I’m really not being mean and trying to banish a fellow science blogger to some barren, frigid desolation — hey, that’s where I live! — but she’s volunteering to leave New York for a month to live in Antarctica. All you have to do is vote for her essay, and presto, maybe they’ll ship her off to somewhere near the south pole. Cool.

This is big news, a first in the history of that institution! The student who led the LU College Democrats, the student club that was shut down by the administration because apparently, anything other than Republican Wingnuttia is the antithesis of the conservative Christian ideals they hope to promote, has written a letter describing the important lessons he learned at Liberty.

That lesson, of course, is to get the hell out and go to a different university.

Give them time, and with a little hard work, maybe the rest of the student body there can master that important skill, too.

He’s going to be lecturing in Phoenix at the end of August on “Why Ben Stein is wrong about science and history“, which really should win some sort of prize for one of the one of the most obvious titles ever. He’s going to have to talk for days to cover the topic adequately, so pack a lunch.

Wish I could go. It should be entertaining, in a Mike-Tyson-battles-PeeWee-Herman sort of way!

A reader wrote in to say his mother was being victimized by a putative religious organization called Elite Activity Resurrected. It has to be seen to be believed. It’s all dressed up in egalitarian pieties about ending world poverty, but when you look at the actual operation, it’s a remarkably blatant con game.

The World’s first Interdenominational Belief System on the Internet!

Poverty is our Adversary!

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty.” — Martin Luther King Jr., April 4, 1967.

“Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” — Isaiah 1:17.

Aww, that sounds so noble. But here’s how it works:

Our models of abundance are designed specifically to anchor the belief that giving opens the way to receiving. Once you choose to participate in any Elite Activity model, you enter the cycle of abundance from the outer circle and give unconditionally without consideration to the participant in the inner circle. When you do this with the proper intent, and follow the guidelines, you will eventually reach ‘the inner circle’. This is where other participants give their unconditional gifts to you, and you experience the power of ‘Many giving to one’.

And here’s a kind of ‘review’, if by that we mean ‘uncritical endorsement of fraud’.

You are first “invited” to join the Elite Resurrected gifting program by a current member and then on the out-most ring in which place your “gift” (starting at $100), a monetary amount to the person that has made it to the center. You then “invite” at least two people that want to share in the giving during the second phase (the person that originally invited you will help you in this.). During the “Empowering” phase you help the people that you invited and once you successfully fulfill that part you move into the inner circle where you receive your gifts. There, it says, you will be able to receive 4 “gifts” (a total of $400) before being “invited” to join a new cycle at $250. You can still receive 2 more “gifts” at the center of the $100, after which time you will be recycled back to another $100 circle to make your way to the center once again.

Can you say “PYRAMID SCHEME!”, boys and girls? Sure, I knew you could. This is criminal activity; the only people whose poverty is going to be diminished are the members of the inner circle, and they’re going to make out like bandits. They are bandits!

Alert the police. They have a list of upcoming gatherings in places like Little River SC, Litchfield Park AZ, Houston TX, and lots of events in Mexico. I think having the local bunco squad paying a call on these thieves would add a welcome bit of festivity to their gatherings. They are vermin preying on fears of the economically disadvantaged.

Horrified mole from WND traumatized! That dancin’…it’s Satan’s work!

It’s nothing personal, but we’re getting a little worried about the economic competition you’ve been delivering lately, so we need to even the playing field a little. A couple of Christian evangelical real estate billionaires have created a Noah’s Ark tourist attraction in Hong Kong. Pretty soon you’ll be as stupid as we are.

Oh, wait! “Tourist attraction”? It’s supposed to poison the minds of the locals, not traveling Westerners! Dang. Maybe we can ship a few container ships full of Bibles and Chick tracts over there instead.

In an awesome development, I have been chatting with Mr. Deity (which, by the way, makes me officially a prophet. I’m working on letting my beard grow long now), and he has offered to answer almost any questions you might have. What would you ask an omniscient, omnipotent being? Leave your questions in the comments, I’ll pass them on, and then I’ll stroll down from the mountain with the answers chiseled on digital stone tablets.

I don’t want to catch any of you frolicking with golden calves while I’m getting the words of the Lord now, you hear?

And keep in mind that I’ll only pass along the interesting questions. Asking for lottery numbers…not interesting. And you know I’d keep those answers for myself, anyway.

A doctor in Nebraska, Dr. Leroy Carhart, has stepped forward and said he will train his staff to take over the important role lost when George Tiller was murdered. That’s courage, and I applaud what he is doing. I hope more doctors take on this essential task.

That’s the good news. The bad news? Look at what Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, a fellow who is obligated by his position to support the law, had to say.

I’m disgusted and I’m saddened, and I hate it that he’s here in Nebraska and I hate it that he’s in America. I mean, this guy is one sick individual.

I hate it that the people who enable murder can be found in positions where they are supposed to promote justice.

I just got a bunch of email from various people warning me that my cell phone number (no, you can’t have it) is going to be sold to telemarketers next month, and I need to call a certain phone number right away to get it blocked. I must have a cynical mind, because my first thought was that if I were a telemarketer who wanted to fish up a bunch of ripe cell phone numbers, I’d send out bulk email telling people who hated telemarketers to call me on their cell phone.

I was right. I checked Snopes, and there is no proposed sell-off of cell numbers, and calling the number given won’t help you in the slightest.

This has been a public service announcement. If you receive that email, do not call, just hit delete.

These aren’t quite pointless polls, since comments are actually being solicited instead of mindless clicks, but you can still swamp the forces of silliness in thise two blog entries.

One asks, Charles Darwin: brilliant scientist or agent of Satan?. You can give any kind of answer you want, like “Charles Darwin was a brilliant scientific agent of Satan!”. Have fun.

The second one sounds even more fun: recommend new names for Falwell’s Liberty University. I’m going to have to echo Hitchens’ infamous comment about Falwell post mortem, and suggest that since the place has voided itself of it’s biggest chunk of effluent, it should now be called Matchbox U.