Beach Drive through Rock Creek Park to Remain Open to Motorists

Not sure what I think about this. Seems like a cop out to me. Lowering the speed limit by 5mph and adding some "speed tables" won't make the road much safer for non-drivers. I think I would have preferred either of the other options (leaving things as they are or a total closure).

And on a related subject, now that its clear that Beach Drive will remain open, isn't it time for the DC government to do something with the abandoned section of Klingle Road that passes under Connecticut Avenue just north of the zoo? That road should be repaired and put back on the map. Or in the alternative, it should be properly retired and formally converted into a bike/foot path.

Almost as close as Florida 2000

The Virginia Attorney General election results were certified yesterday with a tiny 323 vote margin of victory for Republican Robert McDonnell out of nearly 2 million votes cast. Democrat Creigh Deeds has already filed a petition for a recount.

Bizarre addendum to my last post

A strange thing I discovered via Archive.org's Wayback Machine: The Onion was actually running a fake plane crash story as one of their top headlines on September 11, 2001.

So somewhere out there, I'm sure there's at least one conspiracy aficionado who thinks The Onion had something to do with the 9/11 attacks.

Signs Spotted -- and not spotted -- on the PA Turnpike

Spotted:

A Bedford County Sheriff's billboard with a picture of a couple dogs proclaiming "Beware of Dogs: Drug Dealers Stay Away."

I'd wager that a grand total of zero people have driven by that sign and thought "Perhaps I shouldn't set up my drug empire in Bedford... I was thinking about it before, but now that I know Bedford doesn't welcome drug dealers, I guess I better try Westmoreland or Fulton County instead."

Not spotted:

Any mention of an official Flight 93 Memorial.

Why is there no official Flight 93 Memorial? The only indication that anything of significance ever took place is one sketchy, hand-painted sign between the Allegheny Tunnel and the Bedford interchange which offers some sort of commercial tour.

It has already been 4+ years. I think there really ought to be a National Park Service operated memorial. And it would only make sense to have those brown NPS/Memorial highway signs up indicating which exit to take to visit the site. Though tragic, the site really should be a major attraction for Pennsylvania visitors in the same way Gettysburg is. The folks that died on that plane (likely saving the Capitol or the White House from destruction) should be honored with more than one flimsy tour operator's roadside advertisement.

Happy Thanksgiving from Ironcity and Flips McTough

In case the thought of the NFL's first meaningful Thanksgiving Day game in years doesn't provide enough cheer, you can always have a look at good old Flips McTough over at The Waahmbulance to bring warmth to your heart.


click here for video - courtesy of The Waahmbulance

(original posts here and here)

Anyhow, I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving. Mary and I will be in Pittsburgh where I'll be dragging her to my 10 year high school reunion.

What is so particularly bad about foreign oil?

This is something that's been on my mind for a while. Perhaps someone can better explain the economics to me.

I ask because in the past few years, the Bush administration and the Republican Party have spoken about the benefits of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) as if it would be some sort of grand socialist endeavor. When talking about the direct impact ANWR drilling would have for the average American, it seems like they are pretending that the federal government itself is going to get the oil straight from the ground and funnel it directly into American cars, without anyone taking a profit. There's never any mention of the certainty that the big oil companies are going to make a gi-normous boatload of profit on the whole thing.

As far as I can tell with my limited economic background, any oil we get from ANWR would just be added to the global marketplace. So maybe oil prices worldwide might drop slightly based purely on the slight overall increase in supply, but I fail to see how American gas prices are going to be affected in any big way (again, that's unless the government treated this as a socialist enterprise and did the drilling, transportation, and refining itself and then provided this extra gasoline at cost specifically to American consumers).

I understand that buying American products in general is good for the American economy, but in the context of this energy debate, the Bush administration seems to portray purchasing foreign oil as being WORSE than purchasing other foreign products or materials. What is so singularly bad about foreign oil? If not a money issue, then is it fear of being cut off? If that's the case, I would argue that it seems incredibly unlikely that we are in any danger of supply issues. Its not like the other countries could afford to stop selling it to us for any real length of time.


And these economics questions aside, there's still that thorny little issue of dealing with the hard facts: 1) the worldwide oil supply is finite, and 2) permanently mucking up ANWR to get the oil won't change the fact that we will soon need to convert en masse to an alternative vehicle fuel.

We Need Ben Back!

Steelers quarterbacks' records since the start of the 2003 season, including playoffs:

Tommy Maddox: 8-13
Charlie Batch: 2-0
Ben Roethlisberger: 19-2

Or, Steelers quarterbacks' records over the past 85 games, including playoffs:

Kordell Stewart: 20-7
Tommy Maddox: 17-17-1
Charlie Batch: 2-0
Ben Roethlisberger: 19-2

I think that pretty much says it all about what the Steelers look like with Roethlisberger on the field vs. with Maddox on the field.


UPDATE - Here's a *must-read* sports related story which was picked up by BoingBoing... holy balls!

Friday morning

- Went for a 20 minute run in the cold... pretty painful... how the hell am I going to play in a tournament this weekend?!? I need to get back in shape.

- Read this Charles Krauthammer op-ed about "Intelligent Design" from today's Post. I don't think I will ever give a higher approval rating to a Krauthammer piece again. This one's a 10. Seriously.

Astronomy Picture of the Day



Young Stars of NGC 346 from NASA's APOD website

Hilarious Disaster

Getting back to my recent mention of the Nicole Kidman movie being filmed around DC... the weather was nice on Sunday, so Mary and I decided to go find the movie people. We had read somewhere that they were using Union Station the day before, so we started there. No luck, but while driving across the Mall on 3rd Street afterwards, we spotted some action just west where 7th Street cuts across.



