Obvious joke inspring headline of the day:

Microsoft takes axe to service staff

         Microsoft had service staff?

This story about a satellite TV thief ordered to pay $180,000,000.00 in restitution, in bite size 500 dollar monthly installments reminds me of a Chris Rock joke about a guy putting a car on layaway for $5, then paying $2 a week until its his.

Extensive research?

McCraw said extensive research by the FBI determined that the Mexican IDs can be fraudulently obtained by presenting false documents at a Mexican consulate, or can be forged. "Even the newest version can be easily replicated, despite its security features," McCraw said.

The Mexican government has no central database that can be used to track recipients of the cards, he added. Monterrubio said such a database is under construction.

Criminals can use the cards to facilitate money laundering and alien smuggling, McCraw said. One alien smuggler was arrested with seven of the IDs, each with his picture and a different name.

Hell, if you googled this topic last summer you could have know this.

I repeat, when will these people come to Connecticut? Dick "I'll sue anybody" Blumenthal could use some time to think about his mistakes.

I guess all the investigators up here in CT are too busy with all the mayors and ex-aides to the governor.

Damn! 96,000+ feet in a solar powered aircraft! Too bad it crashed...

If the death-tax-repeal isn't made permanent, can we expect a slew of suicides and suspicious deaths just before the tax repeal sunsets in 2010?

Just a thought...

My goofy fake matricula consular graphic, which made an appearance at some press conferences with Rep. Tom Cancredo, is still generating press.

The State Of Employmet[sic]

Some more amazing deals today at the amazon.com's Friday sale, especially if you are in the market for any new cookware.

I guess this replaces "Sears Catalog Day".

A few years back I remember reading about "Flight Simulator Airlines", that is, fake airlines set up by Microsoft Flight Simulator enthusiasts. The Sim-Airlines had published schedules that were "flown" by people flying the correct aircraft type from airport to airport at the scheduled times. (Like any subculture, getting this far into it requires folks of a different bent.)

Some of the Sim-Airlines had websites touting their fleets, showing their schedules, discussing how to become a pilot for the airline, and bragging about their safety and on-time records.

Anyway, if looks like one enterprising young man took it to the next level, and set up a fake airline site (not, so far as I know, a Sim-Airline in the sense that he ran a flight simulator airline) and started selling cheap tickets to Hawaii!

I started a new job this week so posting is going to be very slow until things settle down...

On the plus side working kicks the shit out of being unemployed.

Do you think that this somehow applies to the clap?

Clay Shirky on the FCC decision regarding media outlet ownership restrictions.

Comedian's stuff on ebay:

• 1983 Popular Computing introducing the Apple Lisa (Typical System price $13,000!)
• Four Cornell Lunatic campus humor magazines from 1987-1991
• Some other crap

Here's a funny bit about professorial leftism at Cornell from a recent Suzanne Fields column.

Joseph J. Sabia, a conservative who has spent nine years on the Cornell University campus, tells Cornell Republicans of a "gut check" he felt during a debate over race-based "living centers" with the president of Cornell Democrats. When he argued that such arrangements promoted de-facto segregation and heightened racial tensions - "the situation has become so intolerable that even lunch tables are racially segregated" - his opponent could muster only an off-the-point insult: "You mean black students don't want to sit near you, Joe? Wow, that really surprises me."

Some students cheered, but Joe knew he had won. The one-liner was "an unconditional surrender of any semblance of intellectual thought," he said.
...
Another Cornell conservative had a "gut check" in the middle of a lecture in a course on rural sociology. When the professor observed that Cleopatra was an "African-American," a shy sophomore Republican raised his hand. "I don't know as much as you do about rural sociology," he said. "But I can say with certainty that Cleopatra was not an African-American."

The startled professor asked him to explain.

"Cleopatra could not have been an African-American because at the time Cleopatra lived America had not yet been discovered."

Bob Dylan's weatherman, like the professor, felt a gust of cool wind blow in from the right.