Dan's View On The World

Cyber Crime Watch Update

He is not Emmitt Smith

According to CNN.com, hackers have broken into the University of Southern California's admissions database, exposing "dozens" of admissions records from a database of around 270,000 past applicants. The university has cautioned people to beware of anybody attempting to impersonate a slow, overrated possession receiver with declining skills.

Who Am I? Why Am I Here?

CNN is reporting that James Stockdale -- the retired Vice Admiral, former POW and 1992 running mate of fruity Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot -- passed away yesterday. I'll always remember Stockdale as an average guy who was thrust into a bewildering situation. Stockdale participated in the 1992 Vice Presidential Debate with essentially no preparation, compared to Senator Gore and Vice President Quayle who had both been extensively prepped for the event. He later explained that his famous quotation was meant as the beginning of an overall explanation of how his experiences and perspective differed from those of his opponents. Sadly, he was never able to carry on with his treatise. From his subsequent interview with Jim Lehrer, it sounds like it would have been comedy gold.

When Vanity Plates Go Wrong

So I'm driving out Route 4 this morning and I notice the vanity plate on the pickup truck in the other lane. Vanity plates are so common in New Hampshire that they often don't even catch my attention, but this one was pretty eye-grabbing:

I'm not even quite sure where to begin, so I'll just throw out some random thoughts in no particular order:

• I really hope that somebody played a joke on the old guy driving that pickup truck. A really sick joke, to be sure, but the alternative is too gross to thing about.
• In most states, the Registry of Motor Vehicles has some means of filtering out lewd, profane, politically incorrect or otherwise inflammatory vanity plate applications. I guess that's one more thing that goes out the window in a state with no income tax and no sales tax.
• Were "HOT CARL" and "HOT KARL" both already taken?

Props to the ACME License Maker web site for the graphic.