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Holidays with family

I posted some of these pictures a while back, but forgot to link to them from the blog. This year, we celebrated Thanksgiving with Stef's family on the actual holiday, then traveled to Boston the following weekend for Thanksgiving with my family and our annual Hanukkah-Christmas celebration with family friends. My parents visited DC two weeks later, followed by Christmas with Stef's family again, for a wonderfully family-packed month.

posted on Jan 9, 2008 6:49 pm (comment)

tags: family, photos, Stefanie

Bad urbanism on the Potomac waterfront

In December, I got into an interesting debate on the Dupont Forum neighborhood list about my feelings concerning the Third Church landmarking. Lance, who considers the building a "masterpiece," asked if my desire to get rid of most 1970s-era buildings in downtown DC extended to more widely praised structures like the Watergate and Kennedy Center.

I replied:

The Watergate and Kennedy Center are, as mid-20th century buildings go, pretty nice, and I'm not in favor of razing them. However, they still do not represent good urbanism either, especially when considered in context with the Potomac River Freeway which was built around the same time (the West Leg of the 1971 Inner Loop plan, whose cancelled North Leg would have ruined Dupont). Both buildings are clearly designed for cars and with a more suburban sensibility, such as the way the Watergate has an interior park but presents a mostly blank wall to the streetscape. Most land around the Kennedy Center is used for getting cars in, out and around, than for human beings.

I added that I hadn't really had a chance to explore those sites in detail, which prompted me to take a walk down there for some photos.

Cheers: Obama; jeers: CNN

I'm glad Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus. Despite serious reservations about Obama's habit of rhetorically running against progressives, I also like much of what he believes, and he is bringing new people into the Democratic Party. And very importantly, Obama has the best chance of defeating Hillary Clinton for the nomination. I believe her Presidency would continue the entrenchment of right-wing frames and hawkish security policies that have been so destructive. (Larry Lessig articulates the case for Obama and against Clinton well.)

Watching CNN last night, I was struck by the lengths to which the commentators went to avoid talking about policy. It was all "the energy of the supporters" and Obama is young and about change and yada yada yada. The excerpt they replayed from Obama's speech was perhaps the most inane piece, the part about independents and Republicans coming together for him (huh?). In the speech, he did talk about policy (a little), and I believe that Hillary Clinton's war vote and ongoing support of saber-rattling in Iran cost her.

But CNN's Candy Crowley actively disagreed when Wolf Blitzer asked her if Clinton's war vote played a part, saying Clinton had changed her position and has been a staunch opponent of war with Iran. That's only true on the surface (she moves us closer while vehemently insisting on her opposition in carefully qualified language). But the surface is all that matters if you're CNN.

posted on Jan 4, 2008 12:37 pm (comment)

tags: Barack Obama, CNN, Hillary Clinton, Iowa, politics, press

FoxTrot agrees: your Senator needs an iPod

The December 30th FoxTrot comic hits on the very idea IPac ran with two years ago: sending iPods to Senators. Back in February 2006, Senator Ted Stevens mentioned the iPod he'd gotten for Christmas in a hearing, and to educate Senators on the many legitimate uses of digital technology, IPac launched the Your Senator Needs an iPod campaign.

It was a stunt as much as anything, but it generated awareness of the digital divide between citizens and elected officials who barely understand the technology they are legislating. The humorous nature of the campaign was the very quality played up by Sunday's FoxTrot, in which Jason sends iPods to members of the U.S. Senate this Christmas for exactly the same reason IPac did.

A small excerpt of the comic (click to read the whole thing with punchline):

posted on Jan 2, 2008 2:26 pm (comment)

tags: comedy, Congress, FoxTrot, IP, IPac, iPod

Elephants!

For our second day in Chiang Mai, we went to the Chiang Dao elephant camp. This was definitely on the touristy side, but also a lot of fun. Each elephant has a mahout, or trainer, who works with the same elephant starting when the mahout and the elephant are both very young.

The day begins with an elephant show, where the mahouts demonstrate how elephents can push, pull, roll, and lift huge logs, which was how construction materials were transported and manipulated before trucks and forklifts. They also show off various tricks, such as starting the show with one elephant raising the flag on the flagpole, having the elephants pick up the mahout's hats off the ground and place them on their heads, and doing "elephant paintings" where the mahout holds a paintbrush in the elephant's trunk and the elephant waves it up and down or makes dots.

Flybys

Cities are beautiful at night, New York especially. Last weekend we flew to Boston for Thanksgiving with my family (we spent the actual holiday with Stef's family this year). It's amazing what a difference the camera makes, especially in low light. I had my new(ish) Canon Eos 30D with me on this trip, and was able to get these pictures of New York and Providence, while I've never been able to successfully capture a city at night with any lesser camera.

posted on Dec 6, 2007 9:22 am (2 comments)

tags: New York, photos, Providence

More photos around DC

posted on Dec 5, 2007 8:41 pm (comment)

tags: photos, Washington

Quick links

I've added the ability to post little links on my blog that will be displayed in a more compact format between posts, like Gawker-empire blogs do. (If you're seeing this post on the main page or a chronological archive page, there are two right below.)

posted on Dec 4, 2007 9:30 pm (comment)

tags: meta

Knocked Up was "a little sexist": So says Katherine Heigl because the female characters were "shrews." While the movie was cute and enjoyable, I did have this reaction as well. (comment)

Here Comes Another Bubble: Hilarious video about Web 2.0 and startups in the Valley, to the tune of Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire. (comment)

Hell freezes over; also, Verizon opens up network

Maybe it's the criticism Verizon has been getting on blogs, in the press, from academics, and in Congress for its anticompetitive behavior. Maybe it's pressure from activist groups like Save the Internet. Maybe it's the upcoming spectrum auction, where the FCC implemented some (but not enough) rules to encourage mobile competition, and Verizon sees the writing on the wall. Maybe it's because they refused to launch the iPhone on their network, and instead Apple ended up with an exclusive with AT&T. Maybe it's Google's recent announcement of their open Android platform.

Whatever the reason, yesterday Verizon—the most control-freak-ish of mobile carriers, the one that cripples phones to disable WiFi or Bluetooth or anything that might compete with their high-priced service add-ons, the one that refused to give NARAL SMS access, whose BREW system locks out all but the deepest-pocketed developers—that same Verizon Wireless yesterday announced that it will open up its network to any phone, the "cellular Carterfone" Tim Wu has been advocating.