Magic Statistics

A dim-bulb collection agency in Florida has really stepped in it.

A collection agency tried to collect a $16.96 debt with an letter that addressed its recipient with a four-letter word for excrement. "Dear S—," began the letter attempting to collect from an old record club membership. The word was spelled out in the letter, which arrived in an envelope addressed to "S— Face."

"I've never seen anything quite so brazen," said attorney Kenneth Hiller.

He said his client plans to sue Nationwide Collections Inc. of Fort Pierce, Fla., next week.

Under U.S. law, debt collectors are not allowed to use profanity to collect a debt, Hiller said, nor are they supposed to threaten legal action over such a small amount.

Nationwide President Phillip McGarvey said the October 2007 letter was automatically generated after his company bought about 350,000 Columbia House accounts. "S— Face" is the name under which the account was opened and the way the coupon to start the club was filled out, he said.

It would not take a lot of programming skill to weed out profane names before sending out merchandise.  The expense would certainly be far less than writing off a bunch of bad accounts.

Saudi Arabia’s religious police, known in Arabic as the muttaween, arrested and strip-searched a woman yesterday because she was sitting in a coffee shop with a man she is not related to.  Sheesh.

Saudi Arabia's religious police detained and strip-searched a woman for sitting in a Starbucks coffee shop with a male work colleague who is not a member of her family.

The woman is 40 years old, a married mother of three, and a financial consultant.  But, to the Muttaweenies, she’s just a lawless reprobate.

She was holding a business meeting with the man in a branch of Starbucks in Riyadh, in a section reserved for families as is the rule in Saudi Arabia where unrelated members of the opposite sex are segregated in public, she was quoted as saying by the Arab News on Tuesday.

Such is the absurdity of life in the Islamic kingdom: In their considered wisdom, the religious cops decided that a married businessman found sitting in the wrong section of a coffee shop had to be taken to the local hoosegow and subjected to a strip-search.

The woman was released a few hours later when her husband came to pick her up.  The man she was sitting with, however, is still in custody.

Previous related posts:

• Polygamy in Sweden and Saudi Arabia
• Muttaweenies are on the job
• Teenage girl sentenced to beheading in Saudi Arabia

The Halifax Daily News catches up with the most recent IPCC climate change fantasy.  Brian Flinn reports.

Nova Scotia is in danger of being cut off from the rest of Canada as the Atlantic Ocean rises, according to the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The province's only land link to continental North America is the Isthmus of Chignecto. It's just 24 kilometres wide and mostly covered by low-lying wetlands. It could be at least temporarily inundated.

The IPCC, of course, has an impeccable record of scientific objectivity and credibility.

You can tell that the story is not to be taken seriously by the fact that it’s illustrated with a photo of a roadway damaged last November by the remnants of Hurricane Noel.  The problem is that the photo was taken at Queensland Beach—on the Atlantic Coast, the far side of the province from the Isthmus of Chignecto.  (See map at right.)

Today’s Halifax Daily News ran another story by the same reporter.

Much of Annapolis Royal would find itself under water if a large tropical storm arrived at the same time as an unusually high tide, according to a study by the Clean Annapolis River Project. The town's hospital would be isolated from much of the town. Its fire station would be stranded on a small island.

Mr Flinn would appear to be the newspaper’s token fear monger global warming alarmist.

h/t: e-mail from the See of Pisiquid, which, if the IPCC's conjecture proves accurate, could become the Sea of Pisiquid.

Previous related posts:

• StatGuy announces retirement
• Global-warming scare-mongers rule

After decades of sex-selection abortions, some areas of Asia have far more unmarried men than women.  With a shortage of marriageable women, thousands in northern India have been sold to men who are unable to find wives.  Many women are bought and sold several times.

The wrinkles on Sumari's face betray her troubled past, making her look far older than the nearly 40 years she believes she is.

Widowed young, she was brought from her native village to northern India and sold to a man who abused her sexually and physically, and imprisoned her and her daughter in his house.

"It went on for three or four months, until he sold us off to another man," says Mumtaz, Sumari's daughter, who is now about 20.

Sumari is one of the more fortunate ones: After being sold numerous times, she ended up with a husband who treats her decently.

Experts say abortion of female foetuses because of the traditional Hindu preference for sons in this male-dominated society has led to a severe shortage of women in Haryana [state], and upset the sex balance nationwide.

The problem is compounded by the custom of youthful marriage, leading to a high rate of maternal mortality during childbirth and, thus, even more young unmarried men.

The going price for a bride ranges from 5000 to 20,000 rupees (approx. $125 to $500).

Previous related posts:

• Indo-Canadians having sex-selection abortions
• 30 million Chinese men will not find a bride
• Global war against baby girls