Letters, we get letters...

Al salaam,
My name is Haja mashed from Brunei I am a 23 years old and a british citizen who was taken to Brunei by my father 10 years ago. He deceived me that I was going there on vacation and later married me out to a wealthy Prince in Brunei who is 30 years older than me. I was thus forced into marriage and when I objected I was beaten and raped by this Prince. I was locked up in a house for six months after which I submitted and decided to accept my faith, knowing that was the only way out. After I got my freedom back I have been allowed by my husband to have access to his account and businesses.

With the help of a loyal aide I have been able to divert $4.500.000.00 (four million five hundred thousand dollars)as bonds into a private finance house without his knowledge. Right now I have mapped out a plan of escape out of Brunei,thou I have tried escaping several times and its been fruitless. first of all I have been able to move the fund out of Brunei. This is where I need your assistance,to help me secure the fund from the finance house before I get out of Brunei if I am lucky enough. If you know you are capable of handling such a huge amount of money respond to me and I will compensate you by giving you $1.000.000.00 (one million dollars) of the total fund
Note also that you must keep this transaction secret as my life is at stake if my husband or any of his relatives hear of this transaction they will stone me to death or hang me. Please reply me here :

[Address witheld for her safety-- Ed.]

Yours faithfully,
Haja mashed

Alas, I am unable to help poor Haja. Perhaps you can, dear reader.

Simply prove your truthworthiness by depositing $500,000 in either the PayPal or Amazon Honor System accounts located in column to the right.

I know you'll do the right thing.

Note: I see that I'm not the only one getting letters from the Middle East this weekend. Go check out the letter to Rusty at the Jawa Report.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Cartoonist Chris Muir of Day by Day is asking for help. Please visit his site to see why, or simply click the banner below.

And say a prayer, will you? (h/t: MVRWC)

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:22 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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London Paramedics have come up with a simple, but brilliant bit of practical advice; include ICE—In Case of Emergency—contact numbers in your cell phone address book:

Cell-phone users often have entries for just about everything on their phones' contact lists -- spouses, parents, children, the hairdresser.

But some emergency workers are asking cell-phone users to add one more contact to that address book -- an "In Case of Emergency" or ICE contact.

Originally conceived by paramedics in London, the ICE concept has spread internationally, mostly through e-mail messages and a handful of reports in the national media. According to The Washington Post, at least a couple of police departments in the United States have encouraged the idea in their jurisdictions.

Paramedics, police and firefighters often waste valuable time trying to figure out which name in a victim's cell phone to call in the case of an emergency. Most people often identify spouses or other kin by their first names on their contact lists, which makes them indistinguishable from the entries for the dentist or babysitter.

For more on the concept, go to http://www.icecontact.com/.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:00 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I see quite a few intelligent folks are up in arms over a few comments President Bush made regarding the theory of Intelligent Design.

Many of these intelligent folks are of the opinion that Bush said Intelligent Design was as valid a theory as evolution. I don't read it that way. Here is the Q&A in context:

Q I wanted to ask you about the -- what seems to be a growing debate over evolution versus intelligent design. What are your personal views on that, and do you think both should be taught in public schools?

THE PRESIDENT: I think -- as I said, harking back to my days as my governor -- both you and Herman are doing a fine job of dragging me back to the past. (Laughter.) Then, I said that, first of all, that decision should be made to local school districts, but I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught.

Q Both sides should be properly taught?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, people -- so people can understand what the debate is about.

Q So the answer accepts the validity of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution?

THE PRESIDENT: I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought, and I'm not suggesting -- you're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes.

So what did you hear? In this conversation I didn't hear anything sinister. I did not hear of a plan to depose evolution, or teach creationism, but instead a simple call to hear all sides of the debate. I don't pretend to be a scientist or a theologian, but there seems to me to be enough room for both theories.

The earth is 4.6 billion years old, and we know this as a geological fact that astrophysics supports. We know for a fact life evolves, and we can see generational changes in lower species within our lifetimes. Evolution is a fact. Life evolves...

But where did life come from? For things to evolve, they have to start somewhere. Despite all the wonderful work provided to us by dedicated scientists, they still cannot provide a theory of The Beginning any more reasonable than the metaphor of Genesis I.

1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was [a] formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

9 And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.

11 Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

14 And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [b] and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so.

31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day

From an origination context, ID has as much right to discussion as any other theory. If this is Bush's argument, I think everyone is getting overheated over nothing, and I suspect this is the case.

I do, however, get a kick out of imagining an omnipotent, all powerful God trying to dumb-down the complicated (and to us, still mostly unknown) physics that bind this reality together into a metaphor that a Bronze Age scribe could understand and pass along. It must have felt as futile as trying to teach calculus to a trout.

God asks us through religion to rely on faith. I'd argue that is because he knows our brains can't handle the cosmic truths any better today than we could a few thousand years ago.

Of course, I may very well be wrong, and if I am, I have but one thing to say in my defense:

42.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:00 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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