Atheist sells chance to save soul on eBay

CHICAGO - Hemant Mehta, a 23-year-old Atheist from Chicago, asked eBay bidders last month to send him to church.

The winning bid of $504 came from Off-the-Map, a Christian organization with the mission of "normalizing evangelism for ordinary Christians." Off The Map's slogan is "Helping Christians be normal."

More at the Secular Outpost. (The above two paragraphs are from the Secular Student Association's blog. Mehta is chairman of the Secular Student Alliance.)

Bizarre bicycle safety film from 1963

I had the privilege of viewing this film, "One Got Fat," two or three times in grade school in the early-to-mid seventies. It's the story of Filbert, Nel, Stan, Mossby, Rooty, Floog, Orv and their friends--all creepy monkey-faced humans--who bicycle ride to a park nine blocks away, all but one coming to an unpleasant end. (Hat tip: Radley Balko at The Agitator.)

Dirty Politician: Rick Santorum, again

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), who was previously pointed out exchanging donations to his charity for government contracts, now denies that the charity, Operation Good Neighbor, is his. Sure, he founded it, but he says (in a letter to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) that he's had nothing to do with it since then:

I do not have a personal charity. The reference was an allusion to Operation Good Neighbor, a charitable organization that I founded in 2000. Since then, I have had no control over its direction. My involvement is limited to being honorary chairman of the board -- a board that includes former Philadelphia mayor W. Wilson Goode, a prominent Democrat -- and lending my name to fund-raising events. That's it.

Attytood shows, with quotes and photos, that Santorum's a liar.

Also in today's news is that Barbara Bonfiglio, former treasurer of political action committees for the indicted Sen. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Santorum, and convicted former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA), has resigned from the D.C. law firm of Williams & Jensen and from her post as treasurer of dirty politician Rep. Rich Pombo (R-CA)'s political action committee. Her lawfirm bio says "She also advises the firm's clients on matters involving House and Senate ethics rules, as well as compliance with the Lobbying Disclosure Act." She was treasurer of Santorum's charity, Operation Good Neighbor.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that Santorum lied when he said he would stop regular meetings with lobbyists:

After saying in January that he would end his regular meetings with lobbyists, Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), the third-ranking GOP leader in the Senate, has continued to meet with many of the same lobbyists at the same time and on the same day of the week.

(Via Talking Points Memo and TPM's Daily Muck.)

UPDATE: At least three lobbyists have been working at Santorum's charity--in addition to Barbara Bonfiglio, mentioned above, lobbyist Rob Bickhart, whose offices are also the home of Santorum's PAC and re-election campaign, works for the charity. And the charity is spending as much as 60% of its money on non-charitable things, like $200,000 for travel expenses and meetings. Santorum's response, when asked about this, was to deny that Bickhart is a lobbyist.

Computer issue at The Economist

This morning I received nine emails from The Economist with the subject "Address confirmation." Each message was identical, and stated:

Dear JAMES LIPPARD:

Thank you for amending your address details.

We have updated our records accordingly and will deliver your copies of The Economist to the amended address shortly.

If you encounter any problems with the delivery of The Economist, please call Customer Service on 1-800-456-xxxx.

Sincerely,

Customer Service.

Since I hadn't amended my address details, I called the Customer Service line (after I had only received three copies of the email)--and it was busy. After a few tries, I got through and waited on hold for quite some time, and then reached a human being. She informed me that this was an "error" and that the entire subscriber base had received these emails, which was the cause of the difficulty getting through on the phone.

This will no doubt be an expensive "error"--but my fear is that this may have been caused by an intrusion, resulting in the exposure of my information. Since there are no doubt numerous California subscribers affected, if this is the result of a hacker compromise they'll be required to issue notifications under California's SB 1386.

