One of our fearless webmaster’s recent entries detailed the story of the biggest bank heist in Brazilian history – nearly $70 million. It was a daring theft, including an estimated 10-20 cohorts who spent upwards of three months digging a tunnel from their fake landscaping business to the bank’s vault. It was obviously a well thought out, perfectly executed plan. I must admit, I was impressed. As I commented when that story was posted, I had only one hope – that the perpetrators would not suddenly show up at their local pub sporting a new Rolex and driving Ferraris. "Please, let there be some smart criminals for once," I said. Really, is that asking so much? 

Apparently so. Two men were detained on August 11 in possession of a number of new vehicles which had been purchased with cash shortly after the successful heist. Seriously, what happened here? They spent an entire fiscal quarter carrying out this plan, and the next day they act like idiots? You can’t tell me that $20 grand wouldn’t buy you a false passport and a ticket on the first flight to a non-extradition treaty nation. Why doesn’t anyone think this through BEFORE they pull off something like this?

Maybe it’s the same reason lottery winners tend to end up broke in 10 years. Still, it’s even more evidence of the stupidity of humans, and it’s just plain sad.  

Look, plenty of people weighed in on this before, but I generally disagreed with the premise that Best Buy was the place of Evil. If nothing else, I could always compare it to the likes of Circuit City, a so-called electronics store staffed by 16 year old imbeciles who not only know nothing about what they’re selling, but have somehow organized the store in such a way that you cannot find what you want without asking one of them and then explaining, using small words, what you need. Best Buy isn’t as bad as THAT, right? Even if their "great prices" are largely an illusion, they generally have a good selection in stock and their staff generally doesn’t get in the way.

Well, that was my theory, at least. Unfortunately, I have been to Best Buy three times in the last 3 days. I had a simple enough goal at first – I needed a new SD card for my PDA, one I could cram full of MP3s for my upcoming road trip and thus stave off the boredom that is Interstate highway travel. Given that I had this idea so late, I wasn’t able to follow my usual mantra of "buy it online and avoid human interaction", so I trundled off to Best Buy to pick one up on Saturday. And actually, that was a pretty simple process. The cards were by the digital cameras, which made at least some sense, and I managed to find a 1 GB card without trouble.

My Saturday trouble began when I had an important brainstorm – I needed an FM transmitter for my PDA, so I could actually listen to the silly thing in the car. Okay, no problem. It’s Best Buy, they have everything. If I were them, where would I put this device? One would think that the MP3 player section would be a good start. And indeed, there was one there. "Specially designed for use with an iPod" (which I do not have), and a mere $49.99 (which made me snort). After casting about for a while, I found one of the blue shirt-wearing employees and explained what I wanted. Naturally, he led me back to the iPod friendly section. "Look," I said, "these things cost 20 bucks. Where do you have the cheaper ones?" He directed me to the opposite end of the store, where the portable CD players can be found. Sure enough, I found what I wanted for $20.99. A little more than I ought to have spent, but not wildly so.

After I got home, I managed to discover that I needed a card reader (the cool little MP3 player that doubles for that purpose won’t read a 1 GB card), so I went to a different Best Buy yesterday and managed to find one without incident. However, over lunch today I went to buy a USB drive for a coworker who gave me a Best Buy gift card to make the purchase. So there I was, at yet a third store in the space of 60 hours, wandering aimlessly about in an effort to find them. The Computer department seemed like the best bet, and sure enough they were easy enough to find.

Well…sort of. The "Geek Squad" (which translates to "30% more than you should have to spend on any such product) brand of USB drives was displayed prominently in at least 4 locations. And if I’d been willing to spend 30 bucks on a 128MB drive (in other words, "if I was stupid"), I could have been in and out of there in 5 minutes. However, trying to find any other brand was completely freaking impossible. After 15 minutes of looking, I finally cornered an employee, who – you guessed it – said that the Geek Squad version was the best option. After I gave her a stony look for a few seconds, she offered, "…but I think there are some other brands on one of the endcaps…" Finally I found the endcap in question, stepped carefully over the boxes cluttering the aisle, and snagged the $16.99 version (if I was shopping for me, nothing but the 512MB would have done, which may explain why my coworker always seems to have more disposable income than I do).  

What irked me about this isn’t so much that they have needlessly-expensive products available. Hell, it’s capitalism and all that, right? What annoyed me instead was that the only option that was easily accessible was the one that cost way the hell too much. To be fair, having the transmitters by the portable CD players is perfectly reasonable. Likewise, thumb drives aren’t easy to categorize, so having to wander around the computer section until I found them was pretty much what I expected. My point is that splitting up your stock in that way is incredibly annoying, and in my view totally pointless. It just adds another step to the process for any reasonably-educated consumer. I mean, really. Before I made ANY of these trips, i spent 5 minutes comparing prices online and even checking to make sure the brands I was likely to get were in stock at the store I was going to. I KNEW they had what I needed, so it’s not like I was going to buy their stupidly-overpriced rates for the "branded" stuff anyway. But why set up so damn many roadblocks to what should have been a simple expedition?

I suppose I know the answer already, of course. It’s the same reason that I continue to get 300 pieces of spam in my email every day – because even if 99.8% of it goes unviewed, there’s always the one poor sap who will believe the claims about penis enlargement, or be absolutely CERTAIN that the Nigerian lawyer really will share that $46 million US, and only needs the target’s social security number and bank information so he can wire the funds safely. And while I don’t begrudge Best Buy making some extra money (really, I don’t), in the future I imagine they can do so without any of my business.

Well, except on the day after Thanksgiving, when you can often pick up a nice PC for under 200 bucks if you’re willing to wait in line for a few hours. I’m totally down with that. 

