Wayan’s DC Photos

This is what happens when you mix geeks in love with the XO laptop and bloggers envious of the clock-stopping technology: a laptop wrestle at the bar.

Luckily, the OLPC computer is designed to survive rough abuse just like this and it meshed right through the mash up.

Despite the fistacuffs, my OLPC News meetup and the DC Blogger meetup was a success. Geeks computed and collaborated on the main goal of the evening: invigorating discussion and eventual inebreation.

In a very funny followup to the whole silly Barry-Page kerfuffle, local Mike Licht has gotten told to buzz off and quit emailing… Barry’s communications director Andre Johnson of ProImage Communications.

My favorite part of the exchange is when Johnson tells Licht “I have never heard of you and truly don’t understand why I am getting emails from you.” I guess being someone’s employed communications director and receiving an email asking a question about Barry – complete with signature line clearly identifying himself as being from NotionsCapital.com – was a little confusing for him.

I think Gene Weingarten has made the best statement on the matter in his chat yesterday where he said

The controlling fact, for me, would have been this: The only reason this became public is that Marion Barry chose to make it public. And he chose to make it public in a quite hilarious way: Marion Barry, suspected and convicted scuzzball, tax evader, former crack user, erstwhile obtainer of oral sex in a crowded prison reception room, calls the elegant, sophisticated Tim Page, and I quote, a “lowlife.”

SCOTUSBlog reported earlier that the Supremes made no mention of the various outstanding appeals.

The Orders List contained no mention of either the District of Columbia’s appeal (07-290) or a cross-petition by challengers to the city’s flat ban on private possession of handguns (07-335). The next date for possible action on these cases is likely to come after the Court’s pre-Thanksgiving Conference — either on the day of the Conference, Nov. 20, or the following Monday, Nov. 26.The Court, of course, does not explain inaction. But among the possible reasons for delaying the case are these: one or more Justices simply asked for more time to consider the two cases; the Court may be rewriting the question or questions it will be willing to review — especially in view of the disagreement between the two sides on what should be at issue; the Court may have voted initially to deny review of one or both cases and one or more Justices are writing a dissent from the denial.

So in other words – a whole lot of nothing and no clue what it means. They added “At no point is there likely to be an answer as to what happened to bring about the delay. Both cases are expected to be re-listed for the Nov. 20 Conference.” So you’ve got another 7 days to grind your axe.

One’s a drug-addled politician clinging to public office, the other is a classical music critic for the Washington Post. But it seems that when they get together, there’s sparks! Apparently, Barry’s staff sent Page (who I will remind you is a music critic) a press release about the councilman’s support/non-support of the hospital property in Southeast. Page, upset over the (possibly frequent) email from Barry’s staff sent back this response:

“Must we hear about it every time this Crack Addict attempts to rehabilitate himself with some new=and typically half witted–political grandstanding?

I’d be grateful if you would take me off your mailing list. I Cannot think of anything the useless Marion Barry could do that would interest me in the slightest, up to and including overdose. Sincerely, Tim Page.”

Yikes. Page’s reviews are usually this sharp-tongued when performers don’t meet his approval, so I don’t exactly think that Barry’s office (which freaked out and got Page suspended from his writing gig at the Post) should be as surprised as they acted over his comments. Given that nothing Page said about Hizzoner, the Mayor for Life, was factually false, I’m surprised that the Post caved in to the righteous indignation of Barry and his staff.

For Shame, Post. For Shame.

Virginia Governor Kaine has decided to stop throwing good money after bad dumb and has cut a $275,000 expenditure that matched Federal funding for some abstinence-only sex education programs. The Post article on the matter is a cavalcade of baseless blanket statements, irrelevant observations, and poor reasoning. There’s a side order of political incompetence & sloth tossed in at the end, like a ironic cherry.

Sen. Ken Cuccinelli II, recent recipient of a 92 vote mandate, is quoted as saying “The longer you delay the commencement of sexual activity, you have healthier and happier kids and more successful kids,” a point with which I completely agree. Since a study earlier this year showed that abstinence-only programs didn’t discourage kids from starting to have sex one iota we can comfortably cut the funding for them without worrying that we’ll walk away from that goal.

Delegate Robert G. Marshall of Prince William expressed annoyance that Planned Parenthood, who lauded the decision, didn’t make the statement before the November elections. While Kaine’s office published this information in documents over a month ago [pdf], he apparently relies upon opposition groups to read government publications on his behalf and distill the information into sound bites he can more easily lodge objections to.

