Making Cassandra start correctly

I've started playing with the Cassandra database. The README.txt file that comes with the distribution omits one simple but critical step:

# The first five steps are fine
$ tar -zxvf cassandra-$VERSION.tgz
$ cd cassandra-$VERSION
$ sudo mkdir -p /var/log/cassandra
$ sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/cassandra
$ sudo chown -R `whoami` /var/lib/cassandra

# They forgot to tell you to do this.
$ sudo chown -R `whoami` /var/log/cassandra

If you don't change the ownership on the /var/log/cassandra directory, cassandra (and cassandra-cli, the command-line client) will spit lots of sparks when you start it up.