Halloween celebrated on our block with a pot luck that we skipped. Our kids returned with pillow cases of candy. B. dressed up as an aging ghoul and Z. as an umpire. We handed out candy from out porch with some of our neighbors. One brave lad came by dressed as George Bush.
"It's hard to imagine one teenager running up $10,000 in text charges in a month -- until you consider the services she used. Amanda had signed up for text-chatting services, lured by ads promising romantic dialogs with "cool guys." With each message costing $1-$2 a pop, such chats can easily cost hundreds of dollars a day."
Will the madness never end? I keep adding 419s to my blog as they drop into my e-mail, hoping that seach engines will pick them up with other folks get them. I must admit that some are quite creative. Cheating people is hard work. So, as a public service, here are some 419 frauds. I'm also hoping that by publishing them, my Nigerians friends will get the hint that they should stop sending me these e-mails, but I doubt that they will.
Due to your effort, sincerity, courage and trustworthiness you showed at thecourse of the Uk Online Lotto winning cheque shipment to your location, Iwant to compensate you and show my gratitude to you with the sum of$500,000USD (Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) I have authorizedthe finance house where I deposited the money to issue you internationalcertified bank draft cashable at your bank.My dear winner, I will like you to contact the CEO in charge of the financehouse for the collection of this international certified bank draft. Thename of the Person with your Cheque is Mr. Terry Mark Stewart.COMPENSATION AND FINANCE HOUSE HEAD OFFICECONTACT AGENT MR.TERRY MARK STEWART.EMAIL: compesationofficer_terrystewart@yahoo.dkAt the moment, I am very busy in Sydney because of the investment projectswhich myself and my new partner Mr. Peter Hills. Finally, remember that Ihave forwarded instruction to Mr. Terry Mark at the finance house on yourbehalf to send the bank draft to you as soon as you contact him withoutdelay. Please I will like you to accept this token with good faith as thisis from the bottom of my heart. Thanks and God bless you and your family.Hope to hear from you soon.
My sincere advice to you as a Christian is that you should endeavor to Payyour tithe to a bible believing church when you get the money because Inoticed it as a fiduciary agent that you were skeptical about your winningswhen you were been ask by the Uk lotto Agency Inc to file out a claim foryour prize.
And now the current policy of the Lotto organizers is that if an emergedWinner fails to claim up his/her winning cheque of $500,000 it's nowmandatory that this fund can be remitted or forfeited to the fiduciary agentin charge of this winners file.However, I want you to contact him immediately as soon as you receive Thisemail.
Yours Sincerely,
Mrs. Sherry Cole.
XXXX
From: web036@zipmail.com.br
Hello my Dear,
You might find it so difficult to remember me. Though, it is indeed, a verylong time.On my singular, I am much delighted and privileged to contactyou again, after couple of years now. It takes fate, courage and God's fearingto remember you and at the sametime,to show gratification to you despitecircumstances that made things, not worked out as we projected then.I take this liberty to inform you that, the transaction we were pursingtogether, finally worked out by God's infinite mercy and I decided to contactyou, just to let you know. You are advised to stop any further communicationwith your local representative(s) any officials (s) department whom maycall you or email concerning the drafted cheque what sum of $950,000,00,accept Mr.Peter Jakie, You are advise not to accept any fax or telephonecalls that does not come from him.Because he is the only person I left the instructions on how to deliverthe drafted cheque to you,and you may call him immediately you receivedthis important message for more information through the instruction I left,I have conscience as a human being,due to your tremendious efforts and contributionsto make things work out.Meanwhile, I must inform you that, I am presently in Taiwan now for numerousbusiness negotiations and establishment. I just arrived two days now. Now,with my sincere heart, I have raised and signed an International Cashier'sBank Cheque,to the tune of USD$950,000.00 in your name as COMPENSATION foryour dedication,humanity and contributions.Please, contact him now, my confidential secretary,his name is Mr. PeterJakie on his E-mail:(peterjakie2000@yahoo.fr ) to discuss on the best wayfor you to recieve it. Feel free to reach him as i have left instructionson your behalf.Sincerely Yours,Mr.johnson micheal.
XXXX
From: the_lottery_dept@yahoo.com.hk GUINNESS STOUT IS GREAT PROMOTIONS 2007. We are pleased to inform you of the result of the just concluded Monthly draws held on the 28th of OCTOBER 2007 GUINNESS IS GREAT Worldwide Promotion, your email was among the 30 lucky winners who won GBP (Great British Pounds) £120,000.00 each on the GUINNESS STOUT Company. However, the results were released on 16th of NOVEMBER 2007 and your email was attached to ticket number (GUI29578NN845) and ballot number (BN: 923645194756/JTF-W). The online draws was conducted by a random selection of email addresses from an exclusive list of 250,031 E-mail addresses of individuals and corporate bodies, picked by an advanced automated random computer search from the internet. However, no tickets were sold but all email addresses were assigned to different ticket numbers for representation and privacy. The selection process was carried out through random selection in our computerized email selection machine (CELMA) from a database of over 2,250,000 email addresses drawn from all the continents of the world. This Lottery is approved by the British Gaming Board and also Licensed by the International Association of Gaming Regulators (IAGR).This lottery is the 2nd of its kind and we intend to sensitize the public. In other to claim your GBP £120,000.00 prize winning, this has been deposited in a designated bank. However, you will have to fill the form below and send it to the Promotion manager of The Guinness Lottery Company for verification and then you will be directed to the bank where a cheque of GBP £120,000.00 has already been deposited in your favor. NAMES: AGE: SEX: MARITAL STATUSADDRESS: STATE: ZIP CODE: COUNTRY: PHONE: MOBILE PHONE: OCCUPATION: POSITIONCOMPANY: Please you are advised to complete the form and send it immediately to our Promotion manager through email for prompt collection of your fund from the designated bank. (CONTACT PROMOTION MANAGER)Name: Mr. Dionn Hunter Phone # : +44 7031922296 OR +44 7031949345EMAIL: lottery_payment_center@yahoo.com.hk
Please keep all lotto information away from the general public especially your ticket number and ballot number. (This is important as a case of double claims will not be entertained). *Staff of GUINNESS STOUT Company is prohibited from partaking in this Lottery PLEASE BE WARNED* Accept my hearty congratulations once again!Yours faithfully,Prof. Mrs. Alma Hyman
BARRISTER DUAN MORRIS, Clapham(INVEST)Consultants292, Upper Richmond Rd West , East Sheen, London , SW14 7JG United Kingdom
Atten:
My Dear Friend,
The inspiration to contact you is simply divine providence, I am makingthis proposition because I have to seek the partnership of a resourceperson to help me realize this project. I am Barrister Duane Morris,A solicitor and investment consultant based in London, united kingdom.Iwas attended a business lunch in Berlin, Germany and I got introducedto the renowned German businessman and property mogul, Mr.AndreasSchranner (of the blessed memory).He engaged my services as an attorney and investment consultant and myprimary assignment was to spearhead his investment for rays in the UnitedKingdom. Three months later I invited him to London and under myprofessional guidance and based on my advice he made a fixed deposit of9,800,000.00 Million Pounds Sterling at a financial institution [NINE MILLIONEIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS STERLING ] .This deposit was for 5years and upon maturity I made effort to contact myclient, I could not reach him or any member of his family. I was forced totravel to Germany and there I got the tragic news that on July 25 2000, myclient Mr. Andreas schranner, his wife Maria, their daughter Eich andson Christian perished in the air FranceConcorde new York bound flight;Please Click here and find out what happened to the familyhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/859479.stmI have made efforts to locate any member of his family since then withstrong biological links to my late client without success. The search tofind a close relation is one that has consumed time and resources.The institution is asking me to either present a next of kin to late Mr.Andreas Schranner or forfeit the deposit.My proposal is to package, present you as next of kin to late Mr. AndreasSchranner and process the fixed deposit and transfer custody to you forour mutual benefit. My capacity as solicitor/investment consultant to mylate client gives me the discretion to package and transfer the deposit toyou.I will give you 40% for your effort, 60% for me it will amount toinjustice if I do not take this decisive step to secure this deposit, andinvest it. The late schranner was also a friend in addition to ourbusiness relationship.I will wait for your response with the following information?s.
Your Full name .................................... Your Telephone numbers..... ........................ Your Country......................................... Your Mailing Address.... ...........................
We received instruction from the Debt Management office, ThePresidency, to have your USD $3.1m currently approved by the contractReview and Payment Committee released to you through our Smart CardDepartmentIn a motion filed at the High Court of Justice in respectof your outstanding US$3.1M Contract PaymentvideCONTRACTNO.:MME/32789XDHGH/2007 currently in an Escrow account of ourBank , be informed that this office have been advised via a Court rulingto revalidate yourpayment transfer since its validity of 8th May,2007You will receive your payment immediately through ourSwift card payment centres in Europe, America,Africa and AsiaPacific,This is part of an instruction/mandate passed by the SenatePresident,at the Federal House of Senate,Abuja in respect to oversea Debtcontract payment and debt re-scheduling plan of the Federal Republic ofNigeria and Fifteen other Economic Communities of West African States.This card centre will send you an ATM CARD which you will use towithdraw your money through an ATM MACHINE in any part of the world,but the maximum is($10,000.00) Ten Thousand US Dollars per transaction ofyour sum amounting to Three Million, One Hundred Thousand United StatesDollars only.(USD$3.1Million ).If you wish to receive your fund this way,Kindly reconfirm your(1) Your Full Name(2) Address where the Card shall be sent to.(3) Your Phone Number(4)OccupationFailure to adhere strictly to this directives as instructed by thePresidency and the Contract Review and Payment Committee will lead tosummary seizure of all your funds in Nigeria as interpreted in section89 article 201 of Central Bank of Nigeria and Ministry of Finance Act1979.We shall be expecting to receive your information as you have to stopany further communication with any other officials except the Undersigned.
Thanks for your co-operation. Best Regards, Mr.Isa ZailaniExecutive Director OPerations & Information TechnologyAfribank Nigeria Plc XXXX
From:
OFFICE OF THE SENATE HOUSE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN PAYMENT (RESOLUTIONPANEL ON CONTRACT PAYMENT) IKOYI-LAGOS NIGERIA
Our Ref: FGN /SNT/STB Your ref:
ATTN: Beneficiary,
We, the entire members of the Federal House of Senate, on behalf of the Federal Republic of Nigerian Government, Under the auspices of the civil i am Head of State, President Umaru Musa Yar Adua (GCFR) and the Governor of Central Bank Of Nigeria , Prof Charles Soludo held a meeting last week concerning payment , both foreign and local contractors and some inheritance funds. On going through files yesterday, we discovered that your file was dumped untreated , so at this juncture, we apologize for the delay of your payment and please stop communicating with any office now and attention to the appointed office below for you to receive your payment accordingly . Now your new Payment Reference No.-35460021, Allocation No: 674632 Password No : 339331 , Pin Code No: 55674 and your Certificate of Merit Payment No : 103 , Released Code No: 0763; Immediate Telex confirmation No: -1114433 ; Secret Code No: XXTN013 ,Having received these vital payment number , therefore You are qualified now to received and confirm Your payment with the Federal Government of Nigeria immediately within 24hrs. Now you are directed to contact the Office of the Paymaster General Federal Republic of Nigeria Dr. Mallam Haruna Musa Mimmediately so that he will pay you and fax you the payment Copy Slip and also you should reconfirm your banking Details , this is to avoid mistake while transferring your overdue payment to you.
Contact Person: Dr. Mallam Haruna Musa Em ail:officepayment_g_g@yahoo.co.uk Contact him now and inform him that you received an email from The Federal House of Senate Federal Republic of Nigeria , Instructing you to write him for immediate release of your fund and forward your Details to his office to avoid transfer mistake.
NOTE: We have mounted our security network to monitor every in-coming call , if we still find out that you are still dealing with all those fraudsters that have been frustrating our efforts and defrauding beneficiaries, We shall stop and cancel your payment immediately .
Best Regards
DR. DAVID B.MARK. SENATE PRESIDENT(Federal Republic of Nigeria)
After a successful completion of the draws of the MICROSOFTEMAIL PROMO held on the 17th November 2007, yourcompany or your personal e-mail address,attached to winningnumbers:(23) (77) (04) (57) (33) (170) won in the Tenthlottery category.You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of£150,000,00 (One Hundred and Fifty Thousand British PoundsSterling) in cash credited to file REF NO:MSW-L/007-28793,BATCH NO:2007MJL-05, this is from a total prize money of£3,750,000 (Three Million,Seven hundred and Fifty ThousandBritish Pounds Sterling),shared among the Twenty five (25)international winners in this category.All participants were selected through our Microsoftcomputer ballot system drawn form 142,000 Names,as part ofour International \"E-MAIL"\ Promotion Program for ourprominent MS-WORD users all over the world and for thecontinuous use of the internet.You are therefore requested to contact the claims processorvia the e-mail address provided with the informationrequired in the form below.
TEL: +44 703 5902789In order to avoid unnecessary delay and complications,pleaseremember to quote your reference and winning ticket numberin all correspondence with your claims officer.Your secretpin code is ML0757985.
PLEASE NOTE THAT YOU ARE TO SEND THE FOLLOWING INFORMATIONTO CLAIM YOUR WINNINGS:
1. Full Name: ........................................
You are to keep all lottery information(your winning numbersand MOST ESPECIALLY your secret pin code) away from thegeneral public.This is important as a case of double claimsand unwarranted abuse of this program will not beentertained and will be legally pursued.
Congratulations once again.
YOURS FAITHFULLY,
MRS. ENDA STEELE
XXXX
From: 'JOHN MORGAN'
JOHN MORGAN 60 Seven Sisters Road, London NW2 3PZ. From: Barr John Morgan (Esq.)
I am Barrister John Morgan, personal Attorney to Ronald Lake, on the31st Of January 2000, my client and his wife Joyce Lake were involvedin a Plane Crash (Alaska Airlines Flight 261) all passengers unfortunatelylost their lives, since then I have made several enquiries to locate anyof my clientsextended relatives but this proved unsuccessful. See the website belowwww.archives.cnn.com/2000/US/02/01/alaska.airlines.list/Since it is not compulsory that the Next-of-Kin must be a bloodRelation to the deceased, hence I contacted you, be informed that aNext-of-Kin can be anybody, friends or organization etc.Presently, the Bank where the deceased (my client) had a Deposit valuedAt US$10, 500, 000.00 Million issued me a notice to provide theNext-of-Kin to my client to receive its benefit or have the accountConfiscated, so I have contacted you to assist me in repatriating thisbenefit left behind by my client before they get confiscated ordeclared unserviceable by the Bank.To this effect, I now seek your consent to present you to the Bank asThe Next-of-Kin of the deceased (my Client) so that the proceeds ofThis Benefit valued at US$10, 500, 000.00 Million can be paid to you andthen you and I can share it; 50% to me, 40% to you, while 10% should begiven toany Orphanage Home. I guarantee that this will be executed under alegitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law.