"Channel 6 news? There's no channel 6."

"CWN? Shouldn't that say CNN?"

It turned out we had indeed stumbled onto a scene from The Visiting. Apparently, the movie involves a ficticious disaster involving a Space Shuttle named Patriot. Wreckage winds up strewn all over the National Mall. The scene they were filming was the post-wreck news coverage along with folks leaving flowers and home-made memorial signs for the fallen astronauts.

We lingered around after shooting and realized that though all the actors and crew had left, the fake debris, signs, flowers, and police tape would remain for a while. So Mary and I hopped over the police lines and snapped pictures of each other playing dead alongside pieces of debris while some recently arriving tourists looked on in horror as they had no clue this was merely a movie setting.



We heard confused people whispering amongst themselves "Would the police really let people go in there if something happened here?" And surely some of the unaware people thought we were sick assholes as we laughed while posing for shots with signs like "In Loving Memory of the Brave Crew of the Patriot."



We also found out that there was an embassy scene being filmed near 22nd and Mass. We drove up there and sat around for a long while, but despite Kidman's car pulling up right in front of us, Mary never got her celebrity spotting: Kidman waited in the car (with tinted rear windows) for her scene to be ready longer than we were willing to sit around on the sidewalk.

Seconded

Virginia AG Race Gets Even More Interesting

After some recalculations (not recounts) of all the precincts' numbers, the official vote count stands at 970,635 for McDonnell to 970,225 for Deeds. That's 49.964% to 49.943% -- a separation of about one fiftieth of one percentage point.

In other words, GAME ON. Bring on the lawyers and recounts.

I wonder if this will get ugly.


[11-16-05 update - separation has dropped even lower: 350 votes]

And while on a grim subject...

Has anyone noticed that we still haven't solved our original post 9/11 problem: Afghanistan. We haven't heard much about the country lately, but a visit to www.icasualties.org/oef shows that with each successive year, we've lost more troops rather than less. The numbers are still small compared to Iraq, but we're entering our FIFTH year there and the fatalities are trending in the wrong direction:

     2001: 12
     2002: 43
     2003: 47
     2004: 52
     2005: 93

Wanna see an unfortunate example of web retention?

Check out this April 2003 USA Today story with its fantastic past tense title "Why U.S. casualties were low." The story came out about a month after our invasion of Iraq. It contains some quotes that are retrospectively pretty damn funny in their own incredibly sad way:

"Operation Iraqi Freedom illustrates how the United States has forged an era that is closer to bloodless war for U.S. combat troops, at least than anyone could have imagined after the carnage in Vietnam."

"...by any measure, this war is the shining example of the low-casualty conflicts typical of the post-Vietnam War era." (I admit I have taken this one a bit out of the context of the surrounding paragraph)

And perhaps the best. Or the worst:

"Land mines, which killed 20 last time [1991's Gulf War], have not claimed any U.S. troops in this war."

Compare that last one with this recent Post story about the heavy toll taken by IEDs. Just reading that old USA Today story makes me embarrassed for them. That's definitely one they ought to take off the website.

And while on the subject of casualties, its probably worth noting that we not only reached, but roared past the so-called landmark of 2,000 deaths last month. Let's just hope 3,000, 3,731, 5,252, etc, etc is not on the horizon.

Practically ran right into two pretty big name people today

First off, upon walking out the door today, I discovered a film called The Visiting was being shot quite literally a frisbee's throw away from our apartment. They were set up on the corner of Connecticut and Ordway in front of the old Sam's Park n Shop strip mall (right near the Cleveland Park Metro).

I was in a hurry and was more annoyed about the hubbub than I was interested. So I walked through the filming area on my way to the Metro escalator without noticing that the actress I walked right past was Nicole Kidman. Until I googled the name of the movie tonight, I had no idea that she was in it or that the strangely pale and skinny woman was actually Kidman.


a shot from a couple weeks ago that I found via the imdb website - Kidman looked exactly like this today

So then a half hour later I got down to the Hart Senate Office Building to drop some resumes in a few places and I crossed paths with Orrin Hatch in the hall as soon as I cleared security. Hatch is probably one of the three best known Pitt Law alumni in the country -- the others being Derrick Bell and Dick Thornburgh -- so its a shame that I didn't have the nerve or the interest in his politics to shove one of my resumes into his hand.

WHOOPS!



Looks like calling in last second campaign help from someone with a 39% approval rating wasn't such a hot idea. What was expected to be a nailbiter in Virginia turned into a solid win for Tim Kaine (51.8% to 45.9% with almost all the votes counted).


Jerry Kilgore waves farewell to his chances last night as Bush thinks
"I would SO lose Virginia if I was up for election tomorrow."

I married the smarted man ever...

SAM PASSED THE BAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

More fun with glue

(via Kelvin)

This lovely story was brought to you by the fine folks of Western Pennsylvania

("He woke to a strong burning sensation in his genital area...")

Now there's one feeling I don't ever want to wake up to!

There is one piece missing from this story, however. I would like to know how someone fails to notice his junk getting super glued and/or his head and back getting nail polished. May I suggest that this guy had a drink or two? Or 12?

As E.J. Dionne so aptly puts it, the Plame cover up worked

I got so angry reading his Post piece today. I had not even considered that Libby might continue lying about the whole thing, only go to jail for a brief time, and then get pardoned by Bush in December 2008.

And unless Special Counsel Fitzgerald comes up with more indictments, these crooks are going to get away with it. It embarrasses me that we, as a country, are far too stupid to see through the fog of BS and may be too quick in forgetting the whole affair.