Posts filed under “news”
Boston Marathon Bombing
Explosions at the Boston Marathon. People killed, including a child; grisly injuries among runners and spectators. Photos of the carnage. Video of the blast as seen by a runner. Schneier recommends responding to terrorism with indomitable calm. How to Help. May all affected find aid and comfort, and the bombers be brought to justice. Update: [...]
Asteroid 2012 DA14
A small asteroid named 2012 DA14 flew close by Earth on Friday 13 Feb 2013, flying south to north, 17,200 miles from the surface at closest approach: much closer than the moon and even within the orbits of farther-out geostationary satellites. This was going to be the live space event of the month — until [...]
Chelyabinsk Meteor
A meteor (or bolide, the term for a bright, exploding fireball) exploded in the sky over Russia, with a bright flash of light and multiple loud bangs seen and heard in Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains. The shockwave injured people and caused light damage to structures in the city. Since dashboard cameras are so prevalent [...]
On the Passing of Computer Luminaries
Steve Jobs died on October 5th, shortly after the iPhone 4S was announced. Jobs’ reserved seat sat empty at the event, and as new Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered the keynote he almost certainly knew the time was near. I half-expected that he would demo the new iPhone’s FaceTime app with a call to to [...]
Santa Puts Me Back in the News
Who’d have thought writing about getting yelled at by the National Santa’s elves would land me back in the local news? This time, my WeLoveDC entry complaining about being stopped from photographing Santa’s Workshop at the National Christmas Tree got picked up in NBC Washington’s Around Town section. (Cue, of course, the requisite “WELL PEOPLE [...]
BTQ in NYT
In “Begging the Question, Again” on the Times Topics weblog, NYT deputy news editor Philip Corbett talks about the misuse of the phrase, and briefly mentions BegTheQuestion.info, my pedantic language site. I was alerted to this by the sudden flurry of “nytimes.com” inbound links in my referrer log that day. BTQ’s continued growth in popularity [...]
Area Man Takes Escalator Video, Appears On Local News
Some of you may have seen me on TV last night, on FOX 5 News Edge at 11 (news story, video). Our local Fox affiliate sent reporter Jessica Weinstein to interview me at Foggy Bottom yesterday, site of the Metro Escalator Mess that I caught on video. I recall talking at length about Metro delays [...]
USA Today on Flickr Commons
Amy and I are briefly mentioned in this USA Today story by Rebecca Kaplan on the Flickr Commons, for our restaging of the LOC lipstick photo. The article doesn’t have the photos themselves but I left a comment with a link, and of course you can see them right here:
Bush, Arroyo, Carrots, Sticks
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was in town yesterday to pay a visit to our neighbor at 16th and Penn NW (funny guy from Texas, you should meet him sometime). Now, much has been made of a supposedly offensive statement he made — “I am reminded of the great talent of the- of our Philippine-Americans when I [...]
Various Debunks
“Lost” tribe not so lost after all. The key word here is “uncontacted”; the government had known about isolated native tribes such as this one for decades, and partitioned off that land as an Indian preserve. The man responsible for the pictures played up the “lost natives” angle to draw attention to the problem of [...]