A college student in Ohio who was charged with playing rap music too loudly on his car stereo had some trouble listening to classical music.
Andrew Vactor was facing a $150 fine for sound violation, but a judge offered to reduce that to $35 if Vactor spent 20 hours listening to classical music by the likes of Bach, Beethoven and Chopin.
Vactor, 24, lasted 15 minutes, a probation officer said.
It wasn’t the music, Vactor said, he just needed to be at practice with the rest of the Urbana University basketball team.
“I didn’t have the time to deal with that,” he said. “I just decided to pay the fine.”
Champaign County Municipal Court Judge Susan Fornof-Lippencott says the idea was to force Vactor to listen to something he might not prefer, just as other people had no choice but to listen to his loud rap music.
“I think a lot of people don’t like to be forced to listen to music,” she said.
She’s also taped TV shows for defendants in other cases to watch on topics such as financial responsibility. As she sees it, they get the chance to have their fine reduced “and at the same time broaden their horizons.”
— In Philadelphia, an attorney is finding out that typos can be expensive.
A judge says lawyer Brian Puricelli, of Newtown, is entitled to $26,000 in fees for his work on a successful civil rights lawsuit, not the more than $180,000 he wanted.
U.S. District Judge William Ditter, in an opinion filed last week, noted that the attorney’s paperwork was riddled with typos and errors.
Puricelli admits he relies too heavily on spell-check software and doesn’t proofread enough. But he also says the judge should have known he had accidentally filed an unedited copy, and that amended paperwork filed three days later was the finished product.
Ditter, however, says that filing had errors too.
This is the second time Puricelli had his fees slashed for sloppiness. The same thing happened with a different judge in 2004.
— In a sign of the times, the National Debt Clock in New York City has run out of digits to record the growing figure.
As a short-term fix, the digital dollar sign on the billboard-style clock near Times Square has been switched to a figure — the “1’’ in $10 trillion. It’s marking the federal government’s current debt at about $10.2 trillion.
The Durst Organization says it plans to update the sign next year by adding two digits. That will make it capable of tracking debt up to a quadrillion dollars.
The late Manhattan real estate developer Seymour Durst put the sign up in 1989 to call attention to what was then a $2.7 trillion debt.
— Maybe they should try this for presidential candidates.
Two challengers for an Indiana congressional seat have agreed to be hooked up to lie detectors during a debate.
Ninth District Republican Party Chairman Larry Shickles on Wednesday proposed the political polygraphs for Democratic Rep. Baron Hill, GOP challenger Mike Sodrel and Libertarian candidate Eric Schansberg. The three are scheduled to debate Oct. 21, but an official with a debate co-sponsor said lie detectors won’t be included.
“Our planning committee worked up the format and rules, and we are not inviting negotiations from the candidates,” Alan Johnson, dean of Vincennes University’s Jasper Campus, told The Herald of Jasper.
Shickles, in a letter sent Tuesday to 9th District Democratic Chairman Mike Jones, suggested that the candidates be hooked up to lie detecting machines at the Oct. 21 event or a separate debate.
“While this format may be unusual, I feel strongly that voters need to be able to make a clear decision without all the usual spin,” Shickles wrote.
Sodrel’s campaign said he would agree to the proposal, and Schansberg said he also would agree to wear a lie detector. Hill declined to comment.
Jones said having a lie detector debate “just seems pretty bizarre.”
“Polygraphs have their use in law enforcement, but I don’t see them fitting in a political debate,” Jones said. “There are plenty of avenues for finding out each candidate’s true position. The votes of both Baron Hill and Mike Sodrel are on record with Congress.”
The race pits Hill and Sodrel against each other for the fourth time. Sodrel unseated Hill in 2004, but Hill won the seat back in 2006.
— And finally, watch your stove. It might be armed.
A woman in Sekiu, Wash., said she was shot in the leg by her stove.
Cory Davis told the Peninsula Daily News she had just stoked her cast-iron heating stove Sunday when she heard a loud bang and was struck in her left calf.
Davis says a case of shotgun shells spilled about a month ago at her home and one must have landed in the newspapers she used to light the stove.
She removed a metal fragment herself and was treated Monday at Forks Community Hospital.
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