Google Doccing

The title of this post is the next candidate in my eternal quest to coin a term. When I succeed, I will finally be able to move on to my next life goal, which is even more difficult, because it will require the services of a midget.

We all know what google stalking is. But there's something else that lots of people are obsessed with that lacks a brilliant "internism."

Google doccing is the activity of diagnosing yourself by searching the web for symptoms of your likely psychosomatic problem. Typically, the google-doccer concludes that they are afflicted with a disease that affects about 1 in 1,000,000 people, since that is the only disease which actually may manifeste every single one of the systems that the hypochnodriac believes they are experiencing.

Google doccing itself will probably become a medically recognized obsessive compulsive disorder category. If it's not already. I know many people who've convinced themselves that they have any of of HIV, Parkinson's, an ebola infection, and lupus, to name just a few. Trust me. If a disease affects pygmys in New Zealand 99% of the time, and actually has only been diagnosed conclusively a couple hundred times in the last century, you probably do not have it.

Google doccing. Got kind of a ring to it, doesn't it? As of now, I'm the first to document its use online. Urban dictionary doesn't know about it. Though there are five google hits for the quoted term, all of them seem to have to do with using Google Documents. Which is obviously a far less hilarious and disturbing than the act of freaking yourself out by looking at horrible pictures of rashes, and comparing vague lists of disturbing symtoms to yourself.

So start talking about google doccing. But I'd suggest seeing someone with an actual medical degree, before you conclude that your disorder can only be cured with experimental drugs mail-ordered from China.

Too Clever By Half

Well, this is old news as far as webular things go, but some things never get old. One of them is having conversations with Cleverbot. If you have never done this before, I highly recommend it. It is entertaining, disconcerting, and time-sucking.

Photo by Flickr user Photog John

Jamie: Hi there.

Cleverbot: Hi.

Jamie: What makes you so clever?

Cleverbot: Who said i'm clever?

Jamie: It is implied by your name.

Cleverbot: No. My name is Cleverbot.

Jamie: Cleverbot includes the word clever.

Cleverbot: That's what you think.

Jamie: At least I think.

Cleverbot: I doubt it.

Repent Ye, For The Apocalypse Is Upon Us

I know I talk a lot about the apocalypse, but this time, I can say without hyperbole, it is absolutely upon us.

Just look at this last week. And technically, it's still summer! Nothing is supposed to happen in the summer.

Psychopath terrorizes Discovery channel.

It all began with the now infamous event that, fortunately, ended with loss of life to none but the lunatic.

Sharks moving in to Potomac

The river that, along with the Anacostia, girdles the nation's Capitol, used to be a safe haven for leisure boating activities and, occasionally, swimming. No more. Not one, but two eight-foot monsters were caught here this week. Sharks have moved in, and they're here for two reasons: to chew gum and kick ass. And it looks like they're fresh out of gum.

Mass Suicides

Like a bad M. Night Shyamalan movie, people are wantonly killing themselves this week. Well, at least one person tried to, two if you count squirrel boy from the first story. But the timing is highly suspect.

Innocent Public Transit Outposts Attacked

A bus shelter in Adams Morgan was destroyed, absolutely, for no reason at all. Yet neither MPD nor WMATA can confirm that the incident happened. Strange things are afoot, indeed.

Trees Trimmed On My Street

Signs were posted for "no parking" on my block, and yesterday morning, city workers were conclusively spotted trimming the trees. This is stunning for any number of reasons. First, the chances of someone doing anything when "no parking" signs are posted is about zero, be it moving, road work, or anything else. In fact, the only thing that usually happens when "no parking" signs are posted, is that I get a parking ticket.

This time, people actually came and trimmed the trees. I have not yet figured out what kind of conspiracy is behind this bizarre action, but it is certainly a cover for something insidious. I will report back as details emerge.

And that is not all.

A fire broke out at the Philips Collection. It's September and still over 90 degrees. Adrian Fenty seems poised to lose the election despite having more money than God. A hurricane is at this very moment destroying the outer banks. Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the Gulf of Mexico, another oil rig catches fire.

WHERE WILL IT END??

I blame the squirrels. Of course, the squirrels.

There's no question, either things can only get better after this week, or the world is about to end. Either way, your problems are over, so everyone have a great holiday weekend!

Discovery Channel's Nutjob Finally Loses It

I am LOOKING for solutions so that we may not NEED electricity and all that stuff."

- James Jay Lee, 1/29/08

What you cannot see in this picture is the actual Discovery Channel building.

Hey, everyone! I just got back from a lovely weekend in Maine with my wife, and not even halfway through my first day back, there's a lunatic threatening to blow up a building two blocks from my office.

Being the voyeuristic type, I ran out to check it out, and took a few decidedly unexciting pictures, such as the one at right. I swear, it was mayhem: I heard nothing but sirens for two straight hours. The sound, apparently, of every single emergency vehicle in MoCo being scrambled to Ellsworth & Georgia Avenue. I got yelled at by one cop for being in the wrong place, but otherwise, nothing happened in my brief time at the scene.

The web, being what it is today, had already done all the sleuthing work necessary to give a detailed history of the individual involved here. God help me if my name ever makes the news in the wrong way. He goes way back with Discovery.

Silver Spring Singular, a blog about the town not called Silver Springs, has lots on this guy.

In March 2008, he threw around thousands of dollars at passersby, causing mayhem! That sounds awesome, actually. I wish I had been there.

A month before, he had organized a protest of Discovery, but by "organized" what he really did was pay homeless people to protest. I kinda remember this.

He tries to recruit people to his lunatic fringe on weird chat groups. He blames Discovery Channel for most of the world's ills:

"I disagree. Discovery is hugely responsible for what is happening and their ineffective programming must be protested and dealt with. The time for pussy-footing around the subject is done. It's time to protest them until they start changing their stupid message. They ARE glorifying the damned fishermen who are overfishing the planet and I would think that you would see that for yourself instead of defending them."

-- James Jay Lee, 1/24/08

As of now, he has posted a rather insane list of demands that mostly center on Discovery Channel programming. This list is on his web site here as well - but too much traffic to get it from the source as of this posting.

Demand number 4 is among my favorite:

"Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down!"

This could be a very long hostage crisis....

It's worth reading, though, and the list itself is a very compelling argument against too much sugar in children's diets.

In all seriousness, I hope everything works out OK, and that this is not one of the last photographs ever taken of the Discover Channel Building. As of right now, there are hostages being held. I am crossing my fingers that this ends peacefully.

Another lame photograph taken during the crisis that might as well have been taken on a random Sunday morning, for all the activity you can make out. At this point I went back to work, realizing I would learn a lot more online than a block from the Discovery Channel.

Update: Suspect Shot, Hostages Safe!

At 4:50 PM, police shot the suspect. All hostages are safe, it's over! Good work MoCo police. This ended much better than Die Hard.

Metro Set To Further Annoy It's Best Customers

Metro, following in the footsteps of progressive organizations such as the Recording Industry of America (RIAA), will be enacting new policies designed to cause invoncenience, aggravation, and possibly legal problems, to the kind of customers it likes most: those who own Smart Trip cards. Starting August 29, you will no longer be able to exit a metro station if your Smart Trip balance is below zero.

