I'm right there with you on that one, Chuck.

Some folks will do anything for their brief moment in the spotlight. Take for example Detroit area counterfeiter Kenny “Boom” Smith who is a big fan of the reality show Hardcore Pawn which is filmed in Detroit at American Jewelry and Loan. He wanted to be on the . . . → Read More: Dumbass counterfeiter wants to be on “Hardcore Pawn” so badly he gets himself busted.]]>

I'm right there with you on that one, Chuck.

Some folks will do anything for their brief moment in the spotlight. Take for example Detroit area counterfeiter Kenny “Boom” Smith who is a big fan of the reality show Hardcore Pawn which is filmed in Detroit at American Jewelry and Loan. He wanted to be on the show soooo badly that he offered to sell Les Gold, the owner and star, his counterfeit making machine and a bunch of counterfeit money:

So Gold didn’t bat an eyelash when Smith showed up and wanted to sell him his counterfeit money and machine. He wanted to be on the show. Smith told Gold he would bring his counterfeiting equipment to the store. A short time later the Secret Service showed up at American Jewelry and Loan. They had been tracing Smith’s activities since he had been passing his fake bills.

Gold filled them in on what Smith had told him and the agents found out Smith’s counterfeiting claims had been captured on camera for the show.

So now, Smith has been busted by the Secret Service and charged in federal court. This isn’t his first counterfeiting case either. He has done a stint in prison for the same thing and if convicted he is going back again.

As Gold says, “All because he wanted his five minutes of fame on TV.”

via Counterfeiter caught selling to famous Detroit pawn shop of ‘Hardcore Pawn’ | News – Home.

Obviously Mr. Smith isn’t the brightest bulb, but his quest for TV infamy still prompts a couple of questions. What, exactly, did he expect the pawn shop to do with the phony money? Sell it as a novelty? REAL FAKE MONEY! FOOL YOUR FRIENDS! GET YOUR ENEMIES ARRESTED!  Did he not understand that he was being filmed admitting to a crime? He signed the waiver allowing them to use the footage on the show and it’s not like they use hidden cameras. Did he just think it wouldn’t be admissible in court?

If nothing else I suppose he deserves credit for putting his own stupid add back into a jail cell. That’s one less source of fake money doing business in Detroit.

Now archaeologists have . . . → Read More: New Mayan discovery shows they didn’t think world would end this year.]]> I’ve said before that the only thing you can conclude about the Mayan calendar stopping on December 21st, 2012 is that it is time to get a new Mayan calendar. Yet there are still plenty of people out there who cling to the idea that it’s significant in establishing when the world will end.

Now archaeologists have found new evidence that the Mayans certainly didn’t think the world would end at that time after discovering a mural in the ancient city Xultún which included dates stretching well past the end of the calendar everyone is so worked up about:

Unprecedented Maya Mural Found, Contradicts 2012 “Doomsday” Myth

One is a lunar table, and the other is a “ring number”—something previously known only from much later Maya books, where it was used as part of a backward calculation in establishing a base date for planetary cycles. Nearby is a sequence of numbered intervals corresponding to key calendrical and planetary cycles.

The calculations include dates some 7,000 years in the future, adding to evidence against the idea that the Maya thought the world would end in 2012—a modern myth inspired by an ancient calendar that depicts time starting over this year.

“We keep looking for endings,” expedition leader Saturno said in a statement. “The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It’s an entirely different mindset.”

There you go. Clear evidence the Mayans thought the world would continue on past the end of the calendar they were using. Can we please put this stupidity behind us now?

Probably not, but it was worth a shot.

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Yes! As promised, this past weekend saw ***Dave and I sitting down in front of our respective PCs and attempting to pontificate at length on various topics including many that you supplied us with. We talked politics touching on Mitt Romney’s apparent nomination, Paul Ryan’s general obnoxiousness, and David Barton’s twisting . . . → Read More: The long delayed 8th SEB Podcast is now available!]]>

Blah blah blah...

