly enough, isn’t online). The narrator refers to herself as a “carer”. It’s a term I’d never heard before, and I assumed that it was Ishiguro’s own coinage. In the context of the novel, it refers to the narrator’s career taking care of other clones who have just had their vital organs surgically removed. However, I read the BBC story about the young kidnap victim in Austria being rescued, and it said that she was being looked after by “psychological carers”. And there’s a carer network in Britain (it’s the “Princess Royal Trust”, which I initially thought was for Diana but is in fact through Princess Anne, go figure).

So it’s a Britishism that I just hadn’t heard before, and not a brilliant neologism by Ishiguro. Just pointing that out.

An NYT puff piece on Paris Hilton’s personal assistant — wait, stay with me now:

When asked about his improbable journey from [John] Lennon to Hilton, Mr. Mintz explained that in his eyes he once represented an artist who stood for the dreams and values of a generation. And now he represents an heiress who, well, stands for the dreams and values of a generation.

“Young people don’t believe in politicians,” he said. “They don’t believe in their leaders. They look to celebrities to represent them.”

He said it, not me.