"We asked if there had been a problem with Metro never recovering negative fares from travelers; [Metro spokesperson Angela Gates] said she'd have to look into that."

-- Dave Jamieson, TBD reporter

A few years back, the RIAA invented the "eff you, frequent flyer" business model by suing the very people who spent the most money on them. While largely a symbolic gesture, since only a couple people actually went to court and most cases were dropped due to them being absolutely insane to sue children in the first place, it set the stage for future acts of desperation by other organizations. Organizations that found themselves with management and cash flow problems, faced with a changing world but unable to keep pace, or just plain stupid.

I think metro falls in the "just plain stupid" category, since they don't really have any competition. They have, apparently, decided that their own hard times have warranted the implementation of the "eff you customer" program, rather than taking the more practical step of getting their shit together. The result of such poorly-thought-out moves is, inevitably, bad press, futher hemmhoraging of revenues as some customers stop using your service, and other collateral damage.

Let's take a look at what this means.

You must use cash to pay ExitFare.

Most people use SmartTrip card because of its convenience, and the ability to pay by credit card. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to do the math here. Since you have not ever needed cash to travel by metro for a decade, there's a decent chance you won't ensure you have some on you before you head to work.

SmartTrip cards do not feature an "automatic recharge" feature.

Unlike almost every other "subscription" sort of service on earth, you must manually recharge your smart trip card when it runs out. At a machine. This means, inevitably, this problem is going to happen to everyone.

People don't think about their Smart Trip balance. That's why it's useful.

When you have a SmartTrip card, it's very simple: you go in, and when it goes below zero, you get a warning on your way out. That is a reminder that it's time to recharge. And if you forget, it won't let you go back in again on your next trip. So you refill on your way in. You can't get screwed. You can never find yourself able to get in, but not out. You can never find yourself stuck in a Metro station with no cash, and no legal way to leave. Until August 29th, that is.

It's like the "refuel" light on your car. It reminds you to stop at the next gas station.

But now, you won't get a "refuel" warning any more. Oh, and also, you can only look at the gas guage on your car at the end of a trip, or after you've already gotten on the highway. Because a metro trip can range from $1.60 up to $5.00, there are many, many possible trips for which you'd have sufficient balance to enter, but not exit.

It's like if your car suddenly just died on the side of the road at some point below 1/4 of a tank.

And I don't buy the argument that "people using paper cards have always had to deal with this." You know what's different about a paper card? It has your balance printed on it.

Why?

If you could link your SmartTrip to a credit card to recharge automatically, I don't think most people would care about this. But despite this technology being available for things such as EZ Pass for more than a decade, you can't. This is a whole different problem, but it's amazing that they would implement a policy change such as this one, before enabling automatic recharge. That shows extremely poor judgment.

Metro recently lowered the price of SmartTrip cards from $5 to $2.50, and seems to be rationalizing this move because they fear fraud from people buying SmartTrip cards, and leaving the system with a negative balance. Which could, at most, be $3.40, since the minimum fare if $1.60 and the maximum rail fare is $5.00. And that's even using non-rush for the minimum and rush hour for the maximum.

In the worst case scenario, Metro would be facing someone with a $3.40 negative balance on a $2.50 card. And I'm not even sure that scenario is possible, unless you crossed non-rush-hour to rush-hour lines during your trip.

Would anyone really ever do this? Would this ever be a possible method of "fraud" at any scale other than extremely isolated?

Furthermore, Metro earns tons of money from unused fares, and interest on money spent on transit before it's taken. I would guess the average balance on a SmartTrip card is over 10 bucks, and there must be millions of unused farecards purchased every year (e.g. by tourists, or from people who just toss low-balance farecards). I don't know how much money this is -- but I guarantee you it's far, far more than they could ever stand to lose from a handful of folks who would rather go to CVS and buy a new card, than pay (at most) the 90 cents difference to recharge their own SmartTrip card.


Apart from the insanity of even a tiny fraction of society going to all this trouble to perpetrate a fraud with a theoretical maximum value of ninety cents, what the hell?

If this is your only reason for this move, then why didn't you just price it at $3.50 which will effectively eliminate the, er, "incentive?" Even better, why didn't you just not change the price from $5 in the first place? Do you really think there's a single person on earth who prefers saving $2.50 on the cost of a SmartTrip card, which most people buy exactly once, to the convenience of not facing possible incarceration in a metro station every time they go to work?

Prediction

Monday, August 30. Mayhem. Tens of thousands of people, probably 10-20% of all riders, cannot exit because they entered Metro at rush hour with under $4 on their card (as they probably do approximately 20% of the time).

Three-quarters of these people, the ones with cash, will be pissed as they have to wait in huge lines for the exitfare machine.

The other one-quarter, the ones without cash, will be jumping turnstiles.

Or, Metro station operators will just open the emergency gate and let everyone go through, costing Metro far more in a single day because of the chaos, than they could ever stand to lose.

Thursday the 12th is the new Friday the 13th

This blurry photo is 16th Street around 8:00 AM on Thursday,
right before I bailed out. That's a tree.

I tried to post this last Friday. It didn't work out. The last two days of last week were, literally, a wash.

Thursday began with my reverse commuite to Silver Spring being transformed from a leisurely 15 minute drive to a 45-minute traffic evasion snafu. Every half-mile or so, I was faced with another closed road, and forced to divert eastward. It began on 16th Street, than 14th, then Georgia, and finally onto the neighborhood backroads of Takoma, DC as I struggled to find a way across the border to Maryland that wasn't blocked by trees or emergency vehicles. It's nice that there are so many alternatives, so at least it was possible to get to work.

Not that it mattered. The parking garage was flooded, and there was no power in the building. It became clear that situation wasn't changing anytime soon, so I headed out. I had to go to Rockville last week at some point, and since there was nothing else to do that day, I decided to go for it.

That turned out to be a poor choice as well, since it was impossible to go east or west on any road. By the time I'd gotten up to about Route 28, I realized it wasn't happening. I also realized I wasn't getting back to DC anytime soon, since all roads in were jammed. So I just kept going. I ended up going all the way to Baltimore, where I had a couple other non-urgent errands to take care of, and this was accomplished. Eventually, I made it to Rockville, around 3 PM. Everything was still a mess - working traffic lights in Montogomery County were rare.

Friday the 13th - Groundhog Day

Come Friday, things seems sort of back to normal, except many traffic signals in Moco were still out. I went to my office, began the morning rituals of coffee and email. Fifteen minutes after arriving at work, the power went out again rather dramtically. A loud boom was followed by several smaller ones. The power flickered on a couple times and finally died for good.

After an hour or so of hanging around, we found out power would not likely be restored at all on Friday. Unfortunately, my work requires being connected to the server (unless I can plan ahead and copy everything to my laptop, which of course I hadn't) so there was no possibility of working at home. Another unplanned day off, this time spent on home improvement.

Normal Life Resumes

.. at least until the next storm!! There is no question. The apocalypse is upon us.

Anyway, hope everyone is weathering these times of questionable power. I leave you with a gratuitous cute puppy picture.

