Oooo boy, now we've done it: we've got the FCC on our case again. We thought we'd seen the last of those guys once we apologized for the On-Air Noodle Incident (we can't go into details without violating the terms of the settlement, but hey, everyone heard about the On-Air Noodle Incident), but it turns out that they're waving that whole "equal time" rule at us and pointing, well, pointedly at our recently-referenced scenes about Macs surviving raging fires. Apparently, since it's an election year, they're really being sticklers about the equal time thing, and so they're insisting that in order to balance our previous anecdotes about Macs surviving fires, we now have to work in a plot thread about Macs starting fires. Hey, don't ask us; we just work here.

Luckily, just such a story has been making the rounds. (Coincidences rock!) Faithful viewer Andrew Goetz informs us of an article in The Daily Princetonian which reports that the Royal and Sun Alliance Insurance Company has slapped Apple with a lawsuit in hopes of recouping some or all of a $2 million payout the company had to cough up when part of Princeton University caught fire a couple of years back. It seems that Princeton firefighters "determined that an Apple Power Mac G4 plugged into an electrical receptacle box" was the cause of the blaze, which damaged "DNA sequencers, peptic synthesizers, computers, furniture, freezers, plumbing," and, sources tell us, half of an egg salad sandwich that one of the grad students estimates to have been worth $1.1 million for "sentimental reasons."

Personally, we think it's pretty shady to blame Apple's "faulty wiring" for the fire, because the only time we've seen a Mac set itself ablaze was when one committed suicide when forced to run some exceptionally painful software. So we figure the university is largely at fault for letting some random student install and try to run Word 6.0 on the poor thing. Seriously, what choice did it have? With any luck, a judge will see it the same way.

Meanwhile, this scene serves double duty: not only does it fulfill that "equal time" requirement that the FCC is moaning about, but since Princeton University is located in the country of Rhode Island, it also lets us finish out International Week with a bang! Yes, this week we've visited France, China, Canada, and now the balmy tropical shores of Rhode Island, last wild refuge of the Great Speckled Auk. Interesting fun fact: Rhode Island's official unit of currency is the "gek," which is an octagonal copper coin with a hole in the middle and bearing the likeness of the island's first great leader, Mbutseklecch, who, through the judicious use of fire and primitive agricultural tools, saved the island from an invasion of migratory shellfish in 1804. The native language is a guttural tongue called "Hechchchht," although most inhabitants speak at least some English. The country's main export is salt water taffy.

What's that? Princeton's actually in New Jersey? Okay, whatever. Same difference.