OK… so you didn’t know I wanted out. I didn’t either but for business reasons on my wife’s side and I-want-an-iPhone reasons on mine we’re thinking of switching to Cingular. I read in a few places that since Verizon has raised their text messaging fees to 15 cents per message that constitutes a material change in the contract which allows you to break the contract without paying the Early Termination Fee (ETF). The catch is that you can’t have a text messaging plan. I don’t – I get charged per message and I send very few but since this is a fee increase I can get out of my contract. I called Verizon and spoke to a CSR here’s how it went:
Me: I’ve heard that there’s been an increase in the fee for text messages. As I understand it this constitutes a material change in the contract. I’ve heard I can get out of my contract. Is that true?
CSR: No, Sir. You’ll need to pay a $175 ETF to get out of your contract now.
Me: But this increase in the text messaging fee should allow me to terminate my contract without any ETF.
CSR: Can you hold for a moment? I’ll talk to my supervisor.
I’m on hold for about 5 minutes.
CSR: Sir, you can terminate your contract with no fee since you weren’t aware of the 15 cent fee when you signed the contract (I’m guessing she means because of the increase from 10 cents to 15).
Me: Great. So when I’m ready I just call you and tell you I want to terminate the contract and there will be no fee?
CSR: That’s correct, Sir.
Me: Can you note that on my account?
CSR: Yes, Sir. I will. (Who knows if she did. I got her name and employee number)
It was that easy. So now we just need to decide if we really want to switch to Cingular.
Are you surprised? I like to think that I’m above the tabloid fray and gossip rags but then a story like this comes along and drags me down. Anna Nicole Smith was a beautiful mess (and sometimes not so beautiful). She became popular in the pages of Playboy in 1992 and later as the face, and body, of Guess Jeans. I remember those milestones well and found it sad in later years as she started to deteriorate. She made it 4 more years than her role model, Marilyn Monroe, but in this day and age of 24 hour news she couldn’t keep her self-destructive behavior private.
She leaves a baby daughter who’s paternity has been contested since before she was born. On one hand it makes me sad that this baby will grow up not knowing her mother but on the other I’m not sure that it might not be for the best.
TVWeek.com is reporting that President Bush’s 2007 budget slashes funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by 25%. The “No Child Left Behind” president wants to cut funding to one of the few publicly funded entities that has truly done well for children over the past 40 years.
Bush’s hypocrisy never ceases to amaze me. He touts one thing while he does another and the American people sleep on. I think people are starting to wake up but I’m afraid that we will only truly realize the damage that this man has done to our Country in the years after he leaves office – and there’ll probably be a Democrat in the White House to take the blame.
Disgraced minister Ted Haggard has been pronounced “completely heterosexual” after weeks of intensive counseling. Thank god! I knew that if they just worked really hard and prayed over it they would get that homosexuality right out of him. Good for them! Since Haggard has said that Mike Jones was his only homosexual relationship and no one else has come forward in the past 90 days it looks like he’s all better.
I’m sure Ted’s learned his lesson… he’ll just be more careful next time.
Source: Yahoo! News
Newsweek has a story about a man, Jose Luis de Jesus, who claims to be the second coming of Christ (and the Antichrist, for that matter, all in one). His flock of over 100,000 seems to believe wholeheartedly that this man is Jesus. They call him “Lord”, obey his every word and, probably most importantly, donate generously and often.
Of course I don’t think he’s the second coming – I don’t think there was a first coming. What I find interesting is the fact that every other Christian in the entire world who isn’t a member of this man’s congregation surely rejects his assertion. I would think that the fact that they can deny another person’s faith – faith that I’m sure is felt as strongly as they feel theirs – might make them question their own. I’m sure it doesn’t. It’s not just that Christians reject much of the Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist teachings (and vice-versa) but all of these religions have denominations and sects that even members of the larger group reject. But if the adherents to these various forms of the religion believe as strongly as the members of the larger group then how can anyone reject another’s faith without calling into question their own?
Whether it’s this “second coming” by Jose Luis de Jesus or the ancient Greeks’ belief in Zeus or the Catholic Church’s faith in the Holy Trinity it’s all equally suspect in my book. And just because your religion is better organized or larger or has been around longer it makes it no more valid than any of the thousands of crackpot religions that smaller groups believe in.
Yes, according to this interesting data. The author took data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project and compared them to the IQ and the Wealth of Nations by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen. When you look at the graph it’s easy to see that with only a few exceptions (the U.S. being one) countries with lower average IQs have a higher degree of religiosity.
I’ve felt that this was the case for a number of years. Now I am in no way saying that everyone who is religious has a low IQ. I’m sure there are a great many very intelligent people all around the world that have very strong religious convictions but as a whole I believe that people with strong religious beliefs tend to have lower IQs than those of us that don’t. Yes, I said “those of us”. I’m including myself in the high IQ non-believers. I’m not a genius by any stretch of the imagination but I think of myself as a relatively intelligent person and I am an atheist. I think that, in general, a person needs to have a certain mental rigidity to have strong religious convictions and the stronger the convictions the more rigid they must be and a rigid mind is a closed mind and a closed mind is not an intelligent mind in my book.
What is the explanation for the anomaly that is the U.S.? America is a large country that has a mean IQ of 98. The mean is not the average. The mean is the sum of all IQs in the U.S. divided by the number of people. Of course this 98 number wasn’t derived from all the actual IQs of everyone in the U.S. It is simply an educated guess based on data of a representative sample of the population. But let’s say for arguments sake that 98 is close to the median IQ is the U.S. That would mean that about half the population has an IQ lower than 98 and half have an IQ higher. The percent of people in the U.S. that said that “religion is very important” is 59%. To me that would account for the 50% of the population below an IQ of 98 and 9% that have a higher IQ. And that seems about right to me.
It comes down to this; extreme ideologies are more easily accepted by people with less critical thinking skills. The more extreme an ideology is the more it tells you how you should live each part of your life. This is ideal for someone who isn’t that bright, who doesn’t have the critical thinking skills (or the desire) to figure out what they need to do in different situations that crop up in day-to-day life. It’s easy; You hate these people. You love these people. You don’t do this. You do this. It’s like getting an instruction manual for your life. And instruction manuals are for people who can’t figure it out on their own.
Blogging is hard… and I’m not that creative. Sure when there’s a fire in me (political or otherwise) it’s easy to run off a month of posts. But when things slow down and I’m feeling pretty content I find the blogging slow going.
This is why I’ve decided to try an experiment for February. I will try to write a minimum of 5 entries per week. They may be long or short. They will be about something that strikes my fancy (Whatever I want). I’m going to give it my best shot.
Hey, I’m already 1 for 1!