Please get in touch with me with the below details immediately youacknowledge thegood receipt of this Message.
Full Name: Full Address: Tel Number: Fax Number: Mobile Number: Private Email: Occupation: Marital Status: Age: Sex:
N:B PLEASE GET BACK TO ME ON MY PRIVATE EMAIL ADDRESS WHICH.......................... FOR THE SAKE OF CONFIDENTIALITY.
XXXX
On Sat Nov 17 6:22 , "office file" sent:
YOUR ATM PAYMENT WAS SUCCESSFULL
Good day,
I have been waiting for you since to come down here and pick your bank draft but we did not hear from you since that time then i went and deposited the $1.200,000.00 usd draft/cheque in the bank.We have arranged your payment through swift card payment center Asia pacific, this card center will send you an atm card which you will use to withdraw your money in any atm machine in any part of the world, but the maximum is One Thousand, Five Hundred United States Dollars Per-Day.Kindly contact the below person who is in possition to release your ATM Payment Card.Send your information which they will use to send the card to you.
1. Your full name:: 2. Your home address were you them to send the atmcard:: 3. Current occupation:: 4. Age:: 5. Your current home telephone number/mobile phone number:: :: 6 . A Copy of your identification::However, kindly contact the below person who is in position to release your atm card. MR FRANK WILLIAMS( DIRECTOR)ATM Payment Department apex banktel: +229-97 65 87 48 Email: frank1_williams@myway.comI have paid for the processing and delivery charges.the only money that your are going to pay to them is only $165 dollars which they will use to obtain the affidevid of onwership from the federal high court of Benin Republic. Try to contact them as soon as possible to quicken the processing of your card before your draft gets expired . Let me know as soon as you receive your card.
Waiting for your respond. and your Urgent Call.
Thanks
Mrs LILIAN BENSON
XXXX
On Sat Nov 17 15:25 , eguatu10@earthlink.net sent:
Attention Friend
Its my pleasure to inform you that i have verified from the bank director regarding the transfer of your fund and it was good news because the requested fee was less expessive for you to afford. your consignment containing your fund($1.200.000.00) have been deposited with the BANK OF AFRICA(BOA)so that your fund will be wired to your account immediately.You are to contact the bank director with your banking details. However i went to BANK OF AFRICA(BOA) to discuss this with the bank director as its has not been delivered to you. However he told me that your fund can be transfered to you via a direct wire transfer(KTT) into your account.He told me to instruct you to contact the bank to apply for a direct wire transfer into your account to avoid loosing your fund due to delay. Therefore you can contact the bank with below information, send to them your banking information.
BANK OF AFRICA(BOA)20/22 HOSPITAL ROUTE COTONOU BENIN REPUBLIC MAIL=mailto:MAIL=bankofafrica_bfb_190@myway.com, Telephone=== /+229 93 48 17 71 BANK OF AFRICA(BOA)FOREIGN OPERATION DIRECTOR. REV.CYPRAIN MARK
Send an email to the bank with the above bank email address and apply for your wire transfer as i have informed the bank about you already.On receipt of your fund into your account endeavour to inform me immediately you receive your fund in your account. the director told me that the only fee you are to pay is $95,00 usd for the opening of new international account there in there bank that will be used to transfer the fund to your destinated account in your country and it will alsoserve as the bank transfer charges.
Thanks
Remain Blessed
Barr.Ewele Eguatu
XXXX
On Mon Nov 19 3:30 , "charles Soludo" sent: OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENCY, THE HONORABLE, GOVERNOR OF CBN. TINUBU SQUARE, LAGOS- NIGERIA. PRIVATE EMAIL : charlesmailbox206@yahoo.com
Definitely I know that this letter will be a surprising one to you.Firstly, I will like to introduce myself formally as Prof.Charles Soludo, The Governor of the Central Bank Of Nigeria (CBN). You are been officially contacted by me today because your funds were re-deposited intothe "Federal Suspense Account" of C.B.N last week, because you did not forward your claim as the right beneficiary within due time.Well known to all, the Central Bank Of Nigeria is the apex bank of all commercial banks here in Nigeria. My reason for contacting you is that we had two strange visitors who came to the Bank for the claim of your fund, one who introduced himself as an attorney and a foreigner who claimed to be authorized by you as the beneficiary of your fund.I had toask them why they came to see me in person and they said that they were here to put up claims on your behalf for your fund valued at some millions in United States Dollars, which rightfully belongs to you in our records. I asked them who authorized them to come down to Nigeria for the Collection of this Payment and they told me that you asked them to come and collect this Funds on your behalf. In fact this was the biggest surprise of it kind that this bank had ever witnessed, because your fund is still in the "Federal Suspense account" of C.B.N, and yet you sent these men to come and collect the fund on your behalf without notifying the bank.The bank do not understand why you sent these men to come and collect your fund on your behalf, as it appears to be suspicious. If actually you want them to help you collect your fund, at least you should have notified us through our customer care department or even myself, the Governor of this bank. They actually tendered some vital documents whichproves that you actually sent them for the collection of your Fund. Honestly, it really baffles me that you took such decision without the consent of the bank.
Below is a list of document which they tendered to this bank today:
1. HIGH COURT INJUCTION. 2. ORDER TO RELEASE. 3. TRANSFER PAYMENT SLIP
Actually, these documents which they tendered to this bank is a clear proof that you sent them to collect this Fund on your behalf. Finally, I had to ask that they give me time to verify their claims before releasing the money to the account, which they have provided already. As the governor of this bank, i'm in a position to authorize the release of your fund to them, but it is necessary that we have a confirmation from you before i do so. Due to the nature of my job, I will not want to make any mistake in releasing these Fund to anyone except you whom is the recognized beneficiary of this Fund in our record.
Kindly clarify us on this issue before we make this payment to these foreigners whom you sent on your behalf.
OFFICIALLY SIGNED.
PROF. CHARLES SOLUDO. GOVERNOR, CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIAN
Discussing this issue or message with a third party will only complicate matters regarding recieving your fund, so i advise that you clarify this matter directly on your own. Please do not respond to this box,the email box is not equipped to receive response.
From: "henksmith4" Subject: Award Notice Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 22:20:01 +0200
Award Notice,
Following official publication of results of the Email electronic online Sweepstakes organized by the(KRASLOTEN LOTTERY AGENCY) corporation,the Slide circuit award
Contact Mr. James Peterson by phone or email Tel:+31-623-494-970, Email:krasloten5050@yahoo.de For Claim and Clarification of 1000.000.00(One Million Dollars)From KRASLOTEN LOTTERY AGENCY database internet email users.Your email address was randomly balloted which came out attached to(Ref.No 99868)
Regards,
Mrs.Henk Smith.
XXXXXXXX
On Wed Oct 24 5:36 , 'Fidelix Woodgate' sent:
FGN/OHG/00X09/2007ATTN: BENEFICIARY,STOP ORDER FROM THE PRESIDENCYThis is to bring to your notice about the due process of your outstanding contractual payment which was suspended by the Central Bank of Nigeria there by stopping the telex unit to pause the transfer of your contract fund to your nominated bank account. As aresult of this development verification conducted by the Finance Ministry in conjunction with the Debt Verification Panel on your contract case file has been endorsed for payment awaiting your confirmations.In view of several efforts already made by us to contact you for the following reasons based on the new account submitted to this office on your behalf:
(1) My Office desks have just received a sworn affidavit from Mr. RAINER HESSE of Germany to re-route your payment into a new bank account number as stated VACAP Federal Credit Union, 1700 Robin Hood Road, Richmond, VA 23220. Account number 32501.of Mr. RAINER HESSE. The sum of 10 Million US Dollars ( Ten Million US Dollars)
(2) Please, confirm to our department if you have instructed Mr. RAINER HESSE to appoint an attorney/agent on your behalf thereby asking that he receive cash call remittance on your behalf.
(3) It have come to our notice that you are being contacted by unauthorized individuals with respect to your contract payment but unfortunately this office is not aware of your unofficial dealings and warned that itis at your own risk.
(4) Please, also confirm if you have authorized Mr. RAINER HESSE to change your banking particulars to the following particulars stated below:
VACAP Federal Credit Union,
1700 Robin Hood Road, Richmond, VA 23220.
Account number 3250163
Also re-confirm your Contract Number, Contract Amount, Private Telephone and Fax number, your e-mail address, Office or home address so that we can cross-check it with our file records.
We have decided to contact you for re-verification because we suspected that Mr. RAINER HESSE is trying to divert your money through the sworn affidavit into a new different bankaccount. You are advised to call the Chairman Debt Verification Panel upon the receipt of this mail.
Please call me as soon as you recieve the mail for more concrete discussion regards to this issue of your payment.
Direct telephone number : +234-70-3512-3010
Treat as urgent
Yours faithfully,
Fidelix Woodgate
Warning:
This communiqu is from the PRESIDENTIAL BOARD OF TRUSTEE ON CONTRACT PAYMENT upon the advice of the Presidential adviser on Contract are advised to adhere strictly to directive. Any fund beneficiary who ignores instruction will be doing so at his own risk and should not blame the Federal Government Of Nigeria for non-payment of their contract funds.
FRONT DESK OF THE PRESIDENT FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA
On Sat Oct 27 9:14 , vittoriofondazio_1@hot.rr.com sent
: VITTORIO FONDAZIONE.
Corso Ercole I d'Este 44, Ferrara 44100 - Italy.
IMPORTANT NOTICE Foundation's Officer, Fondazion Di Vittorio, ITALY http://www.fondazionedivittorio.it Concern.
The Foundazion di Vittorio, would like to notify you that you have been chosen by the board of trustees as one of the final recipients of a cash Grant/Donation for your own personal, educational, and business development. The Fondazione Di Vittorio, established 1977 by the Multi-Million groups and now supported by the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS),United Nations Organization (UNO) and the European Union (EU) was conceived with the objective of human growth, educational, and community development. To celebrate the 28th anniversary program, The Vittorio Foundation in conjunction with the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS), United Nations Organization (UNO) and the European Union (EU) is giving out a yearly donation of US$850,000.00 (Eight Hundred and Fifty Thousand United States Dollars) to 100 lucky recipients. These specific Donations/Grants will be awarded to 100 lucky international recipients worldwide; in different categories for their personal business development and enhancement of their educational plans. At least 15% of the awarded funds should be used by you to develop a part of your environment. This is a yearly program, which is a measure of universal development strategy. The objective is to make a notable change in the standard of living of people all around the Universe (From America to Europe, Asia to Africa and all around). The Vittorio Foundation has been assured of highest organization standard courtesy of the United Nations. It is our belief that we can achieve a great positive change in the general welfare of the universe through this program. That is why the foundation is doing everything possible to get all recipients notified of their donation. Note that your country is not the only country that is benefiting from this donation. Beneficiaries have been chosen from countries from all continents. The idea of this donation is that within ten years from now, there will be notable richness among many unusual people around the world. This will give many people the opportunity to get their lives to a stage where they had always wanted. Kindly note that you will only be chosen to receive the donation once, which means that subsequent yearly donation will not get to you again. Take time and thought in spending the donation wisely on something that will last you a long time. Recipients are only eligible to be awarded this donation once. Based on the random selection exercise of internet websites and millions of supermarket cash invoices worldwide, you were selected among the lucky recipients to receive the award sum of US$850,000.00 (Eight Hundred and Fifty Thousand United States Dollars) as charity donations/aid from the Vittorio Foundation, ECOWAS, EU and the UNO in accordance with the enabling act of Parliament. (Note that all beneficiaries email addresses were selected randomly from over 100,000 internet websites or a shop's cash invoice around your area in which you might have purchased something from). You are required to fill the form below and email it to our Executive Secretary below for qualification documentation and processing of your claims. After contacting our office with the requested data, you will be given your donation pin number, which you will use in collecting the funds.
Please endeavor to quote your Qualification numbers (N-222-6747,E-900-56) in all discussions.
SEND ALL YOUR CLAIMS AND INQUIRIES TO THE Executive Secretary- Claudio Giovanni Email:vittoriofondazio_grantclaims07@yahoo.no
All information is strictly confidential and will only be used for the purpose to which it is been requested. Please note that these donations/Grants are strictly administered by Economic community for West African States (ECOWAS), European Union (EU), under delegated powers from the United Nations Organization (UNO). This means that your qualification number will be reffled to know the organisation (ECOWAS or EU) that will handle your payment. You are to keep this whole information confidential until you have been able to collect your donation, as there have been many cases of double and unqualified claim, due to beneficiaries informing third parties about his/her donation. Finally, all funds should be claimed by their respective beneficiaries, no later than 15 days after notification. Failure to do so will mean cancellation of that beneficiary and its donation will then be reserved for next year's recipients.
On behalf of the Board kindly, accept our warmest congratulations.
Regards. Mr. Sparo Malcom
(Foundation officer)
XXXXXXXX
On Sat Oct 27 18:01 , 'Kenneth Moore Esq' sent : Dear Correspondent.
I am compelled to write you this email for the following reason:-One of my client, who is now deceased, in his Will, left his entire Estateand Cash deposit, valued millions of US dollars. The truth is that l donot know if you are the beneficiary or not.For over two years, l have tried effortlessly to locate the person on the will without success, which mandated me to contact you.
Can you get back to me urgently if you are capable of investing thesefunds in any profitable ventures in your domain?
On Sat Oct 27 2:01 , ahmd_sidq4@zipmail.com.br sent : Attention: Beneficiary,
Greetings
I am much delighted and privileged to contact you now. I am Barr. Williams G Ben & councelors Chambers. I have been expecting you to come down here and pick your Cashiers Cheque from my client but did not hear from you since that time ,so I deposited your Chequewith global max in Benin of Republic for quick delivering to your home address,as I travelled to see my family.
Your $850,000,000 USD has been dormant due to the Time it was deposited,All you have to do is to contact the GLOBAL COURIER and pay them their monthly dumorage fee of $98 USD and Present them with your information where they will Deliver the funds.
This is the information they need to delivery your package to you, it'sonly delay now.
