One of the majestic lions guarding the William Howard Taft Bridge on Connecticut Ave NW, Woodley Park side. The lion sculptures were made by Roland Hinton Perry.
Monument in Fog
The Washington Monument rises into the mists of a foggy morning. Photo taken with a Canon Powershot A400.
Staring Dragon
This cute little dragon (found via anildash) appears to move its head and eyes to follow you from almost any direction you look at it. I tried printing out the graphic, cutting out the dragon, and folding and taping it as instructed:
The effect’s a lot more convincing in the video, I must say. Maybe I folded something wrong.
Photo taken with a Unibrain Fire-I Webcam.
Live The Life Mag
Ganns, a good friend from college days, has taken quite a leap of faith as of late, devoting himself full-time to the ministry of publishing a culture and lifestyle magazine for the Filipino Christian community. That community will get to taste the fruit of all his work on November 27th, when they officially launch LIVEtheLIFE Magazine. (Here’s a shot of the front cover.) Great work, Ganns! I’m sure it’ll be a hit.
Trains Look Like This
For the person who came to my site googling for “What do trains look like nowadays,” I refer you to the the photo galleries at cleanairbus.com “train” tag on Flickr.
Update: Sadly, cleanairbus.com is gone, and with it the photos of trains. Flickr’s “train” tag will have to do for now.
Too Much E
Oh dear: High Vitamin E intake is associated with an increased death risk. Remember those old Squibb Natural Vitamin E commercials with a rock-climbing Richard Gomez, saying how it increased his sex drive? I wonder what kind of commercials Squibb is showing these days? More on that (Vitamin E, not Richard Gomez), plus links, from Antifaust.net and Doc Emer.
Arafat’s Death
Goodbye to Yasser Arafat, and to his keffiyeh, too. (Jacoby sure is fair and balanced.) More from Salim, Metafilter, the Moonie Times, and DEB “grain of salt” KA.
Cross and Arrows
John Piper on DesiringGod.org’s new logo. Excellent use of minimal imagery: four red arrows pointing to the heart of the very cross they form.
(Also note that CSS is used for layout, making the site easily readable in text-mode browsers, and laying down site content in an ordered hierarchy. An assortment of HTML problems currently keep the site from validating, however.)
Penn Project Letdown
I had such high hopes for the Penn Project through the months it was under construction. No way they’d be opening that stretch of Penn Ave in front of the White House to vehicular traffic ever again, right? So perhaps it would make sense to turn it into a sprawling pedestrian plaza — which is what I thought they were doing with the space. I passed by there on my way home today to check out the newly opened site, and was sorely disappointed.
At first glance, hardly anything has changed. I had expected that the whole stretch of Penn Ave from 15th to 17th NW would be paved over with colored granite slabs, turning the street fronting the White House into an extension of Lafayette Park. Instead, the granite slabs are just for the fronts of the Old Executive Office Building and the Department of the Treasury. The rest of the street remains mostly the same, with only minor cosmetic changes, some extra trees, and removed bollards.
Ah, well. My fault for getting my hopes up and not looking at the Penn Project page earlier, where I would have seen the whole plan from the start. My own misplaced expectations aside, it’s nice to have that open space in front of the White House back, now tree-lined and bollard-free. And the newly asphalted surface should make for some excellent inline skating.
More on DCist. Update: And yet more, plus link-back, from DCist.
Arafat’s Health
The many faces of Yasser Arafat’s health: dead, brain-dead, not dead, comatose, deteriorating.
Also see Antifaust.net for more input and links on Health and Power.