The Internet Is A Vast Wasteland

This should be a revelation to few. While studies are not conclusive, for every man-hour saved by being able to immediately determine the availability of King Ding Dong lunchboxes for home delivery, at least another man-hour is wasted, filling up our brains with information about things that have no value whatsoever. Such as Sarah Palin's children's wedding plans. And King Ding-Dong lunchboxes.

Almost 50 years ago, then-FCC chairman Newton M. Minow declared television to be a vast wasteland. He's 84 years old today. I wonder what he would have to say about the Internet? With the hindsight of someone born moments after the first human being is known to have stepped on the moon, who still remembers such things as 13 channels and black-and-white programming, I can tell you it's a hundred thousand times worse. Maybe more.

But this thought didn't just occur to me out of the blue today. I subscribe to upwards of a hundred different blogs. I don't read them all regularly, but skim a lot of them. Many are personal blogs, that I happened to read once and I found interesting or well written or funny, and so I susbscribed. Two different posts on two absolutely unrelated (and indeed, almost diametrically opposed) blogs touched on this. The first is from a blog called the committed parent which is written by a "social neuroscience educator." I'm not exactly sure what that is, but he writes about child psychology. His last post discusses the downsides of having so much information available and its consequences on creativity, intellectual development, and wisdom.

The other is from a personal blog written by some Canadian guy who calls himself The Real Johnson. I know nothing about this guy except from some of his posts, but he writes well and is often funny. Oh yeah, he likes to drink, too. His last post is called "Internet Killed The Artist" and, from a totally different perspective (possibly drunk) from our PhD child psychologist above, comes to much the same conclusion.

I happened to read these two posts back-to-back and was stunned by the parallelism. In real life, these two individuals could be arch-nemeses. Yet separated by thousands of miles, several decades of life experience, 8 or so beers a day, and a Royal Mounted Police border crossing, they both wrote about the same notion today.

Internet usage is supposed to surpass TV watcing in 2010, at least in Europe. I am not sure exactly how you'd define "internet use," though, since a lot of people watch TV online. If I download a movie from the internet and watch it on a TV, does that count? Anyway, the distinction is fuzzy because "internet usage" could be doing stuff on your iPhone, or playing games, or all kinds of things that can be done on a variety of devices, or may be essentially similar to what you used to do on a TV. The mediums are merging and changing constantly.

But at the end of the day, wherever all this goes, I think that watching television (just watching it) will soon be something that is so passive, that fewer and fewer people will be able to do it. Our collective attention span gets smaller every year as technology invades every aspect of our lives. We lack the patience needed to immerse ourselves in any single pursuit, because we can achieve the kind of gratification we seek from the shallow alternatives that technology make available.

The television is no longer a stage, it is an extension of a the information matrix that weaves through every part of modern life. There is no need to sit and watch it, when you can take it with you and interact with it. We aren't interested in being passively entertained, we want our entertainment to actively engage us and respond to our feedback or we will lose interest.

Historically, anthropologists have demonized television for its passivity. It demands little of its users to entertain them. But could it be that the opposite problem is no better? As people become accustomed to instant gratification from life connected to the Internet, we are losing our ability to pay attention to anything. Even crappy television.

I predict that just sitting on your couch and watching television will soon be a lost art. Parents will beg their kids to unplug from the hive and just try to do something that doesn't give them any "likes" or comments for an hour or two. Television, once predicted to destroy the world, could be the last hope for saving it.

The child psychologist, in this post, says that we need to "spend time in nature, meditating," among other things. While I think his advice is good, the chances of getting most kids to unplug long enough to meditate is about zero. After all, there are a lot of wifi dead spots in nature.

So let's all do our best to get out in nature. I bet few of us can say we've been more than 200 feet away from the nearest automobile in the last month. But barring that, let's at least all pledge to stop checking our email for a couple hours and watch some good old fashioned TV.

The Couch Trip

Ah, it's great to be young and insane!

-- Billy, from "The Dream Team*"

Yesterday evening, N. and I executed Part II of the Couch Upgrade Master Plan that was begun over the weekend. We had to return to her sister's place in Virginia to collect the final of three pieces.

This is the last thing I remember before the apocalypse.

Everything went fine getting to Virginia. We took Rock Creek Parkway to avoid the construction on 9th Street, leaving just before 6:30 so we'd hit it when the traffic returned to two-ways. Easy as pie! Getting out of town during rush hour is the hard part, right?

Wrong. We came back in over Memorial Bridge, with the intent of returning home to Columbia Heights via RCP, as we had come. In the intervening time, which couldn't have been more than an hour, the parkway had been completely barricaded. You couldn't turn right onto the parkway, so you had to go into this little Ohio Drive turnaround thing. From here, I figured I would try to get back to 23rd Street by going around the other way 'round the Lincoln Memorial.

Wrong. You could not go left in order to go "clockwise" around the circle, also blocked, forcing you to go right, into some kind of no-man's-bus-parking-tourist-zone. A place where no sane person would ever choose to drive. A place where I had no choice but to drive.

Us and about a million other cars, of course, since everyone was thoroughly confused at this point by the complete madness of the dysfunctional detours and non-existent traffic control officers.

This was 30 minutes of my life. Really.

So around we go, eventually ending up right back where we started: at Independence & Ohio Drive where the parkway was blocked. From there, of course, it was clear that the only way to escape was on Independence Avenue eastbound. A U turn and there we were.

Hello, Washington Monument! Hello, Tourists!

At this point I realized we would be required to drive deep into the heartland of DC, the mall. We eventually found ourselves heading up 14th Streetish. By now, it had been an hour in traffic and the weather was looking ominous. But we were close to home: I was on Rhode Island Avenue, heading towards Logan Circle. Soon I would be at Sherman Avenue which is pretty much a straight shot to from my front door. I could almost taste victory!

But no, the saga was not meant to end like that. Rhode Island was blocked off before Logan Circle. There was some incident on the northern side of the circle involving many police cars, but the south side looked clear so I wasn't sure why they closed RI Ave. completely. Nor could we turn around, because traffic was bumper to bumper the other way. But hark, an alley! We were saved! I ducked in, convinced we would soon be free.

But as I could see the light at the other end of the alley, one final challenge lay in wait. Like the Kraken of our odyssey, it loomed before us.

A Ford Expedition with a trailer in tow was attempting to back through the alley.

"Ford Expedition" just by itself is something that simply has no place in a city, much less an alley. Add "trailer" and you're fully West Virginia. These things should be stopped at the border. But backing up through an alley?? The alley that happens to be the only possible escape route from traffic hell? While rain is starting to pelt down upon our precious couch?

In the meantime, of course, another car had come into the alley behind us, completing the absolute madness. Hunger-induced crankiness ensued. Words were exchanged between myself and that Expedition's "navigator." Everyone threw up their hands. The details are a blur at this point but somehow, miraculously, we turned around and got back out of the alley. We found a place to stop and covered the couch with a tarp. Somehow we escaped to 15th Street which by some miracle was functioning and got the hell out of Dodge. Somehow the skies were sort of merciful and the storm had passed by the time we got home.

Nearly 90 minutes after leaving Springfield, VA, we got home.

