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.

IMG_6971.JPG IMG_6972.JPG IMG_6969.JPG IMG_6996.JPG IMG_7006.JPG IMG_7011.JPG IMG_7020.JPG IMG_7024.JPG IMG_7029.JPG

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.

[crossposted to Metafilter]

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:

Without Net Neutrality

More from DC Metroblogging.

New DC Metro Voice

.

I’m sure those of you who regularly ride the DC Metro have heard the new subway voice:


powered by ODEO

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:


powered by ODEO

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 screenshot

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 screenshot

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.

BBC News screenshot

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 screenshot

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.

Drudge Report screenshot

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 screenshot

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.

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.

IMG_6833.JPG

IMG_6837.JPG

Lafayette Fountain Squirrel is also featured in today’s DCist Morning Roundup, and was one of the Interesting Flickr photos of 06/06/06.

Upgrading my Mac Life

.

I did two major (to me) Mac-related things recently: I upgraded to OS X 10.3.9, and I got a 512MB iPod Shuffle. Yeah, I’m cheap.

IMG_5477.JPG iPod Shuffle 512MB

It’s been three and a half years since the iBook’s tumultuous arrival, and it continues to serve me faithfully, chugging along with its 384 MB of RAM, a bit battered and worn with age, but still working pretty well. I contemplated trading up to a G4 (or, more recently, an Intel MacBook), but this iBook has sentimental value to me, having been my first Mac, the machine which helped me get my Master’s Degree, and it still runs fine, so I’ve opted not to sell it. Today the iBook sits on its iCurve beside the Netvista, running as a webcam server and music player — and I still bring it with me when I go on trips. All this time it’s been running OS X 10.2 “Jaguar,” but I figured if I was going to keep it, I had better upgrade, since Jaguar seems to have almost completely lapsed into obsolescence in the Mac software world. A G3/700 with only 384MB of RAM probably would have trouble handling OS X 10.4 “Tiger”, so I opted for 10.3 “Panther,” which came relatively cheap secondhand on eBay.

No mercy: I wiped the HDD completely after a quick backup. (I didn’t even bother to keep my old email.) OS X 10.3 installed quickly, and just as quickly ran software update to get up to 10.3.9. Since I named the Netvista “Fezzik,” for being a huge, hulking brute, I renamed the iBook “Vizzini,” after the proud Sicilian intellectual who met his untimely death in a poisonous mind game with the Dread Pirate Roberts.

I will talk about the iPod Shuffle at length in another post.

06/06/06

.

Good morning, everyone. It’s 6:06 AM EDT of 06/06/06, and the world hasn’t ended! A lot of people will probably feel an urge to leaf through John’s Revelation today. The dreaded number is mentioned in Rev 13, at the sight of the Second Beast, which rises out of the earth after the First Beast rises from the sea, after John’s vision of Israel as a woman adorned with the sun, moon, and 12 stars, who is chased by Satan, who makes war on her offspring, the Christians.

Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence, and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound was healed. It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in front of people, and by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that was wounded by the sword and yet lived. And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain. Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.
– Rev 13:11-18

(Note that “Antichrist” is not mentioned. The term is not used in John’s Revelation, but in two of his earlier letters, and is thought to have referred to the Gnostics, who denied Christ’s bodily nature.)

Many Christians believe the Two Beasts are a prophecy of a coming time when a great world leader and his servant will lead the world in ways against God. Others believe that the passage refers to a time already past, when Christians were persecuted by the Empire. At various times by various people, the 666 Beast has been thought to refer to Nero, Caligula, Domitian, Adolf Hitler, Aleister Crowley, Ronald Reagan, the Pope, the United Nations, credit cards, barcodes, RFID technology, and David Hasselhoff.

(There was some earlier hubbub about the discovery of a manuscript which used the numbers “616” rather than “666,” but given that the Greek forms of the differing characters are very similar, and the overwhelmingly larger number of corroborating manuscripts use “666,” it may just have been 3rd-4th Century copyists writing a bit fast.)

I think it would take a somewhat loose hold of scriptural interpretation to regard the Second Beast as an already-fulfilled prophecy, seeing as how we haven’t yet had a public figure who has used miraculous fire-calling powers to support an oppressive leader while establishing an economic system of head-and-hand markings; but then, John uses a lot of unclear, way-out symbolic language in this text, so it’s not meant to be taken all that literally to begin with. Expectant mothers need not be worried about having their kids today, any more than a person should worry about the dreaded numbers being in a home address or on a license plate. I mean, if you’re not entertaining thoughts of oppressing Christians and making everyone put barcodes on their hands and foreheads, then it’s just a simple number to you, and our God is bigger than a sequence of three digits.

More from Tim Townsend of the St Louis Post-Dispatch, By Farther Steps, GetReligion, Slacktivist, and HolyOffice. What do you think 666 refers to?