Archive for October 2003

Magnamity in politics

Well I have most of the site back up. There are still a few links to fix, but I’ll fix those this weekend. I finished setting up the template for Greg’s site which I think turned out pretty well. In the process, I’ve learned more about CSS and PHP, essential skills for websites these days.

The statute on the left of Edmund Burke, located at 11th and Massachusetts Avenue NW, is one of the most ridiculous statues in Washington. It’s a model of the statue of Burke in his home constituency, Bristol, England. But what’s up with this pose? It look’s like a bad Twyla Tharpe dance move. What was he supposed to be doing? Notice the raised right hand and raised left foot. It looks like he should be a car ornament.

Then we get to the inscription on the statue, which I’ve blown up and repositioned in the picture. “Magnamity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom.” Although a noble sentiment, it seems to be the chief failing of we liberals these days. The conservatives have no such scruples and know that after they do something outrageous we will let it go while they sneak back into the cloakroom to plot another outrage. Sadly magnamity in politics is a virtue that we must abandon.

Website down

Well, when this website was migrated to new servers by my webhost, the site crashed. The webhost said that wouldn’t happen, but it did. They, of course, were lying. I’m trying to get it back up. After several hours of fussing with this site, some of the links work and other don’t. I’ll try to get it working correctly over the next few days.

Atlanta

I spent the last two days in Atlanta. This is the view from my room in the Westin Peachtree Center, just across from our office. A great view from a lousy hotel. It took me an hour to check in. The desk clerk checked me into a room that was occupied by someone else, as I learned when I saw somebody else’s luggage in what was supposed to be my room. It took forever to get this mistake sorted out.

Everyone is really polite in Atlanta other than the panhandlers, who are amazingly aggresive. I was in front of the hotel smoking a cigarette and two panhandlers would not leave me alone. They can’t be from Atlanta. My guess is that they head south hoping to take advantage of Southern hospitality. Little did they know that I was from Washington, the town of Northern hospitality and Southern efficiency, and so wasn’t going to buy their story.

The webhost for this site has just been sold, and they are going to migrate their site to their servers which no doubt means this site will crash. The date for migration is Monday, October 20, so this site will probably vanish then. I’m trying to back it up and find another host. If I’m not here next week, please be patient.

Winning is for losers

Oh well, the Cubbie Bears, as I feared would happen, ended up by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

This is the south side of Franklin School and I’m in no mood to describe this building now that the Cubs have crashed and burned. But Cubs fans are resilient. We pick ourselves up and move on even after we lose. Frankly, had we won, we would have lost the whole point of loving the Cubs: loving the losing team. Loving the winning team is for losers. So I’ll post more pictures of Franklin School and we’ll talk about in my next post.

One Franklin Square

I didn’t know this but One Franklin Square, at 13th and K, is the tallest commercial building in the District at 210 feet. The only taller structures in the District are the Washington Monument (555 feet), the Basilica (329 feet), the Old Post Office (315 feet), the National Cathedral (301 feet), and the U.S. Capitol (288 feet). I walk by this building almost every day and I never knew this until I did some research tonight. The building was able to exceed the District’s height limitations because the tower are “unoccupied embellishments.”

While posting this I’ve been watching the Cubs-Marlins playoff game. Once again the Cubs. for whom I have, due to my time in Chicago, an irrational affection are managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Cubs fans always know that no matter how good things look they can suddenly turn for the worse. It’s a great lesson for life but a lousy thing where sports are involved. And I hope the guy in left field who tried to catch the Marlin foul ball and caused it to go into play feels like shit.

Reflections

I’ve been seeing the reflection off of this building from my gym for a while, thinking it would be a great picture. It looks much better before the jpeg compression which has a hard time with the diagonal lines. The printout doesn’t have these artifacts and looks great.

Shadows on a gray wall

I’ve been busy putting a greymatter blog up for a friend, so I’ve been ignoring my own. And he’s not even adding content yet!

I haven’t even had much time to take any photos. This was from two weekends ago. It’s the side of an undistinguished building at 17th and Church transformed by the interplay of light and late afternoon shadows.