Victoria Cobb of the Family Foundation offered her objections to the change and pointed out a Virginia DOH study that “found a majority of teenagers agree with abstinence-only sex education.” Apparently students’ affection is a compelling reason to support something, so Cobb and the Family Foundation will soon also make announcements supporting downloading music for free off the Internet, wearing your baseball hat backwards, and the repeal of prohibitions against staying up too late, listening to “that” music “too loud” and hanging out in the mall even when you’re not buying anything.

OLPC Children’s Machine XO

Are you excited about a “$100 laptop” for children? Have you heard about One Laptop Per Child? Might you even be a Give One Get One participant?

Then you’ll be excited to learn that Wednesday night you’ll have the chance to play with a XO-1 laptop at the much-anticipated:

OLPC News Washington DC Meetup
at RFD in Chinatown (map)
Wednesday, November 14, 2007 @ 6pm

Jonathan Blocksom and I are organizing a geek-out with BTest-1 and BTest-4 OLPC XO laptops.

If you have your own OLPC XO, Classmate PC, Asus Eee PC, or other low-cost computing option, bring it out. We can have a full on laptop shoot-out.

But don’t think One Laptop Per Child’s clock-stopping hot technology will be upstaged. As the many G1G1 XO laptop buyers will confirm, when it comes to educational computing for children, there is no equal to OLPC.

H&K .40 compact

Originally uploaded by seanbonner.

…let’s talk about the DC gun ban, shall we? Pictured here is Metroblogging-founder Sean Bonner’s H&K .40 compact. He would be legally prohibited from keeping this firearm, even in its unloaded state, if he lived in DC, instead of on the mean streets of Silver Lake. The Post today explores the success/failure of the gun ban’s 31 years on the books. While it makes no conclusion, it does bring out the salient arguments from both sides:

• Gun bans won’t stop criminals from carrying (an obvious statement coming from criminal/mayor/councilman Marion Barry)
• A Gun ban in the District won’t affect Maryland and Virginia, where guns are largely freely available
• Gun bans may only prevent home accidents
• The ban didn’t stop rampant gun violence inside the District in the 80s and 90s when DC was the murder capital of the US

So, with word coming today from the Supreme Court as to whether or not they’ll rule on the current challenge, what do you make of a gun ban in the District? Good policy? Bad policy? Constitutional or not?

Speaking of mass transit woes and fools, tonight starts the rounds of public hearings where you can weight in on WMATA issues. Dr Gridlock lists here the places and times, but for quick reference:

Bechtel Conference Center in Reston, tonight Nov 13th
Metro headquarters in the District, Nov 14th
Montgomery County Council Building in Maryland, Nov 14th
St. Luke’s Center in the District, Nov 15th
Arlington County Board Office in Arlington, Nov 15th
Prince George’s Sports and Learning Complex in Landover, Nov 15th

This morning I decided I’d try a different route to the office and, rather than walk/jog/rollerblade/segway the distance to the metro station I’d instead catch the bus a few blocks in the other direction. What the hell – it’ll keep me from having to change lines by going straight to Rosslyn.

Well, it was a reminder why I prefer rail over the bus. I could build you an enterprise-class time & attendance system (well, I did once) but bus scheduled confuse the crap out of me. The line in question, 23[pdf], is designated as eastbound and westbound. But from my perspective it’s pretty much just going north and south.

Maybe most locations are less confusing (or just as likely, most people are more competent than me) but where I was directed to go has a stop for this same bus route on both sides of the road. So I pondered it a bit, looked at where the next few stops were and picked the side that seemed most likely to be going the direction I wanted. When it showed up at the designated time with no sign of a bus from the other direction I thought “oh good, I figured it out right.”

And enjoyed that confident feeling for the entire mile or so till the end of the line.

Oh well, at least that left me at a metro stop, albeit one farther down the yellow line than where I’d have started from if I’d walked.

The last time I really had much to do with the Catholic Church that I was raised in, I was brand-new to DC, and living in Alexandria. I went to St. Anthony of Padua in Bailey’s Crossroads, and I sang in the choir. At least, I did, until the day the priest got up and said, in his Sunday homily, that women couldn’t understand the suffering of Jesus. That was my resignation from the Catholic Church.

However, I might be tempted to go back to Mass when Pope Benedict brings his funny little car to the streets of DC in April. He will say Mass at the new DC Stadium, a choice I found odd because there’s no parking there, and frankly, there’s parking AND a higher capacity at RFK. Regardless, if the Pope’s your guy, he’s coming next April. Mark down April 17th on your calendar for Mass at the new DC Stadium.