Update on the criminal career of Christopher Rocancourt. He recently confessed to having scammed people by posing as a member of the Rockefeller family. Why people would have believed that a Rockefeller would be speaking with a thick French accent, I still can't understand.

Book critics are stressing out over how to respond to the release of Stephen Glass's first novel. Should they review it and trash it, or just ignore it? Stephen Glass, if you don't remember, got fired from the New Republic five years ago for inventing news.

Great article in the New York Press detailing the career of Dr. 'Goat-Gland' Brinkley, the man who made a fortune during the 1920s and '30s by selling a quack cure for male impotence that involved the implantation of goat glands. Incidentally Brinkley became so popular and such a powerful figure in American culture that he ran for governor of Kansas and would have won if the Democrats and Republicans hadn't rigged the election.

Benjamin Radford and Robert Bartholomew have a book out that should be of interest to those interested in hoax stuff. It's titled Hoaxes, Myths, and Manias: Why We Need Critical Thinking. I haven't got my hands on a copy yet, but here's a review of it from Psychology Today.

Apparently the old Kentucky Fried Chicken email hoax is still going around. I thought this one had died out ages ago. I guess the good ones never die out completely.

The 3rd Annual Nigerian Email Conference.

Oops! Microsoft now says that the iLoo was not a hoax, just a bad idea. But why should we believe this latest version of the story? Personally I think they'd have been better off leaving it as a hoax.

Here's a diagram of the iLoo.

Microsoft says that the iLoo (the internet toilet) was just a hoax.