Today my inbox was graced by the most imaginative, most interesting Nigerian 419 scam letter ever. This scammer ought to give up fraud and start writing thrillers ala Tom Clancy.

I am writing this letter from a maximum Security detention facility here in London. My Name is Corporal Donald Payne of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment Posted to Baghdad, and I am currently serving 1 year jail term having been sentenced on the 30th of April 2007 after a lengthy court-martial, I have been charged with crimes of torturing Iraqi prisoners along with Two colleagues in my regiment.

Because of the recent turn of events I have applied for, and secured a permit to clean the Prison Library because it will keep me away from the general population of inmates and such I will stay alive a bit longer and most importantly There I have access to send at Least One email a day, and Such have found it necessary to tell you about this because of the fact that the Moslem community in prison here have passed a death sentence on me for the crimes of torturing Iraqi Prisoners for which I was imprisoned and an attempt has been already made on my life so now I am in a different cellblock. but I know its just a matter of time before they get me, They do not understand that I was just following orders, I have applied for a transfer but they are taking too long to approve it. That why I need to open up to someone I can trust who can apply for My transfer and strike a deal with The chief Warden here to hasten the transfer process ,A neutral person Like you That’s why I have contacted you.

When we were posted to Iraq I was detailed to provide security escort for The UN Nuclear waste and radioactive material disposal unit responsible for carrying out such tasks as the disposal of dangerous nuclear materials at specified radioactive waste disposal sites of such nature discovered in Iraq by the American Inspectors. The Iraqi Army Marked These Metal Boxes as dangerous radioactive and Nuclear waste Materials So when they were discovered by the UN weapons Inspectors in an underground bunker the metal boxes were treated as Level /A Radioactive Nuclear Contaminants Thus Documentation was processed for the contents to be detonated, destroyed and disposed in one of the several US nuclear disposal facilities around Iraq , So they marked the Boxes for detonation, destruction and disposal, having been believed to Contain Nuclear and radioactive materials for the production of Biological weapons and weapons of mass destruction for The Iraqi Army.

But while we were subjecting these boxes to routing scanning for our record purposes we discovered that the Two Metal boxes did not read as containing radioactive nuclear materials on the scanner screen but rather what appeared to be paper like materials in cellophane wrappings which prompted us to open the security seals on the boxes only to discover That The two boxes contained cash ,$12.9 million United States Dollars Concealed By top Iraqi military officers and abandoned in the bunkers during the Raids by Us marines who preceded the Weapons Inspection team.

When the boxes were found missing and Two officers in My regiment my self inclusive were charged for torturing Iraqi prisoners, I was tried and court-martialed, when I confessed to having sold the Nuclear materials to An Iraqi Army General the military treated the matter as internal affairs and I was sentenced in a military court and locked up in The British Military detention Facility for 18 months for selling nuclear materials to the Iraqi Army.

Right now I need an honest and sincere but neutral person, a civilian preferably to receive these funds from the diplomatic security deposit company which is used mainly for the movement of sensitive and diplomatic as well as classified shipments in and out of Iraq, where I managed to lodge the Two boxes as containing photographic and x-ray film materials and documentation from the United Nations Nuclear waste disposal facility In Baghdad for shipment out of Iraq.

Please, Should you not be willing to work with me on this, kindly ignore this letter so as not to implicate me because I have worked too hard to keep this on the down low for this long I plan to have a better life on the other side of these walls come April 2008 when I my sentence ends if only I could just Stay Alive.

I anxiously await your response,

Yours Faithfully

Cpl Donald Payne

I am tempted to pull an Abdul Jabbar on this guy just to read more of his story.

A letter to the editors of the Hamilton Spectator on the religious education subject that has dominated the coverage of Ontario’s election this year. They did not publish it.

The seven years I spent at a private Christian school taught me that religious education is not about the “diversity” and “tolerance” its supporters keep mentioning: it’s about systematically ensuring children grow up to have the same views as their parents.

My educational environment was one of religious, intellectual, and (save for one black teacher in later years) racial homogeneity. Those books that managed to make it past rigorous review into the school library still sometimes had bits that were censored with black marker.

