Technically Incorrect

Michelle Owen was convinced that her ex-boyfriend (and father of her child) was not a nice man.

She was going through a custody dispute with him and was worried he was into child pornography. She was even more worried that he had used her laptop to enjoy his alleged perversion.

As a concerned citizen, she asked the police to examine her laptop. The Indiana police, also composed of concerned citizens, was delighted to oblige.

The detectives did, indeed, find some deleterious video, but surprisingly, it appeared to feature Michelle Owen and Toby the beagle.

May I quote the police report, … Read more

I always thought a stray meteorite would just smack into the world in, oh, 2020, and that would be that.

Or, perhaps, around 2015, everyone would become a celebrity and have a simultaneous nervous breakdown, brought on by excessive drug abuse, causing a Koresh-like disappearance of humanity.

But no, the year to prepare all your insurance policies for is 2030.

By that year, according to Professor John Beddington, the U.K. government's chief scientist, food and energy demand will have risen by 50 percent and fresh water by 30 percent. And the global population will have risen to around … Read more

Despite their calm demeanor and sweet, jovial humanity, it appears that the British are Europe's worst sleepers.

Sixteen percent of Brits claim their nights are not like white satin. (The finest European sleepers are, in fact, the Spanish, of whom only 2.4 percent report problems. We can learn a lot from the Spanish.)

While the British do accuse stresses associated with their jobs, their bank accounts, or their miserable spouses of keeping them up and getting them down, there is a new abomination for insomniacs: gadgets.

Yes, we can now happily diagnose a new disease for which some … Read more

Welcome to "Reality TV meets Tech In A Nasty Head-On Collision Week."

After the hard-shoe conspiracy shuffle danced by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak this week, I now bring you Kenley Collins, a finalist in season 5 of "Project Runway."

Kenley was arrested early Tuesday morning after allegedly assaulting her ex-fiance with, among other things, a laptop.

You will all collectively breathe again when I tell you that the laptop was not, apparently, her first weapon of choice. No, that was the cat.

She allegedly threw poor Tiddles (yes, name made up by me) in her ex'… Read more

You're Charlie Villanueva, power forward for the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks. You're playing the Boston Celtics. It's halftime. The game is tied. What do you do?

Yes, you send a tweet on Twitter.

Villanueva's read: "In da locker room, snuck to post my twitt. We're playing the Celtics, tie ball game at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up."

His Twitter screen name is CV31 (yes, his initials and number), and his highly informative live bulletin didn't exactly make his coach, Scott Skiles, a squat little man with a … Read more

Everyone has an NCAA bracket. It's like underwear. So few people come back home without it.

The problem is that the regular season of NCAA basketball might as well be sponsored by Xanax. It used to be wonderful and then players started leaving after one year of (not) attending college in order to turn pro. (See how many of your friends can name last year's Kansas starting five.)

In any case, the whole point of your NCAA bracket is to gain some superiority in your workplace of painful mediocrity.

So, because the Tournament starts tomorrow and because I … Read more

If you're the sort of person who faints at the sight of blood, gore, corpses or people with missing limbs, please look away now.

Because I want to tell you the story of Jerry Jalava, a software developer from Helsinki, Finland. Jerry bought himself a gleaming new Ducati motorbike. He crashed it just a week later.

He was rushed to hospital. The doctors couldn't save half of his finger, but they saved his ingenuity.

The doctors were Finnish, so they had a sense of humor. They told Jerry he should fill the gap at the top of his … Read more

I wonder if Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and the producers of ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" will meet for coffee and a slice of cake before next week's show.

Earlier on Tuesday, Woz had declared that he was being set up by those cynical Hollywood producer types.

He said that if he was in the bottom two, it would be "an outright lie." And he was convinced that the fix was in for him and his partner, Karina Smirnoff, to be in the dance-off (and win it) in order to boost ratings.

You will … Read more

It's one thing to have a photographic memory. It's quite another to have something called a super-autobiographical memory.

If your brain is wired super-autobiographically, you really are the weird of the weird. As well as the wired of the wired.

These are people who remember almost everything. Dates, times, names. Yes, even former lovers. The sort of people who remember that they were born on a Wednesday, lost their virginity on a Sunday and were arrested for the first time on a Monday.

And, according to ABC News, there are only four of them. Or, at least, four … Read more