Yes! As promised, this past weekend saw ***Dave and I sitting down in front of our respective PCs and attempting to pontificate at length on various topics including many that you supplied us with. We talked politics touching on Mitt Romney’s apparent nomination, Paul Ryan’s general obnoxiousness, and David Barton’s twisting of history and how the Founding Fathers were not perfect beings who made no mistakes. We spoke of classical music and our short-lived time as musicians. We chattered on about how much the new movie The Avengers sucks. Endless erections caused by BMW motorcycles. The really bad sci-fi movie The Lawnmower Man. And we round out the conversation with discussing the movie trailers ***Dave saw before his viewing of The Avengers.

In all it’s an hour and 16 minutes of non-stop meandering where we manage to stay on topic… mostly. This is the original unedited recording. I had spent most of last night editing it up a bit, but on reviewing the work this evening I decided I didn’t like it. I wanted it to sound more like two guys having a conversation than a NPR-ish recording and so I decided to abandon the edits and I didn’t even bother trying to find music to put at the beginning. I’m not sure why, but this just felt better to me than all the usual edits and additions I have done in the past.

Plus, it was less work.

You can either listed to the podcast by using the player at the bottom of this entry or you can download it by clicking here so you can put it on your MP3 player of choice or copy it to a CD and then bury it in the backyard. As always, comments/criticisms/compliments/complaints can be left in the comments as you see fit. Once again ***Dave and I had a lot of fun doing this and we hope you’re at least as amused as we were.

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Seeing as it’s been several weeks since the original call for topics for the 8th SEB Podcast it’d probably be a good idea to solicit new ones for it now that ***Dave and I have managed to settle on doing it this Sunday.

So I am once again turning to you, . . . → Read More: Need topics for the missing 8th SEB Podcast!]]>

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Seeing as it’s been several weeks since the original call for topics for the 8^th SEB Podcast it’d probably be a good idea to solicit new ones for it now that ***Dave and I have managed to settle on doing it this Sunday.

So I am once again turning to you, dear readers, for your suggestions/questions/topics that you’d like to hear two middle-aged white guys pontificate about at length. We’ll chatter on about nearly anything regardless of how qualified or (more likely) not we are to say anything cogent about it.

Opinions are like assholes and we have a lot of them… wait… that doesn’t sound quite right.

Anyway, you can either leave your suggestions in the comments on this thread or email them to me by clicking here. We’ll be recording the podcast this Sunday! For reals this time! Most likely.

But . . . → Read More: Religious sites are more dangerous than porn sites for getting malware.]]> We all have that one friend/relative/client who seems to get infected with some form of virus or malware every week and those of us who take on the task of cleaning up their PCs every time they do always tell the same joke: This wouldn’t happen if you’d stop visiting all those porn sites.

But it turns out that it’s actually religious sites that are the real malware threat. At least according to a report from the folks at Symantec:

The average number of threats found on religious sites was 115 mostly fake antivirus software. By contrast, pornographic sites had less than a quarter, at around 25 threats per site. Of course, the number of pornographic sites is vastly greater than religious sites.

According to Greg Day, Symantec’s security CTO for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, while trojans may seem more serious, “if you have installed fake AV you may think you are protected, when in reality you are open to all sorts of attacks.”

This does make a certain bit of sense when you think about it. A lot of religious websites are set up and maintained by church people with varying degrees of computer skills whereas most successful porn sites are run by people who know what they’re doing and how to secure their platforms. No one thinks the asshats who put malware out on the net are going to bother with some piddly-ass church site so there’s less concern about updating software or locking down server access even if the person running it has a clue how to do those things. From the hacker’s point of view, however, every PC infected is one more PC in the botnet that can send out spam/DDoS attacks/whatever. A lot of attempted hacks are automated with scripts these days so if it’s trivial to hack a site and install your malware it’s worth doing so even if it only nets you a handful of PCs. Not like the hackers themselves even have to think about it.

Which is why you should always wear a condom when you go to religious websites. You know, just to be safe.

Though the reality is that Obama is well aware we’re going to vote for him regardless of how much he dicks us around because the alternative is so much worse.