1.YOUR FULL NAME................ 2.YOUR HOME ADDRESS.......... 3.A COPY OF YOUR PICTURE............. 5.YOUR CURRENT HOME TELEPHONE NUMBER.........________________________________________________
FOLLOWING, IS THEIR CONTACT INFORMATIONCONTACT PERSON; DR.Eric johnson DISTRICTMANAGER GLOBAL MAX COMPANY LIMITED.E-mail:(c.globalmax@yahoo.dk)CONTACT PHONE+229-9389-2879___________________________________________________
Now make sure you are writing direct to the giving addressand let me know as soon as the transfered is completed.
"The first jury trial Mrs. Clinton handled on her own, for instance, concerned the rear end of a rat in a can of pork and beans. She represented the cannery, and she argued that there had been no real harm, as the plaintiff did not actually eat the rat. “Besides,” she wrote in her autobiography, describing her client’s position, “the rodent parts which had been sterilized might be considered edible in certain parts of the world.”
The jury seemed to buy her argument, more or less, as it awarded only token damages. But no one was particularly happy about the case or her performance. Her former partner, Webster L. Hubbell, told one of her biographers that she was “amazingly nervous” in speaking to the jury."
"It may surprise you to learn, that an attorney represents her client. etc." (snort)
Don't be so patronizing. Yep, I know what a lawyer does. On what basis do you assume that I'm one of "you wing-nuts"? I'm pretty consistent in my blogging going way back in my roasting of the Republicans and I'll probably be voting for Billery.
This is a fairly typical post from November 2nd, 2006.
You're a shining example of those wormy hard-eyed partisan true believers of both the right and the left that is irony deficient and humorless and probably dateless as well. So to you and them I say: lighten up.
Then what was your point in posting that drivel?
That drivel is from the The New York Times, as read with horror by the likes of you.
so sweet on your lips, so wild in your bloodstream, so fat on your hips. savoir faire sinuate subsume sizar - poor schoalr salient sincere - sine cere - without wax sales lady - prostitute scraps the mug shave satchel - buttocks sprinter - when winter and spring overlap salbugrious skald sock a corpse - shroud it sedulous steatorrhea sleipnir - Odin's grey eight-legged horse scratch horuse - brothel SS - siilicet - let it be known scurvy social overhead capital sesquipedalian stop over - short jail sentence stare decisis - general rule formign a precident sui generis - of the same kind standing vote sucking bamboo-- smoking opium Souther Christian Leadership Conference somnolent solipsist selector channel shilly shaly simonpure sub rosa supernal surian sciamochous stranbge bedfellows splentic sankasktachaturthivratodyapana - sanscrit work scatalogical shaman saturnine sophistry sui juris shibboleth - watchword see Judges 12:4-6 spoliation silver pheasant - beautiful aristocratic lady suacy sedge scions solstice
The evangelicals are in retreat. They don't have a natural presidential candidate. They don't have a unified leadership. They no longer seem to share even the same political beliefs.
Excerpts from David D. Kirpatrick's End Time for Evangelicals? and Frank Rich's Rudy, theValues Slayer. (The New York Times, October 28th).
Meanwhile, a younger generation of evangelical pastors — including the widely emulated preachers Rick Warren and Bill Hybels — are pushing the movement and its theology in new directions. There are many related ways to characterize the split: a push to better this world as well as save eternal souls; a focus on the spiritual growth that follows conversion rather than the yes-or-no moment of salvation; a renewed attention to Jesus’ teachings about social justice as well as about personal or sexual morality. However conceived, though, the result is a new interest in public policies that address problems of peace, health and poverty — problems, unlike abortion and same-sex marriage, where left and right compete to present the best answers.
The backlash on the right against Bush and the war has emboldened some previously circumspect evangelical leaders to criticize the leadership of the Christian conservative political movement. “The quickness to arms, the quickness to invade, I think that caused a kind of desertion of what has been known as the Christian right,” Hybels, whose Willow Creek Association now includes 12,000 churches, told me over the summer. “People who might be called progressive evangelicals or centrist evangelicals are one stirring away from a real awakening.”
Some rebellious evangelical pastors and theologians of the new school refer to themselves as the emergent church. Others who are less openly rebellious but share a similar approach point to the examples of Rick Warren and Bill Hybels. “What Warren and Hybels are doing is reshaping the perception of what it means to be a Christian in our country and our world,” McKnight says. Warren and Hybels are also highly entrepreneurial. Each has built a network of thousands of mostly evangelical churches that rely on their ministries for sermon ideas, worship plans or audio-video materials to enliven services. As a result, their influence may rival that of any denominational leader in the country.
Warren is clearly a theological and cultural conservative. Before the 2004 election, he wrote a letter to other pastors emphasizing the need to combat abortion rights and same-sex marriage. But these days Warren talks much more often about fighting AIDS and poverty. He raised hackles among conservatives last year by having Barack Obama give a speech at his church. And he also came under fire last year when he traveled to Damascus, Syria, where he implicitly criticized the Bush administration for refusing to talk with unfriendly nations.
Hybels, founder of the Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago, is very possibly the single-most-influential pastor in America; in the last 15 years, his Willow Creek Association has grown to include more than 12,000 churches. Many invite their staff members and lay leaders to participate by telecast in Willow Creek’s annual leadership conferences, creating a virtual gathering of tens of thousands. Dozens of churches in Wichita, including Central Christian and other past bastions of conservative activism, are part of the association.
As his stature has grown, Hybels has seemed more willing to irk Christian conservative political leaders — and even some in his own congregation. He set off a furor a few years ago when he invited former President Bill Clinton to speak at one of his conferences. And the Iraq war has brought into sharp relief Hybels’s differences with conservatives like Dobson.
Most conservative Christian leaders have resolutely supported Bush’s foreign policy. Dobson and others have even talked about defending Western civilization from radical Islam as a precondition for protecting family values. But on the eve of the Iraq invasion, Hybels preached a sermon called “Why War?” Laying out three approaches to war — realism, just-war theory and pacifism — he implored members of his congregation to re-examine their own thinking and then try to square it with the Bible. In the process, he left little doubt about where he personally stood. He called himself a pacifist.
Hybels traced the “J curve” of mounting deaths from war through the centuries. “In case you are wondering about this, wonder how God feels about all this,” he said. “It breaks the heart of God.” At his annual leadership conference this summer, Hybels interviewed former President Jimmy Carter. To some Christian conservatives, it was quite a provocation. Carter, after all, was their first great disappointment, a Southern Baptist who denounced the conservative takeover and an early critic of the Bush administration. Some pastors canceled plans to attend.
“I think that a superpower ought to be the exemplification of a commitment to peace,” Carter told Hybels, who nodded along. “I would like for anyone in the world that’s threatened with conflict to say to themselves immediately: ‘Why don’t we go to Washington? They believe in peace and they will help us get peace.’ ” Carter added: “This is just a simple but important extrapolation from what a human being ought to do, and what a human being ought to do is what Jesus Christ did, who was a champion of peace.”
In a conversation I had with him, Hybels told me he considered politics a path to “heartache and disappointment” for a Christian leader. But he also described the message of his Willow Creek Association to its member churches in terms that would warm a liberal’s heart. “We have just pounded the drum again and again that, for churches to reach their full redemptive potential, they have to do more than hold services — they have to try to transform their communities,” he said. “If there is racial injustice in your community, you have to speak to that. If there is educational injustice, you have to do something there. If the poor are being neglected by the government or being oppressed in some way, then you have to stand up for the poor.” In the past, Hybels has scrupulously avoided criticizing conservative Christian political figures like Falwell or Dobson. But in my talk with him, he argued that the leaders of the conservative Christian political movement had lost touch with their base. “The Indians are saying to the chiefs, ‘We are interested in more than your two or three issues,’ ” Hybels said. “We are interested in the poor, in racial reconciliation, in global poverty and AIDS, in the plight of women in the developing world.” Conservative Christian leaders in Washington acknowledge a “leftward drift” among evangelicals, said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and the movement’s chief advocate in Washington. He told me he believed that Hybels and many of his admirers had, in effect, fallen away from orthodox evangelical theology. Perkins compared the phenomenon to the century-old division in American Protestantism between the liberal mainline and the orthodox evangelical churches. “It is almost like another split coming within the evangelicals,” he said.
When Rudy’s candidacy started to show legs, pundits and family values activists alike assumed that ignorant voters knew only his 9/11 video reel and not his personal history or his stands on issues. “Americans do not yet realize how far outside of the mainstream of conservative thought that Mayor Giuliani’s social views really are,” declared Tony Perkins, the Family Research Council leader, in February. But despite Rudy’s fleeting stabs at fudging his views, they are well known now, and still he leads in national polls of Republican voters and is neck and neck with Fred Thompson in the Bible Belt sanctuary of South Carolina.
There are various explanations for this. One is that 9/11 and terrorism fears trump everything. Another is that the rest of the field is weak. But the most obvious explanation is the one that Washington resists because it contradicts the city’s long-running story line. Namely, that the political clout ritualistically ascribed to Mr. Perkins, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer of American Values and their ilk is a sham.
These self-promoting values hacks don’t speak for the American mainstream. They don’t speak for the Republican Party. They no longer speak for many evangelical ministers and their flocks. The emperors of morality have in fact had no clothes for some time. Should Rudy Giuliani end up doing a victory dance at the Republican convention, it will be on their graves.
But the most significant — and happiest — explanation for the values czars’ demise as a political force is that white evangelical Christians and a new generation of evangelical leaders have themselves steadily tacked a different course from the Dobson crowd. A CBS News poll this month parallels what the Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick found in his examination of evangelicals for today’s Times Magazine. Like most other Americans, they are more interested in hearing from presidential candidates about the war in Iraq and health care than about any other issues. Abortion and same-sex marriage landed at the bottom of that list; fighting poverty outpolled abortion as a personal priority by a 3-to-2 margin. To see just how large a gap separates that evangelical electorate from the values organizations that purport to speak in its name, just look at the Values Voter Summit that the Family Research Council convened to much press attention in Washington last weekend. In a survey of participants to determine which issue would be “most important” in choosing a presidential candidate, the summit’s organizers didn’t even think to list the war, health care or fighting poverty among the 12 hot-button options.
The Values Voter Summit’s survey of the attendees’ presidential preferences showed just as large a disconnect. Rudy Giuliani came in next to last (behind Tom Tancredo, ahead of John McCain) in the field of nine candidates, earning only 1.85 percent of the vote. By contrast, among white evangelicals nationwide in the CBS News poll, he was in a statistical dead heat for first place with Fred Thompson; indeed, Mr. Giuliani’s 26 percent among evangelicals nearly matches his showing among all Republican voters. The discrepancy between the CBS poll and the summit survey leaves you wondering who exactly follows Dr. Dobson and Mr. Perkins beyond the ticket buyers who showed up for their media circus last weekend at the Washington Hilton. Of late Dr. Dobson has been throwing a hissy fit about Rudy’s rise, reminiscent of his 2005 condemnation of the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants for appearing in what he labeled a “pro-homosexual video.” Apparently suffering from the delusion that he has the pull on the right that Ralph Nader once did on the left, he has threatened to bolt to a third party. But for all this huffing and puffing, Dr. Dobson and his stop-Rudy brigade are as politically hypocritical as the Reverend Haggard was sexually hypocritical.
If they really believed uncompromisingly in their issues and principles, they would have long since endorsed either Sam Brownback, the zealous Kansas senator fond of using fetus photos as political props, or Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who spent 15 years as a Baptist preacher, calls abortion a “holocaust” and believes in intelligent design rather than evolution. But they gave Senator Brownback so little moral and financial support that he folded his candidacy a week ago. And they continue to stop well short of embracing Mr. Huckabee, no matter how many rave reviews his affable personality receives on the campaign trail. They shun him because they know he’ll lose, and they would rather compromise principle than back a loser. Backing a loser, they know, would even further diminish their waning Washington status in a post-Rove, post-Bush G.O.P. The more they shed their illusion of power, the more they imperil their ability to rake in big bucks from their apocalyptic direct-mail campaigns. They must choose mammon over God if they are to maintain the many values rackets that make up their various business empires.
Hilariously enough, some other big names on the right, typified by Sean Hannity of Fox News, are capitulating to the Giuliani candidacy by pretending that he, like the incessantly flip-flopping Mitt Romney, is reversing his previously liberal record on social issues. The straw they cling to is Rudy’s promise to appoint “strict constructionist” judges to the Supreme Court.
Even leaving aside the Giuliani record in New York (where his judicial appointees were mostly Democrats), the more Democratic Senate likely to emerge after 2008 is a poor bet to confirm a Scalia or Alito even should a Republican president nominate one. No matter how you slice it, the Giuliani positions on abortion, gay rights and gun control remain indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton’s.
“You have absolutely nothing to fear from me,” Rudy disingenuously told the assembled at the Values Voter Summit last weekend. Actually, there’s plenty for everyone to fear from a Giuliani presidency, starting with the mad neocon bombers shaping his apocalyptic policy toward Iran. But that’s another story. Whichever candidate or party lands in the White House, this much is certain: Inauguration Day 2009 is at the very least Armageddon for the reigning ayatollahs of the American right.
We could learn a lot from crayons: some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they all have to learn to live in the same box.
9:00 Roused into consciousness from a creepy dream involving my youngest boy, tempestuous ocean waves, and Harvard's Langdell Hall.
10:45 Dropped oldest boy off at Mountain View Park to referee three soccer games.
11:15 Sorted laundry, watered the new rye grass and fruit trees, and added water to the pool.
12:00 Made lunch for myself-- rice, chopped red cabbage, and tuna.
1:00 Picked up two gallons of fat-free milk from Albertsons. Returned them thirty minutes later for two percent. While driving to Albertsons on Indian Bend, I saw a collision-- a Buick driven by an elderly man at seventy miles per hour broad-sided a turning red Sentra that then hit a traffic light, causing the light to collapse and all lights at the intersection to shut down. The man sat stunned in his car while gasoline leaked over the road.
