caveat emptor.  this advice is handed out, from person to person, from incident to incident.  it's treated like wisdom.  you all know the difference between intellingence and wisdom don't you?  you can tell a child repeatedly not to touch a hot stove, but they often need to learn for themselves what the danger behind "hot stove" is.  intelligence is easily understood as facts but without experience to provide context for them.  wisdom is it's complement; it provides the framework within which you can use facts to do useful things.

what do all of these things have in common?  i've been giving some thought to the recent dust up over the pawnshop in dc that was serving as a front for stolen bicycles.  one issue that this incident clearly illustrates is that the way we buy and sell things using the internet is still in flux.  we look at ebay or craigslist or some other online bazaar and scope out the wheelsets, frames and components that we would like.  the price is considerably lower than that at your local bike shop so what's not to like?  here, my friends, lies the crux of the issue regarding intelligence and wisdom.

getting burned on a transaction is difficult to understand.  you saw the bike.  you payed your money.  you followed the rules.  the facts are on your side.  but then something went wrong.  in some cases it goes horribly wrong.  the wisdom that comes from this is in learning to appreciate the numerous additional kinds of risk that are out there.  the details vary but the motif is stunningly common.  i'm not going to prattle on about this, because we've all had friends who had these types of things go wrong.

instead, i'm going to introduce a new feature which i call: kevin's sketchy internet bike postings.  these are named for kevin, not because he's unreliable, but because he sends me more sketchy bike postings than anyone else by a long shot.  first up is this nice offering:

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva/bik/301842440.html

check in man.  new bike plus five hundy in accessories for $650 because the dude is lazy and/or changed his/her mind.  as kevin said, wtf??!!  might be a gem of a value.  might also be a hopelessly surreal encounter.  i know you're curious, but should you follow up?  can you afford not to?  it probably won't work out, but what if it did?

i need to be clear about one thing.  i'm not implying these bikes are stolen or the postings are fraudulent.  i'm merely amused at how ridiculous they are.  around my house, we joke about something making your "spidey sense" tingle.  look at the postings we put under this category and if you have the slightest instinct to hit that "buy it now" button, go back and re-read the section about intelligence and wisdom.

- - - posted by scott