everyone probably already knows about the horrific red line accident yesterday afternoon. i have nothing to add to the coverage of the incident; i haven’t regularly ridden that stretch of the red line since i moved out of silver spring in 1995. i don’t ride the metro rail much anymore at all, but many of my loved ones do, and the knowledge that this could happen to them is sobering. until we learn more, there’s no reason to think that this type of accident couldn’t occur anywhere along metro’s 103 miles of track or at any time of day. (however, i’d like to see a beltway vs. metro comparison of fatalities-per-passenger-mile-traveled. my hunch is the beltway’s considerably more dangerous.)

lacking a direct connection to the accident (although several work colleagues called me to make sure i wasn’t on the metro), i immediately started thinking about the administrative details that would need to be handled. the investigation. the impact on metro ridership. and whether metro will provide psychological counseling to the survivors of the accident. even if this is handled as well as humanly possible, i don’t see how it won’t generate at least a few lawsuits.

What is more important than current controversies, [Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice] argued, slapping the table for emphasis, is how the decisions will look 25 or 30 years from now. “If you get very focused on whether someone thinks your policies are popular, you won’t do the right thing,” she said.

statements like this have always left me disquieted. i understand the importance of taking the long view, of necessary sacrifice today for more secure tomorrows. but the phrasing of rice’s statement above suggests to me that she takes a binary view of policy: that the right choices for are future are not the right choices for our immediate present, or that good decisions for today are bad decisions in the long term. this us-vs-history view troubles me – it seems to me that it’s just as easy to make bad short- and long-term decisions. and while good short- and long-term decisions may be the most difficult balancing act, might it not be better – and possible – to make mostly-good decisions in both the short- and long-term?

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first river road, then 16th st. NW, now 7th st. NW – what’s with the dc-area water mains?

update: and as of 2:54, the post is reporting another main break, on U place, SE.

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was steven chu not asked about renewable energy, did he not comment about it, or did the post choose not to cover that part of the hearing? i’ll have to read the full transcript¹ to find out; while i agree that improving energy efficiency is a necessary step, we’re going to keep using energy, and i’d like to see the dialogue move beyond “clean coal” and nuclear technology.

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creative expression and cultural exploration through the cinematic medium are common in the west (although perhaps not common enough, if you look at the dreck hollywood keeps churning out). young saudi filmmakers, though, are having a difficult time of it. their subject matter – the role of women in saudi society – is fascinating.

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they’re the 3rd-highest GDP in the world today, so you’d better learn to like them, that’s what i say.

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“a time of great economic peril” is a throwaway line in an article on clinton, kerry, and obama, but it’s compelling nonetheless. the article itself is a good read for the backstory on the political dance of a sec’y of state nomination, and raises interesting questions about whether clinton actually has a developed thesis for the u.s.’ role in global affairs.

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and finally, zimbabwe. a “failed state,” by some accounts, where the fatality rate for cholera is about 5%, and the government serves only the increasingly isolating self-interest of mugabe. the life expectancy today is 58% of what it was fifteen years ago. twenty years ago, 85% of the country had health services within six miles of where they lived. today, the health care system has “essentially ceased to function,” and physicians for human rights wants the u.n. security council to refer the issue to the international criminal court. we’ll see how that goes – the u.s. has never been a fan of the icc.
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¹ that’s odd, no written transcript is immediately accessible. i may have to watch the webcast instead.

two news sources cover the same story regarding the release of sealed grand jury testimony in the rosenberg spy case.

nyt: “u.s. judge upholds secrecy of rosenberg testimony”
cnn: “58 years later, records unsealed in rosenberg spy case”

however you parse it, it boils down to this: ethel’s brother, david greenglass, doesn’t want his testimony made public, and the judge won’t order it unsealed as long as he’s alive. (david vladeck, GULC professor and one of the petitioners requesting the documents, argues that greenglass compromised the confidentiality of his testimony by discussing it with 60 minutes and elsewhere in the public record, but that’s neither here nor there as far as the spin goes.) most of the rest of the testimony is now fair game.

apparently the washington post has problems with berkeley breathed’s brand of humor, and pulled last week’s opus strip. salon has full story, including the post’s reluctance to run an installment featuring lola granola’s conversion from amish nudist to radical islamist. they really shouldn’t be so pc about the amish… i hear they don’t use the interwebs much.

