With the Federal Trade Commission’s Do Not Call registration revving up to allow you to eat dinner in peace, there are actually deceptive sites up that claim to pre-register people for the federal list. One of them was charging money for the service.

“But what can I do? I cannot kill him,” lamented Wilfried Seipel, director of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, to the NY Times. He was referring to a security guard who merely turned off what he believed to be a false alarm without investigating the cause. Later Sunday morning a cleaning woman discovered that Benvenuto Cellini’s masterpiece “Saliera” had been stolen. One or more thieves had climbed up exterior scaffolding (unsuccessfully designed to thwart such audacious thievery), broken a window, and entered the building, quickly smashing a heavy display case and running off with the 10-inch-high sculpture. Shown in lectures to many an art history student, the gold-plated salt and pepper holder is the famous work of the infamous Cellini, who led an Italian Renaissance life that would stun the imagination of modern tabloid readers, and chronicled it in his autobiography. It is likely that a private collector paid dearly to have own this piece. Perhaps an enterprising underground art dealer decided the time was ripe for a bidding war in the black market. Whatever hands it ends up in or travels through, the Kunsthistorisches Museum director hopes they will take care of this fragile Renaissance artwork.

Items from the estate of The Who’s John Entwistle go under the gavel at a Sotheby’s auction on Tuesday. Entwistle’s vast collection of over 150 guitars will be up for bid alongside a selection of brass instruments (a French horn, euphonium, tuba, tenor horn, bugles and trumpets). Life-size casts of 30 fish caught by Entwistle (hammerhead shark, marlin, barracuda) are among the more unusual items. Conventional rock memorabilia include band photos and silver, gold, and platinum records.

The NY Times is running a series of articles following the creation of one Steinway concert grand piano, No. K0862. The first in the series tells of the physical labor of the bending of the rim. There is an accompanying multimedia segment that delves into the mystery of each Steinway’s unique sound as Erika Nickrenz, pianist with the Eroica Trio, auditions three concert grands lined up in the showroom. Will the destiny of K0862 be determined by the end of the series? Some Steinways blossom with phenomenal sound while others are just another well-made Steinway.

Librarian Bill Drew is collecting a list of libraries with wireless Internet access. (via xBlog)

A Chronicle article on nanotech spoke of “stain-resistant ‘nanopants’ already on the market.” Nanopants? “Nano=Care” pants, available at Eddie Bauer, are made of material marketed by Nano-Tex. The fabric is coated at a molecular level with stain resistant chemicals. The Eddie Bauer chinos were introduced in 2001. For the latest nano-news, check Nanodot, a Slashdot for nanotech.

Short bits today:

We know who won’t be watching NBC on May 19th. “Martha Inc.: The Story of Martha Stewart” with Cybill Shepherd as the duchess of domestics will air that evening. Review copies of the tape arrived in TV critics’ mailboxes accompanied by a nutcracker and two walnuts.

Infogrames is going all the way with their ownership of the Atari brand by renaming their company and their NASDAQ symbol. But Midway still owns the original agames.com domain (not that it has much recognition as an Atari domain unless you are in the know).

$100,000 for one easy day of filming versus maintaining your journalistic integrity? Yesterday, the NY Times ran an article questioning the use of news anchors in public television “news breaks” that are paid for solely by the health care companies that are being profiled. The CNN anchor mentioned quickly backed out of the deal, and Walter Cronkite will likely pull his participation as well.

High on the list of things I took for granted during my Connecticut childhood are the bridges of the Merritt Parkway. Named for Congressman Schuyler Merritt, the Parkway was constructed between 1935 and 1940 as a public works project. Its woodsy 37 miles runs through southwestern Connecticut, and, during off-peak hours, is a lovely alternative to the truck fumes of I-95. It has been featured on Letterman Top 10 lists (“Little Known Provisions in President Clinton’s Crime Bill: No speed limit on Merritt Parkway for late night talk show hosts”) and is the highway on which most 16 year old Fairfield County residents first drove 55 mph. The 70+ bridges that needed to be constructed for the Merritt were designed by architect George Dunkelburger to fulfill its scenic purpose. Historic motifs and various styles are represented in the bridge decorations. Complexity ranges from a simple “stone wall” to fancy concrete detailing. An ambitious traveler took photos of 28 of the bridges. The Parkway has inspired a conservation effort.

There is one rather reviled bridge along the Merritt route. The “Sikorsky Bridge” forms one end of the Merritt, connecting it up to the Wilbur Cross Parkway, over the Housatonic River. Named, informally, after nearby Sikorsky Helicopters, visible to the north, the bridge has an open steel-grid deck. What it lacks in aesthetics it does not make up for in user friendliness. Driving across the open grid gives me the same feeling I get when I can’t get an amusement park bumper car to go where I want it to. It’s as if my tires are as scared as I would be if I were walking across the see-through grate, with the river waters clearly visible far below. However, the wheel trembling will be a mere memory soon. The bridge is being replaced and the new structure will have a solid deck of concrete and asphalt.

“Deaccession” is the term used when a museum removes a piece from its collection. I ran across a Yahoo photo of a Degas pastel, “Danseuse”, scheduled to be auctioned by Sotheby’s this week, and discovered that it is being sold by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A tiny flurry of news articles immediately followed the MFA’s announcement in March that it would be selling “Danseuse,” plus another Degas work and a Renoir portrait. The proceeds were destined for the acquisition of a major work, the identity of which the museum refused to divulge, calling it only a “masterpiece”. Journalists pressed their sources and the latest news, unconfirmed of course, reports that the MFA is raising money to purchase an 1876 Degas painting titled ”The Duchessa di Montejasi with Her Daughters Elena and Camilla.” Estimated price is $20 million. Proceeds from the auction of the three works is estimated at $17 million. Some may quibble over the loss of the lovely Degas pastel, but with a $425 million building-expansion campaign under way, not to mention a plodding economy, the museum isn’t expecting donors to furnish very high ticket art. There are fewer masterpieces left in private hands, and the MFA is pursuing a rare chance to pluck one out for public view.

Yuk or yum? I have been fighting snails continuously since I planted some basil last year. Snails love basil. After unsatisfactory investigations into beer traps, copper barriers, and midnight hand-picking, I had settled on iron phosphate bait. Then one morning I saw birds merrily breakfasting on the tasty snail bait. I’ve just about given up on fresh pesto this year. Culinary cravings brought the brown garden snail to California in the first place. The gardener’s hated Helix aspersa is one and the same as the gourmet’s escargot. They were imported for food in the 1850s, but never quite caught on here as they did in France. Freed from their culinary prison, the snails proliferated amongst the gourmet California vegetation. You can catch and eat them if you’d like. The ones around our garden at least are already well-seasoned with basil.