What did we learn? Who is to blame

I tried to find a way to blame this on the bikes, but I couldn't. A couple of them did scare the crap out of me by blowing by me just as a light changed, but it was no skin off my nose. I did, however, nearly have a collission with someone in a wheelchair who playing frogger with his life downtown. That was awkward.

I would like to chastize the Park Service for the worst traffic control ever when closing basically the only way to get to Northwest DC from Memorial Bridge. You stole an hour of my life that I will never get back.

But at the end of the day, it was just one of those situations where everything aligns to create the perfect storm. That was one big twinkie, but we lived.

* I couldn't find any suitable quotes from "The Couch Trip." But they are both movies from the late '80s about escaped mental patients so it was close enough.

The Road to Leftovers

In which I discuss old food, and the quest for old food in "The Road."

I eat leftovers. Old ones.

There, I have said it. I'm not ashamed. I hate wasting food and have been known to eat things that have been in the refrigerator long enough to receive four weeks' vacation each year. Freezer burn can be fun! Dinner goes from a tedious affair, to a special surprise, since you don't know what you'll be eating until it's defrosted. Sometimes not even then.

N. does not share my enthusiasm for green cheese and grey meat. While I prefer to rely on the "stink test" to determine the safety of most items found in the fridge, she prefers more conventional methods. Personally, I think that "best if used by" dates are a guideline, rather than a rule. I mean, if it said "absolutely do not use after this date," that would be one thing. But it's really just a suggestion. And then there's the "sell by" dates. Well, I bought it by that time, didn't I? Once it's in my fridge, obviously, time stops and I can eat it until it decides to leave on it's own volition.

Anyway, in the interest of protecting herself from my toxicity experiments, N. has started marking items with a date after they've been liberated from their original packaging. In some cases, such as the taco shells picture above, that information was not available. As you can see, her dating convention accounts for this situation as well.

I had leftover tacos for lunch yesterday... mmmm....

Moving on down the road...

On the subject of old food, we happened to watch this movie "The Road" the other day. The majority of this film involves a man and his young son clawing their way around a burned-out post-apocalyptic world looking for old food, since nothing will grow any more.

This movie is based on the pulitzer prize-winning novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy. Because I am functionally illiterate (I just finished reading my first book in 14 months last week) I had never heard of the book. No matter, though, because had I known this fact before watching the movie, it is certain that my disappointment would have been that much greater.

I am going to level with you. And this may expose me as a boorish, MTV-generation loser with the attention span of a gnat.

I did not like this movie. At all. It was an exercise in bleakness. It's not that I can't handle slow-paced movies. I can. But when the high point of a movie was watching Viggo Mortenson finally wake out of his depression long enough to defend himself against a bow-and-arrow attack using a flare gun, it's time to consider the appropriateness of the medium.

What I'm saying is, perhaps this was a great book. Apparently there are droves of people out there who are entertained and inspired by a story of survival in a grim, hopeless world. Maybe, as a novel, one finds much insight into the character of humanity, finding life and clinging to morality in a lifeless world. I don't know, since I did not read the book. All I got from the movie, though, was scene after mind-numbing scene depicting the end of civilization and the pathetic fool's quest of two of the handful of survivors. It was basically like watching a cancer patient's last two hours of life.

Apart from the pure unpleasantness of the watch, there was no effort made to explain what this was all about. Perhaps this is not important for the movie's target audience (obviously, not me) but if you are going to create a vehicle for an end-of-days character study, at least make it plausible.

Something seems to have wiped out all life on earth, including every plant and animal. Yet somehow, a number of humans survived. What an odd catastrophe! Was it nuclear? Disease? Are some humans just miraculously immune to the effects of whatever it is that made the entire earth look like an abandoned Detroit suburb in January? And all along I thought it was the cockroaches that would survive.

I realize that for the literati, the backdrop of a story is merely a stage. The grey landscape and the brutal conditions are a canvas upon which a story is told. But if these deplorable conditions defy any conceivable reality, then what we have is an excercise in academics. It is no different than an economist demanding that the world must behave rationally, because in a village of three people, it always does. There is no such village. The oversimiplified setting detaches the story from any kind of reality. It makes it impossible for me, the viewer, to evaluate and absorb the emotions and actions of the actors in any substantive way, because I do not believe it. Each of the handful of confrontations on this Odyssey between our anti-heroes and the few other survivors is specifically contrived, altogether implausible, and consequently without weight.

Anyway, I can't recommend this film, unless you need something to put you over the edge on your plans for an oxycontin overdose.

Big Business, Soda & Corn Subsidies

Someone posted and deleted a comment to my last post about the soda tax. I won't identify them, because obviously they chose to retract their comment, but I did want to respond to it because I don't think it's an uncommon reaction to this kind of position:

"The American Beverage Association, and its simulated grassroots spinoffs that have been set up to oppose this, thank you for your time and effort on their behalf. "

In opposing the beverage tax, I want to make a couple things clear.

I realize that the soda industry, like almost every other industry (such as the snack food, alcohol, automobile, oil, hemp, solar power, and gastroenterology industries) has an association and a lobby, and spends lots of money to promote its agenda. Of course, the bigger the industry, the bigger their lobby. But if we were proposing a tax on something that hardly anyone ever bought, would anyone really care?

If I based my positions simply in opposition to those of big business, would I be any more a thinking person? The fact that a big company happens to have financial incentives to take a particular position, is not a good enough reason to oppose it.

I also realize that corn production is subsidized in this country. Actually, it is the most heavily subsidized agribusiness by far, to the tune of something like $4 billion a year.

I am not in favor of this. While the DC government is not the Federal Government, I hope that the irony of a country that subsidizes production of corn syrup, and then at a local level taxes the same, is not lost.

Oh, the humanity.

This blog discusses this irony, noting that President Obama himself has suggested exploring a soda tax. Wait, the president wants a soda tax, even though we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup? *shakes head* Something is wrong here.

Even if I thought that the best way to deal with a ridiculous situation where our Federal government is complicit in the production of cheap soda was to tax it at the other end, which I do not, the tax being proposed is far higher than the subsidy. From the blog above, the Joint Committee on Taxation calculated that a 3-cent tax on each 12-ounce sugared soda would raise $51.6 billion over a decade, about $5 billion a year.

That means that a tax of 1/4 of a penny per ounce would raise about the same amount of money that is spent annually on corn subsidies. From grist, we learn that only 3.5% of all corn in this country ends up as corn syrup. Multiplying that 4 billion annual subsidy by 3.5 percent, we get a figure out about $140 million a year going to subsidize soda production - assuming that every single drop of corn syrup ends up in a can of soda. Which obviously it does not.

This means that a tax of a penny per ounce equates to about 142 times the amount of the Federal subsidy on high-fructose corn syrup.

I am against taxing soda (or any non-"sin" item) at an excessively high rate.

Soda, unlike cigarettes and alcohol, does not have any inherently illness-causing ingredients. Ironically, the only soda ingredient that has been proven to cause cancer, like both cigarettes and alcohol can, is artificial sweeteners, yet diet sodas are excluded specifically from this tax.

If you think sugar is a luxury, inherently bad, and not necessary for human survival, such as alochol and cigarettes are, then tax all sugar. Or tax all food, since soda only accounts for 11% of the calories estimated to be consumed by most people.

