I was just awarded $100,000 from the United Nations Foundation!

I was just awarded $100,000 from the UN Foundation, according to the email I just received. If anyone wants to go collect it for me, you can keep 90% of it for doing the footwork It is a bit strange that they awarded me $100,000 without taking the trouble of knowing whether I'm a man or a woman (see the "Dear Sir/Madam"). Here's the email:

United Nations Foundation Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Suite 400 Washington, D.C. 20036 Dear Sir/Madam, UN Foundation Grant. This is to notify you that you have been chosen by the board of Trustees of the above International (Charity & Human Developmental Organization) as one of the final recipients of a Cash Grant/Donation of $100,000.00 (one Hundred Thousand Dollars) for your personal development. The UN Foundation was created in 1998 with entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Turners' historic $1 billion gift to support UN activities. The UN Foundation builds and implements public-private partnerships to address the world?s most pressing problems and broaden support for the UN through advocacy and public outreach. The UN Foundation is a public charity. The ITIL Foundation, UK has been appointed to oversee this development affair. You are required to expeditiously contact the Executive Secretary of The ITILFoundation with the details below for documentation and release of your cash aid, your Qualification number is (UNI/ITIL-816-1119G-987-94) quote it in all discussions. Executive Secretary:ITIL Foundation, UK - Barrister STEVEN CARLOS Email:itil.ungrant@yahoo.co.uk, itilfoundation11@gmail.com Phone: +447045769825

On behalf of the Board,

faithfully, Cherryl Oconnor Unit Co-ordinator UN WORLD GRANT DEPT. Maybe it's time to call Paul Kinsella, the guy who excels at scamming the scammers.

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The Family: Trickle down fundamentalism.

Would you like to know about a group of six or seven fundamentalist Christian Congressmen who believe that they have been tapped by God to usurp more power for the already powerful? Then consider Rachel Maddow's discussion about The Family with Jeff Sharlet, author of a brand new book: The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Jeff knows about The Family because he went undercover and spent time living among them at 133 C-Street, the group's headquarters in Washington D.C, which is a church that looks like a house. Senator John Ensign lives at the house. So does Senator Tom Coburn. Mark Sanford mentions an affiliation with C-Street while he was having his affair. What goes on at C-Street stays there, thanks to the secrecy pact enter by the members. Wikipedia offers far more. What do these guys want? To do God's will, of course. What is God's will? As long as you are chosen by God, the means justify the ends. Anything is justified, even monetary bribes; they sometimes call themselves "The Christian Mafia." They prefer to operate behind the scenes. Maddow sums up the aim of The Family:

promoting American power, world wide, unfettered capitalism with no unions, no programs to help poor people, all with this idea that godly powerful rich men should get as many resources as possible personally, and they should just privately help everyone else.

Here's Maddow's interview.

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Republican Scientists are rare

PEW has issued new research findings showing that relatively few scientists are political conservatives. Only 6% of scientists identify themselves as Republicans:

Most scientists identify as Democrats (55%), while 32% identify as independents and just 6% say they are Republicans. When the leanings of independents are considered, fully 81% identify as Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 12% who either identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP.

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Dennis Kucinich takes on the Manhattan Institute

What is the deal with single payor? How does the United States compare to Canada on the ability to provide health care services? Rep. Dennis Kucinich is showing his frustration with Dr. David Gratzer, Senior Fellow of the conservative Manhattan Institute. Gratzer had it coming because he presented himself as an expert on the problems with the Canadian system. See here and here. For a clear presentation of why we do need single payor insurance and why we can afford it, see this report by Marcia Angell, M. D., Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine Harvard Medical School.

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Quote time

I love to collect quotes. Such a high ratio of thought-provocation per word! I'd even bet that there is a the seed for a novel in most well-honed quotes. I collect these from many sources, though more than a few of the following were presented to me by The Quotations Page, which I use as my homepage. Some of these quotes have made the rounds (the oldies-but-goodies), though I'd bet that you'll find more than a few that you've never seen before. Enjoy. In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

Johann von Neumann (1903 - 1957)

Doing a thing well is often a waste of time.

Robert Byrne

It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.

Tom Stoppard (1937 - ), Jumpers (1972) act 1

The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along.

Douglas Adams , Last Chance to See

“It is not acceptable to have a religion where the alternative to faith is punishment — that’s how you train dogs, not develop people.”

Deng Ming-Dao

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Oscar Wilde

A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.

George Wald (1906 - )

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.

H. H. Williams

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