Some people are borderline, sure, but some others you just know are crazy. We're talking about those folks who so obviously have a hole in their marble bag that any additional evidence of severe mental illness is purely superfluous. For instance, does anyone really need to see a doctor's report to believe that, say, Charles Manson is a few credits short of his diploma from Sanity High? Ditto that rainbow-wig John 3:16 guy, damn near anybody who willingly appears on Springer, and Michael Dell. But when it comes to the epitome of sheer irrationality and wack-job behavior, we look no further than that endearingly unhinged institution known as Wall Street.

Now, anyone who follows Apple's stock price knows full well that Wall Street is clearly six or eight quarts shy of a full brain tank. Any institution that regularly punishes a company for reporting higher-than-expected earnings by slashing the price of its stock has some serious issues that need to be resolved, no doubt-- and we needn't even mention all the erratic behavior regarding that whole dot-com thing, right? But while we don't need any further evidence of Wall Street's inherent looniness, it's more than happy to give it to us anyway. Case in point: the way that, after Apple's earnings warning, the company's stock price fell through the floor, crashed into the basement, bored through the earth's crust, and is currently resting somewhere in the planet's creamy liquid center.

Granted, Apple's little admission of "Oops! We built a computer that no one's buying! Our bad" should be expected to trigger a bit of a stock beating, but, irrational creature that Wall Street is, AAPL was butchered out of all proportion to the facts at hand. And now that the anti-anti-Apple media backlash to the backlash is starting to kick in, some observers far more astute than our sleep-deprived selves are only too happy to point out the absurdity of the situation. As faithful viewer Will Findlay notes, Robert Cringely has chimed in with his two cents on the sitch-- and he makes a very interesting point about why AAPL is currently undervalued beyond the bounds of reason.

Cringely (who has definitely not always been an Apple cheerleader in the past, despite having worked for the company early on-- so you can take his latest column as a reasonably impartial assessment) makes this one simple observation: after the post-earnings-warning bloodbath, Apple's market capitalization had been nuked to a mere $4 billion or so. And yet Apple has $5 billion in cash. Meaning that Wall Street thinks everything Apple's got in addition to its cash is actually worth negative one billion dollars. That means that if Apple were to give away all its cash and then put the company up for sale, Disney would demand a billion dollars from Steve just to take the company off his hands. And why? Because Apple will only make $100 million this quarter. Yes, that's surely a sign of a company with one foot in the grave...

An interesting corollary to this intriguing little fact: if Cringely's numbers are right, Apple could theoretically buy back every single share of its own stock-- and still have a billion in cash left over when it was through. Sort of puts things into perspective, doesn't it? Whoops, here comes Wall Street... quick, you go call the men in white coats, and we'll wait here with the giant butterfly net.

Something verrry fishy's going down with them newfangled Cubes Apple has been releasing into the Mac ecosystem lately. We're not talking about the cracks-- or the "mold lines," or the mold lines that might have a tendency to crack, or whatever it is that most of the Cube Controversy Crowd is obsessing over these days. (By the way, if you want to see what all that fuss is about, faithful viewer David McConnell pointed us to a new ZDNet article complete with close-ups of the mystery blemishes.) We're talking about the decidedly spooky phenomenon of Cubes suddenly waking up or turning on or off-- when there's no one around to trigger the event. Oh, great; like the crack thing wasn't bad enough, so now the Cubes have got to be haunted, too. That ought to perk up those slower-than-expected sales...

Now, while we personally would just chalk up the spontaneously self-starting Cubes to poltergeist activity or the increased telekinetic powers of the real human brains living at every Cube's core, Apple has a far more prosaic explanation kicking around in its Tech Info Library, and we figure it's only polite to pretend that it's the truth, at least for a moment. According to Apple, the culprit is the super-cool buttonless electrostatic touch sensor on the Cube's top surface. If you haven't tried this yet, it's definitely worth a trip down to your local Apple reseller to mess with a demo unit. The power symbol is simply silk-screened right onto the Cube's unbroken surface, and brushing it with a finger causes a pulsing glow to emanate from the surface under the symbol itself-- and then the Cube wakes up, or goes to sleep, or whatever. Elegant, yes, but apparently the technology is also a bit, er, "touchy," what with all this random on and off activity on "a small number of Power Mac G4 Cubes."

Of particular interest is Apple's list of steps to troubleshoot the problem. Step one from Apple is to "make sure the Cube is on a sturdy, flat surface," since operating your Cube on a trampoline or an inflatable pool toy may cause the phantom power phenomenon. Step two is to "make sure there is nothing on top of the Cube" triggering the power switch-- like your cat, or your right hand with its index finger extended. Step three: "check the settings in the Energy Saver control panel," just in case you actually set your Cube to start up and shut down at seemingly random intervals and just plumb forgot about it. Steps four and five constitute that timeless classic that's been in every troubleshooting manual for every electrical device since the dawn of time: make sure it's plugged in.

The sixth and final step is probably what most people were waiting for: an adventure into the Cube's guts. Apparently a "DC-to-DC Converter card" that isn't fully seated (perhaps because it came loose in shipping) can trigger the problem, and Apple provides step-by-step instructions on how to reseat this troublesome little beastie. (You were wondering why the Cube costs so much? It's because Apple threw in useless components like a DC-to-DC converter. What's to convert, if it's already DC?) Hopefully this is the one that'll fix the problem for most of those afflicted-- if not, we recommend either a spiritual cleansing by your local shaman, or wrapping the Cube in tin foil to block the brain's telekinetic waves.

In today's fast-paced, work-a-day world, it's not always easy to get the nourishment your moral compass needs to thrive and survive. Oh, sure, the nightly news is chock full of sound-byte atrocities that might give your sense of moral outrage a quick burst of energy, and the newspaper can provide you with plenty of dressed-down stories about the darker side of human nature, but it's all just empty calories-- and no one can live on junk food forever. That's why we always like to start our morning off with a big, brimming bowl of Unmitigated Gall™... from Microsoft!

Yes, Unmitigated Gall-- the only reliable corporate chutzpah that's guaranteed to turn your stomach with righteous indignation. Microsoft has been injecting a healthy dose of Unmitigated Gall into every episode of the popular courtroom drama "Redmond Justice" since the show first graced the airwaves years ago. Simply watching the show provides you with 100% of the U.S. recommended daily allowance of outrage and disbelief to really get those cheeks burning and the juices eating away at your stomach lining. Feel morally superior while simultaneously being ashamed to be a member of the same species as a team of people who can be so brazen in their transparent ploys. Now that's satisfaction!

To see how Unmitigated Gall works its magic, let's take today's show as an example. According to The Register, Microsoft stunned the world by breaking years of precedent and filing something early for a change-- though, of course, what it filed was a proposal demanding longer-than-usual courtroom briefs and a five-month appeal schedule obviously meant to grind the legal process to an even more agonizingly slow pace. "But AtAT," we hear you say, "there's no Unmitigated Gall in that, is there?" Patience, friends! The Unmitigated Gall comes as a coda-- in which Microsoft actually blames the Department of Justice for delaying the outcome of the case by trying to bypass the appeals court and go straight to the top. Ladies and gentlemen, we have gall... and it is unmitigated! Feel that gut churn? Now you're ready to take on the world! "Microsoft: Offending People At A Gut Level Since 1975!"