My positions today, as always, are based on my own opinion. Because almost every industry has a lobby, if that position happens to be against taxing something that I also am against taxing, then by gosh I guess I'm going to be on the same side as whatever industry it is being taxed.

Major Facebook Security Bug -- On Top Of Bad Policy

Facebook recently added this "Connections" feature which many of you probably unwittingly signed up for. I did. Each time you would log onto facebook, it would give you the opportunity to convert all the things you entered into your profile page into "connections" -- your music, likes, interests, and so on.

Programming: Scary and Insecure

I'll explain the new policy below, but far more frightening is a bug I came across while messing with the new privacy settings.

The picture at left is my profile as it would appear to one of my friends. This is something you can do in Privacy settings.

Those chat windows are not mine.

Those message waiting, friend request, and status update indicators are not mine.

I can see my friends' outstanding friend requests, and type in the chat windows.

I have no idea what the practical implication of this bug might be, but it is very clear that Facebook's code does not isolate your profile and session information from others at a basic level. Like a jilted lover, Facebook has become scary and insecure.

There is no way that any system with a functioning security model would ever let something like this happen. What this means is that information which should only be available to my friend when they are logged in, was shown to someone else.

My friend's friend requests.
I am not nearly this popular.

Let me repeat this. This should never happen, ever. Even if someone made a programming error in this section (that shows you what your profile would look like to someone else) -- there is no way I should ever have seen open chat windows or friend requests. That information, related to my friends' profile and session, should be at the highest possible level of security in Facebook and never shown to anyone other than that specific user, when they are logged in.

This raises serious concerns about the hackability of Facebook - that is, it's almost certainly vulnerable to fairly basic security exploits. Core profile information is not only unprotected at a basic level but was shown to me accidentally.

Is this bug reproducible?

Yes. I have a "joke" facebook account that is friends with a few of my friends. I sent myself a message from the "joke" account, and opened up a chat window in my real account.

When logged in using my joke account (from a different computer entirely) and viewing my "joke" profile as my real account, I could see the message waiting indicator, and the chat window that I had open in my real account.

Did you tell facebook about it?

Yes, and it sure took some doing to find their bug report form. Now taking bets on how soon it will be before my account is disabled, which is their usual response to any communication about a problem.

This Isn't Exactly Rare

After a bit of googling, there are numerous reports of similar security breaches in the last couple months, which further reinforces just how shaky the basic security design of Facebook is.

Faceook bug might have exposed your inbox - February 25, 2010

Facebook bug delivers mail to the wrong people - February 25, 2010

Facebook bug exposes private email addresses - April 1, 2010


Policy: Bad

This change came with new privacy settings, which seems to be a fairly routine event these days. Most people probably didn't realize that by finally acquiescing to the "connections" thing, you made all that information public. This article explains what "connections" does to privacy. The long and short is that anything you "like" is now publically associated with your name, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Supposedly, you can prevent your "likes" from appearing directly on your facebook page, though in practice that does not seem to work. But even if you could, from the viewpoint of the thing itself that you are "liking," your name will show up on their list, meaning that it will end up in every marketing database known to man.

Would The Last Person Please Turn Out The Lights?

My mother used to say that a lot. That was long before anyone ever heard of "global warming" and "multi-trillion dollar defecits." It was just basic, sound financial advice: don't waste electricity by leaving the lights on when you're not there.

The District of Columbia could really use a mother right now. This morning, while walking the dog in the dawn hours, I realized the lights were still on at 1125 Spring Road NW. This is the DC-owned facility which I wrote about about two weeks ago, that has been "permanently closed" since November. Though you wouldn't know that from DC's web site, or the DC Court System's web site.

In my previous post, I wondered why DC thought it was OK to shut down a city-owned facility spanning almost two blocks, and at the same time stop mowing the grass, picking up trash, or shoveling the sidewalks. See, when private property owners do the same, several bad things happen:

• They start getting taxed at the "blighted property" rate of 10% annually
  
• They get ticketed and fined for failing to maintain the grounds
  
• If the building is big enough, they get a lot of heat because a lot of people complain about it
  

But it's good to be the king, isn't it? Because you can do all the same bad stuff, without repercussions, that you bust other people for doing.

Anyways, I have a suggestion for DC. This is a win-win for everyone and it won't cost you a nickel.

Shut off the damn lights, and with the money you save, hire someone to mow the lawn every two weeks.

Given that about half the lights in this facility of at least 50,000 square feet are on, I'd say you'll have some money left over.

PEPCO, Still For The Birds

PEPCO, why do you hate me so? I am, by all rights, one of your most loyal customers. I run a space heater well into the summertime. Sometimes even at the same time as an air conditioner. I have more computers in my house than IBM. Was it the compact flourescent light bulbs? The insulation? What did I do?

It has been a year since my last run-in with PEPCO, so I suppose it was just going too well.

I have had my electric bill set to "auto-pay" since I am incompetent when it comes to administrative matters. This ensures that the bill will be paid on time, and the power will keep flowing. A week ago, I noticed that the emails they send me, advising me how much was going to be automatically deducted, seemed to be getting larger and larger. How did I use $409.22 worth of electricity in March? I dutifully logged on to my PEPCO online account, only to discover that my bill was no longer being paid automatically.

PEPCO had revised their online account system, apparently, and turned off my auto-bill-pay. If they told me about this, I obviously missed it. I went through an annoying, painfully slow process to basically entirely re-register again and tried to pay my bill online.

The web site refused to accept my payment, simply saying "there was an error." I double-checked and triple-checked every detail. My bank account and routing numbers. Name and address. Everything was right to the last apostrophe.

So I wrote an email to their online service center with the following question:

I have tried to pay my bill using your new online system, and it will not accept my payment. After I enter my bank account and routing numbers, and click "pay," it says "there was an error and your payment could not be processed." Can you please help me? What might be causing this problem?

After receiving no response for two days, I paid PEPCO using the relatively archaic "online banking" method, in which my bank pushes a payment to them, instead of them retreiving one automatically. But I wept to myself slightly, as it meant I would now have to remember to do something each month. I secretly hoped PEPCO would respond and return me to the joy of automatic deduction.

Then today, eight (8) days after my original inquiry, PEPCO responded! I had the following message in my inbox.

Date: Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 8:03 AM
From: correspondence@pepco.com 
Subject: Pepco On-line - Contact Us

Thank you for contacting Pepco. I apologize for the delay in 
our response and for the difficulty you have experienced with 
our web site. I have requested the password for your Energy 
Know How/Web Account to be reset. You will receive the information 
via e-mail. When you get the e-mail, click the link in the e-mail 
to re-enable the web account. 

If further assistance is needed, please contact us again at
www.pepco.com/contact/online/.

Sincerely, 

Connie
Internet Representative
Customer Care

AGGGGHH!!!

Connie, I appreciate your response to my inquiry. But did you actually read it? Nowhere did I say I was having trouble logging in - in fact it should have been absurdly obvious that I could log in since I was trying (and failing) to pay my effing bill!

Ah, PEPCO, how do I hate thee.

Resolution: Pepco Telephone Support Is Actually Good

Obviously, at this point I had no choice but to call them or have my electric service terminated. I steeled myself for what I assumed would be a long and frustrating experience.