UPDATE: An email from the publisher says it was a technical error and not a security issue:

From: "Paul Rossi, Publisher of The Economist" [comcast email address omitted]
Subject: Apology from The Economist
Date: 09 Mar 2006 23:31:01 GMT

Dear Reader,

I am writing to apologise for any e-mails you may have received today from The Economist.

I sent an e-mail this morning asking you to confirm your address details. I understand that in error, we may have sent further e-mails confirming a change to your address.

This was caused by a technical error on our part and I am very sorry for the inconvenience and irritation that this may have caused you.

I want to reassure you that your address and all of your personal details have at all times been secure and will remain so.

If you did not change your details, we will continue to deliver your copies of The Economist to the usual address.

We are aware of the problem and are dealing with it. In the meantime, if you wish to contact me regarding this please e-mail [email address at economist.com omitted].

Yours sincerely,

Paul Rossi
Publisher, North America

I never received an email asking me to confirm address details as described in this email.

Commoncause.org: Spamming for "net neutrality"

Mark Cuban reports that he's been deluged with form letter spam from Commoncause.org, which has mistakenly identified him as a telco (depicting him with devil horns), just because he wrote a blog post saying that he thought there could be value to tiered levels of service.

If this is now the nature of the debate, it doesn't appear that "net neutrality" advocates have reason on their side. (My previous remarks on "net neutrality" are here and here.)

The Spam Kings blog points out deficiencies in the email subscription process used by Kintera, the provider for Commoncause.org.

Another creepy robot

This one, a six-legged robot from Carnegie Mellon University, climbs trees and walls using claws, micro-claws, or sticky material, as appropriate for the surface. Again, there's video. (Again, via jwz's blog.)

Previous robot, "Big Dog" the robotic pack mule, here.

Good Math, Bad Math Blog

Mark Chu-Carroll (who I remember as an active participant of the talk.origins newsgroup back when I was also active there) has started a blog on "Good Math, Bad Math." His first postings include a discussion of a study linking autism and thimerosol (bad math) and cellular automata (more bad math).

Faith-Based Homeland Security

George W. Bush has issued an executive order creating "a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the Department of Homeland Security." The Center will be run by a Director appointed by the Secretary of Homeland Security after consultation with the Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The original Director of WHOFBCI, John DiIulio, who blasted the Bush administration in Esquire magazine in 2002 and then quickly attempted to retract his criticisms.

Once again, reality matches The Onion.

(UPDATE: This is apparently primarily focused on disaster recovery efforts--but it still seems quite wrong for the government to engage religious organizations via contract or grant to aid in disaster recovery efforts, when these are voluntary charitable organizations. It not only involves taking from the general public to support a particular religious viewpoint, it turns a voluntary charity into a taxpayer-supported service.)

Blogger's spam-prevention robots are defective

WARNING

This blog has been locked by Blogger's spam-prevention robots. You will not be able to publish your posts, but you will be able to save them as drafts.

Save your post as a draft or click here for more about what's going on and how to get your blog unlocked.

Clicking there yielded:

Your blog is locked

Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.

You won't be able to publish posts to your blog until one of our humans reviews it and verifies that it is not a spam blog. Please fill out the form below to get a review. We'll take a look at your blog and unlock it in less than a business day.

If we don't hear from you, though, we will remove your blog from Blog*Spot within 10 days.

Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs.

That's what I saw Wednesday morning... afternoon Thursday, it's still locked.

Hello,

Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and whitelisted so that it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Sincerely,
Blogger Support

And it's back, apparently since shortly after I last checked and found it locked, based on the timestamp on this email.

Dirty Politician: Conrad Burns

Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) says that Jack Abramoff never influenced him, but Abramoff says in Vanity Fair that he got everything he ever asked for from Burns:

"Every appropriation we wanted [from Burns' committee] we got. Our staffs were as close as they could be. They practically used Signatures [Abramoff's restaurant] as their cafeteria."

Burns' former staffers have also made millions from going to work for telecom and tech firms that have received funding from Burns earmarks.