Apparently...

some students in Vietnam are wearing wigs as a means of cheating exams. Said wigs are reported to be stuffed with electronic hardware so associates can forward correct answers to examinees. Teachers became suspicious when students wearing 18th Century North European headgear began arriving for an important matriculation. Unfortunately heavy horsehair and South East Asian temperatures mix not and a number of sweating students short circuited and therefore, in more ways than one, failed. Some were mortified to discover they could only receive the BBC's South Asia Service and one became linked to a passing NSA satellite that insisted his name was Dominique. Missiles were prepared on the US Indian Ocean fleet until someone established that phrases such as,

"Well it was on page bloody 23 last night,"

and,

"The answer's pi r squared dammit. Bollocks, your doing literature? I thought it was physics!" Who is this? Get off the line."

were not Al Qaeda attack codes.

Expect arrests and renditions soon.

On a separate wig issue, the true story of their demise has a connection to those modern student japes reported above. As the 17th Century drew to a close wigs developed an ostentation not previously seen. With the expansion of cities and particularly London land prices put the promise of a country home beyond the reach of those previously considered wealthy. For a short period during the 1750's a number of wigs were marketed with smallholdings knitted into the thatch. The idea was stunning in it's brilliance and would have worked but for a series of highly publicised deaths by conflagration. The foppish rich (and isn't it always them) seeking to make savings through reduced staff numbers were unaware that at night fire requires careful husbandry, or at the very least to be put out. At nightfall throughout London sightings were reported of a phenomenon initially thought to be huge horizontal matches with brightly burning heads. Only on closer examination was it discovered they were in fact rich people with brightly burning heads. Many of these heads were stolen by urchins to the East End where a spattering skull properly maintained could provide heat to a poor family for months.

Smallholding and country house wigs soon fell from fashion though one concomitant fact did not escape rationalists of the time. The 10 years during which these rich fools fought to establish this ridiculous fashion and during which many fell foul of their own foolishness was also the only decade in that century when syphilis showed a decline.

There's something poetic about that, dontchathink?