I have a friend who is a faithful e-mail forwarder. I don't mind, because she is pretty much the only one who sends me the dusty sweepings of cyber space, and occasionally she finds some gems. One of her recent offerings was not treasure, however, but fool's gold.
Note that the words of the e-mail, the majority of which I reproduce below, do not belong to my friend. She gets credit for providing blog-post inspiration, not for the embarassing sentiments.Today I picked up at Bank of America several of the new $1.00 coins with the picture of George Washington on it. To my shock and dismay the words, "In God We Trust", are not on this coin!
A quick search of the other coin denominations in my collection confirmed that every one contained these faithful words. The new George Washington $1.00 coin is the first money ever issued by the USA in modern history without the words "In God We Trust". By omitting these words, our politically correct, secularist leaders made a conscientious decision that either; 1) God does not exist, or 2) that God exists, but can no longer be trusted.
Who originally put 'In God We Trust' onto our currency?
My bet is that it was one of the Presidents on these coins.
All our U.S. Government has done is Dishonor them, and disgust me!!!
I am personally offended and fed up with the denigration of God and Christianity in my country. I am certain George Washington would never have agreed to his picture on the coin if it any way diminished faith in God.
What can we do to show our displeasure? First of all, let's boycott the coin. Do not ask for it at banks. If it is given to you in change ask for dollar bills instead and tell the person why. Write your Senators stating your displeasure.
Finally, if you agree, pass this e-mail on to others. Collectively, we must send a strong message to those secularists who are trying to remove God from our culture. If we do this, some 300 million $1.00 coins will back up and rot in the supply chain! To God be the glory!
Together we can force them out of circulation. Please send to all on you mail list !!!
You had better believe I don't want one !!!!!!!
Sigh. I could give free rein to my Inner Conspiracy-Theorist and say it's all Ted Kennedy's fault. Having experienced the higher-level coinage of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, and the European Union, I wish the United States had the sense to supplant (not just supplement) the dollar bill with dollar coins. (And maybe the $2 and $5 bills while we're at it.) But the mountain of paper used to print dollar bills comes from Massachusetts, where the Crane Paper Company has a stranglehold monopoly on the business. The $1 bill has a lifespan of under two years and represents about 45% of the U. S. currency production, so it's no surprise that Massachusetts politicians don't like dollar coins.
However, as I've always maintained, there's no point in invoking conspiracy theories when plain human ignorance can provide sufficient explanation. What makes this e-mail so embarassing is not just the hype but the ignorance: "In God We Trust" IS on the new dollar coins.
I'll send a dollar coin to the first nephew who e-mails to tell me where the motto can be found. If you do find one of the new coins WITHOUT the motto, please send it to me. It's worth a lot more than $1....
The history of "In God We Trust" on U. S. moneyI busted up laughing at "If you do find one of the new coins WITHOUT the motto, please send it to me." You should send that request to everyone on your friend's email list . . .
Regardless of the facts, the e-mail begs the question whether "In God We Trust" belongs on our money. I think it's a lie and ought to go. Nations generally trust their horses and chariots or their gold.
In my (successful) search for the location of the motto I also found this time-killer: CoinDoku
The one I played wasn't that great, but it will familiarize you with all the wigs and eagles on dollar coins.
Both of these nephews found the words, but they will let one of their cousins have the money.
P.S. I was impressed that you managed to find a U.S. dollar coin in Switzerland (or Japan, or Korea, or wherever you are now). They're hard enough to obtain here -- never in change, and even the banks can't be counted on to have any.
Then I realized you probably used that ubiquitous modern substitute for material reality, the Internet.
Hooray for the First Nephews! Did they see an actual coin?
Yes, I used the internet. In Switzerland.
Yes, the "easy" CoinDoku I did frustrated me by ending in a situation where there were multiple equally valid choices. I must have gotten lucky, because the one I randomly picked was "correct."
Odd. Your "wrong" solution differs from the solution I chose - significantly so. (Perhaps yours wasn't the "easy" one.) But it is correct. Checking all nine different coins for correct placement made me think that certainly I checked more than necessary. There must be an algorithm to minimize checking steps!
Thanks for validating my solution. I was going a bit bug-eyed. And yes, it was supposed to be the "easy" version. It differs from my "right" solution by six coins, three pairs of two. That's how I found both solutions -- I couldn't find a way to narrow the choices for those slots further.
I don't know any easier way to check, but then I don't know much about Sudoku puzzles. Possibly Jon will know something -- see his Sudoku post.
Based on two data points, I could postulate that the first-chosen of equally-correct solutions is deemed "right." Or that we both got lucky.
I am probably too busy (I am waiting for a machine to install all of the Windows Updates at the moment) to check out the game, but I did want to make one comment about supplanting lots of bills with coins.
That would be extremely annoying for me. Are there any other arguments of why we should go to coins other than the length of time that a bill lasts argument and that we waste a bunch of money replacing paper dollars, and I guess I should care about the government wasting that money, though I suspect that they waste enough money in other ways to make the paper dollar money waste not even make a difference.
Coins take up way more room in my pocket than a bill, so I never carry coins. If we switched to
Commenting only on the safe issue for the moment :) I'll say that the CoinDoku was entertaining and educational. But I did spend 'way too much time after I found two solutions to the same puzzle and couldn't figure out why one was considered right and the other wrong. After a fair amount of cross-eyed work, I submit the problem to my readers, since I'm more than willing to admit I can miss the obvious staring me in the face.
