Sometimes we like Virginia November 22, 2005
Posted by danjeffers in Uncategorized.add a comment
DC is caught between Virginia and Maryland in an unusual way. First, we don’t have our own state, second, Northern Virgina and several Maryland communities are basically DC suburbs. Except they get all the benefits of being in another state|: Voting rights, lower taxes, a responsive local government, etc.
|Usually, true DC residents don’t like being in the burbs. But sometimes we go to places, like Virginia, and people are nice enough we get jealous. For instance, yesterday |I got on a bus going to some place in |McClean. |I mentioned to the driver where |I wanted to get off, as it wasn’t an obvious landmark. As we approached, he spent several minutes trying to explain how the addresses ran, making sure I knew how to get back, etc.
After |I got off the bus, as I looked for the address, I looked over to see that he had stopped the bus, got out in the rain, and was pointing at the building I’d been looking for.
Naming Celebtity Kids November 18, 2005
Posted by danjeffers in Uncategorized.add a comment
Celebrities give their kids strange names so the kids can’t run off and be normal. “I named you Kel-al, and nobody in my private entourage or tightly controlled private school will beat you up because of it. If you want to go to public shool, though…”
The Stop and Spread November 16, 2005
Posted by danjeffers in Things not to do while walking in DC.add a comment
Many times, a group of people walking down a busy sidewalk will come to a place where they want to stop. Either they’ve reached their destination and can’t immediately enter, or they want to renegotiate. Unfortunately, these people suddenly find they are standing too close. The walking formation may have been tight, but they didn’t realize it until stopped. So, the outside wings spread away, and everyone moves a step or two away from each other. The busy sidewalk suddenly has a clog, the artery is jammed, and pressure rises until flow is restored.
Buses could, perhaps, stop at the right place November 12, 2005
Posted by danjeffers in Washington DC.add a comment
When buses are full, and they need to drop someone at a stop, the driver usually overshoots by a good half a block, hoping to let that one passenger off before anyone else can run up and board. That’s fine.
But some drivers, when they are running behind and trying desperately to make up time, do the same thing. They seem to be expressing the fact that they’d really rather keep going by overshooting the stop, forcing everyone to walk half a block to where the bus actually stopped. Those of us who get annoyed, tend to walk slowly. So this whole impatience ends up making everything go more slowly.
Intelligent Design or Half-Baked Process? November 11, 2005
Posted by danjeffers in Philosophy and Religion.add a comment
I'm all for intelligent design if it merely means that evolution, not to mention the birth of the universe, was authored by God. (or whatever other name you might possibly have for an intelligent creator). But that adds little to the discussion of either religion or science. The division between natural and supernatural that Thomas Aquinas laid down would still hold. Science is the study of the creation itself, and postulates a self-enclosed, self-regulating system.
However, if Intelligent Design is the hypothesis that God authored creation but did so poorly, forgetting to make evolution robust enough to climb over certain levels in complexity, then there are problems. That would imply that God is an imperfect creator, that he does a half-assed job, then patches things together with Divine Duct Tape. Religion is affected by this conception of God. And science, as we know it, become impossible. There is no theoretical limit to the where the laws end and the Holy Duct Tape begins.
We need a word to describe this: November 8, 2005
Posted by danjeffers in What is real?.add a comment
When you are hanging around with someone and suddenly, it becomes clear that they are talking to someone else over their ear-piece. This happens more as the physical process of dialing or answering the cell-phone has been reduced to touching a button under your jacket. Then, when your friend says something to you, you wonder if they are still talking to that thing permanently hanging from their ear.
"Are you talking to me?"
"There's nobody else here, is there?"
"Well, actually, anyone on your speed dial might be here now."
Cell-phone Camera in the Face November 5, 2005
Posted by danjeffers in Washington DC.add a comment
First time I saw this, a woman had been pulled over on 16th street. Obviously upset, she was pushing her cell-phone, camera-lens first, into the face of the officer. Taking his picture, I guess, for the "Do-you-know-who-I-am?" hearing.
Second time, on the bus, a couple guys in the back of the bus, one is yelling, the other pulls his camera out as if to say "I'm taking your picture now, don't do anything stupid." The second guy pulls out HIS cell-phone and returns the favor.
Please don’t do the slow slant November 4, 2005
Posted by danjeffers in Things not to do while walking in DC.add a comment
The faregates are one of the biggest chokepoints on the metro system. People who know, walk in a relatively straight line towards the most open faregate. If a different one sudddenly becomes available, and it’s easy to switch without cutting someone off, you do it. But the thing not to do is to walk slowly, in a slant pattern, across the front of the faregates. Especially bad if there are two of you and you’re both wearing large backpacks. It’s like a zone defense, keeping pretty much everyone from simply walking up to the faregate.
Dragging Luggage November 2, 2005
Posted by danjeffers in Things not to do while walking in DC.add a comment
Once luggage was too heavy, too bulky to drag around on city sidewalks. Then some very smart person put wheels on the bags, turning the smallest person into a potential baggage-mule. That doesn’t make it a good idea to outfit mom, dad, and little girl each with a wheeled carry-on and form up in line-across-the-sidewalk formation for a stroll/drag down Connecticut Avenue. To be fair, Dad was doing the worst job of moving in a straight line, blocking those who tried to get around the “darling” little girl with his serpentine defense pattern. Call a cab.
Please don’t use your stroller to stop traffic November 2, 2005
Posted by danjeffers in Things not to do while walking in DC.add a comment
When I’m a pedestrian, I often pretend not to see cars as I enter a crosswalk. I get territorial and refuse to back down when a car is clearly going to violate my territory. But I’m not pushing a stroller. Sometimes you see a mother or nanny poke the stroller out into crosswalks, or even into the middle of the street, with a “you wouldn’t hit a baby, would you?” expression. Almost everyone will stop, if they see the stroller. Which almost everyone will see. So that means everyone minus two “almosts”. Is that really safe enough for you?
