"It's Seven O'Clock in San Francisco... "

(Apologies to George Carlin) "... it's Nine O'Clock in Chicago... In America's Third World County™, it's 7:42; time for the Eleven O'Clock Report." Yeh, I only recall the 7:42 part with anything approaching accuracy. And it was Baltimore. Anyway, a couple of interesting convergent posts in divergent places over the last two days. Both asking (and partially answering) the eternal question: It's past curfew; do you know where your credit cards are? This one at The Bleat has James Lileks relating a cautionary tale about a call from his credit card company. Here's a taste: "And just the other day I was blithely dismissing worries about shopping on the web. Then again, for all I know someone made an impression of the card at a restaurant; that’s still the easiest way to get someone’s credit card number. Anyway, it’s all a mystery. It can’t be connected to those troubles PayPal is having with their database – I answered that email right away and entered my information into their new supersecret computers. I didn’t know they were co-located in Bulgaria, but you learn something every day. (Just. Kidding.)" This post tells of an identity theft victim turning the tables on the perpetrators (h/t Joe Zeff commenting at Pournelle's Current Mail) Ovid goes Sam Spade all over some identity thieves: "I'm so mad about this that the obvious doesn't sink in for a bit. I have interesting information. You don't have breakfast mail-ordered. These thieves were at that restaurant and that's a local zip code...." Cracks the case and even gets the cops to respond (!!!!). Good on him.