Dowbrigade

McLEAN,
Va., Dec. 27 (AP) When the Central Intelligence Agency’s gadget makers
invented
a listening device for the Asian jungles, they disguised it so the enemy
would not be tempted to pick it up and examine it: The device looked
like tiger droppings.

The guise worked. The fist-size, brown transmitter detected troop movements
along the trails during fighting in Vietnam, a quiet success for a little-known
group of researchers inside the C.I.A.

The office, known as the Directorate of Science and Technology,
is celebrating its 40th anniversary by revealing a few dozen of its secrets
for a new museum inside its headquarters near Washington.

Keith Melton, a leading historian of intelligence, calls it "the finest
spy museum you’ll never see." It is accessible only to C.I.A. employees
and guests to those closed quarters.

In 2000, the C.I.A. built a catfish called Charlie, a remarkably realistic
swimming robot. The agency will not disclose much about the fish’s mission,
but experts speculated that it collects water samples near suspected chemical
or nuclear plants.

The agency is not showing off just its successes. It invented a remot
e-controlled
dragonfly for delivering tiny listening devices outside windows, but the
so-called insectothopter could not fly straight in winds.

from The
New York Times

MINNEAPOLIS
(AP) – A naked man got stuck in the chimney of a bookstore early Christmas
morning. Don’t worry, it wasn’t Santa Claus.

The 34-year-old man was treated Thursday for bruises and abrasions at Hennepin
County Medical Center after being found naked and lodged in the furnace
flue at Uncle Hugo’s Bookstore. He was expected to be charged with attempted
burglary on Friday.

“He was lucky,” said police Lt. Mike Sauro. “He was only stuck in that
chimney for a few hours. It’s kind of a happy ending, because if he had
been in there until that store opened Friday morning, it’s my judgment
he would have died.

“He doesn’t appear to be a hard-core criminal, just stupid.”

from AP (thanks,
Ma)

The
deck of playing cards has become the 21st century version of wanted
posters, trading cards or commemorative dinner plates. The Dowbrigade
still remembers the first deck of non-standard playing cards he ever
saw, at Beaver Camp for Boys, when he was 10 or 11. To this day he
finds himself strangely fascinated
by redheads with one boob bigger than the other, like that most memorable
8 of Hearts.

The latest entry in this Deck of Shame is the Wall Street’s Most Wanted,
which has selected its 54 miscreants on the basis of "Corporate Excesses,
Poor Corporate Goverance, Conflicts of Interest, Corporate Fraud and
Executive Greed."

The honorees include: Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Andrew Fastow, William
Harrison, Dennis Kozlowski, Martha Stewart, Richard Scrushy, Mark Swartz,
Don Carty. Harvey Pitt, Jack Welch, Putnam Investment, Bernie Ebbers,
Scott Sullivan and Frank Quattrone

from wallstreetmostwanted.com