Random: August 2003 Archives

Heh. This is a good one. Poor lady can't even spell her own name. ("Ejercitor"? Didn't I get another email offering me cheap imported Ejercitorex from Canada for ejercitor dysfunction? No?) And why is she calling me "Dear" so early in our "good relationship"? And I think she says "o.k" as frequently as Mr. Mackey in South Park says "Mkay?"

Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 22:53:41 +0800 From: "Mrs Louise Estrade" Reply-to: luiose_est@lycos.com

Subject: Mrs Louise Estrade

Dear,

Listen and read carefully, i have found seriousness in
you and that is why i have decided to involve you in
this transaction o.k , i am a woman of substance and
of great importance to my nation and the society in
general. i wll not entertain any act of unseriousness
from you in this transaction o.k

you must take instructions from me at all time and for
security reasons you will only communicate me only by
my email for now o.k.

I caught this on TV Saturday — interviews with Ugandan Indians who settled in Leicester, commenting on Idi Amin's death and the influence of their exile on their lives.

(Leicester is the town in England where I spent two-thirds of my junior year of college. It's noteworthy for not often being in the news. It's a very nice city and the home of Sue Townsend, author of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole. Their football team is called Aston Villa.)

--> "Exiled Ugandan Asians found success in Britain", MSNBC, August 16, 2003, famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/ reuters08-16-085748.asp?reg=EUROPE

In honor of the ever-so "fair and balanced" Fox news lawsuit against Al Franken, I join the Fair and Balanced Friday blog protest.

Because everything I do is oh-so fair and balanced. Just like Fox News.

--> www.nealpollack.com/cgi-bin/blog/do.cgi/200308122150/permalink

But apparently, I live in a country where...

58% of my fellow citizens believe you have to believe in God to be a moral person.

83% of them believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus. 28% believe in evolution.

I just don't get it. Of course, as a Jew raised in a very unreligious household — nobody in my family attends a synagogue regularly — I'm clearly way in the minority as far as faith goes.

This reminded me of a book I read a few years back by Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God. A concept she kept returning to was the tension between logos, the knowledge of the rational, and mythos, the belief in the rationally inexplicable. At various times in their histories, the major religious faiths have struggled to balance the two. For example, the Islamic world was a center of scientific development at one point, but now, not so much, to put it mildly. The Christian world seems to be going the same way if this poll is any indication.

Yet I know there are religious people who don't put their brain on God-is-my-copilot autopilot. One friend of mine tells me about a conversation with her father, a physicist at Stanford University, who finds that the more he learns in the course of his work, the more his faith is strengthened. There's no conflict there for him.

What saddens me about the kind of religious faith that's taken root here is how mindbogglingly literal it is. No room for mystery. No room for spiritual struggle. Everything is neatly spelled out. This is right, and this is wrong, and it says so in the manual. Don't confuse me with the facts (or those pesky science classes in school), my mind is made up.

What a dreary universe these people must live in. I don't want to live there with them. It's good to know there are other people out there who share my views and want something better too.

Not to mention, let's see how "blessed" a country we really are if our scientific and technological prowess comes to a crashing halt because we've become a bunch of hide-bound dumbasses with WWJD slogans plastered all over our cars and our t-shirts.

--> "Believe It, or Not", Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2003/08/15/opinion/15KRIS.html

The interesting part is that she used the Yahoo News send-to-a-friend feature. My guess is that they will be restricting the message length in future... the funniest part is the language. "Please do not reply rudely lest a curse befalls your water"? Ooookaaayyy....

Margaret Mbuli (revelations_16:8@heatwave.org) has sent you a news article. (Email address has not been verified.)
Personal message:

Halleluyah brethren,I am a minister of the Lord and I am concerned with the word of prophecy in ISAIAH 20:19-25 -the task of making the altar to the Lord in the heart of Egypt.It will be a sign and witness to the Lord Almighty in the land of Egypt.He will heal us.
The Acacia wood I can get but with the bronze work someone like you can contribute.I am asking you to do this on your own free will.I live and work in Tanzania with my husband Eliezer Mbuli.We have to build this altar to the Lord and place it at a spot that he got a revelation.Apparently in that dark village alot of visions have been experienced by different people and I believe the zeal is in place.This is at his homeland in Mlalo at a place called Cana.We neither have a church and are not known,infact,even the place where he saw the revelation is not ours.Please do not reply rudely lest a curse befalls your water and a plague upon you.Thank you Margaret Mbuli. Read ISAIAH 17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24.