A magazine is a iPad that does not work

This is a coda to my previous post:

Hideaway

The image below is truly stunning.

I received it via an email with the following text:

This is the sunset at the North Pole with the moon at its closest point,

a scene you will probably never get to see in person.

And, you also see the sun below the moon, an amazing photo and not one easily duplicated.

You may want to pass it on to others so they can enjoy it.

The Chinese have a saying that goes something like this:

'When someone shares with you something of value,

you have an obligation to share it with others!'

I just did.. Your turn

Before reading my comments below the photograph, think about your reaction to the graphic.


When I saw it I thought that it was a beautiful image but was immediately aware that it was not a photograph.

The give away is that the crescent of the moon is very much larger than the sun. This is physically impossible as the sun and the moon appear the same size from the vantage point of the Earth. Solar eclipses show this similarity in apparent size clearly.

In reality this beautiful piece of art was produced by Inga Nielsen at the Gate to Nowhere site. (Unfortunately for mono-lingual people like me the site is in German.) The name of the work is Hideaway.

Hideaway can be found here on Neilsen's site. Note that is is found in a directory called Terragen. Terragen is software which "is a powerful solution for rendering and animating realistic natural environments". The software can be downloaded from this site.

The Cigar Song

Here is an entertaining song by Brad Paisley about an insurance scam.



I became aware of this story when I received the email below from a friend:

You couldn't make this up!

BEST LAWYER / INSURANCE STORY OF THE YEAR,
DECADE, AND POSSIBLY THE CENTURY.

This took place in Charlotte, North Carolina. A lawyer purchased a box of very rare and expensive cigars, then insured them against, among other things, fire.

Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of these great cigars, the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company.

In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost 'in a series of small fires' ... The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason, that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion.

The lawyer sued and WON! ( Stay with me. )

Delivering the ruling, the judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous. The judge stated nevertheless, that the lawyer held a policy from the company, in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure them against fire, without defining what is considered to be unacceptable 'fire' and was obligated to pay the claim.

Rather than endure lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid $15,000 to the lawyer for his loss of the cigars that perished in the 'fires'.

NOW FOR THE BEST PART...

After the lawyer cashed the cheque, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of ARSON!!!

With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine. This true story won First Place in last year's Criminal Lawyers Award contest..

ONLY IN AMERICA .... NO WONDER THE REST OF THE WORLD THINKS THEY'RE NUTS!

The heading of this email is somewhat ironic as the story was made up, as shown here, here and here .

For more information on email hoaxes see this post.

Don't Believe Everything that you Read on the Internet

I received the following email recently:

AFL or NRL ? Guess

36 have been accused of spouse abuse
7 have been arrested for fraud
19 have been accused of writing bad cheques
117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
3 have done time for assault
71, repeat 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
8 have been arrested for shoplifting
21 currently are defendants in lawsuits and
84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year

Can you guess which organization this is? AFL? NRL?



Give up yet? . . . .... Scroll down




Neither, it's the 535 members of the AUSTRALIAN PARLIAMENT IN CANBERRA


The same group of Idiots that crank out hundreds of new laws each
year, designed to keep the rest of us in line.

This ties in nicely with the general dislike of politicians, so lots of people will be happy to believe it. Sadly the claims aren't true. This post isn't really about playing the spoil sport and ruining a good story with the facts . My aim is to foster skepticism about claims that are made on the Internet.

As soon as I read the email I was suspicious, as I was sure that there weren't 535 members of the Australian Parliament. I pasted the following
number of members in australian parliament
into google and found a number of sites including this one.

So there are 150 members in the House of Representatives and 76 in the Senate making a grand total of 226 members of the Australian Parliament.

With this information the claims in the email are clearly absurd - 51% of members have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses or 31% cannot get a credit card due to bad credit?

So where did the "information" in this email come from?

I selected most of the text of the email and pasted it into google?

The site at this link was the fourth in the Google list.

A quick perusal of this site shows that the "information" in the email originated in the United States. It also shows that the info is dubious in a US context.

The person who adapted these claims to an Australian context clearly knew that the claims made were not true, as they made four changes to make the claims appear to relate to Australia.

If you have any opinion as to the motivation of someone to make and spread such hoaxes, leave a comment by clicking on "Post a Comment" at the bottom of this post.

There are many of these email hoaxes circulating, here are a few that I have received recently:

the Nine Zero Hash Phone Scam hoax

the 1954 Home Computer hoax

the Mars bigger than the Moon hoax

the Remus Rudd hoax

the Oliver North warns about Osama Bin Laden hoax

the Mohammed Atta released hoax

the Mall Celebration of 9/11hoax

the Baby in car seat hoax

the Budweiser Celebration of 9/11 hoax. I checked the local paper The Bakersfield Californian and found this article that supports the claim that the email is a hoax - scroll down to the last 6 paragraphs of the story.

the Black in the Whitehouse hoax. Here is confirmation that this is a hoax from the anti-virus company McAfee.

the Cigar Arsonist. The email that I received claiming that this story was true was headed You Can't Make this Stuff Up!, unfortunately it is clear that it was almost certainly made up. A song called The Cigar Song has been written about this scam.

the Nokia Mobile Draw scam. I recieved the following text message:

YOUR MOBILE NUMBER HAS WON YOU $ 2,MILLION IN THE NOKIA MOBILE DRAW UK.FOR CLAIMS, EMAIL US: (Ticket: BAN101Q/NAME/LOCATION): nkprom@live.com, Call: +447035959397

I was immediately suspicious and when I googled the message I found this site which confirmed my impression that this was a scam text.