Other Crap

Redfaced professor made up scary story!

• Did you read about the professor with the stolen laptop who tried to get it back with his wacko scare stories about how it was filled with corporate secrets and top secret government data, and therefore every law enforcement officer in the world was looking for it? Well, both he and the university have admitted the story was bogus (which, of course, was obvious in the first place).
• This was truly an amazing story, because the claims he made could be seen as evidently false by any bright ten year old, and yet he is a professor in some areas of advanced biology. It's not surprising that he was ignorant, because nobody can be expected to know everything about everything, but it is surprising that he was simply too dumb to realize how ignorant he was! He could have constructed a plausible story if he had contacted somebody in the computer science department, but he simply didn't bother.
• Of course, the funniest thing about the story is that one person knew for sure that the professor's story was false - the kid who stole the laptop! So how was the prof expecting the crazy story to get any results? I can only guess that he was hoping to scare some "third party" into talking - perhaps a student who knew about the theft but had not done it personally.
• The professor's wild-eyed claims also included a statement that he knew who the thief was {cough}, which was obvious crap since if his entire story had been true, the government would not have delayed in recovering crucial secret data.
• In fact, some experts pointed out that if the professor's claims had been true, he might have been exposing himself to some serious legal problems by admitting that he had left key secrets sitting around unencrypted on a laptop. It was fortunate for him that the claims were lies!
• "As I speak James Bond, several SWAT teams, John Ashcroft, and Baby Jesus are sitting in my office debating whether to send the thief to Gitmo, or directly to the electric chair for stealing my laptop, which has a million dollars worth of secret tracking devices on it, designed to protect data worth a zillion-jillion dollars and also vital to world peace, the defense of the United States, and the future of the human race. Unfortunately, I left this key information on a cafeteria table unattended."
• Also interesting to me is the fact that ABC first reported the fact that his claims were exaggerated, then deleted the story! "In fact a University spokesman told ABC that Rine had indeed made the whole thing up to scare the student into handing over the laptop. The story has for some reason now been pulled from the ABC site." The mystery deepens!