Friday, August 28, 2009

It’s All About the Benjamins

A message from a Founding Father

“When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for help of a civil power, ‘tis a sign, I apprehend of its being a bad one.” (Benjamin Franklin)

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Old Rant: Net Illiterati

Something I wrote back in the late 90s… [original here]

I need to start updating this site, so I dragged this nugget out of my old closet to build on a Tweet I made earlier:

Dear radio ad writers: URLs *never* hv a “backslash” in ‘em. VO peeps, if u see it in a script, complain! I won’t buy from proven idiots…

I think that if someone is going to build a website, especially if they plan to CHARGE for something there, they should take a few minutes to at least spell check the damned things! How in the Hell did these people manage to get out of high school, and even in some cases get college degrees without knowing the difference between the possessive word “your” and the contraction “you’re?” I’d guess that 8 out of 10 web sites that I visit have multiple instances of the confusion of the two!  Another word that is consistently misspelled is “categories.” It’s obvious to me that many people have gone through life learning everything from television, and have very little experience with the printed word.  Since I’ve read thousands of books, misspellings and grammatical errors LEAP off a page at me; but apparently the Illiterati of the Net are the rule and not the exception.  I suppose this speaks volumes for the state of our educational system.  I wonder sometimes if it isn’t a government plot - after all, the ignorant and stupid are more easily led, and if the Net is a fair representation of the American public we’ve got a disproportionately large population of morons in this country.

Yup. It’s only gotten worse in the years since my original post. Pretty sad.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Laurie Higgins Wants Parents to Know a HS Math Teacher is an Atheist

A call to arms for the godless, for the sake of our CHILDREN!

Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute Sends an Open Letter to the Friendly Atheist - Repost of my comment on Hemant’s blog:

This makes my blood boil. Who the hell does this woman think she is? Christian busybodies injecting their views into educational settings BY COMPLAINING about things their small minds find “offensive” is a reprehensible tactic that’s proven effective more often than not.

The reason the so-called “New Atheist” movement is an absolute necessity (like yesterday), is because these fundamentalist crybabies like Laurie Higgins have enjoyed 30 years of empire-building in the media, accomodation, appeasement and outright, illegal government endorsement allowing them to manipulate public policy in their favor. They insist on their First Amendment rights while seeking to restrain everyone else’s. They’re out of control and it’s long past time to remind them of their place. In church and homeschooling, if they’re so determined to raise generations of Jesus-bots devoid of intellectual curiosity.

With the sorry state of affairs in American education – in large part due to the dumbing down of our curriculum in order to not piss off Christians – I’m thrilled to have good teachers out there, and what they say or do outside the classroom is none of my concern.

These bullshit “Family” organizations are an obstacle to our kids’ education and a threat to the First Amendment liberties of every citizen. I consider this attack upon the Friendly Atheist (a teacher, no less!) yet another call to arms for all the rest of us, from closeted to militant. Ladies and gentlemen get those arms in (ergonomically correct typing) position and fire at will. No quarter given.
BUY HEMANT’S BOOK “I SOLD MY SOUL ON EBAY”

Friday, August 21, 2009

Always Loved This Line…

Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die. Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Ch 18 - Oscar Wilde

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Jam the Search Engines with Nigerian Scammer Info

Too many fall prey in so many ways…

I found an ad on Craigslist, emailed for more info and here’s what I received:

On Aug 18, 2009, at 6:54 AM, pastor Ashely Cole wrote:

Hello,

Thanks for your interest. First of all, I must thank the Lord that I found an intending tenant for my apartment ,My name is Pastor Ashely Cole , I own the apartment you are interested in and I lived there with my Husband and my only daughter before we relocated to West Africa. My Job here in Nigeria involves going to interior villages to give food and clothes to the less privileged ones in the Niger delta region and I also use this opportunity to preach the word of God bringing them to the knowledge of the gospel of Christ,We work with the a charity organization. You can learn more from:http://www.orphanage.org/africa/nigeria/childrenofmary/index.html.

I came here with my family and It was due to my transfer thats we left the apartment and also want to give it out for rent. We are looking for a responsible person that can take very good care of it as we are not after the money for the rent but want it to be clean at the time, and the person that will rent it to take it as if it were its own.My Husband is also a pastor with Christ embassy church here in Nigeria as well.

This 2 bedroom apartment at 326 Amherst Drive, Burbank, CA 91504
which goes for $850 monthly.It has the following features: Air conditioning, Walk-in closet, Hardwood floor, Tile floor, Living room,Breakfast nook, Refrigerator, Stove/Oven,garage, Balcony, Deck, or Patio, Cable-ready, High-speed internet ,Garage parking.

This apartment is not furnished and We want to give it for rent and looking for a responsible person that can take very good care of the apt. for us.So for now,We are here in Lagos,and our house and the keys/documents of the house are with us here,we tried to look for an agent that we can give this document before we left but could not see and we are as well as don’t want our house to be used any how in our absence that is why we took it along with us here.

I hope you will promise us to take very good care of the house. If you are comfortable with the price and really need this apartment, Contact me immediately with the following details.

APPLICANT’S PROFILE

1)Your Full Name
2)Your Full Address
3)Phone Number?
3)How old are you?
4)Are you married?
5)How many people will be living in the Apartment?
6)Do you have a pet?
7)Do you have a car?
8)Occupation??
10)How long are you renting for?

Looking forward to hear from you with all this details so that i can have it in my file in case of issuing the receipt for you and contacting you.Await your urgent reply so that we can discuss on how to get the document and the key to you,please we are giving you all this base on trust and again i will want you to stick to your words,you know that,we do not see yet and only putting everything into Gods hand,so please do not let us down in this our property and God bless you more as you do this.

You can also call my Husband asap:+234 80 7868 5848 or 011234 807868 5848 for more details

The pictures are attached and you can also go see the building, though you cant view the inside because we have the keys here.

Thanks and you are welcome

Regards

Pastor Ashely Cole

I barely skimmed the email before I, to my embarrassment, answered this person. To my shame, I even made reference to their doing “God’s work,” when the truth is I’m utterly appalled by the fact that humanitarian aid volunteerism is one of the primary means of various sects proselytizing millions of people who are in desperate need of FOOD and other basic necessities, not Jesus! I may be an opportunist but I’m a die-hard skeptic, so when I got home & read this more closely, I figured I’d investigate a bit…

Googled the email address, americanbir@yahoo.com and found a site (in Thai) http://www.thaidoweb.com/truehits.php?pagename=tanya which contained email correspondence between an aspiring au pair and one “Rev. Martins Laureen Cole” with the intended ripoff also involving travellinkcenter@usa.com or Global link Travel Center, INC.

Have forwarded everything to the Abuse folks at Yahoo! and Craigslist. Then came here and decided to do my part to get yet another Nigerian scammer’s bullshit into the search engines and perhaps spare someone more gullible a potential disaster. The Christian angle is a brilliant tactic, I must admit. So many people are ripe for the picking, especially when they think they’re somehow making Jesus happy or “giving glory to God” by throwing in their lot with their spiritual brethren. People are often so desperate they’ll believe anything, like that there’s such thing as a 2 BR apartment in Burbank for $850/mo… or that a guy was born to a virgin, died nailed to a cross and then came back to life 3 days later. Fortunately some of us are here to keep them from hurting themselves too badly; as long as they’re willing to listen to reason.

Nigerian Scammer Christian Orphanage.org Au Pair americanbir@yahoo.com Pastor Ashely Cole Rev Martins Laureen Cole travellinkcenter@usa.com Global Link Travel Scam Nigeria Jesus