Admiral Ackbar knows medical school

It's a trap!

FBI wiretap disconncted due to unpaid phone bill

The Bush, Jr administration has long argued that surveillance of potential terrorists (such as yours truly, no doubt) is so important that the government should not need to seek a court order before tapping suspect phone lines. Given the level of importance here, I was more than a little amused and bemused to learn that the success of these highly important wiretaps is threatened not only by the ACLU and the Supreme Court, but by the poor accounting practices. It appears that a wiretap includes the establishment of a new phone line, presumably running from the tapped line to J. Edgar Hoover's desk, and somehow the FBI had overlooked paying the bill for some of those lines for long enough that they were disconnected for nonpayment.

I suppose that I'm relieved, both because the government isn't getting a free ride and because someone has stood up to Bush, Jr and won. Perhaps Verizon can get us out of Iraq, too.

For those who are at work and can't listen to the NPR segment, here's the story from a few other agencies: ABC, Reuters, MSNBC, BBC,

Attend the tale, but wait till it comes out on DVD

Well, and so I've now seen Burton's Sweeney Todd. And it's not bad, but it's not great, either.

I was very impressed by Rickman as Turpin - I thought he did a great job. Cohen did a good job, too. And I didn't think that any of the actors were bad, though on the other hand I wasn't impressed by the singing abilities of either Depp or Carter. I thought "By the Sea" was very cleverly done, and by extension so was Epiphany" (though "Epiphany" seemed peculiar until it was revealed that he wasn't actually running around with a razor and being ignored by everyone). The setting was appropriately dim and dreary.

But I found the contrast between the underplayed singing and the lush score to be bit jarring, and several of the actors seemed to make a real distinction between singing and speaking, which I found to be a bit disruptive to the movie's flow. There also seemed points where the actors clearly waited for the score to catch up before
singing. I remember that in the stage production's wigmaker's sequence Sondheim included some spoken lines ("Repeat that. Repeat that!""Yes, Mr Todd.") to cover the change in key before Anthony sang in response to Sweeney, and the movie might have benefited from similar devices. Alternately, it might have been better off as a non-musical, perhaps using Sondheim's music as underscoring or background music.

So, see it, because it is a good story, but you don't need to see it in the theaters.

Lap cat, fat cat

A few nights ago, Scruffy, of his own accord, crawled into my lap to be petted for twenty or thirty minutes. He only left because I had to stand up - I forget why.

Of course, once he was out of my lap he ran off back to his lair.

I think it's a combination of general shyness and agoraphobia, as he sometimes will run to his shoebox, which offers him no protection at all.

Shadow, on the other hand, is overweight. That thought had been in the back of my mind for several days - her outline no longer looked quite right - though it hadn't moved forward enough to really reach conscious thought, and it has to be the reason for the real difference in weight between her and her brother. She was at the vet again a few days ago for her ear and this was pointed out to me. So, food is no longer available 24 hours a day, and I try to play with her and stir her up more that I had been, and we'll see what happens.

I'm also a little confused about her sociability. The past few times I've had visitors she has generally been willing to sniff an offered finger, but then will deliberately, unhurriedly walk off and disappear under the bed. Strange.

Don't surrender your common sense to your GPS

Yesterday, a commuter train hit a passenger car in Bedford Hills, New York. News reports state that the car's driver turned onto the tracks at the bidding of his GPS system, and mistook the tracks for the parkway that lay just beyond them.

Reports were unclear as to whether the man didn't realize that there was a railroad crossing at that location, or whether he thought he had safely passed through it when he made the turn onto the tracks, but I don't know that that matters. Photos of the wreck site show that the crossing is marked on each side with traditional cross bucks, wig-wags (the flashing red lights) and gates that lower over the roadway. A round "RAILROAD" sign appears before the crossing. To not realize that there was a railroad crossing he'd have to ignore the first set of signs and gates; to think he was through the crossing, he'd have to ignore the second set (those turned toward the traffic coming the other way - he wouldn't be able to read the signs, but those cross-bucks and the gate are unmistakable from either side). Admittedly, this all occurred after sundown, and the red lights at the crossing wouldn't have been flashing (time passed between his getting stuck and the arrival of the train), but a railroad-crossing cross buck is pretty obvious for what it is, and I have to assume that he had his headlights on.

I can therefor only guess that the driver wasn't paying attention. He surrendered his own judgment to the GPS unit, and when he heard it, or thought he heard it tell him to turn right, he complied without considering the advisability of doing so. And I'm not terribly surprised that he did, because we surrender a lot of our judgment to signs and traffic signals when we drive. The traffic light is green, and I proceed without stopping or even slowing to look for cross traffic. And this is the right thing to do, if we wish to use our roadways with anything approaching efficiency, but we have to be careful not to surrender too much, as this man clearly did.

It is probably our faith in signs and signals that leads us to believe that we can multi-task as we drive - we eat, drink coffee, fiddle with our CDs as we drive down the road. We talk on our cell phones, either using a hands-free unit or not. We shave. We put on makeup. Usually we get away with it, but incidents like this one remind us that we won't, always, so hang-up your cell phone, put down your CDs, and pay attention to what you're doing.

* No injuries were reported in connection with this accident
* The driver of the wrecked car and the company he rented it from are being held liable for the damage to the train and tracks, plus lost revenue and other expenses which are expected to total hundreds of thousands of dollars
* NTSB's database of railroad accidents

When and why did headlights become so difficult to change?

I've probably done more maintenance, service, and installation work than most car owners. Along with headlights, brake lights, and battery, I replaced the fuel filter and the serpentine belt on my previous car. I also installed flashing lights, running the wires from the battery, though the firewall and up through the dashboard to a switch panel that I installed, then back through the firewall to the flasher, and from the switch panel, through the passenger compartment, into the trunk, and to another flasher. All of the wires were hidden, except where they came out of the dashboard behind the switch panel and ran into the panel's back. So when the headlight blew on my current car, I figured it would be easy to replace.

I was wrong. The driver's side headlight on a 2001 Saturn L-series sedan is beneath the fan control unit, and replacing the headlight requires that unit's removal. This was extra-complicated in my case because the bracket holding the fan control unit was warped. You then have to hire a six-year-old child to reach into the small space you have revealed, grasp the headlight, push it into its socket, and turn it a quarter turn. Then the lamp can be carefully be removed from its socket.

Unplugging the lamp, which can only be done once it's removed from the socket, requires finding and squeezing an unmarked, non-obvious button, and pulling firmly.

Installation is the reverse of removal, with the added difficulty that you can't touch the glass bulb with your fingers (or the bulb will eventually shatter). Also, the bulb looks like it fits in the socket at least two ways, but it only fits in one way.

Ironically, just last Friday my barber was telling me how he only changes the headlight on one side of his car - the other one he sends to the mechanic, because it's so difficult to do. Maybe I'll do that the next time the driver's side headlight blows.

Who designs these things?

I have over a stone of cat

Scruffy went to the vet today to receive his microchip, and though Shadow already has one, I took her along for the opportunity to weigh her on their scale. Scruffy weighed in at 7.5 pounds; Shadow at 8.2. If a stone is fourteen pounds, I have 1 and 1/10 stone of cat.