Fortunately, my parents strongly promoted reading and took me to the Dundas public library often. The books I read there showed me that it is possible to rely on reason and evidence instead of dogma and superstition.

Most, if not all, religions claim exclusive ownership of truth. If we reject this claim, then all religious schools teach untruths. If we accept it in the case of one religion, as supporters of religious schools do, logically all the schools belonging to other religions are teaching untruths. Either way, I can think of better uses for my taxes.

Oliver Mateo (Mah-TAY-oh – Spanish for Matthew) Duyzer was born last week Tuesday, August 7, 2007, at 3:04 pm. He weighed in at a whopping 10 pounds, 4 ounces.

Oliver at three or four days old – thanks to Tim for this great photo

I’m discovering that there are things people were right about and wrong about these early days of his life.

One of the most common remarks I heard before Oliver’s birth was how sleepless I’d be, and how much his schedule would dominate my life. I didn’t really understand exactly why this was, or how it could be – don’t newborns sleep most of the time? Can they really be that much work?

Well, they are, and then some. They live on an approximately 3-hour cycle: shit, eat, soothe, sleep, repeat. Sometimes he mixes it up with shit, eat, shit, soothe, sleep, repeat. Or the ever popular shit, eat, piss while changing diaper forcing change of clothes, soothe, sleep, repeat.

A cycle this short is taxing because we must constantly work to accommodate it. My personal schedule runs more along the lines of shit, eat, eat, eat, sleep, spaced out over 24 hours. You can see how these schedules are not very compatible.

But then there are times when he is quietly alert and awake and cuter than I could have ever imagined someone could be. Or when I lay on my side with his head nestled in my arm, warm body cozied up to my chest, occasionally murmuring or letting out a contented sigh, while I read a book.

Those are moments of quiet relaxation and enjoyment to cherish.

I cherish the other moments too. When I’m changing his smelly diaper and he’s wriggling around with his naked bum in the air, or even when he’s screaming full tilt, he’s still awfully cute.

The other thing I heard all of the time was how my perspective on life would dramatically change. I heard this from clients, from my father, from friends who have children.

That’s something I haven’t felt at all. Maybe it just hasn’t sunk in yet, but I suspect that the real reason is perhaps because I had already adopted that new perspective. Nine months is plenty of time for preparation.

The last week-and-a-half has been crazy. One thing that I think every parent I’ve talked to is right about is that it’s only going to get crazier – and that Oliver is going to keep me on my toes for life.

Bring it on, little man. Welcome to the big wide world.

PS Oliver has an online photo gallery.

I took a moment to blast some National Post editors on Raise the Hammer today. Check it out: Wrong Again: The National Post on Climate Change, Part 2.

Other semi-recent writings on RTH that I haven’t linked to from here include As Spring Arrives, Perennial Issues and Guerilla Gardeners Resurface and Vanishing into the American Gulag.

I hope you’re having a great summer!

Dan Gardner, who writes for the Ottawa Citizen, frames the atheism debate nicely in an article from last Saturday.

Those making this case [for atheism lately] have been dubbed the “new atheists.” They have also been called fanatics who are dogmatic, zealous and intolerant of other views — the mirror image of religious extremists. As one English university dean said in the Guardian, Richard Dawkins is “just as fundamentalist as the people setting off bombs in the Tube.”

Less Olympian thinkers have portrayed strident atheists as hacking away at the bonds of morality, which must inevitably lead to various forms of depravity ranging from the sexual to the genocidal.

Don’t you know Stalin was an atheist? That’s the way it goes. First you read Richard Dawkins. Then you have an abortion. Then you’re putting a fresh coat of paint on the Gulag.

This frames the debate in a pleasingly symmetrical way. Over on that side are the insane religious fanatics who fly jets into skyscrapers and march around with signs saying “God Hates Fags.” Over there are fanatical atheists. Between the two extremes are sensible moderates who take the Goldilocks approach to faith and reason.

He goes on to sum up the famous atheist Richard Dawkins’ message:

If you claim that something is true, I will examine the evidence which supports your claim; if you have no evidence, I will not accept that what you say is true and I will think you a foolish and gullible person for believing it so.

That’s it. That’s the whole, crazy, fanatical package.

Well worth a full read.