Here’s a bee sipping nectar from a sunflower at the USBG, and a lone monarch butterfly stopping to rest on the National Mall. (Mid-migration?)
Mike and Rowie
Congrats to Mike and Rowie, two close friends who finally got hitched last Saturday! I’ve known Mike since 4th Grade, and Rowie since college, (both of them Ateneans) and never did I imagine while we were in school that it would be the two of them years later — but it looked perfect when they finally did get engaged, and it still does today. Toni has photos, and Angie and Ganns (note the new URL) were there too.
Thanks to Adashki for the photo above, taken at Mary the Queen Church in San Juan. I used to sing in the choir at MTQ back when I was Roman Catholic. Great church. Jesuits.
At the Zoo
My zoo photos tend not to come out too clearly, either because the animals are so far away from me that I have to push my camera’s digital zoom to the extreme ends of blurriness, or because of insufficient light inside buildings necessitating a faster — but grainier — shutter speed (since I usually keep flash off). Still here’s some of the good stuff from the weekend:
Sleeping pandas, including Butterstick in a tree:
Two elephants standing such that they look like a single six-legged elephant:
In the bird house, a funny warning sign and an owl in an O RLY YA RLY moment:
A very stern-looking wattled crane:
See more in the DC Weekend June 2006 photoset.
Zoos and Museums and Gardens
Amy came over for the weekend, and the days were perfect for a visit, bright and dry and cool and pulsing with potential and energy. (Or maybe that last bit was from the coffee.) We went to the zoo to see what we could see of the latest baby boom: sloth bear (not on display), kiwi (couldn’t see it), tiger cubs (not on display), and Butterstick (sleeping in a tree). On Sunday, I was reader for the Old and New Testament lessons at church, and the choir sang “‘Twas in the Year That King Uzziah Died.” Afterward, we dropped by the National Geographic Explorers Hall to view the Gospel of Judas papyrus fragments and see Crusader Castles in Miniature. The rest of the afternoon was spent at the National Gallery to see Venetian Drawings and Master Drawings from the Woodner Collections. We also visited various gardens along the Mall, including the US Botanic Gardens, the Ripley Garden, the Haupt Garden, and the Butterfly Garden (which had no butterflies in it, though we did see a monarch flitting about the Mall itself). Finally, a restroom stop at Natural History led us to an exhibit of Antarctic photos.
Many pictures were taken, some of which I will show you here, and others of which will make for fun photolog entries in the next few days. Go to the DC Weekend June 2006 photoset to see them all.
House Knocks Down Net Neutrality
I just heard some sad news on talk radio. Net Neutrality was found dead in Congress this morning. There weren’t any more details. I’m sure everyone in the community will miss it. Even if you didn’t enjoy its work, there’s no denying its contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
Update: Just to give you an idea of this problem carried to its extreme logical conclusion, here’s what the internet might look like were it up to the corporations lobbying to get rid of net neutrality:
New DC Metro Voice
I’m sure those of you who regularly ride the DC Metro have heard the new subway voice:
Some people say they don’t like her [1, 2, 3, 4], but I think I like the new voice. She’s a bit more brisk, the chimes a bit more urgent, as compared to the relatively lackadaisical old voice. This sounds like a voice that means business, more likely to get people to actually stand clear of the doors. If you pay attention, there’s even a little code in the xylophone-like chimes: two high dings mean the doors are about to open, high ding followed by low ding means the doors are currently open and about to close, two low dings mean that the doors are closed or should be closed but someone’s got an arm or a purse stuck.
In a world where it were up to me, however, this is how my Metro voice would go:
What do you think? Complete with the Hans Zimmer soundtrack, I think it would totally rock.
ABU MUSAB AL-ZARQAWI SENT TO HELL IN HANDBASKET PROVIDED VIA FIERY RAIN OF RIGHTEOUSLY MERCILESS AMERICAN VENGEANCE
Or so would read my dream-headline for yesterday’s big news: the timely delivery of large quantities of live ordinance ordnance to the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. It’s not quite the capture of Osama Bin Saddam, but I was expecting the news outlets to go all out reporting this. Here’s what we got in the way of breaking headlines on major news websites:
FOX News was quick and concise: DEAD, in capital letters over a red spatter of fresh blood. There’s a slightly grim sense of victory here, a tight-lipped, clenched-fisted war room kind of ambience, not quite the cathartic explosion of audacious jubilation I would have expected from FOX News.
