MATH: ALSO GOOD FOR CATCHING THIEVING WAITERS

ITEM: One form of small-scale credit card fraud is when waiters add an additional tip in the tip line of yr credit card (even if you’ve left a cash tip on the table) – by, say, turning a 3 into an 8 with a stroke of the pen, or adding a “1” in front of a “5.71” tip (though that's admittedly not easy if they put a dollar sign right in front of the amount).

Naturally, you can prevent this by keeping the paper receipt and checking them against yr credit card bill, but if yr not in the habit of keeping yr credit card receipts – or prone to losing them – Punny Money recommends using a checksum technique.

Say this is yr bill.

Adjust the amount of the tip so that the numbers in the final total to the left of the decimal point add up to the right-most digit. In this case, the total has a “51" to the left of the decimal point (A). 5 + 1 = 6, so the final digit should be six. Adjust the total to $51.86 or $51.96 (B) by adding nine or subtracting one from the tip (C).

Then, when you get the credit card statement, find the item and add the numbers to the left of the decimal point, and confirm that they add up to the right-most digit. If they don’t, you’ve been pwned. It’s not 100% foolproof, but it can help keep yr losses low.

If yr not mathematically inclined but you do have an iPhone or a smartphone running Windows Mobile, there are apps for both that can calculate a checksum tip for you.

Speaking of handsets, Free From Broke has another suggestion: if you have a mobile phone with a camera, use it to take a photo of all your credit card receipts as soon as you get them. That way, you'll have a dated record of all your credit card purchases that you can refer to when you go over your credit card statements.

Wow. Who knew math would be this useful?

NOTE: Many people would also argue that one way to prevent this is to tip servers 20% like yr supposed to. Maybe – but while I wouldn’t exactly say I take all my tipping advice from Steve Buscemi, I do think tipping shouldn’t be automatic. And waiters rude enough to not be worth tipping might also be the sort to resort to credit card fraud to get revenge on deadbeat customers.

Being with me is like math class,

This is dF

GREAT MOMENTS IN MARKETING: MEATY BEATY BIG AND BOUNCY

Okay. It was one thing to have Padma Lakshmi making love to chowing down on a Hardee’s/Carl Jr  bacon burger.

But now Hardee’s/Carl Jr have hired “top rated bikini body” Audrina Patridge (who may be famous – I’m not sure) making love to chowing down on a Hardee’s/Carl Jr teriyaki burger.

( Video behind the jump to conform with office dress codes )

Which I might not bother to mention except that it seems Burger King is keen to up the ante in the meat-sex competition with this.



Which I mention for a couple of reasons:

1. I actually saw the same ad for Burger King in Singapore last week. I thought it was a local campaign, seeing as how oral sex in Singapore was only legalized less than two years ago. And that was only for straight people. So I thought, you know, progress. (Insert "$6.25 slut" joke here.)

2. Ads like this are apparently why MIC – that Burger King franchisee in Tennessee – put “Global Warming Is Baloney” on its signs.

JJ McNelis, MIC’s marketing president, told Lou Dobbs that they did the signs in a response to some of BK’s “poorer marketing”. Not the Seven Incher specifically, but the one with Sir Mix-a-Lot rapping about square booty to promote a Spongebob kids meal.

Well, I got to tell you, I hear on the frontline that we caught a lot of grief over that particular campaign so we thought that putting up a little different message might change the dialogue a little bit. By golly, we certainly succeeded on that front.

Quite.

So you can expect more scientifically inaccurate conservative sloganeering from MIC to offset the inevitable BK/BJ jokes. Maybe something on how abstinence-only sex ed works 100%.

Incidentally, the transcript of that interview is worth reading if you enjoy the spectacle of Lou Dobbs blathering about how brave MIC is and how Big Business doesn’t do nearly enough to stand up for its First Amendment right to push oversimplified political views on its customers, for which American soldiers are dying to protect.

From you I get opinions,

This is dF

IN FUTURE, YOU ARE NEVER OFFLINE

I write about mobile phones for a living, and my sources say this is you five years from now.



Just so you know.

[Glommed via YesButNoButYes, but no idea who the artist is. One of you web-savvy people might have an idea.]

You’ve been Facebooked,

This is dF

CYNTHIA DAVIS WANTS TO TAKE YOU ALL TO DINNER

Following up on the Cynthia “Stay Hungry” Davis story, where Davis (a Republican state rep in Missouri) opposed a summer lunch program for poor kids on the grounds that “Hunger can be a positive motivator” and is also healthier because “People who are struggling with lack of food usually do not have an obesity problem”:

Keith Olbermann found out and named her “Worst Person In The World” for it.

So she’s put out a press release defending her opposition to the food program. There’s a lot of the usual “I was quoted out of context and you twisted my words and why do you hate children so much?” stuff, but basically (and I had to read it a few times to get her point) she seems to be saying that she opposes govt food programs because:

1. It takes away the rights of parents to feed their kids.
2. Meal time is family time, and you can’t have family time if the kids are out getting lunch somewhere.
3. The solution isn’t to feed kids, but to enable parents to feed them.

Notice that she doesn’t actually give any concrete suggestions for actually doing #3 apart from leaving it to churches (who can’t do it without govt assistance unless yr pastor’s name is Rick Warren) or finding gainful employment in the wholesome, family-friendly fast food industry. Which is as well since #1 and #2 don’t seem to have any basis in reality, either.

Still, points for pretending that govt lunch programs have nothing to do with the fact that some families don’t make enough to feed their kids three square a day, and that their food expenses are often higher than middle-class families. Makes it easier to just rattle off a bunch of batshit about the positive side of hunger.

"Hunger makes food taste better."

See? I can do it too.

I need lunch,

This is dF