So there I was, spooning Tabasco into my porridge to make it taste like food, when all of a sudden this jumped out of the bushes at me: Being ugly makes a difference to your security. Well, mine, anyway. How do I figure? Two ways.
First, as my bud Big Steve would say, “In poker, they call it a tell.” (Now Big Steve is a good ole boy, does a lot of thinkin’. He was the first to let on that the sign Wet Paint is not an instruction.) See, if the bad guys really are prone to being uglier than not… — sorta gives a guy a leg up on ’em, help see ’em comin’. Far-fetched? Maybe, maybe not. Some really smart professors who get people to pay ’em for what Big Steve and me keep studyin’ Thursday nights across the green felt – well, these birds reckon real good liars do a whole lot better if they’re good lookin’ too (Aldert Vrij, Par Anders Granhag, and Samantha Mann, “Good liars,” in Open Access Journal of Forensic Psychology, Vol. 1, 2009. Retrieved July 20, 2011 from http://web.me.com/gregdeclue/Site/Volume_1__2009_files/2009-excerpt-Vrij.pdf )
Now, stay with my train of logic, here. If they’re real good, we don’t see ’em. That means they get away with it. Why? According to the professors’ research, folks just plain tend to buy what attractive people are pitchin’ and it helps even more if the liars don’t talk too fast or act jumpy while making the sale. OK, fine. That part don’t help a whole lot … till you get this politically incorrect news flash: How come so many of the death-to-America chuckleheads are plain butt-ugly? Now I mean by our standards, of course. Sure, there’s somewhere where scraggily bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, shoe bomber Richard Reid, Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Makil Hassan, and underwear bomber Farouk Abdulmutallab qualify for rock star status with their roadies. I just ain’t seen it here. And even the guys that may not be so ugly like skivvy-slinging Farouk, let on about being socially isolated – feelin’ like a turd in a punchbowl (E. Andrews, “Lonely bomber in his own words: What Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab wrote about his family, sex ... and his love of Liverpool FC,” Mail Online, December 30, 2009. Retrieved July 20, 2011 from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1239162/Umar-Farouk-Abdulmutallabs-charred-underwear-hid-explosives-Christmas-day-airline-bomb-plot.html). That’s right. Skivvy slinger bellyached about havin’ no friends and someone who went to the same school said, “he was pretty quiet and didn’t socialize much or have a girlfriend (ibid).” Duh. Clue or what?
So, here’s Point #1: The bad guys haven’t broke the code on this tell. A lot of ’em started out ugly and stay ugly or get uglier over time. As in not getting’ better lookin’ each day. Why do we miss out on this tell? Well, this article from a Canadian magazine, of all places, calls it “the curse of the indelicate obvious. (N. Catrantzos, “Defending Against the Threat of Insider Financial Crime,” Frontline Security, October 2010, (pp. 17-19). Retrieved July 20, 2011 from http://www.frontline-security.org/publications/10_SEC2_Money.php
I don’t need fancy words like that to cover up a smart way to be stupid. We do it all the time. Old lady sees the elevator door open and a big nasty guy in there droolin’ and smellin’ ripe. Does she stay out? Nope. She steps right into that box to get mugged by him ’cause she don’t want to cast aspersions or some such. You see it all the time (as noted in Gavin DeBecker’s Gift of Fear, New York: Little, Brown & Company, 1997, available at http://www.amazon.com/Gift-Fear-Survival-Signals-Violence/dp/0316235024/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0 ) Smart folks making theirselves stupid and missin’ obvious clues on account of not wantin’ to hurt somebody’s feelins. So, if Point #1 is to pick up on the easy tell that the bad guys don’t realize they’re puttin’ out there, what’s Point #2?
It’s that maybe acts of terrorism attract ugly perps. Why? What else they got to do? It’s not like they got to skip out on a lot of dates on a Saturday night to pencil in jihad on their dance card. Hell, I may have seen one of these guys in his early stages my own self but didn’t know it at the time. His name was Omar and he actually fought with the Taliban against the commies as a kid. Used to hurt his feelings in 2000 when someone in the office called the Taliban terrorists. “Please, freedom fighters,” Omar said, real respectful-like. Now Omar wasn’t exactly ugly. He was presentable. But somethin’ about him turned off the girls in the office. Can you feature where this is goin’? No dates on Saturday night – just like the skivvy slinger. So, next thing you know, Omar takes to talking a lot of politics in Urdu on the phone instead of doin’ his job in finance. The company lets him go. Word was, before 9/11/01, Omar had hightailed it back to Pakistan and had been fixin’ to find hisself a bride there in an arranged marriage. Sure.
Point #2 is that ugly people, or people who see theirself as a social outcast – ugly or not – what they got to lose? You can sneak up on this point another way. Ask a Secret Service agent looking into a threat how to get a handle on the subject. Chances are he’ll be talkin’ about “looking into how the person has dealt with unbearable stress … examining past traumatic events in his life (such as) feeling humiliated or being rejected, especially in public (R. A. Fein and B. Vossekuil, Protective Intelligence and Threat Assessment Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice, July 1998, p. 17. Fein is a psychologist for the Secret Service and Vossekuil was a Deputy Special Agent in Charge.)” That sort of academo cop talk they use in formal situations— not like when you break out the kitchen whisky after bustin’ some caps at the range, if you get my drift.
Bottom Line: Keep your powder dry and keep your head on swivel when the next suspicious character is ugly, too.
