Sears/Kmart giveaways continue! Plus how to avoid getting hassled by The Man

A CRAPPY DEAL FROM KMART: The Eddie Lampert fire sale continues! As per Slickdeals, you can buy a toilet seat that costs less than $10 and receive $10 of Shop Your Way reward points. If you’re concerned that your credit card habits don’t seem unusual enough to those around you, why not surprise your friends and loved ones with an order of fifty profitable toilet seats? They make great stocking stuffers!

Oh, and another Slickdeal from last week that I missed: buy $25 in KMart gift cards and get a $5 Kmart award card, plus $2 in SYWR points. That one’s apparently good for a couple more days.

HOW TO AVOID GETTING ARRESTED: Dale Carson, a defense attorney and former cop, offers some thoughts on how to avoid getting arrested:

“Law enforcement officers now are part of the revenue gathering system,” Carson tells me in a phone interview. “The ranks of cops are young and competitive, they’re in competition with one another and intra-departmentally. It becomes a game. Policing isn’t about keeping streets safe, it’s about statistical success. The question for them is, Who can put the most people in jail?”

For those of us who churn obscenely generous credit card sign-up bonuses, it shouldn’t be a surprise that people respond to incentives in predictable ways. But what if you get stopped and questioned by the police?

If police want to hassle you, they’re going to, even if you’re following the above tips as closely as possible. What then? Every interaction with a police officer entails two contests: One for “psychological dominance” and one for “custody of your body.” Carson advises giving in on the first contest in order to win the second. Is that belittling? Of course. “Being questioned by police is insulting,” Carson writes. “It is, however, less insulting than being arrested. What I’m advising you to do when questioned by police is pocket the insult. This is difficult and emotionally painful.”

Winning the psychological battle requires you to be honest with cops, polite, respectful, and resistant to incitement. “If cops lean into your space and blast you with coffee-and-stale-donut breath, ignore it,” Carson writes. Same goes for if they poke you in the chest or use racial slurs. “If you react, you’ll get busted.” Make eye contact, but don’t smile. “Cops don’t like smiles.” Always tell the truth. “Lying is complicated, telling the truth is simple.”

The full article’s here, and Carson’s book, Arrest-Proof Yourself, is available on Amazon.

HOW TO AVOID GETTING MUGGED: It’s bad enough you have to worry about getting hassled by The Man (speaking of whom, congratulations for winning The Onion’s Man of the Year award), but there are plenty of criminals out there as well. Fortunately, if you’re in control of your body language, the bad guys will leave you alone and go after people who don’t read my blog:

But the most impressive part of Johnston’s investigations came next, when she asked whether it was possible to change the way we walk so as to appear less vulnerable. A first group of volunteers were filmed walking before and after doing a short self defence course. Using the point-light technique, their walking styles were rated by volunteers (not prisoners) for vulnerability. Perhaps surprisingly, the self-defence training didn’t affect the walkers’ ratings.

In a second experiment, recruits were given training in how to walk, specifically focusing on the aspects which the researchers knew affected how vulnerable they appeared: factors affecting the synchrony and energy of their movement. This led to a significant drop in all the recruits’ vulnerability ratings, which was still in place when they were re-tested a month later.

THE ECONOMIC DOMINANCE OF ENTJ’S: Here’s an interesting picture. Myers-Briggs is behind the times (five factors seems to be where it’s at now), but there are some significant salary differences between the 16 M-B groups.

HOW TO GET ITEMS FROM THE FREE SECTION ON CRAIGSLIST: Ryan at ReCraigslist writes:

I no longer respond to ads on the free section by telling people I can come right away. I’ve given up. There are so many people sitting on there trying to get the items that it’s not worth my time competing to be the first to respond. The thing is, you don’t have to be the first to respond to get the item. You just need the best response.

If you want to get something from the free section on Craigslist, reply to the person offering to pay them what you would willing to pay for the item.

Obviously you’ll only want to do this if the “free” item has some value. More details in the article.