CNN showed a marked sense of excitement, liberally sprinkled with Bush quotes, including a “justice is served” subhead to drive home the victory of the moment. Plus, there’s the screengrab from that classic Zarqawi With Jammed M249 video. The hatred for Zarqawi projected by CNN’s Zarqawi box is palpable, giving us even more of a “RAH RAH USA KILLED THE BAD GUY” vibe than FOX News, interestingly enough. I’m also surprised that they didn’t use a bigger font for the main banner; they’ve gone much bigger before.
The Beeb lives up to all expectations, showing a nominally factual news story unable to keep from mentioning the failures of the coalition government, unsubtly interspersed and surrounded with sentimental tributes to the life and times of this staunch, brave, unbowed Iraqi freedom fighter. Nothing says “We Love You Zarqy Baby” like “A Life in Pictures.” You can almost feel the disappointment in the sidebar headline “Blow to Insurgency.”
Al Jazeera, of course, is quick to get feedback from the Zarqawi family in Jordan, who fully expected this and give praise for his martyrdom, etc, etc; but note how the headline article studiously refers to Iraq as “the Land of Two Rivers” or “Mesopotamia” when referring to Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda affiliation. It’s like the scholarly types at Al-J really want us kafir to see the illustrious cultural richness of the Persian heritage vis-a-vis the terrorist insurgency, or perhaps they’re stressing that Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda operational reach went beyond Iraq’s boundaries, to the rest of the region. Oh, and that “Life” box in the sidebar provides endless irony.
Oh come on, Drudge, you can do better. How about “Iraq Jumps the Zarq”? Or at least use some red, like FOX did? Or an exclamation point or three!!!
Sploid‘s story looks fairly conventional, but the real juicy is in the juxtaposition with other tabloidesque article headlines. Note the “God Strikes Again and Again,” which, though being about lightning, could at first glance be thought to refer to God smiting America’s enemies. And you can’t miss that “Bin Laden Hunter’s Parrot Pardoned” box. On the other hand, these tabloid story boxes shift around a lot as the news changes, so what’s in this screenshot might not necessarily be what you see when you go there.
More from Metafilter, Michelle Malkin, Tom Tomorrow, Little Green Footballs, Scott Adams, Cox and Forkum, Daily Kos, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush. Hey, don’t say I link you to only one end of the spectrum.
Back to Bloglines
I just went back to Bloglines. I know I said before that feeds are a river and Bloglines was drowning me, but after a few months, Kinja just isn’t doing it for me, plus, like Google Reader, it lacks batch editing capabilities, which is a real pain when you want to remove or recategorize a whole bunch of feeds. Worse, the javascript-heavy interface takes a while to load, with all the yellow fades and curve-cornered layers — especially on the “manage favorites” page — and it was hindering rather than helping my feed management labors.
So, it’s back to the frames-based, occasionally clunky Bloglines UI. To stem the sometimes overwhelming tide of content, I’ve switched the feed display to “Titles Only,” making it easier to filter through stuff. Kinja stays as backup.
I do not like AJAX.
Another DC Summer Afternoon
More photos from yesterday’s walk home. It was one of those perfectly lit afternoons, when the setting sun casts its rays through the hazy summer air just so, and the amber light turns just about any photo into a work of art. I couldn’t stop snapping. Click on the thumbs below to see them larger, and view the full set here.
Squirrel at Fountain
Walking home from work yesterday, I ran into this squirrel eagerly sucking water from a fountain in Lafayette Park, near the White House. I pressed the button on the fountain to see if I could give him a little more water, but the fountain was not actually working, so he’ll have to be satisfied with the drops he could get. I’d like to point out that he never ran off, even when I stuck the camera in his face or pressed the fountain button right by his head.
Lafayette Fountain Squirrel is also featured in today’s DCist Morning Roundup, and was one of the Interesting Flickr photos of 06/06/06.