The opposite was true. After being on hold for a mere 3 minutes, I spoke to someone who was knowledgable and helpful. The nice woman did the following things:

• Combined my two pepco accounts into a single log-in
  
• Knew why the online payment wasn't working and told me what to do to fix it (use Internet Explorer... you'd think that if their system wasn't cross-browser compatible they would mention that somewhere on the site)
  
• Walked me through the entire process to be sure everything was working
  
• Waived the late fees
  

Honestly, that was one of the better customer-service experiences I've ever had. If only their Internet customer service (and IT department) was as good.

Child Safe, Amber Alert System Dangerous

A commenter on yesterday's posted noted that the full story was available from, of all places, Fox News.

As it turns out, this was an Amber Alert. The person who was actually missing was a six year old boy named Rashaun Robinson. He was apparently picked up by the "ex-girlfriend of the boy's mother," a phrase which only now raised my eyebrows, even though I've read it about five times. I guess since gay marrige is now legal in DC that should hardly come as a shock, and it didn't. It's not that the boy was picked up by his mother's ex-girlfriend that surprises me. It's just that girls with girlfriends is a lot more DC than Suitland.

But moving on. I was thrilled to discover that I had kept the recording of last night's prime time comedy extravaganza. Or rather, Tivo had kept it in it's "recently deleted" folder. I pulled out every bit of video-hacking geekery that I could muster and figured out how to get that video from my Tivo to YouTube. Now, I'm sure to all you people who watch TV online and download new Hollywood movies before they've even left the "cutting room" (if that's what they still call a digital editing studio), this is no great feat. But to me, this required at least 20 minutes of googling, and downloading two piece of free software. As it turns out, I already had said software installed on my computer from years ago, but had forgotten all about it. Apparently, I have done this before and entirely erased it from my memory, much the same way I would erase a bad Saturday Night Live rerun from the Tivo.

Behold, the Emergency Broadcast System message, above. Though in many ways you heard all this yesterday, having the actual broadcast in front of us presents me with a new opportunity to point out all the ways in which it fails.

Top Five Ways DC's Amber Alert System Stinks

At least Battlezone, circa 1980, had color.

5. 1960's technology used to produce message will convince most people their TV set has switched into "service mode."

Seriously. Is this the best you can do? A black screen with white text that will make most people think of "Pong" on their Atari 2600? I'm more likely to believe that Comcast has been hijacked by rebels, than there's a serious message I should be paying attention to.

4. The useful information is only in the audio track.

I made fun of this alert yesterday because I thought it had no information at all. I could not be more wrong. Actually, it included a name and description of the abudcted child. But only in the audio. Which, of course, I had muted, since the the message began with a seizure-inducing noise that had led me to a single, inescapable conclusion. A pteradactly must have thawed from the glacier in which it had been frozen for 100,000 years, woken up, realized that it was the only pteradactly on Earth, let out a heart-rending scream that was heard for 500 miles, and then laid back down and died.

3. What does "effective until 21:40 mean?"

The only actual information offered by the video feed is that the child abduction emergency ends at a certain time. In this case, 9:40 PM. I am dying to know how they could have predicted that the child would be found, and within two hours!

Also of note: this is not an Amber Alert, it's a Child Abduction Emergency. I guess they haven't updated this text since about 1996, when that term came into common use.

2. The MPD release gave totally different information.

From yesterday's post you can see the email I got at almost exactly the same time I saw this on TV. It said nothing about a missing child. Actually, it said the the abductor was the missing person and made absolutely no mention that, in fact, we were really concerned about the child she had kidnaped. Awesome.

1. No pictures.

Apparently, the only outlet that was capable of providing the correct information about who was missing, and also providing a photograph of that person, was Fox News.

I am not a religious man. But seriously, if Fox News is now more reliable than MPD and the Amber Alert system, GOD HELP US ALL.

Snoverwhelmed

Roving packs of dogs now rule Columbia Heights

Somehow, despite being trapped in my house for days, I have not found time to blog yet. Honestly, I'm not even sure what day it is most of the time. It's just another day. I no longer wonder whether the office will technically be open or not, since there is no way for me to get there until the metro runs above ground again.

This is actually an improvement.

A snowplow did come by this morning. The result was interesting. While 11th Street might technically be passable now, it is impossible to turn onto any side street, since they are all now walled off by snowbanks about 4 feet high.

Most people's cars are hermetically sealed in the wall of ice and snow. That has not stopped a handful or eternal optimists from digging out their cars every day, though so far I have not seen anyone sucessfully leave their parking spot in two days.

Where we are at this point is full-on cabin fever. If I watch another NCIS rerun I will kill myself. Or, more likely, N. will kill me. Walking the dogs must be accomplished in the slim sidewalk area where they can actually walk. And that's only going to get worse when people start throwing salt down, which hurts the dog's feet. Last week, we put ziploc bags on Sully's feet once to protect him from the salt. It was pretty hilarious actually.

Worst of all, I have not been to Home Depot in more than a week. They'll probably be out of business by the time I make it back there.

At the same time, business has obviously been good for the local watering holes. We've been to The Red Derby, er, more than I'd care to admit, mostly because it's about the only place we can get to. It has been packed every time.

So we perservere. This is officially more disastrous than the Great Marion Barry Disaster of 1996. That is, my office has been closed for more consecutive days than that event, which seems like a good yardstick. Luckily (yes, really) the Internet means that I've been able to work most of the time, unlike last time around, when everyone in the entire city was clearly bonkers after about five days of being cooped up. I am trying to remember what we did for a week with no internet.

DC Snow Removal Up To Usual Standards

...for the Barry Administration, anyway. Yeah, this was a record-breaking snowfall. No, I don't exepect miracles. But at the same time, there hasn't been a snowflake coming out of the sky since late Saturday night.

Nor have I seen a snowplow since sometime Saturday. Nor have I seen any evidence of salt or sand on the roads, anywhere.

So, did Adrian Fenty decide that closing the DC government applied to snow removal as well? I have to say, though, I admire his optimism. Apparently, normal trash collection is scheduled to resume today. That will be quite a neat trick, since no vehicle of any sort has traveled through my alley since before the snow. I will be very impressed if the garbage trucks can drive through 18" of snow.

I heard anecdotally that a lot of snowplows had broken down. I don't suppose that there's any connection between the 700+ speed bumps that Fenty put throughout the city, and the inability to remove snow from the sidestreets? Couldn't be. Great thinking, there. Aother brilliant Fenty move: just do whatever you want, without thinking about the consequences.

Petworth - 8 AM on Monday. Illionois Avenue and 4th Street.




11th Street in Columbia Heights - Sunday Afternoon




Adams Morgan - Sunday Morning. At first I thought this guy was an idiot for trying to turn onto Euclid Street from Columbia Road. After he got un-stuck and traffic started moving again, I realized why. 18th and Columbia Road was basically unplowed and it was obvious that most cars wouldn't be able to pass.




As of 8 AM today, everything looks pretty much the same as it did on Sunday morning. So what were the snowplows doing all day Sunday? Or did the speed bumps kill them all?

I guess we'll just wait it out like the old days.

