It seems that a fake rock, The New York Times reports, may briefly reignite the Cold War between Russia and the UK: “A grainy black-and-white video, broadcast on state television on Sunday night and shown repeatedly again on Monday, was said to show a British diplomat picking up a fake rock that was said to conceal a communications device used to download and transmit classified information through hand-held computers.”



Placed near a leafless tree to add, I suppose, more naturalism to an otherwise fabricated still life, “the rock, the size of a watermelon, and the device, said to be able to transmit and receive data at distances of more than 60 feet, were seized near Moscow, prompting a search across the city for similar device.”

One has to wonder how many other rocks and stones and boulders were overturned, inspected and shaken, provoking perhaps mildly amusing Heidegger meets Monty Phyton soliloquies: “Is this fake? Hello? Is this thing on?” (In Russian.)

Or how many deciduouses and evergreens were stripped and frisked. Knowing how trees can be great masters at disguise, I imagine this militarized tree hugging love fest may have played out on an unprecedented scale.

Perhaps in a decade or so, we will be told that the entire Yellowstone National Park has been the real ECHELON listening post all along.