3:00 My 13 year old bought a T-Mobile cell phone with his referee earnings. He has wanted this for some time. The plan costs $50 a month, and he will pay for everything. Yet another introduction to the karma of effort. Study hard, get good grades. Work hard, and get things things you want. Certis paribus of course,
5:00 Watched C-SPAN for a hour. Interesting debate "Is Christianity the Problem?" from The King's College in New York, with Dinesh D'Souza, author of "What's So Great About Christianity," and Christopher Hitchens, author of "God Is Not Great," moderated by Mavin Olasky, provost of King's. I had seen Dinesh a few times before on Fox, and was never impressed by his predictable right-wing platitudes perhaps due to the kind of questions and format that Fox has. I had also heard Hitchens before as well on various cable shows, and I also was never impressed with his visceral hatred of Christianity and militant anti-theism. Although the audience applauded D'Souza more frequently that Hitchens, I felt Hitchens had the better arguments. The claim that the West's ethics derive from Jesus Christ, that Hitlerism is agnostic, and that proof for a divine law giver lies in the fine-tuned laws of the universe were just a few of the D'Souza's assertions that struck me as dubious. I was also dubious about Hitchens' claim regarding the theistic predicates to Marxist-Leninism. For fanatics on either side, Christianity is the either the source of all evil or the source of all good. There is a middle ground in there some where.
6:00 Took my youngest boy to Nothing But Noodles where I had wavy egg noodles sautéed with tender beef and mushrooms, tossed in a Stroganoff sauce. He had alfredo-- curly pasta tossed with a freshly made Parmesan cream sauce, topped with Parmesan and Romano cheeses. On Saturday and Sunday, his dinner was free. A good meal, but the restaurant was deserted. I'm not sure why. Drove back home into a spectacular goldenrod sunset.
7:00 My wife and I went to the Harkins Shea 14 to see new Steve Carrell movie "Dan In Real life." We enjoy seeing "The Office" each week, so we were curious about his latest movie release-- and we weren't disappointed. It was a feel-good comedy that captured the poignancy of trying to kindle the spark of love in the middle of one's life and also the tension between what one proclaims and what one lives. The setting-- a family reunion in Rhode Island-- also reminded me of our family reunions as well in Door County and also our summer trips to New Hampshire when I was a kid. I recommend it.
It must be terrifying for so many people in California. But kudos to governor for evacuating almost a million people out of harm's way. The test as to whether this will be New Orleans 2.0 will be the follow-through from the Federal, state, and local government and the response from the insurance companies. All of those liberterians who saw their homes go up in flames have just be mugged by reality and may now have a little more fondness for what the government can do. I'm sure that Hollywood will also mount a fund-raiser as well.
The tribulations facing California tonights reminds me of the challenges that faced my ancestors in more than a century ago. Death in the form of fire would race over the dry bristle. The shifting line of fire would sometimes cover 30 miles or more. In 1873, in Saline County, Nebraska, the wind swept the smoke of a great fire toward a schoolhouse. One mother, against the teacher’s most earnest objections, took her children and those related to her away. The ten children tried to run before the fire and fell, one after the other, the mother too in her efforts to save them. The teacher and pupils who remained with her were safe on a nearby plowed field. Ironically, the schoolhouse was untouched by the fire.
I had a glimse into what Californians are enduring in 1983. A fire in the apartment complex where I was living that took the life of a seven-month-old girl in the unit beneath me and left the father critically injured. My cat Rex woke me up at about two a.m. and I remember the utter horror of the moment when I saw billowing clouds of orange come towards me from the first floor, a horror that was compounded when I had to fight through thick, black smoke in an apartment that had no sprinklers or alarms. Little Jaclyn Wallace’s clothes, toys, and crib lay twisted in a puddle of ashes and glass. I was amazed that the soot and the stench penetrated everything, through cupboards and under and between stacks of clothes.
You can always count on Fox News to spread misinformation.
For the second straight day, Fox News stood virtually alone in advancing thinly supported speculation to raise fears that the wildfires ravaging California are not the result of a confluence of arid heat and high winds but were set deliberately by al Qaeda terrorists bent on destroying America.
The "facts" in this case is a four-year old memo from the FBI. No doubt al Qaeda was responsible for Hurricane Katrina as well.
But it may be that with the hindsight of history, the fires in California are a sideshow. The more scary event occurred before a congresisonal committee this morning where Condi "mushroom cloud" Rice announced new financial sanctions on Iran, even while Turkey is poised to invade Iraq.
The Bush administration today imposed a series of new sanctions on Iran to punish Tehran for weapons proliferation and supporting terrorism throughout the Middle East.
I doubt that the factual basis for taking this action is any stronger than is the factual basis for assuming that al Qaeda is responsible for global warming. The administration has demonstrated its eagerness and shamelessness in inventing facts to align with policy as they did in the run up to the war in Iraq. So I am hoping that Congress has the stomach to ask the hard questions before committing our troops to yet another front in the "war on terror".
Two Jehovah Witnesses stopped by today. I was still working so I couldn't chat with them. They left me copies of their publications Awake! and The Watchtower. The publications contained a mix of human interest stories ("The Plight of the Shark") and sound ethical instruction ("How to Protect Your Children"). I admire the Witnesses for their political neutrality and their refusal to take up arms but not so much their views of end-times and blood transfusions.
Apparently your theism does not push you to believe absurd and readily falsifiable things about the world. I try to be economically on my beliefs, especially faith-based beliefs. One of my core beliefs is that the great division among world views is not between theism and atheism but between reason and unreason-- uncritical and fanatical thought. One test for reasonable or rational belief is the extent and williness of those that hold that belief to aggressively test that belief in the market place of freely competing ideas, moderating their beliefs in the light of new information. Totataliterian and authoritarian beliefs naturally do not meet that test. I also make a divison between thoughts and actions. I really don't mind how nutty someone's convictions apparently are, but the time to draw the line is when thoughts translate into demonstrably hurtful actions. I had a good example earlier this week when two Jehovah Witnesses knocked on my door. The Witnesses prohibit the transfusion of blood for any reason, and I wonder how many of their flock went to the grave because of that immoral dogma.
At least twice a year, we try to reduce the extra stuff that makes up our existence by donating them to charity-- clothes that boys have out-grown, books, toys, or bikes they no longer use, and also appliances, jewelry, kitchenware, and appliances. We found that on a bottom-line basis, it's better to donate this than try to sell it through eBay or in a garage sale, taking the deduction on our income tax form-- generally amouting to several thousand dollars of refunded money in our pocket. We usually donate to Big Brothers and also to Vietnam Veterans of America. They rebulk the donations, which are then auctioned to resellers. It's a good deal for everyone.
We were invited to a wine tasting Sunday evening sponsored by a PAC in Paradise Valley where we were introduced to several local Democratic candidates, notably Bob Lord who hopes to defeat John B. Shadegg of the Third District.
A wine tasting consists of an aroma component-- detecting wines based on aroma. For exampe, a lemon aroma relates to the citrusy qualities of Sauvignon whereas the smell of jasmine, orange, an apricot can be found in Gewurtztraminer and Riesling. Gererally, the aromas break down into floral, spicy, herbal, vegetable, nutty, woody, earthy, oxidized, and micro biological (yeasty and lactic).
The tasting components consists of seeing how foods interact with the wine causing sometimes similarity and blending and other times contrast. For example, Ecco Domani Pinot Grigio shows similarity with basil pesto and contrast with toasted pine nuts. With Beaulieu Vinyard BV Pinot Noir (a red wine), the grilled portabello mushrooms showed simalarity on the palate. The sundried tomatoes accentuated the acidic taste thereby showing contrast.
I was very sorry to hear of the death of a distant cousin Paul Stahl, 25, in South Dakota. The first paragraph is from my uncle and trhe remainder appeared in local newspapers.
I don't know if you have been informed that Janet & Robert Stahl's only son Paul died Oct. 9th. He had contacted hantavirus. It is a virus which can be inhaled from deer mouse dropppings; urine or saliva & there is no known cure for it other than one's own body being able to fight off the virus. He had not felt well & began to run a high fever later turning into nausea & flu like symtoms. He & Megan have a 6 mos. old little girl. They have been advised not to enter their manufactured home ,as they have no idea of where he might have contacted the virus, so are temporarily staying at Jamet & Roberts. Paul Stahl, 25, of Bridgewater, died Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2007, at Sanford Health in Sioux Falls of a sudden illness.His funeral will be Friday at 10:30 a.m. in the Bridgewater gym.Burial will be in Bridgewater Cemetery.Visitation will begin at 4 p.m. today at Zion Mennonite Church of Bridgewater with the family present from 7 to 8 p.m.He was born July 27, 1982, at Sioux Falls to Robert and Janet Stahl. He attended Lake Area Technical Institute and farmed in Bridgewater with his family.He married Megan Juhnke in 2004. She serves on the South Dakota State Fair Commission.He is survived by his wife; parents; grandparents, Paul and Hulda Stahl and Betty Fillbach; and parents-in-law, Kent and Sandy Juhnke.He was preceded in death by his grandfather, Myron Fillbach. Paul Stahl, 25, was working in his machine shop in Emery when he felt light-headed and dizzy Oct. 2.Within days, he felt sore muscles, a tightening chest and spiked a fever of 103.8 degrees. Stahl of Bridgewater went to a clinic in Salem on Oct. 5, then to Sanford USD Medical Center's emergency room that night. Hospital tests showed he had a virus, but doctors said it would have to run its course, Stahl's wife, Megan, said.When Stahl had nausea, a constant fever and deep muscle aches last weekend, he returned to the E.R. on Sunday, where he was admitted and had several tests for meningitis. They showed nothing abnormal.
A chest X-ray on Monday pointed doctors in the right direction when it showed that Stahl had interstitial pneumonia in both lungs - which is less common. An infectious-disease doctor began exploring whether hantavirus was an option, Megan Stahl, 25, said.After being put on a respirator to help with breathing, her husband died the next day in the intensive care unit.
"There is no way to pinpoint exactly where he contracted it," Megan Stahl said, adding her husband hadn't been out of state. "He loved the farm. He enjoyed being outside with the cattle, dogs and horses. ... We want to prevent this from happening to someone else."South Dakota has seen 13 cases of the disease since 1993. Of those, four have resulted in death, including one a year for the past three years.State Epidemiologist Lon Kightlinger said hantavirus can strike any time of the year. It's caused by a virus carried by rodents, primarily the deer mouse, and results in hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. That causes the lungs to fill with fluid and can cause respiratory failure.
The virus is found in mouse droppings, urine or saliva, which release the virus into the air when disturbed, Kightlinger said.It's best to treat mouse droppings or nests with bleach and water - and to let it soak - before carefully wiping it up and bagging it for disposal, Kightlinger said.
Hantavirus is not contagious or transmittable from human to human. Researchers don't know why some people exposed to the virus get sick while others don't, Kightlinger said.There have been 465 cases of hantavirus diagnosed since it was first detected in 1993 in the southwestern U.S. Deer mice are located throughout South Dakota.Symptoms usually appear within two to four weeks of exposure and include fatigue, fever, muscle ache, coughing, vomiting and diarrhea.
Paul Stahl was laid to rest Friday, with services at the Bridgewater gym. Along with his wife, he is survived by a 7-month-old daughter, Sydney; his parents, Robert and Janet; three grandparents; and his parents-in-law.
Earlier this week, my wife and I were invited for a taste test at Cold Stone in Scottsdale. Along with about a dozen other, we went into a classroom where someone wearing a white lab coat gave us two small samples of vanilla marked Sample A and Sample B. We indicated on a piece of paper what we thought about its texture, creaminess, and taste and whether we liked Sample A better than Sample B. There was only the most subtle differencs. The test took about 15 minutes, after which a Cold Stone representative gave us a $15 Cold Stone gift card. It was certainly more enjoyable than most of the tests I've taken in my life.
Yesterday, my wife and I went on a 16 mile bike hike. To verify our distance, we traced the same route by car and then continued on to a Cold Stone at 510 S. Mill Street in Tempe, bustlng with ASU college kids and the occasional vagrant and musician. It was also a chance to expose our kids to that kind of experience-- to have fun but also to blend in, stay alert, look people in the eye, and show confidence. Anyway, we finished up the evening with my wife and I sharing a mint milk shake for $4.95 and the boys having their treats with fifty cents to spare.
Could you give me some examples of dogmatic God concepts in Judaism?
Can there be any doubt that theism permeates the Jewish religion, from the Shema of Deut. 6:4-5: " Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD: and thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." to the first of the Ten Commandments: "I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." Can there also be any doubt as well that a clear definition of God eludes Jewish people as it does Christians, at least to the precision that I can define Felis silvestris catus (house cat)?
I think that in some way we must be talking (writing) past one another. I don't deny that Judaism is definitely God-saturated. I've in the past participated in enough seders to know that. I also know that the various Jewish sages have harped on the impossibility of characterizing God, that only analogies can be used, etc. My point was only that overall Judaism is less tied to dogma in the way it views God, so that individual Jews, say in a given congregation, may have quite different concepts, one viewing God in an almost pantheistic way and another envisining God as more personal and involved in, and maybe another being in effect an atheist but still willing to engage in God-talk as part of the ritual. I'm sure too that in a large Christian congregation there are variations in how people view God, but probably less, because views of God are more determined by dogma. You are supposed to sign on to God being certain specific things, some of which I enumerated previously, so your god-concept is much more circumscribed by that dogma. Jesus enormously complicated things for Christians, who spent a lot of time and spilled a lot of blood hammering out how he was to be regarded. Is Jesus of one substance with the Father or is he separate? The Gnostic view that he wasn't real person but just a ghostly substitute got booted out. They got very nitpicking and very specific about all these things. Of course there were always differences that arose, new heresies to wipe out (e. g. Pelagianism), and the reformation and all those obstreperous Protestants, who split into a zillion sects, each with their own nitpicking differences.
Although I am an obstreperous Protestant, I hesitate to speak for all Protestants, obstreperous or otherwise. I think you are right that there may be more moving parts in Christianity as regards to the idea of God than Judiasm. The one distinctive with all Christian sects, no matter how liberal or orthodox, is that Jesus is some way figures in, as God, as the Son of God, a man/God, as once man now God, as a mythic figure or even as an entirely fictional symbol. But it isn't true that all Christians must be theists. However, it is true that some Christians sects such as the Catholics have an achitecture of dogma that you mention, even throwing in Mary as the mother of the triune God. On prima facie grounds, it all seems incoherent. But it may also have been this kind of deep deductive reasoning first by the scholastics and then by the reformationists that helped establish the foundations of the enlightenment, mass literacy, the industrial revolution, and the age of science.
You may be right that Jewish theology doesn't have much need to grapple with such questions. But the correllary must be that Christians theologians have consequently created a multiplicity of contradictory answers to what God is, some of which I include in the following essay that I wrote a few years ago, trying to sort out wht God is in disctiction to what God is assumed to do.