-- Lamar Bodine, guest columnist and old school world watcher
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Exclamatory Inflation
The phenomenon is long standing and pervasive. In retail, "Ours is the best in town!" may be the claim. In security? Look for service providers with names like Total Security or, as in other hackneyed hustling of hype, A1, First This, or Best That. If not in the name itself, the exaggeration may find its way into the slogan: When Only the Best is Good Enough. For slightly more subtle variants, look in brochures and proposals where the seller characterizes the offering as Best in Class or its employees as Top-Notch. Finally, to remove any doubt that over-promotion is in progress -- whatever the field or discipline -- count exclamation marks. A single exclamation point in an otherwise declarative statement of capabilities is the mark of the sales team starting to overtake operations. As exclamation points multiply, however, credibility diminishes. When every paragraph has a sentence ending with such punctuation, the literature has turned into more pitch than substance. When multiple exclamation points come in a row (!!!), there is no point in reading further to be informed. The only more certain sign of fluff and hype is the added annoyance of INSERTING CAPITAL LETTERS TO CALL ATTENTION WHERE THERE IS NO GRAMMATICAL REASON FOR DOING SO, as if screaming from the page.
In security, the principal value of all this exclamatory inflation comes from noticing its absence. Serious people doing serious business eschew the vulgar, the needlessly showy, and the kinds of exaggerations that create unreasonably high expectations which are impossible to satisfy absent some miracle. The genuinely capable providers of security products and services recognize their limitations and avoid generating misleading sales pitches or, worse still, misleading sales pitches in bold type with weasel-worded disclaimers in microscopic footnotes. In some parts of the security business, the net result has been a sober tuning down of rhetorical flourishes, which is why protective glazing is now called "bullet-resistant," but seldom any longer marketed as "bullet-proof."
The credible vendors and contractors of security wares make their marketing pitches more subtle. Thus an alarm contractor may emphasize 24-hour monitoring and armed dispatch, showing an advertisement which features a command center with sophisticated video displays and a large staff suitable for monitoring intercontinental missile launches. In reality, the operation may be run out of a leased basement with old telephones and last generation computer monitors, and the armed response consists not of a dispatched patrol of contract guards in an imposing vehicle with even more imposing firearms, as shown in the ad, but of a call to local police who show up when they can with whatever equipment they carry on duty. Similarly, otherwise reliable guard services showcase in their advertisements the kind of good looking, imposing officers who only look good in their uniforms because they are professional models, and whose apparent ability to respond to dangerous situations and to reassure worried clients never quite matches up to the illusion fostered by a glossy advertising campaign.
While the best firms will not overtly misrepresent their actual capabilities, they will airbrush blemishes and avoid circulating collateral marketing handouts that show real employees and equipment, warts and all -- no matter how competent they may be. Why? As Niccolo Machiavelli observed, people "judge more by the eye than the hand, for all men can see a thing, but few come close enough to touch it (1981, The Prince, translated by Daniel Donno, New York: Bantam Books, pp. 63-63).
What does all this mean for consumers of security goods and services? There are indeed times when less is more, and when it pays to remark what a provider is not saying, underscoring, or shouting via exclamatory inflation. The serious, credible offerors know what they can legitimately advertise and confine their sales hype to the milder illusions created by imagery -- not the exclamatory inflation of promises no one can ever keep. Watch for what they are not saying.
-- Nick Catrantzos
In security, the principal value of all this exclamatory inflation comes from noticing its absence. Serious people doing serious business eschew the vulgar, the needlessly showy, and the kinds of exaggerations that create unreasonably high expectations which are impossible to satisfy absent some miracle. The genuinely capable providers of security products and services recognize their limitations and avoid generating misleading sales pitches or, worse still, misleading sales pitches in bold type with weasel-worded disclaimers in microscopic footnotes. In some parts of the security business, the net result has been a sober tuning down of rhetorical flourishes, which is why protective glazing is now called "bullet-resistant," but seldom any longer marketed as "bullet-proof."
The credible vendors and contractors of security wares make their marketing pitches more subtle. Thus an alarm contractor may emphasize 24-hour monitoring and armed dispatch, showing an advertisement which features a command center with sophisticated video displays and a large staff suitable for monitoring intercontinental missile launches. In reality, the operation may be run out of a leased basement with old telephones and last generation computer monitors, and the armed response consists not of a dispatched patrol of contract guards in an imposing vehicle with even more imposing firearms, as shown in the ad, but of a call to local police who show up when they can with whatever equipment they carry on duty. Similarly, otherwise reliable guard services showcase in their advertisements the kind of good looking, imposing officers who only look good in their uniforms because they are professional models, and whose apparent ability to respond to dangerous situations and to reassure worried clients never quite matches up to the illusion fostered by a glossy advertising campaign.
While the best firms will not overtly misrepresent their actual capabilities, they will airbrush blemishes and avoid circulating collateral marketing handouts that show real employees and equipment, warts and all -- no matter how competent they may be. Why? As Niccolo Machiavelli observed, people "judge more by the eye than the hand, for all men can see a thing, but few come close enough to touch it (1981, The Prince, translated by Daniel Donno, New York: Bantam Books, pp. 63-63).
What does all this mean for consumers of security goods and services? There are indeed times when less is more, and when it pays to remark what a provider is not saying, underscoring, or shouting via exclamatory inflation. The serious, credible offerors know what they can legitimately advertise and confine their sales hype to the milder illusions created by imagery -- not the exclamatory inflation of promises no one can ever keep. Watch for what they are not saying.
-- Nick Catrantzos
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