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Man accused of selling golf-ball finders as bomb detectors
Gadgets sometimes have alternative uses.
You can hold up a phone at a U2 concert and show that you, too, can create a religious light source.
You can use a hair dryer to bring your iPhone back to life after you've dropped it in the toilet.
However, I have never heard of someone attempting to pass off a golf-ball finder as a bomb detector. There again, I never thought Harvard could beat anyone at basketball.
Excitingly, there is a trial currently in progress in which a British businessman is accused of fooling the military, the police, nay, even governments themselves into buying bomb detectors that were golf-ball finders.
I cannot imagine how the two might have been confused. But the prosecution alleges that 56-year-old Jim McCormick persuaded many important people around the world that these things could spot bombs, ivory, drugs, and even bits of human bodies.
He allegedly claimed they even worked through walls, under water, and even from planes. … Read more