When I was going through my sesquipedalian phase as a teenager, my uncle Ray Johnson, wrote to me that “some of us enjoy big words because the little ones cause trouble. Consider the word “God.” That little monosyllable has probably given rise to more discussions, more speculations, more argumentations, more disputations, more publications, and certainly more sermons than any other word in the language. Perhaps the ancient Hebrews had a laudatory concept with their secret name for the Deity. Expressed only by four consonants, it technically could not be pronounced, and any attempt to add vowels (r vowel points, as Hebrew students would say), as strictly forbidden to the people under penalty of death. The high priest alone was permitted to add vowel points and thus pronounce the name, and that only on the annual occasion of the Day of Atonement. (See Leviticus 24:16) The four letters of the secret name transliterate out into English consonants as IHVH, JHVH, JHWH, YHVH, or YHWH, depending on who is doing the transliteration. And these four letters of the secret name have come to be known as the Tera grammaton. This means, quite literally, “the four-letter word.” Ray then suggested that “this linguistic peculiarity of our four-letter words may be some sort of cultural fallout.”
The word God is one of those words that everyone uses but no one really defines or understands. When politicians say that we’re one nation “under God”, the question becomes exactly what is it that we are under? If the answer is: a supreme being, the question then becomes, what exactly is this supreme being and how do we know that it is interested in us or if it even exists? The Bible isn’t clear as to whether God is a “being” and if “supremacy” is a quality of God. It surely rejects the notion of the old man with the white beard and the deep voice, as God is defined as spirit (John 4:24), fire (Hebrews 12:29), light (1 John 1:5), love (1 John 4:8), and logos (John 1:1). The Church of England defines God as “living, without body, parts or passions” but I certainly have trouble picturing a life that is without body, parts, and passions, like an autistic the Friendly Ghost. If God is spirit, is God therefore emotion? Does God exist in the same way that my cat exists or in the same way that my love for my cat exists? Is God a metaphor for what we don’t know or cannot know? Is God real in the same way that Santa Claus is real? Is God a sewer that flushes away the waste and the worst of this world? Does God exist in the same way that a unicorn exists? What is it that distinguishes the reality of the Christian God from, for example, the unreality of Zeus? Can we believe in God if we cannot define or describe God? If God is consciousness, is that consciousness human consciousness, which would die when all humans die? Is God nature, as the Deists believe, or the sum of all natural laws, as Albert Einstein believed? Is God all that which is not—all that which is outside an imaginary circle drawn around all that exists? Is God localized in persons, places, or things—the Buddha, volcanoes, or money? Is God someone playing with her retarded sister in a playground while both giggle with delight? Are we, as some New Age religionists believe, God? Could God not be noun at all but a transitive verb— like the loving relationship of my boy to his worthless but comforting teddy bear? Does God care about us? Is our Father in Heaven a reflection of our fathers on earth—a cruel and distant father on earth makes us believe in a cruel and distant God, a loving and tender father lets us believe in a loving and tender God? Is God numinous—the awe we feel when we look at a sunset or a baby? Is the word God a mental bucket—a meaningless word that only gains meaning when we fill it with meaning? Is belief in God animated only by the fear of our death and the fires of hell? Is belief in God a utilitarian decision-- because the majority of people are theists, our lives will be easier if we are theists? Is belief in God a kind of celestial bet? Is God a projection of our hopes, a mass delusion, or a part of our biological wiring? Do we believe in God because our fathers and their fathers believed in God? Is God as Karl Barth said ganz Anders—wholly different? Is God the absolute, all matter and all force, swirls of atoms and hurricanes and galaxies, the first cause and the end of history, the alpha and the omega? Is God not here, not yet, evil, impotent, a crutch, a drug, a clown, asleep? And so the questions keep coming—some with answers but many without answers.
Well, obstreperous protestant,
Hey, that fits me!
I was away for a couple of days, and then I wanted to think about your essay. It is interesting that Christianity, at least some branches of it, is effectively polytheistic, despite protestations (!) to the contrary.
I agree that triniterianism is polytheism or, more accurately, tritheism.
God concepts are indeed amazing in their variety. It’s enough to make one resort to atheism. James Blish, the science fiction writer (at least, I think it was Blish), once had a character in a book (Cities in Flight?) who was capable of scientifically analyzing what someone had said or written. I’m kind of vague on the details, but I recall that great skill was atttributed to an ambassador, whose speech seemed very impressive, but the scientific analysis showed that it added up to exactly nothing. I think that is what the god concepts do. Then there is theological noncognitivism, an atheological approach that holds that statements about gods are simply meaningless. One cannot hold that they are potentially true or false; they are meaningless. Of course that makes it equally meaningless to say that God doesn’t exist. Ganz Anders and Ground-of-Being (not to be confused, with the hamburger god or ground-up being) seem essentially atheistic.
Ludwig Wittgenstein said: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.” Into Wittgenstein’s silent category go statements such as “Jesus is the life, the way and the truth.” To whether or not there is a "last judgment", Wittgenstein writes that “I couldn’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the statement that there will be such a thing. No ‘perhaps’ nor ‘I’m not sure’. It is a statement that does not allow for such an answer.” Thus, Wittgenstein is neither theistic, nor atheistic, nor agnostic but "acognostic." It is meaningless to affirm or deny that God exists or even to raise that question. It is not a meaningful question to raise, because God is in the realm of value, and the world is the realm of fact. This position, which seems to be based on logical positivism, is that the question of a god or gods is not meaningful.
I think Wittgenstein is correct in his repudiation that the spectrum of belief is merely theism or atheism, or theism, agnosticism, or atheism, as if these were all embracing and mutually exclusive categories. Consider the sentence: “Jesus is God.” Wittgenstein would say, I believe, that such a statement cannot be affirmed or denied or even addressed any more than we can evaluate the sentence “@#$ is %^&.” We cannot even suspend judgment on the question as we have no basis for any kind of a judgment. However, I don't think that acognsoticism is necesserily a kind of atheism. Rather, it can be a postulate for theism.
Can I prove that God exists? No and nor need I. I like apologetics and I think I’ve read most of the arguments, including the standard cosmological, moral, mental, experiential, teleological, and mathematical proofs. But, in my opinion, they are all flawed. There are many books that lay out the disproofs. Suffice it to say that they remind me of the children’s game, where you try to remove a log without the structure falling down. Proofs for the existence of God seem to reduce to talking in circles, and the elaborate intellectual architecture always collapses under scrutiny. Nevertheless, I’m convinced that intimations that there is something greater than all that I can conceive. You may recognize this as a paraphrase of Anselm of Canterbury's (1033-1109) ontological proof for the existence of God, except that I place the proposition into the subjunctive: If God is that which is greater than which nothing greater can be thought, then how then shall I live? This belief is comforting in that even while life and even all of existence has in the scheme of things the transience of a soap bubble, there is that which is not transient. I call this God, “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 12:2). Because I believe in this conception of God, I believe that there are also truths that are real, transcendent, and immutable, and that these truths have consequences-- axioms that inform both my epistomology-- that there are limits to reason and reason is integral to faith-- and my ethics-- that the search for truth-- is integral to ethics. It’s an a priori that is also not inconsistent with my other a priori that it is better to live rationally than irrationally, and from these two givens—God is and reason is-- much of life makes sense.
Given the enormous diversity of god concepts, how do you maintain your Protestantism? Are you an agnostic fideist?
On a paranormal forum, I chatted with a young lady who is convinced through the mediation of her "higher self" that she was reincarnated in Roman times and also lived in Victorian England and the roaring '20s. How, I wanted to know, do you know that you are not just imagining this? It doesn't matter, she replied. It works for me. To be honest, I suppose that's my answer as well. I'm as skeptical as they come, but not so skeptical that I want to abandon the communion of saints. As far as the question on theism, my view is that the more ambiguous the question is, the less important it is. So, while such metaphysical questions are interesting to reflect on, I'm not sure it's all that important either in terms of how ethically I live my life or how I distnguish truth from falsehod.
It seems to me that you are struggling to give voice something that is inchoate – and inconceivable. I would say inchoate because it is pretty formless, but I think it will remain ill-expressed, because you are struggling to put ideas to something that likely has no correspondence in reality. Theologians seem to struggle similarly and fail. They come up with fine sounding phrases, such as the ground of being, that really make no sense.
Some of us believe in the ground of being while others believe in a being of ground. But you're quite right that such a conception is inchoate and inconceivable. I sometimes feel I am chasing a receding cloud and possible a cloud that doesn't exist except in my mind. But I love the chase!
Yes, definitely better to live rationally, but by including faith aren’t you vitiating your rationality? Life makes sense because of things we’ve discovered scientifically. Following this, it will presumably make more sense as time goes on. But it may never make complete sense, and we should not erect gods to give us the false impression that everything makes sense all at once.
No. Living rationally to me means trying to grapple with that epistomological twilight zone where reason sometimes is profoundly irrational-- not in its means certainly but in its consequences. We've spent many pleasant vacations at Sedona, Arizona, known around the world for its deep red mesas and mountains fringed in vibrant green under skies of Maxwell Parish azure. But it also attracts a spacey New Age element. They offer the credulous or the curious guided tours to vortex sites and also seminars on Yoga, Sufism, Zen, witchcraft, astrology, the Bermuda Triangle, ESP, flying saucers, pyramidology, Kirlian photograph, astral projection, and psychic surgery. Such beliefs imply in my opinion intellectual carelessness and an absence of toughmindness, a need to replace experiments with desires, and the devising of occult and mystical beliefs in such a way that they are not subject to disproof and are impervious to rational discussion.
But my skepticism is a double-edged sword. And so it's to the glowingly optimistic view of science that I share with many New Agers reservations. The advent of science eroded man's fear of the unknown. As religious dogmas fade, the result often is not the absence of dogmas but the emergence of new dogmas. An especially pernicious dogma is that of scientism. It is pernicious because its epistemology is rooted solidly in rationality while its ethics are relativistic or power-based. The mantra of this age of relatativism, materialism, and positivism is that if it can be done, it must be done, despite whatever values those actions may contradict. We see this especially in the medical profession, with speculation and experimentation in such areas as sex selection, cloning, eugenics, and end-of-life choices. We also see it in the military with its creation of chemical, viruses, and fission that could one day allow roaches to inherit the earth. Quo vadis ("Where are you going?") from John 16:5 seems to be an appropriate question to present to the scientific establishment when questions of ethics are in play.
I'm all for robust scientific investigation, but science is not value neutral and indeed even the selection of facts is not value neutral. We make a grave mistake in putting into the hands of doctors, professors, and generals the power and the right to determine the limits and ends of rationality, who, despite their acuman and sature, have no more standing than you I in determining the resolution of these issues.
Society is in a great divide between the machinists and the mystics. Both sides are finding it more difficult to talk to each other, and both sides deserve mutual and self-skepticism. I think the mystics are correct to question science's alleged objectivity, the desanctification of nature, and the falsehood that the scientific method is the only path to truth. The mechanists are correct in applying rigor and rationality to their search for knowledge. The mystics correctly embrace realms of reality that are outside of the laboratory-- mystery, ambiguity, transcendent experience, and illogic contradiction. The mechanists correctly embrace the common Aristotelian language of words, mathematics, and logic, which, whatever their imperfections, are the most reliable and only way of separating truth from falsehood in the natural world.
So are you saying that the ambiguity of God makes makes the question of God’s existence relatively unimportant? This is a variant of theism I hadn't considered (although I do know theists who toy with the idea that God may not be omnipotent -- this might take care of the problem of evil.)
I think so. It isn't important. What is important is the Idea of Truth, the hard work in looking beneath the surface of things, of never-ending skepticism and self-questioning-- not just of information and sources of information but also presuppositions and implications.
Yes, God's omnipotence and human morality contradict each other. It's impossible to have one and also the other.
Yes! Abandon metaphysics. Join the Spartan meritocracies of the world (see Daniel Harbour, “The Intelligent Person’s Guide to Atheism”).
I'm not quite so eager to abandon metaphysics so long as such thinking arouses within me doubts about a world best characterized by H.G. Wells' Shape of Things to Come, who envisioned that out of the military apocalypse an agnostic freemasonry of engineers and technicians who would emerge to reorder the world. It is not in the laboratory but in the inner recesses of our conscience and sense of decency as well as from our religious traditions that we can sort out the answers to such questions as these:
1. Can we spell out clearly the purpose of that scientific research? 2. Who is to shoulder the responsibility if that scientific discovery should prove harmful? 3. In what way are scientists accountable to the public? 4. Is that scientific research moral both in terms of means and ends? 5. What is the impact of that scientific research or discovery on our physical, emotional, and spiritual well being?
I freely admit that a world with God is benighted and chaotic, but I'm not quite so quick to walk away from such a world. I'm reminded of Controller Mutapha Mond's discussion of God in Aldous Huxley's 1932 Brave New World to John the Savage who says that he likes the inconvenience of living with a belief in God.
"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said.
"NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier who said his Christian beliefs compelled him to love his enemies, not kill them, has been granted conscientious objector status and honorably discharged, a civil liberties group said on Tuesday.
Capt. Peter Brown -- who served in Iraq for more than a year and was a graduate of the elite U.S. military academy West Point -- said in a statement issued by the New York Civil Liberties Union that he was relieved the Army had recognized his beliefs made it impossible for him to serve."
My father was a CO in WWII. He took the position that he would not serve even in a supporting capacity such as a medic. He spent the war in a number of camps for COs at worked at the Byberry Insane Asylum and elsewhere. It wasn't a walk in the park. A number of COs in his unit volunteered for starvation and typhoid treament experiments. His younger brother served as a pilot on a B-24 over Germany and received the Distinguished Flying Cross. There are different kinds of bravery.
Truth be told cowardice has killed millions and will continue to do so.
I could not agree more. The Bush war is a great example of that. Because of the cowards in the Bush administration, we entered into an unnecessary war. I hold in particular people such as former Secretary of State General Colin Powell or chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace, people that at the time had the crediability and prestige to make a difference instead of acting like compliant stooges of the neocons.
I think also of those military brass that appeared before a congressional committee investigating the Pat Tilman friendly fire death and coverup. In the C-SPAN broadcast, I heard nothing but evasiveness and excuses from JCS chairman General Michael Myers, General John P. Abizaid, the former commander of the U.S. Central Command, General Bryan Douglas Brown, former commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command. and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Especially reprehensible to me was the one man who didn' t have the guts to even show his pathetic face to the camera: three-star general Philip Kensinger, who led Army special operations forces after the Sept. 11 attacks and then received a censure from the army for his lies and "failure of leadership."
