You asked for miracles, I give you the FBI

We were happy to get a recent email from the FBI telling us that we were to receive $10 million from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for no apparent reason. Perhaps this is related to the bailout in some way?

Central Bank Of Nigeria

We get  junk email about Nigerian banks sometimes, but never from the FBI. Let’s take a look, shall we?

—–Original Message—–

From: FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION FBI. WASHINGTON DC. [mailto:contactcenter@fbioffice.us.org]
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 10:12 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: CONTACT THE CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA NOW…

It must be the FBI; the email address looks valid. Also, the FBI is in Washington DC, isn’t it? It must be important since the subject is in all caps, and the ellipsis at the end of the subject made us want to read more.

Anti-Terrorist and Monitory Crimes Division.
ROBERT MUELLERIII
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FBI
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION FBI. WASHINGTON DC.

It still looks legitimate; we’re impressed to get an email from the executive director of the FBI himself. It must have been done in haste since he didn’t even have time to put a space between his last name and the “III”. We’ll also forgive him for using the word “monitory” instead of what we think he meant, monetary (we had to look this one up; monitory means serving as a warning).

The correct geographical placement of the FBI again gives us confidence that this missive is the real thing.

FBI SEEKING TO WIRETAP INTERNET

We’ll admit that this statement threw us off guard, but we kept reading anyway since this could explain how the FBI found out about our money.

ROBERT MUELLER III
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FBI
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION FBI.WASHINGTON DC.
FBI SEEKING TO WIRETAP INTERNET

Note the effective repetition of the last piece of text. We think this is just to emphasize again how important this is.

ATTENTION: WE THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI) WASHINGTON, DC WOULD LIKE TO INFORM YOU THAT WE HAVE TAKEN OUR TIME MONITORING THE TRANSACTION WITH THE CBN AND HAVE FOUND OUT THAT IT IS HITCH FREE..

Just think; the FBI took an undisclosed amount of time monitoring “the” transaction with the CBN and determined that it is “hitch free”. The use of the well-known law enforcement term “hitch free” further convinced us that this is the real deal.

SO WE WOULD LIKE YOU TO PROCEED AND SEND AN E-MAIL TO THE CENTRAL BANK FOR THE CLAIM OF YOUR FUNDS $10,000,000.00 UNITED STATE DOLLARS ASAP AS THEY ARE VERIFIED AND LEGIT,WE WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO CALL YOU BECAUSE WE ARE BEING SO CONGESTED WITH MOST OTHER MANY CASES.
HERE IS THEIR CONTACT BELOW.
Email: bogusemail@bogus.com
phone:+555-123-456-7890

We can totally understand that the FBI would be too busy to call us considering their workload, which we hope consists of solving crimes and whatnot. We’re impressed that they even had time to send this email! Certainly $10 million is petty cash to the FBI but for us it is quite a large sum.
It seems that we only need to email the CBN, which is not so much work for that amount of money. The email address doesn’t look like it belongs to the FBI, but that is a trivial thing that we will overlook.

NOTE: THIS IS NOT A SCAM ITS REAL!!!!!! WE HAVE CAREFULLY INVESTIGATE THIS AND FOUND OUT THAT ITS REAL AND LEGITIMATE GO AHEAD AND SEND THE CBN AN E-MAIL,AS WE ARE STILL RUNNING UNDERGROUND INVESTIGATION,BUT WE MUST SAY ITS REAL AND LEGIT.

This allays our fears about the suspicious-looking email address. Certainly the FBI’s conclusion that this is not a scam after the careful investigate is proof enough for us to feel safe about sending an email to the CBN with our bank account details.

THE FBI WILL NEVER LIE TO YOU.

This goes without saying (we hope), but again we feel that they have our concerns at heart and are trying to preempt any doubts that we have.

J. Edgar Hoover would be proud.

WE ARE ONLY AWARE OF YOU PAYING THE TRANSFER CHARGES OF YOUR FUNDS DIRECTLY TO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT WHICH IS $480 AND ANYTHING APART FROM THIS KINDLY CONTACT US BACK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

Now we are feeling slightly uncomfortable again. First it was just sending an email to the CBN; now it sounds like we will owe $480 for the bank transfer.
After doing the math, however, $480 is a very small percentage of $10 million so it seems reasonable.

Thank you very much for your anticipated co-operation in advance, and always endeavor to send us an e-mail at all times if you discover any fraudulent activities in this transactions,we earnestly await your urgent response to this matter.

The FBI really has good customer service; if we feel uncomfortable or that we are being swindled we have the assurance that we can contact the FBI at any time and get an urgent response. Also notice the shift to regular sentence case, which is relaxing after the barrage of uppercase.

