- Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.—Gravity’s Rainbow
‘Is it about a bicycle?’ he asked.—The Third Policeman
Tag Archives: Washington DC
P-p-practice
The mercury is pushing 70 today, and some people are actually walking around in shirtsleeves. A typical midwinter Washington heat wave.
(Note the three o’clock shadows—already a month from the solstice, but the sun is still lying low.)
Two weeks ago today, the Potomac was frozen over, and I saw this scene from Key Bridge as I [...]
Flakes
I can’t let December pass without recalling fondly the seventeen inches of snow that suddenly showed up. The snowfall of Saturday, December 19 (and a bit on Sunday), broke a bunch of records, the most easily remembered one being “the most snowfall in Washington in a single day in December,” something like that. For me it [...]
Threads
Picking up a few loose ones …
Armenia
Back in August we heard about the incipient rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey that was to culminate in an imminent restoration of diplomatic relations. On October 10, after a last-minute dispute over wording was resolved with input (shall we say) from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the two countries [...]
Caught
The New York Times reported today that Google is being threatened with sanctions in Germany over its Street View feature, which allows users to “stroll” along streets in areas that are covered by the service, taking in the buildings, scenery, vehicles, pedestrians, etc., in a 360-degree view. The “data protection regulator” for the city-state of [...]
Posted in Agora Also tagged daily life, Germany, Great Britain, New York, privacy, technology Leave a comment
Autobiograffiti
Not only am I getting tired of Facebook (after a mere 13 months of use), I’ve started wondering how much time I’ve already wasted there. It didn’t take very long for me to get fed up and shut down all applications, so if a Facebook bot sends me an egg or kidnaps me or asks [...]
Wasabi
I was looking forward to “crazy” on Tuesday, but didn’t expect so much of teh stupid.
Up until late Monday, Laura and I planned to head down to the Mall at a not-too-unreasonable hour and see what we could see of the swearing-in. We are, after all, just ordinary folk. But a former neighbor (and extraordinary [...]
Auguration
Far be it from me to try and predict how the Obama presidency will turn out. Many of us had a feeling the Bush years would be bad, but did any of us dream it would turn out as disastrous as it did?
I saw a teaser today at the New York Times saying that David [...]
Georgious
Not many notes have been emanating from the basement recently. A lot has been happening upstairs, but the excitement generated there is unlikely to be of particular interest to you. And of course something big is afoot in the world outside, yet whenever I’m on the verge of writing about an especially funny or shocking [...]
Bespoken
And now for a quick roundup of bicycling news.
The city of Washington, DC, finally launched its long-heralded bike-sharing program. It proved to be a smash hit, and plans are afoot to expand it. Within days, an attempt was made to steal one of the bikes from its very public parking place. You didn’t expect that, [...]
Drifting