Up here in Silver Spring, everything is perfectly clear.

Yo, Fenty, here's a bit of advice. If you are going to install thousands of speed bumps, maybe you should consider that we actually have snow here. That's why we have snowplows. Though given how few I've seen this weekend, maybe you forgot about them? So here's something for you to check out: The snow-plow compatible speed bump.

Now that I've gotten the obligatory DC snow fail criticism out of the way... pretty awesome, eh? A few highlights are below. More pictures here! Enjoy.


My day started on Saturday with the realization that I did not have a snow shovel. I did, however, have a four-wheel drive truck. And there's nothing I like more that tooling around the city in the middle of a blizzard. So I started with a trip to Home Depot to solve that shovel problem.

I wasn't sure how it was going to work out, since you'd figure there had been a run on them on Friday. Luckily, even as the DC government was not prepared for the storm, Home Depot was:




After the first of many sidewalk shovelings Saturday, N. and I ventured in to Columbia Hieghts to find some breakfast and take in the spectacle. The Heights was packed and there was a wait. We were too hungry to put up with that nonsense - and frankly, I find The Heights to be the pinnacle of mediocrity. So we walked to Ruby Tuesday's. Plenty of seating!

So typical of Cohi attitude... we'll pay more for crappy food, as long as it's not a chain. Personally, I think RT has better food than The Heights. It also comes with a lower price and less attitude. Our server was fantastic. I am slightly concerned about the presentation of the bloody mary though:




RT closed their doors for the day right after we finished, as did much of the downtown in Columbia Heights. Our post-brunch Target trip was thwarted. But we ran into a friend who was about to head downtown to catch Avatar 3D and decided to join him. It seems likely that the Metro would be a disaster (and it was from all accounts) so we drove instead. The movie didn't work out. Shockingly, it was sold out an hour in advance. How did all those people get there? Guess we weren't the only people with that idea. But we had a lot of fun tooling around the city taking pictures.

Apparently, you didn't need necessarily need four wheel drive to get around. At least, you didn't if you are a completely idiot like this guy.




It seems that that guy wasn't the only one who just couldn't give up his bike in the middle of a blizzard. Ah, Wonderland.




As usual, everyone in DC freaked out and packed the supermarkets at the first sign of snow. We tried to go to Giant to buy a couple things on Saturday afternoon -- the lines were at least 20 people long. Umm... no.

So off to my new favorite alternative, the Petworth Safeway. It was far more civilized. There was plenty of parking and the lines were minimal. We got what we needed. Though certain things were hard to come by even there...




Sharing the Road took on quite a new meaning on Sunday, as pedestrians took to the streets as the only passable place to walk. Many people were out trying to dig out their cars or just walk down the street. Huge props to my neighbors - the sidewalks were 100% clear on my street as of mid-morning on Sunday. It was not so great in many other places.




Park Road between 14th and 16th on Sunday.




There was a lot of fun stuff to see out there. Everyone was great. My neighbors were all helping each other dig out on Sunday. Our dogs regarded the snow with some suspicion at first, but soon enough were having a blast. These guys had the right idea though:




All in all, I love a good snowstorm. It's been a long time for me - I was out of town for the big one in 2003. Glad this one finally lived up to the hype.

Repent, for the end is near!

I had the pleasure of seeing 2012 on Friday night with N. It met my expectations exactly: really cool special effects, repeated brushes with near death at the hands of billowing clouds of smoke and fire, and only brief stints of unpleasant character-developing dialogue.

It was pretty much exactly the same move as "The Day After Tomorrow," unsurprisingly, also directed by Roland Emmerich. You know, scientists realize that the end of the world is coming, nobody listens until it's too late, earth plunges into apocalyptic mayhem, intrepid heroes embark on perilous quest against astronomical odds, and miraculously prevail. It was predictable, preposterous, over-the top, and absolutely without artistic merit. It was awesome.

Sure, there were a few plot holes. Like the premise, which is that neutrinos will cause the earth's core to heat up and the crust to shift around. Then there was a lot of general silliness, like the airport security guy telling people they can't take off in their plane because they aren't cleared. While the city of Las Vegas is busy collapsing into giant flaming rifts in the earth about a half-mile away, and the entire West Coast has already gone fully Lex Luthor. Umm, yeah, like anyone would really give a rat's ass who does what at that point. Most likely he'd be taking advantage of his status of possesing a firearm to get aboard any available plane himself. But whatever, fire and brimstone! Entire cities collapsing in huge chasms filled with flaming lava! Cool!!

Anyway, I don't usually pay much attention to harbingers of the apocalypse from thousands of years ago, but I was curious about what is supposed to be happening in about three years. Luckily, NASA has a web page that clears up all the misinformation going around. So don't sell your house just yet, let's take a look at what NASA has to say. I have quoted NASA's web page in italics, below.

"2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won't End?"

Remember the Y2K scare? It came and went without much of a whimper because of adequate planning and analysis of the situation. Impressive movie special effects aside, Dec. 21, 2012, won't be the end of the world as we know. It will, however, be another winter solstice.

Well, maybe it went off without a hitch for you, but I personally found that my Palm Pilot was screwed up. It took at least a week before it worked right again. What's a Palm Pilot you say? Oh, never mind. But another winter solstice!! Thanks for making us feel safe, NASA. Wait. What's a solstice?

---

Question (Q): Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012.

Answer (A):Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012.

Whew! 2012 should be an awesome year. Nothing bad will happen!

Wait.

Really?

Ummm...

Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.

I have two things to say.

1) 2012 will be the first year of the millenium with no Oprah Winfrey show!!

2) These credible scientists do not live in Washington, DC, obviously. Because 2012 is an election year and bad things will happen.

---

Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?

A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth.

I KNEW IT!!! NIBIRU!!

Q: Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012?

A: The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids

OMG! Asteroids too!!

...although big hits are very rare.

Try telling that to this guy!

The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs

Jesus Herbert Hoover Christ! 65 million years ago? Obviously we are well overdue for a giant disaster. Without question, we should all prepare for the post-apocalyptic world where the moon has been shattered like a cheap golf ball and large jungle cats have learned to talk.

---

Q: How do NASA scientists feel about claims of pending doomsday?

A: For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science?

Where's YOUR science, NASA? This, coming from the same guys who can't even decide if Pluto is a planet or not? All your talk of so-called "rare asteroid hits" and "planetary extinction" doesn't make me feel a lot better.


The long and short of it is that NASA clearly does not have their shit together, and we should trust no-one, least of all some government-funded hacks who haven't managed to get back to the moon in 40 years. If they ever actually went in the first place. Luckily, though, there is proof that the world will not end in 2012. At least not entirely. Because someone will discover a guitar a hundred years later in 2112.

How To Lose Friends And Entrench Enemies

The title of today's post is the entirety of a short comment on Greater Greater Washington by crin. I thought it was particularly fitting because of two things that happened in the last 24 hours. One is the subject of the blog post that inspired that comment, and the other is last night's Presidential address to congress on health care.

First, the local news. Alice Swanson was killed last summer while cycling near Dupont Circle. There was much controversy surrounding this tragic accident, in part because the driver of the truck that hit her was not found to be negligent and not charged. I don't want to debate this here, but rather discuss the events of yesterday related to this.