Best Regards,

ROBERT S. MUELLER, III

DIRECTOR

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20535

E-MAIL:- security@fed-bureau-investigations.org

We’ll ignore the fact that Robert Mueller III got demoted from Executive Director to Director during the span of this email (but gained a space and comma before the “III”), and also ignore that the email address of the FBI has changed, since as they said earlier in this mail, the FBI will never lie to us. Our bank account details are in safe hands. We have already started planning how to use the $10 million. Maybe to buy Citigroup?

Robert MuellerIII, former Executive Director, now Director of the FBI

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE:This communication and its attachments may contain non-public,confidential or legally privileged information.The unlawful interception, use or disclosure of such information is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, or have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by reply email and delete all copies of this communication and attachments without reading or saving them.

Do you think we’ll get in trouble with the FBI for posting this? Gosh we sure hope not.

The Death Star and Imperial GDP

We were fascinated to see a recent article placing the price tag on the death star at $15.6 septillion.

Death Star. Only $15.6 septillion

Recent figures show that the U.S. spent around 4% of GDP on the military. Assuming that the Empire has a similar expenditure on the military, and a death star is 4% of the military expenditure (similar to what the U.S. spends on military construction), this would put the Empire’s GDP at $15.6 septillion / (0.04*0.04) = $9,750 septillion, also known as $9.75 octillion ($9.75 x 10²⁷). Quite a large sum; even in Zimbabwe. And to think they were building a second one.

We have no idea what the population of the Empire is, but if their per capita GDP is like the U.S. (around $45,000), this would make the population around 0.2 septillion people. This is about 32 trillion times the Earth’s population of 6.75 billion, or 32 trillion Earth-size planets worth of citizens.

If the Empire’s tax rate is anything like the U.S., tax revenues would be around 28% of GDP. This would make $2.73 octillion in tax revenues.

The Empire must have a hell of a time with tax audits.

You don't want to be audited by these guys.

The top five unfilmed Michael Crichton screenplays

We here at Raising the Undead were sad to hear about the death of Michael Crichton from cancer. He wrote many popular and scientifically interesting books, and we’ll forgive him for going against popular scientific opinion on global warming.

The worst is behind him.

As everyone knows, many of his books were made into popular movies, most notably Jurassic Park. But what people don’t know are that he wrote screenplays as well, such as Twister. We discovered some of his unfilmed screenplays for sequels of his popular movies, and here we present our selections for the top five. As you can see, he was wise to stick to writing novels as his screenplays seem to recycle ideas from other popular movies.

5) The First Great Train Robbery 2: The Second Not So Great Train Robbery

Two crafty thieves attempt to steal gold from a different train than the one in the First Great Train Robbery.  They become bored using the same ploys as the first film and decide to invent a time machine and travel to the future where they can rob a Shinkansen carrying gold bullion from Osaka to Tokyo. Unfortunately they are thwarted by a modern-day samurai with a pure heart who ass-kicks the Victorian brigands back to their time.

Don't try to run on top of this train.

4) Twister 2: Bad Weather

The tornado from Twister, unhappy about Jo and Bill discovering its secrets using DOROTHY, and not satisfied with the blood of Dr. Jonas Miller, tracks them to the Bahamas where it tries to kill them with high winds and flying debris. Instead of running away, Jo and Bill see this as a great opportunity to conduct more research and create TOTO, a device made out of bottle caps attached to highly sensitive sensors. They trick the tornado into sucking up TOTO, giving them invaluable information about tornadoes before the tornado is attacked by a hurricane and disappears.

Everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it...until now!

3) Westworld II: Northworld

Martin from Westworld takes a vacation with a new friend named Blane (no relation to the Blane of the first movie) to a new park called Northworld, which is a fantasy world where you can interact with androids resembling Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, and the elves.

Martin starts to hit it off with Mrs. Claus when suddenly the Santa Claus android goes berserk and starts throwing elves at Martin and Blane, killing Blane. Martin escapes by impaling the Santa robot with a giant candy cane.

I, Robot. Must kill you.

2) Andromeda Strain: Extinction

A group of scientists discovers yet another extraterrestrial organism, which turns humans into brain-eating zombies. The organism is “accidentally” released into the atmosphere, ironically infecting everyone on earth except the scientists and a girl named Alice. Alice helps the scientists escape to Alaska where there is no virus (and no culture) where they die of cold, starvation, and boredom.

Luckily, Alice has been cloned by another unrelated group of scientists who also cloned dinosaurs from DNA, leaving the world as it should be: dinosaurs and humans living in harmony.