None of these people are cowards in the physical sense. They have all seen death and have shown awesome bravery under fire. Yet, when it mattered most, they turned to jelly. At West Point, if a plebe cheats on his chemistry exam, if he is not expelled, he is shunned by the rest of his classmates. And yet it is more than clear that dishonesty-- moral cowardice-- is not the exception in the military but the rule from the PFCs to SOD. And why is that? It is because the military penalizes those who ask the hard questions and rewards careerists-- those who do not rock the boat, those who act irrespetive of whether or not they should act. They are sheep. Given the quality of officers that the military creates today, perhaps the highest and best use of West Point is to level it with bulldozers and erect condominums, perhaps calling it Trump Hudson.
An axiom in politics is that armies do not enter wars; countries enter wars. And when confidence in our civilian and military leadership wanes, it can only be a matter of time before the military capitulates to the enemy. And, more than anything, it has been the administration's inability to level with the public that has caused this erosion of trust.
Haditha and Abu Ghurab didn't happen in isolation. They rather are the very flower of the US military culture-- a culture that relies on loyalty up and loyalty down, unquestioning obedience to the chain of command, and unit group cohesion. It is the exceptional individual who is willing to defy the chain of command, his buddies, and his allegiences to tradition that have drilled into him since boot camp and do the hard right rather than the easy wrong.
But, frankly, I cannot trust anyone in the military to do the hard right anymore.
Well said! Authoritarianism is fatally flawed. A system that worships Bush is no more viable than a system that worships Hitler.
The civilian leadership has swallowed its own propaganda: It has repeated certain lies so often that it now treats those lies as truth. As a result, the actions of the system are divorced from reality. As the delusions become more compelling, the system comes to treat reality with arrogant contempt.
Eventually the system starts a war, and then its delusions collide with reality. In Iraq, this collision has killed thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. But the politicians back home who harbor the delusions remain secure, comfortable and unfazed. They don't have to hear the screams.
As the downwards chain of command becomes more rigid amd mechanical, insane orders passing smoothly downwards, the upwards chain of feedback breaks: Information about the situation on the ground, information that refuses to fit into the ideology, plan, or grand vision, fails to reach the top. Generals may EVENTUALLY find the courage to spill the beans to the "media", but only when it is years too late to do any good.
Thus the system self-destructs. It happened in Germany, and it is happening here. ( General Sanchez said he was convinced that the American effort in Iraq was failing the day after he took command, in June 2003. Asked why he waited until nearly a year after his retirement to voice his concerns publicly, he responded that it was not the place of active-duty officers to challenge lawful orders from the civilian authorities.)+-- David S. Cloud, "Ex-Commander Says Iraq Effort Is 'A Nightmare'", NYT, 13 Oct 2007 . http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5150 +(The Wonderful Wizard of Washington If ever a Wiz there was -- our fantasy-based foreign policyJustin Raimondo / 11 Mar 2005 ....Our penchant for asking too many inconvenient questions reveals our pathetically archaic insistence on belonging to **"the reality-based community,"** as one top White House advisor famously put it to reporter Ron Suskind:
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"....)+ . +(Rundstedt put it bluntly to Allied interrogators after the war: "I realized," he said "soon after the attack was begun that everything that had been written about Russia was nonsense." )+-- William L. Shirer, /The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich/, p. 1119
"It appears that more people in the U.S. now die from the mostly hospital-acquired staph infection MRSA than from AIDS, according to a new report from the CDC. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was responsible for an estimated 94,000 life-threatening infections and 18,650 deaths in 2005, CDC researchers report in the Oct. 17 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
"Among the highlights from the newly published study:
"While most invasive MRSA infections could be traced to a hospital stay or some other health care exposure, about 15% of invasive infections occurred in people with no known health care risk. "Two-thirds of the 85% of MRSA infections that could be traced to hospital stays or other health care exposures occurred among people who were no longer hospitalized. "People over age 65 were four times more likely than the general population to get an MRSA infection. "
"Philosophers may argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but scientists understand that there is no way to disprove any number of angels on a pin. "
Angels dancing on a pin has become kind of an idiom for useless debate. But I'm curious about where this phrase came from. Did the medievalists actually debate this? if so, what were the issues and arguments?
Anyway, while googling, I found two different answers attributed to the 13th century scholastic Thomas Aquinas.
"Finally, he inquired whether several angels could be in the same place at once, which of course is the dancing-on-a-pin question less comically stated. (Tom's answer: no.)"
Reminds me of the joke of which I'll give you the paraphased and sanitized version.
It was a hard day. Boss lady screamed at me. I got a flat coming home from work. The kids were crying. In the mail was an invitation to an IRS audit. I settled into my easy chair in front of the TV and then suddenly the doorbell rang. Who should appear at the front door but the sweetest little angel holding a Christmas tree. She asked, "where would you like to put this tree?"
We had a Charles Dickens of a time finding a good deal for a car in Orlando near Disney World during the week of Christmas. We checked out PriceLine, Expedia, Travelocity, and Hotwire. The best deal was with Alamo but through Costco for about $750. The same car through PriceLine Alamo went for about $1,250. The average cost for renting a mid-sized car was more than $1,000 for the twelve days.
An investment of time compare shopping online can save you money and large warehouse clubs such as Costco can provide killer deals.
a root out of style; too much like turnips to merit a smile. rigol - diadem repine - complain rapine - pillage roan redoubtable rouncival - gigantic redolence resulting trust replevin reversion run - 39 different meanings redux requite rhinal radiosotope rebarbative - causing annoyance res adjudicata recis sardonicus - smile of death risible rockomastics recherche- sought after Rachmanism rapute of the deep retrometer riometer radio-pasteurization rawhider reefer den rod or rocoe- pistol rowdy dowdy rust eater - steel worker raison d etre repine - fret reticulated repletion regicide Rostov repast residual value ream - 480, 500, or 516 sheets
Scottsdale at this time of years could not be nicer, with its cooling clear air and bright greens and blues. Our date night this week took us first the Bada Boom Pasta Room in Old Town Scottsdale. I had an excellent Tricolor salad of baby greens, spinanch, basil, candied walnuts, roasted garlic and gorgonzola cheese tossed in a raspberry vinagrette and also Mama's Spaghetti Marinara & Meatballs. It was the first time we had visited that restaurant. We had earlier made note of it while touring the city's many art galleries. The pasta was $11 with an additional three dollars for a good-sized salad.
After that, we went to the ASU Gammage in Tempe to see Jersey Boys, a recreation of the history and music of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The language was sometimes authentically raw, but the narrative of humor and poignancy kept me engaged. The music was great. I heard many songs that were a bit before my time but still familiar, including "Earth Angel," "Big Girls Don't Cry, "Walk Like a Man," "Stay," and "Can't Take My Eyes Off You." My mezzanine ticket was $73.50.
CAN’T TAKE MY EYES OFF YOU You’re just too good to be true Can’t take my eyes off you You’d be like heaven to touch I wanna hold you so much At long last love has arrived And I thank God I’m alive You’re just too good to be true Can’t take my eyes off you
"Mr. Christ Donald" is a nice touch but otherwise illiterate.
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Sure they have the votes. What they don't have is the votes to override a funding bill that has withdrawl conditions attached.
All the DEMOCRAT controlled CONGRESS has to do is simply refuse to allocate any funds. They can't be forced to allocate funds. The President can't allocate funds himself, so if the DEMOCRAT controlled CONGRESS doesn't hold a vote to allocate funds then no funds are allocated.
I still think you are simplifying. The first imperative of a politican is his political survival, the only exception being those (like Bush and Cheney) who are lame ducks and could care less about political consequences. A politician that moves too far ahead of its voters will lose his or her job. Whatever logic you propose is confounded by the wariness of the politicans to act in contradiction to the mass of the voters. It is also simplistic to expect politicans to show "leadership" when that very same leadership could result in the loss of their job as well as the loss of party nfluence for years to come. As is true with individuals as well as nations, true change doesn't occur until the pain of going in one direction becomes too great. My guess is that the red states in particular have to bury more of their young by a factor of about ten before there is a change in political direction.
How will we know when we have won the war in Iraq?
Some say we need to stay "as long as it takes" - but as long as it takes for what (exactly) to happen?
What will be the definitive indicators of and criteria for "victory"?
Answer: It will all be over when the fat lady sings (at her inaugural).
But your question begs the question that there really is a war, or to use the president's words, a front in the war against terror. It seems that we must, as we are expending lives and treasure on foreign soil. But I question the premise, especially when it is used as a predicate for us to do something or not something. The formulation is, for example, that since we're at war, we need domestic espionage. In the context of the U.S. Constitution, when can war exist?
The last time Congress declared war was World War II. Today's conflict constitutionally speaking is at most an undeclared war.
The founding fathers were united in vesting the legislature with war-making authority. "The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress," George Washington wrote. "Therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure." The authorization for the present conflict is section three of the Congressional Resolution on Iraq:
(a) AUTHORIZATION- The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to
(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq;
and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.
These fuzzy statements are the legal basis for our involvement in Iraq. It's ironic that an administration that prides itself on recruiting jurists committed to a philosophy of strict constructionism conveniently adopt an interpretation of the constitution so elastic that none of our founding fathers would recognize it.
What the Iraq war really is is politics by other means. The initial goal of this conflict was not WMDs or the defeat of terrorist or the planting of democracy in the Middle East. It is simply the re-election of Bush and the consolidation of state power by terrorising the sheep-like electorate with images and lies.
However, reality-- the facts on the ground-- have a way of dissolving the illusions of war. And the biggest reality on the ground is the prospect that all branches of US power will swing to the Democratic Party in 2008 or shortly after that. Republican congressmen are announcing their retirement in droves-- six senators by my count and perhaps another twelve members of the house. This has the making of a veto-proof Congress and the possibility that as many as six liberal justices will be appointed to the Supreme Court over the next eight years. The only criteria for success is to reconceptualize our involvement as a victory-- regardless of whether the facts support that reconceptualization-- rather than an unending, mismanaged quagmire, as General Sanchez suggested last week. As to the rosy claims of mission accomplished that are now appearing in the press, you may want to consider what is happening outside of Bagdad, especially as regards to Turkey and the Kurds, Iran and their nuclear ambitions, and also the rising power of Parkistan, China, and Russia.
By any rational measure, the decision to go to war in Iraq has caused the United States immense harm, an erosion of respect and influence around the world, and a crippling of America's military establishment and prestige. It will take years for America to recover, and the recovery will have to take place under Democratic administrations.
Why did you see The Passion of the Christ? It was a passive act. My daughter's ex-boyfriend brought the DVD round one evening and I watched to see what all the fuss was about.
I never saw it for two reasons. The commercials horrified me-- an obscene sadio-maschistic frolic in gore. Also, it is contrary to what Christ's death really was all about, IMO, not so much an act of physical suffering (which really in the perspective of human suffering was rather mild) but an act of spiritual redemption.
Here is the real scoop, counter-intuitive though it may seem.
Ann Coulter is one of us as by her existence she creates what she pretends to despise-- liberals . Ann isn't about politics or propaganda. Rather, she is about $$$s from her books and speeches, none of which could exist unless oxiginated by manufactured outrage amplified by the media. As the (pretend) face of modern conservatism, Ann Coulter is doing the Democratic Party a great service.
I woudn't get worked up about anything she says as everything she does is a fraud to conservatives as she is toiling in the service of leftists everywhere.
Why do others have such a negative opinion of atheists? Speaking for myself, which is a theist, allow me to make a few points. First, I think you're begging the question. Most people don't work and have fun in the context of only believers in their particular world view or brand of politics. I suspect for most people it's a surprise when they find out that the chap in the cubicle next to them is a Methodist or a Democrat or a Liberterian or an Atheist and the response generally is most likely a shrug of the shoulders and perhaps something along these lines: "Now how about those Cubs?"
As far as being insulting, I've never seen this at all in real life. In forum life, it's happened, but perhaps no more so than on any other forum where folks have strong points of view, and it certainly provides me ironic delight whenever I see people assert their rationality and then demonstrate their irrationality by the low quality of their discourse. Of course, it's no big deal to put the worst offenders on ignore.
It also kills the dialog and any hope of convincing others that our position is the most reasonable.
Sure it can kill the dialogue, but that may be their goal, a kind of Gresham's Law where bad talk drives out good talk. And that may be because those people could be precisely the opposite of what their arguments claim. Just as I think that Coulter, for example, has done much to expand the ranks of liberals by her emotive conservatism, so too do the most rabid atheists reinforce the the preconceptions of those who have never encountered that minority in any meaningful way thus fostering theism.
Having said that, I don't believe the goal of any dialogue should be persuasion, a kind of verbal tennis match where one side wins and the other side loses. And, frankly, it would surprise me if argument either on a forum or in person has changed any minds one way or another. Perhaps a more desirable goal is to engage in dialogue in such a way so that my thoughts sharpen in the termpering fire of rational argument. Proverbs 2:17 is the ideal: "Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes: "A mind stretched to a new idea never regains its original dimension" and this has been a mind-stretching greenhouse for new ideas.
Naw, we don't have a problem with apple pie. Anchovies, though, are an abomination in the sight of Darwin. Come the revolution, it will be a hanging offense to put them on pizzas.
"Atheist convention" strikes me as a somewhat oxymoronic phrase such as "moral Christian Republican" or "military intelligence." A gathering of people defined in their individualism as not being like minded could make for interesting field anthropology and brings to mind the herding of cats. I wonder if the hard-core naysayers are those who are incapable of membership in this or any club and thusly would take a pass on this convention. As Groucho Marx said: "I don't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member."
We're not that way by definition. It's just a contingent fact owing to the narrowness of the definition. The set of all atheists is just the set of all people who don't believe in a god. It could have happened that we lacked that belief because of something else we have in common, but it didn't happen.
Similarly, you have the set of all left-handed people. Their diversity is equal to that of atheists, and for the same reason.
There are subsets of atheists (and left-handers) who do have something in common besides their definitive characteristic and who are not so individualistic as the others. Members of American Atheists, I assume, have a little more in common with each other than with atheists like me who prefer not to join. Analogously, there is an organization of left-handed golfers. I doubt that I'd want to join even if I played golf, though I am left-handed, but it's there for those who do think they have something to gain through their membership.
