December 22, 2008 10:27 am by Markus.

I just read that Credit Card Companies are adjusting Credit Scores based on shopping patterns in addition to  credit-score and payment history. It seems they also consider which mortgage lender a customer uses and whether the customer owns a home in an area where housing prices are declining. All that to limit the growing credit card default rates.

That’s an interesting way to do it (from a risk modeling point of view) and I wonder how well it works in practice. There might also be some legal ramifications to this if it can be demonstrated that this practice (possibly unknowingly to them) discriminates e.g. against minorities.

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December 2, 2008 9:09 pm by Markus.

In an interview of Professor Marc Bekoff on the radio he described some of the research on sociopathy and playing games. Research indicates that sociopaths don’t play and never learned how to play with other people. A lot of learning is done by playing, boundaries and rules are established and kids learn how to get along with other kids. And then you have a school ban the game of tag and other chase games and even a Virginia School banning all touching between kids. I wonder if the school thought about the consequences of these policies. The kids might turn out like the one in this story illustrating the negative effects of child fear mongering and overprotective parenting. What are kids in Virginia supposed to do? I guess we should have more video games in school then (sidenode: see player quits World of Warcraft (WoW) as an extreme example for how excessive video games can mess up lives). Interesting times indeed…

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