The Falcon's View

Gotta love Pearls Before Swine! :)

I've been slammed and exhausted lately, so haven't had time to formulate a real post. So, to keep you interested and your appetite sated, I refer you to the Stephen Colbert report "Nailed 'Em: Cyber Terrorists". I hope you'll be as amused by this piece now as you should have been outraged in June. :)

Click here to learn how to protect against such attacks.

It's Friday, so here's something funny for you. Here's my favorite quote:

Regardless of the recent upheaval, students throughout the country are learning to accept, and even embrace, the change to their curriculum.

"At first I think the decision to drop the past tense from class is ridiculous, and I feel very upset by it," said David Keller, a seventh-grade student at Hampstead School in Fort Meyers, FL. "But now, it's almost like it never happens."

I'm sitting here, working on my grad school app essay, with Spike on in the background showing The Spy Who Loved Me, and a commercial came on for the "Corvette Dollar" - commemorating 100 years of General Motors. According to the ads, it's legal tender of the Republic of Palau, which has to make you think "wow, this is the collector's item for me!" :) They of course promise that this coin will never be in circulation (duh). But that's not what's totally nuts about this coin. It has a battery and LED lights in it that light up when you press the Corvette logo on the back! Totally hilarious!!!

Check it out here, if you're as curious about it as me. :)

Most excellent hilarity to be ensuing forthwith... :)

Hat Tip to Macenstein

"Don't Tell The Fuhrer The Cowboys Lost"

Hat tip to Off Wing Opinion

This was just too funny not to pass along - and here it is in my 250th post, too! :)

Apparently El Presidente has a picture that he loves greatly and associates with his personal religious beliefs. Without any reason to do so, he concluded that it shows a Methodist evangelist spreading the Good Word. Well, it turns out he couldn't be more wrong. Read the whole story over at Harper's Magazine.

Hat tip to Kottke.

Married guys will particularly appreciate this music video. :)

Courtesy my Dad, this is great Friday Funnies stuff! :)

Everybody knows that the "Dummies" series of books are really aimed at the high-end market, right? Apparently so. According to this story, a teenager in Wisconsin has been arrested for "hacking" his school's computer systems (though no indication of damages has been provided). As part of the arrest, his copy of The Internet For Dummies (Internet for Dummies) was seized as evidence. Ummm... yeah. That's right, you heard me, local LE there thinks that Internet for Dummies is a 1337 h4X0r tome ("elite hacker tome"). Sure it is. Good job super-cops! :) They'd better move swiftly to ban that dangerous hacking book!

Not to let you think that all the truly hard-core tech criminals are based in Wisconsin, you might also check out this lovely story about a teen in Iowa who brazenly stole a girl's iPod, holding it ransom with the demand that she be taped doing naughty things and provide said tape for his own "entertainment" purposes. The genius of course included his email so that she could email over the mpeg with great haste. Now, physical security concerns aside, not exactly the brightest bulb.

I'm a big fan of the ImprovEverywhere productions. This one amused me greatly this morning.

Hat tip to Angeline...

Hands down, my favorite observed April Fools' Day prank yesterday was for "Scanless PCI." From the site:

Quite simply, it's the fastest, least intrusive, most cost effective PCI certification on the market. Our patent-pending scanless technology is just as effective as any PCI certification on the market, but far less costly to deploy and maintain.

PCI Certified by Scanless PCI

Hat tip to Rich Mogull at Securosis.

The brief editorial included by Editor-in-Chief William Falk in this week's edition of "The Week" is quite amusing. Apparently a scientist in Hawaii has filed a lawsuit seeking a stop-work order against the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, because he fears that its use will cause "an irreversible implosion" that will result in "forming a miniature version of a gigantic black hole." He suggests that once a few of these mini black holes are created, they'll converge and begin to grow and suck in everything around them. Other scientists aren't too concerned, says Falk:

"Pshaw, say the particle physicists who run the collider. They've already run the equations, and any micro-black holes they might create would vanish in a nanosecond. Perhaps so. But scientists have been known to be wrong. So I suggest that starting today, we all live as if the End is near. Tell your friends and family members how you really feel about them. Leave work early. Go watch the sun set. And look at the bright side: Everything you know and love may be annihilated, but wouldn't that be a small price to pay to finally put an end to the Democratic presidential campaign?" [emphasis added]

:)

Ok, so, I try not to post anything too off-color here, but this act is just hilarious. It is visually safe for work, but the AUDIO is NOT SAFE FOR WORK. If you don't find off-color humor funny, then please don't watch it. If you're easily offended, then please don't watch it. Otherwise, I hope that you laugh out loud like I did while watching it. An example of one exchange toward the end:

Jeff: "So, do you like being in DC?"
Achmed: "I think some idiots must live here."
Jeff: "Why?"
Achmed: "For example, the Washington Monument..."
Jeff: "Yes?"
Achmed: "...it looks nothing like the guy."

(Click through to see the video.)