in other news, the nyt magazine apparently thinks $40 for a wifebeater is a good bargain (the link to it from the front page reads “Cheap Find: Cotton Tank Top”); the Great Arlington Coffee War has made it to the usnews website (sans the customer’s side of the story); and lacking for a third interesting thing, i give you this: a texas school district that is trying to force a five-year-old boy to get a haircut. i might as well throw in a mention that my uncle made the front page of the wapo on february 15, 1967, for the same thing – the headline ran, “youth fights order to cut long locks.” *sigh*

what can i say? he was jks’ film TA. and then there’s that small matter of absolutely amazing everything.

oh, yeah. and neil patrick harris.

so, SCOTUS struck down dc’s ban on handguns last week, in an opinion likely to create ripples across the country as more gun laws are challenged. an interesting article in the wsj law blog discussed the practical implications of the decision in terms of gun-buying in the city, the upshot of which seemed to be “nothing is going to change quickly.” the immediate reaction in the dc metro area seems to have been a flurry of interest among wannabe hand gun owners who are trying to buy guns in md and va.

given this backdrop (and the wsj interview particularly), a new development in the district caught my eye. the wapo reports that a new gun bill is being introduced by phil mendelson today. the liberalization of the city’s gun laws seems to be happening more quickly than i’d expected, but apparently not quickly (or liberally) enough for some.

alan gura, the attorney who argued against the gun ban before the supreme court, is apparently of the opinion that mendelson’s legislation doesn’t go far enough:

After looking at the draft yesterday, Gura said in an e-mail, “It’s a good start, but there are other issues with the code.”

In particular, he is concerned about the city’s decision to continue a ban on semiautomatic weapons, which he said is unconstitutional.

if i were a writer of very bad puns, i’d say gura was setting himself up for a heller ironic ending.

• “pharmacists for life international” has a handy list of boycott-worthy pharmacies around the country (thankfully few, at least for now). these are places that value “life” over women’s health, and refuse to stock plan B, hormonal contraceptives, and in some cases, even condoms.

  it’s an ugly site, but the list is below the fold on the linked page.

• japan threatens “re-education” for overweight adults who don’t lose weight within six months. on a related note, they’re also improving the manners of their smokers!
• and non-ironically, a theologian working to save quechua.

“Bringing Baitullah Mehsud, the head of this extremist group in South Waziristan — capturing him and bringing him to justice, which is what should happen to him,” is what the United States wants from Pakistan, Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte said last month in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

i’m hideously uninformed on this one, but hopefully negroponte won’t drag u.s. troops into this. it seems to me capturing and bringing to justice isn’t something the u.s. gov’t is doing so well in that part of the world. consider OBL, wanted dead or alive;¹ and then saddam hussein, whose receipt of justice seems to have solved… absolutely nothing.

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¹ c’mon, you didn’t really think i’d link to this, did you?

this morning’s random bits:

• it’s apparently difficult to get rid of all the personal data on an iphone.
• xkcd introduces geohashing. geekier geocaching for the investment-inclined.
• sometimes i think people would be easier to understand if their speech had html markups.
• nick has photos from istanbul up – quite neat, even if he didn’t take his SLR. apparently his main site is down, tho. is this the end of defenestrate.org?
• bad political news: kennedy’s malignant glioma. good political news: va’s abortion law gets overturned. again.
• and a quasi-art project.

that is all for now.

following my not-quite-diatribe about the ridiculous ondcp report, i began to wonder if the problem (politicized research) was being exacerbated by poor reporting skills. and while an n=2 doesn’t make for a very good sample (at least where N=the universe of washington post reports on surveys or studies), evidence for the poor reporting skills hypothesis is mounting.

take today’s wapo article covering the findings of the third annual autovantage road rage survey: for two years in a row, washington region drivers have been found to be the fifth-rudest in the nation. staff writer jonathan mummolo takes this to mean “we aren’t getting any ruder.”

wrongo, jonathan. what it means is that our relative ranking hasn’t changed. it doesn’t say squat about our actual level of rudeness. we may indeed be getting ruder, or (unlikely) we may be getting more polite. don’t you idiot uneducated moronic journalists know anything about basic research?

*sigh* at least there’s free iced coffee at dunkin’ d tomorrow. and no, they’re not related.