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A profile of Reverend Clementa Pinkney, South Carolina pastor and state senator who was gunned down in a white supremacist terror attack last week. His church, Emanuel AME, has a storied place in black civil rights history.
While the media focus on the racist shooter and Confederate flags and gun control, pause to remember the victims, saints in Christ who go now to their very great reward.
Inspired in part by Adam Magyar’s slow motion videos of people on subway platforms, I tried pointing my iPhone 5s slow motion camera at passing trains while waiting for transfers on the DC Metro. Mobile slow motion is nowhere near the quality of Magyar’s hardware, so there’s blurring as the train gains speed, but the scene of people standing almost still while the train is in movement gives the impression of statues going places.
I also caught the new 7000-series WMATA train on the Blue Line:
Amelia Cat likes apples and will eagerly lick at an apple slice or core if offered one. (Don’t let cats at the apple seeds, though; they can be harmful to pets if eaten.) Here’s Amelia licking an apple in slow motion, recorded at 120FPS with an iPhone 5s.
Older video, same thing, from last year:
“Don’t Look Down On Me” is Jonathan Novick’s documentary about the social travails of living with achondroplasia, or dwarfism. Passersby call out disparaging names, random strangers strike up conversations to bring up predictable stereotypes, and of course the “m-word” is addressed.
10 hours of walking in NYC as a woman, a viral video for Hollaback, documents just how much casual harassment a woman tolerates constantly in the city: a relentless texture of cultural pressure and male dominance all masquerading as “just saying hi”, again and again and again.
Don’t harass people.
Saturday was a perfect day to go back up to Shenandoah over the weekend for a few short hikes: the super-easy Limberlost Trail, a walk around Big Meadows, and the upper trail to Hawksbill Summit.
The Limberlost Trail is a flat crushed-gravel path through what used to be a hemlock forest, a very accessible hike through some lush nature, with lots of wildlife if you walk at the right time. We were there in the late morning so all we saw were a chipmunk and a duskywing butteryfly on some wildflowers. Lots of ferns, too.
Deadly train derailment in Philadelphia has brought US rail infrastructure into focus again, and why Amtrak cannot thrive in a culture and political environment that values individualism, cars, and highways over train travel — a collective action that somehow threatens personal liberty.
Washington Post’s derailment map visualization shows where the train sped too fast around a curve. Ongoing NTSB investigation here.
— Patrick J. Murphy (@PatrickMurphyPA) May 13, 2015
It’s not everyday you get to see a 1940s B-29 Superfortress named “FIFI” fly right over DC’s National Mall; one of many historic planes to join in the World War II Flyover last week.
I was working at NASA HQ in SW DC at the time so I walked outside with thousands of others to the Capitol over lunch break to witness the event. It was an amazing sight: wave after wave of historic planes flying in formation for an hour, Mustangs, Corsairs, Hellcats, B-25 Mitchells such as those that flew the Doolittle raids, and yes, FIFI.
I also got some video but it wasn’t great.
My Full WW2 Flyover photo album here, and also see Samer Farha’s photos from Rosslyn, and Djenno Bacvic’s composite of all the planes in the flyover.
Got to see some rare mammatus clouds over Herndon earlier this week: round, pouchlike formations caused by damp, unstable air sinking below storm clouds.
I also tried getting a timelapse video, but somehow it didn’t seem quite so spectacular in motion:
Continuing an unbroken string of annual DC cherry blossom photos, we ventured down to the Tidal Basin for peak bloom on April 11th. Mostly I just used my NEX3’s fisheye lens attachment, occasionally detaching it to use the wide angle pancake lens.
Selfie sticks abounded amongst the crowd, such as this one that peeked out from behind a tree trunk.
The Washington Monument, finally out of its post-earthquake scaffolding.
The Marine One chopper (no president on board) flew by and I managed to get a nice picture of it through the blossoms.
Some equestrian park police also rode by.
Really a perfect weekend for some hanami.
A few days later I returned to the Tidal Basin over lunch break, this time with my new Google Glass to see the post-peak blossoms.
Pink was giving way to green in the canopy and petals rained down on the grass below. Still beautiful, and I was glad for the second opportunity to see the blossoms.
Someone lost a hat.
My Google Glass suffered some damage over Thanksgiving, snapping at a weak point in the frame despite my taking pains to keep it from stress and bending.
I thought that was the end for my Glass experience, but their excellent customer support quickly replaced the unit with an upgraded Glass XE-C. It was a marked improvement over the previous version: better battery life, more RAM, more responsive UI and less prone to overheating and crashing.