Not that we place all that much emphasis on reality around here, of course, but when a plot development looks too good to be true, it often is. Case in point: people have been sending us the link to that "iPod as murder weapon" article for over four months now, because they didn't pick up on the (admittedly way oversubtle) satire, didn't notice that a "HeadlinedNews.com" article was being served by liquidgeneration.com, and never bothered clicking any links on the page, which would have tipped them off pretty quickly to the fact that the whole sordid "I stabbed my boyfriend 80 times with my iPod" story was fake, fake, fake.

Sometimes it's not only the overtly fake stories that are untruthful, however. Faithful viewer Andy Van Buren sent us a Reuters article which was practically tailor-made for an AtAT plot line; it reports that "Britain's Ministry of Defence has become the latest organization to add the iPod to its list of high-tech security risks" and has "banned" the device from "most sections of its headquarters in the UK and abroad." Perfect, right? It builds nicely upon last week's scene about that Gartner report which cautioned businesses of the dangers of wanton employee iPod use behind corporate firewalls, and also plays right into the long-running theme of Apple dissing the UK and the UK dissing right back. And anything Apple-related to do with the military is just begging for a tie-in with Steve Jobs's master plan for world domination.

The thing is, though, the "UK military bans iPods" story is apparently nothing but hooey; faithful viewer Ged Smith pointed out a BBC News article which reports that "the Ministry of Defence has denied reports that it has banned Apple's iPod." While it's true that the MoD has "some areas where portable storage devices would not be allowed" (and we would sure freakin' hope so, seeing as it's the military, for crying out loud), a spokesperson for the Ministry "insisted that iPods are welcomed," and that the Ministry has "a flexible management approach in regards to iPods and similar devices that can move data from official systems. In each area, the risks are assessed and, when appropriate, measures are taken to mitigate that risk. There is not a case that there is an outright ban on these."

So there you have it: British military personnel are indeed allowed to rock out after all. Apparently we're just going to have to wait for another story with a high drama quotient to come along. Well, either that or we suppose we could just do a scene about how the proposed "no 'Pods for MoD" plot point turned out to be false, but we'd have to be pretty jaded and sleep-deprived to pull something like that.