No zombies in Alaska (just brain-dead politicians)

1) Jurassic Park 4: Jurassic Timeline

Rogue scientists at Jurassic Park invent a quantum time machine which they use to go back to the Jurassic Era to get dinosaur DNA so they can start another Jurassic Park in Orlando, Florida.

Another group of scientists, who are not in favor of time travel or dinosaurs, goes back in time to stop the first group. Some dinosaurs escape through the time portal and all the scientists go back to stop them. Unfortunately most of the scientists get eaten except for the one scientist who objected the most to time travel and dinosaurs.

A role was written for Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Malcolm, who time travels back to the Jurassic Era with the second group of scientists but stays behind so that the discovery of his bones will lend some credibility to the Flintstones.

Stupid humans

Short Circuit City

Today Circuit City, the number 2 consumer electronics retailer, filed for bankruptcy, claiming among other things a loss of market share to Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and other rivals. This leaves mainly Best Buy and Wal-Mart, since the other rivals can’t have been much of a force if they can’t be named or even brought to mind.

Drat! Our stock price is down to 25 cents!

This is a sad day for us at Raising the Undead since we will no longer be able to walk into a Circuit City store and see how much money we saved by buying online. Now we’ll have to do that at “Best” Buy.

Our bets are on Wal-Mart.

Service with a smile.

Good news, bad news

Good news: Bush will be out of the White House, McCain will NOT be in, Obama etc.

Bad news: The economy. Oh, and Nancy Pelosi will raise taxes no doubt. Maybe on expatriates.

Pay up my pretties!

Not to mention Iceland. More to come.

WTFchovia

Today Wachovia posted a $23.9 billion loss in the third quarter of 2008. $23.9 BILLION. That’s $11.18 PER SHARE.

That’s more than the nominal GDP for Iceland ($20 billion). To repeat, Wachovia lost more money in 3 months than Iceland generates in a year.

Since Iceland generates 40% of GDP from fishing, $8 billion is fish. Therefore, Wachovia lost 3 years worth of fish in one quarter.

Wachovia's 3Q losses

At an average weight of 5kg, the Atlantic cod has a market value of $30. Wachovia thus lost the equivalent of 796 million Atlantic cod. Most of this loss was due to a decline in asset value. Everyone knows that fish starts to rot and stink after you buy them, much like Wachovia acquisition Golden West Mortgage and its “pick-a-pay” mortgages.

Not happy about Wachovia

At least you can trust the Gorton’s fisherman.

Bad news, good news: I am Sporticus!

Bad news: Iceland still facing bankruptcy

Good news: Hopefully this will be the end of Lazy Town.

Actually, I don’t even know if Lazy Town is still in production, but I am still scarred by its bizarre interplay of humans, humans with prosthetic facial features or pink hair, and puppets.

Lazy Town: WTF?

Not since the TV shows of Sid and Marty Krofft has there been such a drug-induced display of “children’s fare”. This export from Iceland must be stopped and we can all consider this a silver lining on the dark cloud hovering over the tornado of financial destruction hitting the world.

y2k was nothing

It seems now we have a $10 trillion problem. And this time, it wasn’t caused by short-sighted IT types.

Here is a shot of the clock before it hit $10 trillion (which, considering the rate of increase was probably only a few weeks before):

Debt clock

Luckily, American ingenuity has solved the problem (for now) by using the dollar sign LED as a “1″ and adding a makeshift dollar sign:

Squeezing in the debt

The company sponsoring this clock apparently will add more digits to cover up to $1 quadrillion. They should think about the family share as well as that will flip over soon.

Although we’re suspicious of the calculations on this “clock”, 10 trillion is quite a large number. In Zimbabwe they had a $10 million dollar bill until recently. If the US had such a bill (and who knows they may soon) you would still need a million of them.

Future US denomination?

There are about 10 trillion cells in the human body. Speaking of the human body, this sounds to us like a case of “I’m getting fat so I’ll buy bigger pants” instead of “time to lose weight.” Of course, the people controlling the sign don’t control the economy, but they do seem to take a similar approach.

Too bad they don’t have Wii Fit for the national debt.

Back to the Future

It seems that some top scientists are working on a new unmanned drone with flight characteristics similar to a pterosaur. The drone could even land and walk in a way similar to a pterosaur.

Top scientists

This was a logical step for this team of scientists after perfecting renewable energy innovations like the foot-powered automobile and mastodon vacuum cleaner.

We here at Raising the Undead are all in favor of scientific breakthroughs, but if we are spending money on research based on 1960s TV shows, we should consider the “flying car,” which will prove to be a bigger breakthrough for mankind.

Flying car

Smart Investing

This speaks for itself. For reference, $1000 of Lehman Brothers bought a year ago is worth about $1.62, which in many places isn’t enough for a beer.

Except maybe Coors Light.

Smart Investing