The Rush Limbaugh Show is the most listened to radio talk show in America, broadcast on about 600 radio stations nationwide. It is hosted by America's Anchorman, Rush Limbaugh, also known as: America's Truth Detector; the Doctor of Democracy; the Most Dangerous Man in America; the All-Knowing, All-Sensing, All-Everything Maha Rushie; defender of motherhood, protector of fatherhood and an all-around good guy
"When "Dingy Harry" Reid and the U.S. Senate turned away from the business of the nation to instead smear a private citizen, forty-one of them sent a letter demanding the "repudiation" of their inaccurate interpretation of Rush Limbaugh's comments about Jesse Al-Zaid (a.k.a. Jesse MacBeth) and other "phony soldiers" who falsify their service. This letter was delivered to Mark Mays of Clear Channel Communications, Rush Limbaugh's syndication partner, and widely quoted in the Drive-By Media.Up for auction is the original letter signed by 41 Democrat senators. This historic document may well represent the first time in the history of America that this large a group of U.S. senators attempted to demonize a private citizen by lying about his views. As such, it is a priceless memento of the folly of Harry Reid and his 40 senatorial co-signers. "
"Rush Limbaugh's nationally syndicated radio show has an estimated audience of nearly 15 million weekly listeners. It is syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks, a subsidiary of radio conglomerate Clear Channel Communications. Limbaugh also authored two books in collaborations with conservative writers: The Way Things Ought to Be (1992) with Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund and See, I Told You So (1993) with WorldNetDaily.com editor Joseph Farah.
"Limbaugh regularly feeds his audience a diet of falsehoods, misstatements, distortions, invective, and childish put-downs in service of the conservative movement. During his long reign over the airwaves, Limbaugh has called abortion rights activists "feminazis", told an African-American caller to "take that bone out of your nose," referred to prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib as "blow[ing] some steam off, " and declared that "what's good for Al Qaeda is good for the Democratic Party." He touts his close connections to Republicans, claiming that he "[g]ot a big hug" from President George W. Bush during a 2004 White House visit.
"In August 2005, Limbaugh asserted that Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who staged an anti-war protest outside President Bush's ranch in Texas, "is just Bill Burkett. Her story is nothing more than forged documents." Burkett is a retired Texas Air National Guard officer who provided CBS' 60 Minutes with unauthenticated documents regarding President Bush's National Guard record. After Media Matters for America documented this, he claimed that he was taken "out of context" by "little pimple-faced kids that are working at wannabe websites" -- even as the audio and text published by Media Matters proved otherwise. Limbaugh also claimed that Sheehan was "exploiting death."
"Limbaugh has also spread numerous rumors and conspiracy theories about the Clinton family, alleging that Hillary Rodham Clinton was involved in the 1993 suicide of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster and peddling gay-baiting sexual innuendo about Clinton based on Edward Klein's error- and innuendo-filled book, The Truth About Hillary. Limbaugh was forced to resign from his position as a football analyst on ESPN in 2003 after he claimed that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated because "[t]he media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well." The following season, McNabb led his team to the Super Bowl.
"Based on Limbaugh's trivialization and enthusiasm for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, Media Matters requested that he be removed from taxpayer-funded American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS), while Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) offered amendments to defense authorization bills in both the 108th and 109th Congress requiring political balance on AFRTS. The Senate unanimously passed a Sense of the Senate resolution calling for balance on AFRTS."
On occasion, a news item emerges that leaves us shaking our heads in amazement. Such was the case of the policewoman who decided to sue the family of the child who subsequently suffered brain damage from the near drowning because she slipped on a puddle of water. I think of the first responders of 9/11 and then I think of the litigious Sgt. Andrea Eichhorn. What a piece of Couric.
Here are some auto parts vendors that I recommend.
The CarDomain Store has been a top online shopping destination since 1999 for mobile audio and performance parts.
They offer exceptional customer care via our trained in-house customer service group and back each item we sell with a 30-day money back guarantee, and as an authorized dealer of most of the brands we carry, we also offer full manufacturer's warranties. Their MECP certified Tech Support team is also on hand to answer technical and installation questions from customers.
In addition to their great service, CarDomain also offers an excellent selection of products from over 100 brands including Kenwood, MTX, Infinity, AEM, GReddy, Pioneer, Clarion, Eclipse, and Borla.
4Wheel Drive Hardware is the leader in parts and accessories for Jeep vehicles.
The Tire Rack is leading the way in online tire, wheel and performance automotive accessory sales. The Tire Rack has developed and continues to enhance the most sophisticated site in the industry. The Tire Rack carries products from only the top brands in the industry.
Andy's Auto Sports have more than 1.7 million product listings on our website for car and truck parts and accessories. They have products for more than 300 different cars, trucks, and SUV's.
They also carry more brands of carbon fiber hoods and lambo doors than any other company on Earth. And like body kits, these are increasingly popular options people are employing to modify their cars, trucks, and SUVs.
Commission Junction cancelled my account. I reinstated it, but I'm not hopeful that it will bring in dollars. The Google model seems to work for me better. Added Google analytics to my blog.
Watched The Office with the kids.
Saw Ann Coulter on the O'Reilly Factor. Both shrill as usual and clamoring to talk over each other. But I think they are one of us-- Democrats-- as their court jesting can only drive more people away from the Republican fold. Their success is our success.
I planted a lemon tree in the backyard but hacked through an irrigation pipe. Also seeded the back lawn with rye grass. Earlier this year, the frost killed our lemon tree. The other cirtus trees survived.
Our elementary school principal was fired. The usual reason of butting heads and egos run amok. It need not have happened.
Cooling weather, making our nightly biking through the greenbelt enjoyable. We usually go about five miles.
The kids finish their first quarter, we think with straight As. No big travel plans for Fall break this time.
"The twentieth century was marred by wars of unimaginable brutality, mass murder and genocide. History records that the Armenians were the first people of the last century to have endured these cruelties. The Armenians were subjected to a genocidal campaign that defies comprehension and commands all decent people to remember and acknowledge the facts and lessons of an awful crime in a century of bloody crimes against humanity. If elected President, I would ensure that our nation properly recognizes the tragic suffering of the Armenian people." http://www.anca.org/press_releases/press_releases.php?prid=3
Bush Flip Flops:
"We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people that began in 1915. But this resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings. Its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror."
"The Armenian Genocide was centrally planned and administered by the Turkish government against the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. It was carried out during W.W.I between the years 1915 and 1918. The Armenian people was subjected to deportation, expropriation, abduction, torture, massacre, and starvation. The great bulk of the Armenian population was forcibly removed from Armenia and Anatolia to Syria, where the vast majority was sent into the desert to die of thirst and hunger. Large numbers of Armenians were methodically massacred throughout the Ottoman Empire. Women and children were abducted and horribly abused. The entire wealth of the Armenian people was expropriated. After only a little more than a year of calm at the end of W.W.I, the atrocities were renewed between 1920 and 1923, and the remaining Armenians were subjected to further massacres and expulsions. "
"The decision to carry out a genocide against the Armenian people was made by the political party in power in the Ottoman Empire. This was the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) (or Ittihad ve Terakki Jemiyeti), popularly known as the Young Turks. "
"It is estimated that one and a half million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1923. There were an estimated two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of W.W.I. Well over a million were deported in 1915. Hundreds of thousands were butchered outright. Many others died of starvation, exhaustion, and epidemics which ravaged the concentration camps."
Funny how the dims will waste time on another NON-BINDING resolution about something that HAPPENED IN THE PAST, but refuses to deal with IRAN in the present. The Turkish President warned us a few days ago that if this Resolution does go forward then the chances are high that Turkey might stop one of the main lines of supply to our troops in Iraq through Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.Pelosi knows this but allowed the Resolution to go forward anyway. This Resolution has been floating around for many years and I think that the bitch did this just to cause problems for Bush and the troops in Iraq. You cannot have it both ways-- call it a waste of time and then wring your hands at the prospect that this action is effective. It is but one of many tactics to derail Bush's war. Clearly, there are presently not enough votes in Congress to off funding to the war, but that could change after the 2008 elections. After all, 40,000 Americans had to die in the Viet Nam war while there was a draft before it dawned on Congress that stomping through rice paddies in the name of democracy perhaps wasn't the best idea.
So what to do? Until the votes materialize, the only hope is to attack on the periphery and indirectly. Thus, there will be investigations into recruiting, VA hospitals, military contracts, private defense firms, and the draft dodging our the Republican candidates (except for McCain). The weakening of our so-called allies in this so-called war on terror is just one fight in the broader war against the Republicans. This would have never happened in WWII, because there was a national consensus that it was the right war. The outing of a CIA operative and the disclosure of the al Qaeda video provided to the White House by SITE along with Petreaus' testimony are just a few examples of how politicized the war has become. The goal of the Democrats is to make the war the issue of the 2008 election make Bush and Cheney the Republican's phantom candidates.
The loss of the support of Turkey is a small price to pay if it will bring to and end one day earlier the Iraqi war.
GW denied a holocaust? He says it didn't happen? Where did you come up with that?
While I am a Zionist, I will also assert that the word holocaust is not a trade mark of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or any one else. It can refer to any genocide or mass murder aimed at the liquidation of any entire people. Besides the Shoah, other holocausts include the Africans, the Native Americans, the Asians under the Japanese Empire, the Ukranians, and others. What George Bush has done is exactly what many Nazi revisionists do. They allow that there was suffering and even mass killings of Jewish people and others but they disassociate those killings from any governmental authority or intentionality. Thus, a Nazi revisionists would say that the people died because of bombings or disease, not as part of a systematic planned program of extermination. Bush is effectively asserting the same dishonest lie-- that, yes, Armenians died, but only as a consequence of the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, and not because of a policy of eradication by the Turks.
Certainly it would piss off the Turks and if the Turks were pissed off enough to withdraw basing rights would shut down the war pretty decisively. But it would be a lousy tactic to that end because it would be unbelievably messy.
You make a good point. I think however the Democrat think this will apply pressure to the White House without causing the Turks to close down the bases and lines of communciation. The military scenerio that to me is more alarming is what happens if the center doesn't hold and it appears that collapse of Ameriraq is eminent? The first to withdraw will be the private militias, such as Blackwater. We are pinning much of Iraq's security on a civilian agency with no accountability to our military. My guess however is that our involvement will end with a whimper due to the Democrat's death by a thousand cuts-- a restriction here, and investigation there. But I also think the war will not end until after Bush leaves office.
The wild card of course is Iran. I see an involving alliance between Russia, China, and Iran against the US and its Iraq war allies primarily with the goal of maintaining a buffer between their countries and the war and also in defense of its own resource-related interests. China and Russia are both starting to flex their economic muscles and it will only be a matter of time before they extend that push for influence geo-politically.
The following link has their complete essays to the question posed by the John Templeton Foundation:
Professor Laurence Krauss. Unlikely
Professor David Galernter. Yes
Professor Peter Atkins. No
Senior Fellow John F. Haught. Yes
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Not Sure.
Professor Nancy Murphey. Indeed.
Nobelist Christian de Duve. No.
Jane Goodall. Certainly.
Professor Owen Gingerich. Yes.
Astrobiologist Paul Davis. Perhaps.
Astrophysicist Bruno Guiderdoni. Very Likely.
Professor Eli Wiesel. I Hope So.
What do you think?
The implications of the question presupposes that if there is a "purpose" to this universe, something determines the purpose that would not be part of the universe. Some like to call this purpose giver God.
I think you put your finger on the problem. On one hand, the question presupposes that the universe has intentionality apart from the animal intelligences that inhabit it. But, framed as a question of ethics, the questions becomes clearer. The purpose of the universe becomes nothing more or less than the purpose that you find as you walk life's journey. Bertrand Russell's purpose as he saw it was to act so as to produce harmonious rather than discordant desires, and that the good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Thus, while there may not be Platonic purpose as such, we can still find for ourselves purpose by aspiring for harmony and the good life.
Dawkins makes some interesting comments about the Templeton Foundation in The God Delusion. Broadly about the way their money can cause some scientists to compromise their principles.
If I gave you a million dollars, would your compromise your principles? If the answer is yes, then I submit they were never your principles in the first place. On the other hand, I do agree that money can corrupt scientists and intellectuals no less effectively as it can politicans and businessmen. I hope Dawkins can cite examples.
The mutability of principles reminds of British playwright George Bernard Shaw's quip who found himself at a dinner party beside an attractive woman. "Madame," he said. "Would you go to bed with me for a fifty thousand pounds?"
She coyly replied: "Perhaps."
"And if I were to offer you five pounds?" Shaw asked.
"Mr. Shaw!" said the woman. "What do you take me for?"
"We have already established what you are," Shaw replied. "Now we are merely haggling over the price."
Regarding the Templeton Foundation....there is considerable disagreement among scientists concerning whether accepting Templeton funding taints a scientific project, considering that the foundation has as its semi-overt objective the reconciliation of science and religion.
Richard Dawkins: "Freeman Dyson, by accepting the Templeton Prize, sent a powerful signal to the world which, whether he likes it or not, will be taken as an endorsement of religion by one of the world's most distinguished physicists."
Of course, money can have a warping effect on principle. The same is true with the awarding of prizes, the granting of professorships or any kind of employment, celebrity or fame, or the proximity to celebrities and the famous. I think it was Walter Lippman who said journalists might as well throw away their pencil the moment they accept an invitation to give the president their advice. I must admit a bias to philosophers who are work outside of institutions such as churches, think tanks, and universities. These institutions compromise people who do their thinking, protestations to the contrary. These institutions are gateways. They let in certain people—the elites-- and keep out other people—the great unwashed. And, when institutions filter people, they also filter ideas, including conflicting ideas. I wonder what would have happened if they had called Jesus rabbi and had welcomed Paul to the academy. The thinking that emerges from that experience seems to me to be more authentic and applicable than scribblings made in the sterility of a university garret. As much as I admire, for example, Saul Kripke’s theories on semantics, I consider his work inferior to, say, Eric Hoffer, the itinerant longshoreman and migratory field laborer. Kripke, who has spent his professional life on college campuses, may generate more theses, but Hoffer has shaped more minds. And, at the end of the day, that is the acid test of an enduring philosophy.
It may be that the Tempelton prize is corrupting, but that is only because they who have received it are corruptable. And Dawkins' contention that the acceptance of the prize should be taken as an endorsement of relgion leaves me less than aghast. Horrors at the thought that religion might be something other than an unqualified evil and surely undeserving of reconcilition with the august discipline of Science.
That's a little disingenuous of you. Surely you are aware that many are trying to pervert science to dignify certain articles of religious dogma with a veneer of scientific support?
I don't think that's Templeton's aim, however. It appears that his goal is to see if there is common ground between two disciplines, given the assumption of good will and rationality. I don't think his goal is to butress creedal claims with science. Perhaps it's a middle child inclination, but I think I can find middle ground between virtually any two centers of thought. Paganism? I also love nature. Mormonism? I also love family. Catholicism? I also love tradition. Atheism? I also love skepticism. Islam? I also love terrorism. (joking)
My view generally is too much hate is engendered from supposed differences of world views when many but not all of those differences are more apparant than real.
