New Futurama episodes coming!

Saw this on slashdot this morning:

"Good news everyone! Straight from a one-eyed alien's mouth - 13 new episodes of Futurama have been confirmed by Katey Sagal on Craig Ferguson's Late Late Show. All the original actors have signed up too."

Apparently there are 13 new episodes coming to Comedy Central in 2008. Nice to see another one of my favorite shows come back from cancellation!

Tips for staying awake at the wheel

As a narcoleptic, I have to constantly battle with sleepiness all day, every day. Falling asleep at the wheel, especially while sitting in traffic, is a very real danger. It is my responsibility, as a driver, to avoid putting myself and others in danger.

So, I'm always looking for new ways to stay awake while driving. Here are some of the methods I've used. Hopefully they can be of use to someone:

- chew gum (had to stop this when I got braces, though)
- munch on something. chips, crackers, french fries, M&M's, etc.
- listen to the radio instead of CDs, especially talk radio (but not if it's boring to you)
- listen to CDs, but make sure it's music that you know well, so you can sing along the whole time.

I haven't decided if sunglasses help me stay awake, or help me fall asleep. On the one hand, the bright sun in my eyes makes me feel like closing my eyes. But sunglasses make it darker, so it feels more like night time, thus I feel like closing my eyes then, too.

Do you have any tips that work well for you? Please leave a comment and tell me about them!

Dictionaries are considered evidence in death penalty trials?

From an article on Wired News:

The judge in Zacarias Moussaoui's death penalty trial admonished the jury Friday to avoid dictionaries after learning a juror looked up the meaning of "aggravating."
[...]
Deliberations halted briefly Friday after the court learned that a juror had turned to a dictionary _ which U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema had refused to supply the jury earlier in the week when asked.[...]
[...]
Earlier in the week, Brinkema denied the jury's request for a dictionary, saying that to supply them would be like placing extraneous evidence in jury room.

Wow.. So a dictionary is evidence in a death penalty trial?

What if a juror is not the most educated, or they're ESL?
It seems to me that a dictionary is one of the few resources they SHOULD have available to them.

I can understand not allowing jurors to watch the news, read a magazine, Google search, etc. But from what I've seen (mostly TV/movies) of legal/courtroom stuff, lawyers (when addressing the jury) seem to often say things like "[SomeEvilCrime] is defined as ...", since precise wording and language is extremely important in legal proceedings.

In the judge's defense, she did verbally provide a definition of "aggravating" to the jury, and apparently the jury's instructions already included a definition for "aggravating factors", and the juror should not have used a dictionary after specifically having been told not to.

It just seems silly that a dictionary could be considered "extraneous evidence" in a death penalty trial (unless that dictionary had been used as a weapon to kill someone (some editions are awfully big and heavy!)).