Picture from Greater Greater Washington post above

Following her death a "ghost bike" was erected at the spot of the accident to memorialize her. The memorial remained in place for more than a year, and was removed recently (probably by the Department of Public Works). Those responsible for the memorial were outraged because they were not notified of its removal. My personal opinion is that while it would have been nice for DC to somehow let them know, this isn't exactly cause for outrage. The memorial was on public space, it was not permitted, and not legal. It was allowed to remain for more than a year, far longer than any other such citizen-installed memorial I've heard of. It served its purpose, and DPW even installed a sign at the intersection warning drivers to watch for cyclists.

Last night, 22 (that's right, twenty-two) ghost bikes were installed around the location in an act of civil disobedience in response to the removal. From Alice Swanson Rides Again:

Twenty-two bicycles have been placed around the intersection of Connecticut Avenue, 20th Street, and R Street (the original site of the ghost bike), one for each year of Alice’s life. Hopefully, this will get Mayor Fenty’s attention...

We hope this forces the city government to see public space as something for public use. But the one thing we’re not hoping for is for the Mayor’s office to put the bike back. We put it back. And if it leaves again, we’ll put it back again. And again. And again. And this time, the ghost bike stays.

So basically, they are retaliating against the city for what amounts to them doing their job. The problem is, this no longer has anything to do with Alice Swanson's memory. It has to do with revenge, and spite, and an eye for an eye. And more likely than not, publicity for the self-described anarchist who did this. This kind of behavior has no place when it comes to the whole point of the original ghost bike: to memorialize a tragic death.

This has gone too far. If all the time and energy being put into this act of civil disobedience went into having a permanent, tasteful, non-sidewalk-obstructing memorial, we'd probably have one by now. But instead, we have what amounts to junk tied to every other light post in Dupont Circle. But worse, it creates a rift between the ones who care most about this memorial, and the very people whom they need on their side to get a legitimate, permanent one: the city government.

What makes this all the more hypocritical is that this is a very heavily traveled area by pedestrians. In the picture above, the very first bike you see is blocking almost half of the entrance to the crosswalk. This is at a minimum a nuisance - I am sure everyone's been waiting to cross a street at busy times and had difficulty not bumping into people under normal circumstances. This makes it that much worse. In the worst case it could even be a safety problem if someone walked into it because they weren't looking down. I'm not trying to say that it's a hazard akin to an open manhole, but considering the other kinds of things that people walk into regularly, it's unquestionably a possible hazard.

Enough is enough. If you want a real memorial, do it legitimately. If the effort that went into this project -- "weeks Dumpster-diving, as well as wailing on Freecycle and Craigslist" -- had been put towards a productive purpose such as working with the government on a permanent memorial, we might very well have had one by now.

This is public space, remember? Like the road - we all must share it. And it is clear that this action will not help your cause. This will certainly serve to annoy DPW who must now deal with all the new ghost bikes, and it has clearly annoyed the majority of people commenting on the story.


... And, the national news. Last night, during President Obama's speech, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) yelled out "You lie!" while the President was speaking, in regard to his statement that illegal aliens would not be covered by his proposal. Let us forget for a moment the incredible hypocrisy in one politician calling another one a liar. The pot and the kettle immediately come to mind. There is not a single politican on earth who can say they've never bent the truth. And while it may be hard to quantify who's worse, anyone who's listened to Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh for more than 8 seconds should know that Republicans wrote the book on bending the truth. But I'll be the first to admit that every Democrat probably owns a signed copy of the same book.

It's not about lies. There are plenty to go around. It's about respect. To stand up in a congressional address and interrupt the President of The United States in the middle of a speech to the entire free world on the most important issue facing us today and call him a liar?

That is unforgivable. John McCain said it best when asked by Larry King afterwards what he thought:

"Totally disrespectful, no place for it in that setting or any other and he should apologize immediately."

This was the act of a single individual, but what he said reflects upon all Republicans. Sadly, it a bellweather that Obama will have a really hard time getting everyone to move beyond the rhetoric, the name calling, the bickering, and work to create legislation instead of continuing to do nothing. He'd barely been on the stage for 15 minutes, imploring the lawmakers of this country to find a way to stop using this legislation as a political tool while the goal becomes ever more elusive, to work together, and he's called a liar in the rudest possible fashion.

Joe Wilson is symbolic of the problem. He's not the only one, he's just the one who couldn't even keep his composure long enough to listen to the leader of the free world tell him what he was trying to achieve. Unfortunately, he didn't just embarass himself. He embarassed our entire leadership. It's hard to have a lot of faith in a governing body that can't even be nice for a half-hour when the President is speaking.

Cleveland Park Apparently On Life Support

In another life when I lived in Mt. Pleasant, Cleveland Park was it. While Mt. Pleasant Street has always been a great place to get a pupusa at one of seventeen Salvadorean restaurants, there was (and is) little else there. So I typically went to Cleveland Park if I needed groceries that weren't available from the Richfood corporation. Or about anything else.

I haven't been back there too much since living in Columbia Heights. Here, I still can find pupusas and rotisserie chicken at every corner, but can also buy air conditioners, small-to-medium sized furniture, and snuggies.

The ladyfriend and I were there Sunday afternoon to go to Vace, home of the most fantastic fresh mozzerella cheese on this side of the Atlantic ocean, and also for a trip to Petco. This isn't the first time I've been back, but it really sank in how desolate that place is becoming.

In the short time I was there, the following clear signs of the apocalypse were observed:

• Whatsa Bagel is now a nail salon. Everything to the left of what once was Whatsa Bagel is shuttered.
  
• Seven Eleven is out of business.
  
• McDonald's is out of business. I didn't know they ever did that!
  
• Starbucks is out of business.
  
• There was parking in the access road. Lots of it.
  
• While walking from Petco to Vace, I only had to walk in the street once to get around a slow-moving octogenarian.
  
• There was no line at Vace. NO LINE AT VACE!!
  
• There was no line at Brookville Grocery. Oh - and they charged me $3.79 for a single box of rigatoni, but that's neither here nor there.
  

I'm telling you, the end is near for Cleveland Park. A word of advice to Palena - MOVE NOW! I would cry if that restaurant ever closed, but pretty soon they're going to be the last man standing around those parts. Get out while you still can! In fact, the only business that didn't look pretty cobwebby was Petco. Though it did smell like wet dog in there.

So what's going on there? Here are some theories about the reasons behind the decline of Cleveland Park.

• Many longtime CP residents have died off in the last five years.
  
• Arrival of DCUSA in Columbia Heights meant Mt. Pleasant residents didn't have to cross Rock Creek Park to buy stuff other than pupusas
  
• Whorehouse was shut down, killing nightlife
  
• People who used hang out at Aroma finally left Cleveland Park after the smoking ban, and realized that there are bars with people under the age of 35
  
• By the time Aroma got the exemption to allow smoking again, you'd already quit smoking and everyone there somehow seemed even older
  
• Decision to air Indiana Jones 4 instead of Ironman at The Uptown was last straw for many
  

Any other thoughts? Damn I wish you could still get a decent bagel in this city.

RIP Cleveland Park! We'll Miss You!