Endurance and popular appeal seems to me a rather lousy test of philosophical quality.
What would you regard as a good test of philosophical quality?
Those are good tests of scientific utility, but unless you assume that science and utility is the ground and end of philosophy, I don't see how they are the basis for discriminating between poor philosophy (mine, say) and great philosophy ( Plato or Kant, say). While argumentum ad popularum is a fallacy, the staying power of an idea isn't, unless you make yet another assumption: that truth and coherence are somehow independent of the judgment of others over space and time. Needless to say, those two sets of assumptions that are the bedrock of scientism in the first instance and solipsism in the second instance fail the tests of logical consistency, novel perspective, scientific insight, and functional integration.
Earlier today, my wife and I went for yet another two-hour timeshare presentation at The Legacy Golf Resort on 32nd Street, "scenically nestled in the foothills of Phoenix's South Mountain and reigning over 280 acres." I place timeshare presentations only marginally higher than a dentist or an IRS appointment, but my wife is curious about area resorts and likes the inducements-- so off we went. We were hustled while we were on a date night at Tempe Marketplace, a new mall. (We had dinner there at a ribs restaurant Lucille’s Smokehouse Bar-B-Que before heading out to ASU.) So, with the promise of about $150 in a Visa and restaurant credits, we went to the timeshare.
The first lesson is that you can negotiate these inducements. Although the timeshares want to give away as little as possible, there is some flexibility as well on getting from them more than other people will get. From the perspective of the timeshare firms, it seems to me that their marketing process is wasteful and inefficient-- and, because of the marketing overhead, the value may not exist for most consumers. The bean counters have probably determined that one out of ten presentations result in a sale. But, nevertheless, if they can reduce the sale ratio to one out of five, the profit goes right to the bottom line. There must be a better way. We get several calls a month from people pleading with us to visit their resort. Sometimes we will go, but most times we won't. I think it would serve the resort owners such as Marriott, Wyndham, Shell, and others well to collaborate in creating a database consisting of all people that are called so that people that they can identify people that are not qualified or have a record of disinterest. They could use the same kind of neural network scoring used by credit card companies and immigration control. I'm sure the payback on this kind of an investment would be short.
The presentation made by the Shell associate stressed inventory availability, exchange flexibility, same day confirmations, increasing hoteling costs, the company's financial strength, and overall resort and plan amentities. Ever timeshare presentation tries to differentiate between other timeshares and also buying directly instead of through third-party vendors, such as eBay.
Much of the time is spent in casual conversation. Of course, the saleman is looking for words from us that can be made into buttons that he can push to get a sale, such as the button of guilt or stress. And, of course, it is in our power to withhold from him the stuff that could make those buttons.
We walked through an example of the timeshare unit. The Legacy put its best foot forward, and the unit was attractive and spacious, more so than average although not entirely to my taste.
As with all timeshare presentations, they are slow in getting to the bottom line, which was 7,000 points (equating to two or three weeks) at $40,999. If bought today, the price would be $30,899. They would accept a downpayment of $4,239 with the rest financed at a mere 17.55 percent. Shell also offered an Explorer program, in which you could use 6,000 points over two years for the cost of $1,849.
We have owned a timeshare for about ten years-- 19,000 points retailing at about $50,000 through Sunterra. We enjoy travel, and the program seems to work for us. But it certainly isn't for all people, and it is easy to allow yourself to be swayed by appeals to the angels of your better nature to buy into a program or overbuy into a program that you really don't need.
So my final lesson is that if you really want a timeshare, you should decide that you want it before you go the the presentation-- and then hold out for the very best deal at the very last minute. As all good businessmen know, you can negotiate anything and a piece of paper with a number on it means nothing.
http://www.americablog.com/2007/10/so-this-is-who-gop-wants-to-give.html A quick glance at some of the heavy hitters in banking and finance that the GOP would love to use for the outsourcing of American Social Security. I can accept that money makes the world go 'round and that greed keeps the Wall Street machine moving but considering some of the incredibly bad decisions the "experts" on Wall Street have made lately, is this the team we really want? Social Security may not be much, but most Americans would be unable to cope with such staggering losses.
After two hours of deliberation, we voted on a resolution that can be summarized as follows: If neither of the two major political parties nominates an individual who pledges himself or herself to the sanctity of human life, we will join others in voting for a minor-party candidate. Those agreeing with the proposition were invited to stand. The result was almost unanimous.
Speaking personally, and not for the organization I represent or the other leaders gathered in Salt Lake City, I firmly believe that the selection of a president should begin with a recommitment to traditional moral values and beliefs. Those include the sanctity of human life, the institution of marriage, and other inviolable pro-family principles. Only after that determination is made can the acceptability of a nominee be assessed.
So do I. Alas, among the major presidential candidates, the one Republican has demonstrated fidelity to his spouse is the man whose ancestors had multiple wives. Sanctity of human life? Apparently this doesn't include torture and the tactics of shock and awe that have killed more than 3,800 Americans and untold tens of thousands of Iraqis. It also doesn't include unanamity on the use of capital punishment in America. The institution of marriage? Even apart from the GOP closet queens, Republican maurauders of small boys and large interns, amd conservative trollers for man on man sex in public bathrooms, I cannot fathom why anyone thinks the Republicans support pro-family values in light policies such as the extended tours of the National Guard and the president's vetoing of health care of children.
Of course, what Dobson means by the sanctity of human life is the eradication of abortion. That's like wishing that love and peace will prevail in Iraq. It's idealistic folly given what life really is. And why are there abortions? Could it not be that many of those abortions can be traced to the very same policies that conservative promote, such as an unfettered market place that markets filth from the most political conservative media outlets? And who are these people who are having the abortions? It's not the liberals, the atheists, the terrorists, the illegal immigrants. It's conservative Christians from Main Street USA who go to other conservative Christians on Main Street USA to have the abortions. Conservative are blind to the real issue, which has never been abortion but self-restraint versus promiscuity.
I did a makeover of my website today using a SEO tool called website grader. Here are the facts as of today and my comments:
WebSite Grade For www.mymallandnews.com : 63/100 (October 06, 2007)A website grade of 63 for www.mymallandnews.com means that of the thousands of websites that have previously been submitted to the tool, our algorithm has calculated that this site scores higher than 63% of them in terms of its marketing effectiveness. The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of over a dozen different variables, including search engine data, website structure, approximate traffic, site performance, and others. Not bad for an amateur site.
Google PageRank : 4 "Google PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves important weigh more heavily and help to make other pages important." -From Google
The page rank doesn't seem to be stable. It seems to bounce between three and five. Somewhat mediocre. However, the term my mall is invariably the first line of the first page in Google searches.
Title : My Mall & News Description : Portal for News, Commentary, and Shopping Meta Keywords : my mall, mall, shopping, news, politics, opinion, commentary
By adding a meta description and keywords and also HTML headers (i.e. H1, H2, etc.), my ranking jumped about thirty percentage points. Although Google may not regard these meta words as significant, other search tools may.
Domain Expires Within A Year The domain for this website is set to expire in less than a year (106 days). We would suggest renewing this domain with your registrar. Google and other search engines may penalize websites with domains that are set to expire soon. The reason for this is that many spam sites are often registered for short periods of time. Most registrars support paying upfront for several years and the cost is usually only about $10-$20 per year, so it is generally worth it.
Perhaps so. But this is done automatically about two weeks prior to expiration. I don't see much need to address this point.
Permanent Redirect Not Found
Search engines often regard www.mymallandnews.com and mymallandnews.com as two different websites unless you take specific measures to signal to them that they are the same site. The best way to handle this situation is to setup what is known as a permanent redirect (or a "301" redirect) from one of these sites to the other. This way, any links that are pointing to the secondary site benefit the primary site, from an SEO perspective. We could not detect a permanent redirect for this site, so it may be experiencing the negative effects of link fragmentation (some of the inbound links may point to www.mymallandnews.com and others to mymallandnews.com) For example, www.mymallandnews.com seems to have 556 inbound links whereas mymallandnews.com has 1,252 inbound links. By correctly configuring a permanent 301 redirect, the search rankings might improve as all inbound links are correctly counted for the website.
Another red-flagged item that confused me. I built a .htaccess file like this that seems to work, but the error still appears in the report:
Google Indexed Pages : 614 Measures the approximate number of pages on http://www.mymallandnews.com/ that have been stored in the Google index. The Google web crawler will visit the website periodically and look for new content and store it in its index. Generally, the more pages a website has within the Google cache, the better.
There are 0 pages from http://www.mymallandnews.com/ in the supplemental results area of Google. These pages will generally not rank on Google.com. A high number of supplemental pages may indicate a problem with the site. Inbound Links One of the most important measures for a website is how many other sites are linking to it. The more links the better.
Links Summary
Google : 10 Yahoo: 556
Not bad, I suppose, for a hobby site.
Technorati Ranking : 876,360 Technorati is a popular website ranking service. It measures the popularity of a given website as compared to all other sites that have been submitted to its system. This website currently has a Technorati ranking of 876,360.
del.icio.us bookmarks : 0 del.icio.us is a web-based bookmarking site. Delicious users save their bookmarks on the website so they can access them from any browser. A website that has many users bookmarking it is generally popular and will get more traffic. http://www.mymallandnews.com/ has about 0 bookmarks stored. digg.com Submission Summary The website www.mymallandnews.com has had 0 articles submitted to digg.com. These articles received a total of 0 diggs (votes) and 0 of these articles made it to the front page of digg.com. None of this surprises me, as I didn't know anything about these sites before today. I expect that these numbers will improve within the next few months.
Readability Level : 9th Grade This score measures the approximate level of education necessary to read and understand the web page content. In most cases, the content should be made to be simple so that a majority of the target audience can understand it.
This both surprises and pleases me. It surprises me because I dive into on occasion some difficult topics that of necessity uses advanced concepts. It pleases me because my goal above all is to communicate hard subejct as clearly as possible to the broadest possible audience. The ninth grade (one grade higher than my oldest boy) is a good target audience. I've always seen myself much more of a journalist than an academician.
The biggest change I made was to make the blog the splash page as I noticed that it was getting so many hits because it is dynamic. I've thought about getting a RSS feed, and perhaps I will do so in the future. But for now I think the collection of links that cover the range of ideology and the scope of the world works best for this site. The mall side continues to be anemic, although I continue to make money from Google.
So there you have it -- My Mall & News in its most recent incarnation. Perhaps some of the lessons I've learned can be helpful to you as you develop your blog or site.
In Luke 4:6 it says that the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth and said to him "I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours."
The first question that springs to mind is "Is this an accurate statement "it has been given to me and I can give it to anyone I want to."?
Your question beings to mind Nikos Kazantzakis' book Last Temptation of Christ and Scorsese's 1988 film that portrays a Jesus at war with himself, uncertain as to whether the messages he hears is from God or Satan and also later conspiring with Judus to have himself die to fulfill his mission. Luke 4:6 has the devil claim that "the glory...is delivered unto me, and to whomever I will give it," a claim that Jesus doesn't challenge. The devil seems to be referring to the kingdom of worldly power, a kingdom for which the disciples yearned. So it may well have been an accurate statement, but it wasn't much of a temptation from Jesus' perspective as his kingdom never was of this world. In verse 13, after the devil had tested Jesus, the devil "departed from him for a season." The end of that season according to Kazantzkis was Christ's last temptation-- the temptation of human normality-- to have a wife and children and not surrender to God's will.
I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.
Inscription on Kazantakis's tomb in Heraklion, Greece
AI (Aritificial Intelligence) was the worst movie I've ever seen. If I ever meet Steven Spielberg, I think he should pay me $10.99, the amount I paid in the hotel room to see this. I have heard the critics defend it, and yes i "get" it... but I don't like it.
Can you expand? I wouldn't say it was the best movie I've seen, but I think it is the best that Speilberg has produced.
For those not familiar with AI, here is a round up of what the critics thought.
If there is no God, then what basis can we use for what is right and wrong? Aren't our morals tied somewhat to our religious beliefs, or can morals be established without the tie to religion?
Since there are not gods or other supernatural things, our morals are based on what people around us said they should be, i.e., family, community, governments. IOW, --morals are based on consensus. It's always been that way.
But since there is (at least in America) a consensus that God is real, can it not be said that our morals derive (perhaps unwillingly) from religious belief?
Good question. I've heard and read "devout Christians" claim atheists are amoral because we don't believe in God. Intellectually: I'm an egoist. I accept it's to my advantage to obey many rules. When it is not, I will often break rules,if I can either get away with it,or am simply willing to wear the sanctions,and of course my bloody conscience doesn't bother me too much. Today,in an age of moral relativism,people can,and do argue that there are no absolute moral imperatives.I don't agree,but I don't think there are many.I doubt I could intentionlly harm another person without a lot of angst, especially a child.I can't think of any circumstance when the rape of a child would be justified. (by "'rape" I mean any sexuall actvity between an adult and a pre adolescent child).
What I think: For the vast majority of people, moral relavatism is the default philosophy because it is the most indolent philosophy, since it is rooted in expediency and rationalization. For those who embrace a creed of amoralism-- or what they may call moral relativism-- I would ask them: why not rape a five year old? Is it just a fear of punishment? if so, based on the statistics and given the corruption of our judicial system, that fear is greatly misplaced. May I suggest there is a distinction between arguing that there are no absolute moral imperatives-- an ultimately fruitless task, in my view-- and acting as if there were moral absolutes but without conditioning those claims in religion, consensus, or the law. The challenge as I see it is to not relativize or personalize but go to the other extreme and generalize and universalize by acting, in effect, as judge, jury, prosecuting attorney, and defendent when deciding moral obligation or dilemmas. So Kant's answer to the question: why not rape? is this principle: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means." This is the opposite of egotism as it requires a leap of empathy to people generally and a presuposition of ones self of rational autonomy freely acting as "a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends."
The Latin motto on water bottles and Frisbees for sale in the college bookstore makes the point plain: Numquam Bella Piis, Numquam Certanima Desunt — “For the faithful, wars shall never cease.”
I prefer "Blessed are the peacemakers" myself.
I agree. However, the latin motto is particularly appropriate, especially as it applies to religionists: so long as humans cling to their foolish, devisive superstitions, they will continue to kill and slaughter each other, certain that their god or gods is the right one that others must follow.