 Future, thy name is Google.  Can’t wait to see where they go with this project.  Google’s services are already creeping into everyone’s life. Free WiFi would give them a strangle hold on a lot of folks’ daily routines.  If nothing else, this should scare Yahoo and AOL (as well as most ISPs) into serious thought about creating their own wireless networks.

GoogleNet–massive Google WiFi in the works? –

Suddenly Google local (and maps, and video, and so on) makes so much more sense—Business 2.0 reports that they’ve from learned from “telecom insiders” that Google is hard at work on a nation-wide high-capacity data network, buying up unused fiber lines and cheap backbone access to really flesh out their capacity. B2 theorizes this could result in a massive digital video db, on-demand television (IPTV) system, or free ad-based WiFi network, which in conjunction with location-tracking hotspot firm Feeva, has already been pilot launched in San Francisco serving up Google Local-based ads. Could Google really power not just Internet search, but a sizable portion of the Internet? Beats us, but if they want to make it happen, they better get that AdSense click fraud thing sorted asap.

(Via Engadget)

 That’s what it has to be right?  For employees at a Wal-Mart making something slightly over minimum wage to chase a man down, handcuff him, and keep him pinned on blacktop when the temperature is over 95?  Has to be too much manhood going on.  I hope those employees end up in jail for manslaughter.

The Shark Jumps The Shark? – Walmart Murders Customer In Broad Daylight? They thought he shoplifted something, so they tackled him and held him down, shirtless, against the hot pavement…for ten minutes, he begged for his life and the 30-strong crowd did too…and when his heart finally stopped, the Walmart employees didn’t even try to give him CPR. Somehow, this changes the discussion.

(Via Metafilter)

 Things like this give me some hope that there is still mystery in the world.  This place has been a park for decades and yet somehow, a 400 foot waterfall has eluded the public consciousness all this time.  Even with satellite imagery and other modern tools, this place has not appeared on maps (the one map that showed it was off by a mile or more). 

So keep trekking through the wilderness and when you find a place that looks untouched by human hands, there is actually a chance that might be true.

Giant Waterfall Discovered in Calif. Park (AP) –

AP – Dick McDermott knows these parts as well as any man can. But McDermott says he’s never laid eyes on the nearly 400-foot waterfall that park officials recently discovered in a remote corner of the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, 43,000 acres of wilderness in northern California.

(Via Yahoo! Top Stories)

 Um.  Ouch!

Ariz. Woman Recovers From 400 Bee Stings (AP) – AP – An 83-year-old woman is recovering after being stung 400 times by bees, authorities said. The woman, whose name was not released, was attacked Friday by bees coming from the wall of a storage building outside her home, said Fire Department Capt. Paul McDonough.

(Via Yahoo! Top Stories)

 Serious Geekery here.  The article doesn’t talk about how he cooled this beast but I am imagining the radiator from an SUV might do the trick.

Pentium 4 Overclocked to 7.1GHz, Sets World Record – Netmonger writes "This Japanese guy overclocked a Pentium 4 to 7.132GHz!! The system managed to calculate pi to 1 million decimal places in 18.516 seconds, setting the world’s record." The article notes that a Pentium 4 had been overclocked faster earlier this year, but at that speed it was not possible for the machine to function beyond BIOS. Of course, they’d yet to try diverting power from the dilthium crystal reactor to the deflector array.

(Via Slashdot)

 Last entry for the work week and boy is it a doozy!

A mime is a terrible thing to waste – Gospel Mime to the EXTREME!!! Only the power of Jesus can help you escape from the box! Breaking though the barriers of religion and tradition, K&K Mime Minstries electrifies!

(Via Metafilter)

I cannot uderstate how truly bizzare their site is (warning, lots of flash animation and sound).  You must visit it to understand.

These identical twins silently interpret contemporary Gospel music with dramatic gestures and animated facial expressions, portraying man’s resistance of life’s evil temptations and His transformation from doubter to believer. 

And that’s just the beginning.  Be sure to check out the trailer for their DVD and you will realize that these two are truly "The Fathers of Gospel Mime!"

Great essay from Robert McHenry, former Chief Editor for Encyclopedia Britannica, about what is real science and how the Bush White House has chosen to view it.

Turning ‘Unknown’ into ‘Unknowable’

One of the defects of democracy is that we usually have quite ordinary persons as our leaders. Sometimes this doesn’t matter; their particular defects don’t bear upon public affairs, or the times are sufficiently placid that it just doesn’t matter that they drink, or play too much poker, or cultivate friends of doubtful character, or whatever.

These are not such times. The President’s ignorance of science might have remained a private matter, but he chose to speak on the subject of evolution and "intelligent design." This is a great pity.

 Interesting article here.  Certain portions of the Catholic Church have seen fit to publicly involve themselves in Politics by threatening religious reprisals to Catholic lawmakers supporting Roe v Wade.  Does this extend to the bench?

Seperation of Church and State should run both ways.  I realize that churches have a role to play in society, but the these issues are ones that should be taken up between an individual and his place of worship, not categorically declared in public.

As has been said in the past (most notably by George Carlin) if the chuch wants to be involved in politics, tax them!  Let them pay their admission price like everyone else. 

Catholic recusal – Should Catholic Justices recuse themselves from any case citing Roe v. Wade? Now that Catholic politicians have been threatened with having sacraments withheld for supporting Roe v. Wade, does this create an inherent conflict of interest for a Catholic Supreme Court justice (or any judge) in a case involving Roe? According to the American Bar Association’s Code of Conduct for United States Judges, Canon 3, Section C 1 (c), a judge must disqualify himself when he has ‘a financial interest . . . or any other interest that could be affected substantially by the outcome of the proceeding."

(Via Metafilter)