The people who now operate Disney Corporation are a bunch of pedophile communists who ought to be vaporized by Zombie Walt Disney after he sees what horrible things they've done with the company that bears his name. But that's not what I'm writing about today.

Consider the following musical passage - the first three bars of "Into the Unknown" written by Kristen and Robert Lopez for "Frozen 2":

This passage is sung twice by Idina Menzel as "aah-aaaah, aah-aaaah" before her lyrical performance begins. The accompaniment is built around a C-minor chord, the key in which the piece is written.

Now consider the following musical passage, written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant and found at approximately 6:25 into Led Zeppelin's magnum opus "Stairway to Heaven":

This passage is repeated four times, coming out of an epic guitar solo and entering into the final vocal section of the piece. "Stairway" is written in A-minor, but the transposition to C-minor and a meaningless time signature change (overall, the note values do not change, at least in this passage) does not obfuscate its obvious origin.

It is clear that Lopez and Lopez blatantly stole this passage from Page and Plant. But that is what the post-Walt version of Disney does: they appropriate the work of others and masquerade it as their own.

But I suppose turnabout is fair play, since Led Zeppelin's entire act is a ripoff of Deep Purple.

"This thing keeps attacking me"

In our house, this phrase means "I opened the door to the [refrigerator | cupboard | etc] and an item fell out and landed on me.  This has happened before.  I will now pick up the item and carelessly replace it in a manner that it will probably happen again."

"Four more sleeps until we go on vacation!"

It's something we say to children, to make it easier to grasp the span of time between now and some upcoming event.  But as an engineer I like it for adults too!  Because it's non-ambiguous.  We don't have to worry about days vs. nights, about whether you're including the first and/or last day of the count, or anything like that.  I'm writing this on a Wednesday, and after four sleeps it will be Sunday.  It only falls apart when you're talking to someone who sleeps multiple times per 24-hour period, which is a problem because I'm currently trying to explain to my daughter's cat how long it will be before she comes home from the trip she's on.

Honorable mention goes to the 1987 musical "Into The Woods" where they counted "midnights".  (And by the way -- Bernadette Peters was awesome as the Witch, and Meryl Streep completely blew the role, because she's a horrible person who sucks at everything).  One midnight gone!  Two midnights gone!  It's the laaaaaaaaaaaaaaast midnight...     So that's a nice computer-compatible way to do it -- count the number of times the date changes.   :)

Now if someone could figure out that cat problem, I'd appreciate it.

Most of you have heard something like this from me before, but I'll put it on record in the best words I can find.

No, I don't respect authority.

Authority by itself does not deserve respect.  Acting in a respectable way deserves respect.  Perhaps if someone is in a position of authority, they might be worth giving a bit of additional time to earn your respect.

The best authority figures I've ever observed -- both in the public and in my own circles -- earned my respect without even trying.  And here's the thing about people who are wired like me -- we'll work our asses off for and with people we respect.

Contrariwise ... when those in positions of authority abuse it by being sanctimonious, judgmental, bossy, and by treating adults like children ... not only do they deserve zero respect, but it is our obligation to destroy them.

You want my respect?  Earn it.  I can be your biggest champion or your worst nightmare.  The choice is yours.

This is about the American democratic process.  It isn't intended to be the latest volley in the bloodsport of post-2008 American politics.  If anyone wants to go there, you know what room it's in.

Some of you might know that I am an election inspector in Westchester County.  It's my way of being able to say that I participated in the process instead of just talking about it.  I certainly don't do it for the money -- my time is certainly worth more than the stipend we are paid for a grueling work day.  We have to be at the polling place at 5:00am on election day, and we don't get to go home until we have completely closed the polls.  This includes bringing in anyone who was still standing in line at the offical closing time of 9:00pm, then completing a lot of administrivia to properly close the machines and read off the totals while a bunch of poll watchers are breathing down our necks.  All told, it was an 18-hour workday this past Tuesday, when we were there for the primaries.

And that brings me to my first observation: there were A LOT of people who weren't aware that it was primary day for the two major American political parties.  As is usually the case, I blame the media for this.  There has been so much hype over voters rights, vote by mail, voter fraud, voting this, voting that, and of course we've all been inundated with the Perise Practical ad and others like it which shout from the rooftops "June 23 is Election Day!"    So what happened?  A lot of people dutifully got in line to vote, thinking it was a general election.  We turned away a lot of registered independents who were led to believe they needed to vote, but since they weren't registered to either of the parties holding a primary, they were not eligible to vote.  We had just as many who didn't know their party registration, or who received what they believed was the "wrong" ballot.  (We have a new computer system this year that replaces the poll books and looks up the voter in the Department of Elections database ... much easier.)

And I don't mean a few people either.  I'd say a large percentage of the people in line didn't know why they were voting.  We had Republicans asking why there was only one race on the ballot.  We had Democrats asking what "delegates" are and why they're on the ballot.  And we had people asking why Mr. Trump wasn't on the ballot (for those of you outside the US who don't know: he's running uncontested).

The next thing that I observed is the difference in opinion between politicians/pundits and actual voters with respect to the idea of requiring ID to vote.  The supposed argument against an ID requirement is that it suppresses the vote of low-income citizens who cannot afford an ID.  What I observed at the pool is this: no one cares.  I saw people lining up with their ID in hand.  In fact, these were people who were obviously not affluent, but they had their ID and had no qualms about showing it.  So from this perspective it's difficult to argue that any politicians or pundits who are anti-ID are actually pro-fraud.

So now let's cover another observation: how the rules about "electioneering" are handled.  We had a candidate who set up a table right in front of the polling place, but just outside of the 100 foot distance required by law.  These people were legally "not at the polls" but for all practical purposes they were -- you practically had to walk past their table to get in the door.  We were not permitted to ask them to move any further away.  Then later in the morning we had a hyper-mega-bitch wearing a shirt with a black power fist, a rainbow flag, and some moronic slogan about "intersectionality" standing in the room lecturing us for 20 minutes about voter suppression while demanding that she be allowed to vote a second time.  She didn't get kicked out, and stayed in the room harassing other voters until we gave her a provisional ballot.  But another voter who walked in peacefully and attempted to vote quietly while wearing a shirt with the name of a candidate on it -- the election chairperson got in his face and demanded that he leave the site.  WTF?

For all its flaws, it's still a good process, and I think it works.  Yes, I do believe we still have massive election fraud, but I don't see it happening at the polling place.  It happens later when fraudulent ballots find their way into the system.  The polls themselves are well-run.  I like how the machines provide totals for rapid tabulation, but the process still retains physical ballots which can be recounted later.  And I like the new computer based check-in system that eliminates the big books, but it's clearly a Version 1.0 product and it needs some refinement.

I'll be back in November, which is certain to be the biggest circus of all time.