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.

this headline caught my eye. a viral factor for alzheimer’s? could be fascinating, if you’re a public health geek like me.

but no, someone just misspelled “plaque”. shucks.

so, dr. horrible’s sing-along blog is a lot like buffy season six - big with the getting what you ask for, and realizing that whoops, maybe you don’t really want it.

yup.

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.

I think, or a or a well unanimous go get it, the ball gives me the ball well good boy gone Adamic dog would you want to to discuss their in and as a Behrendt plots retard.

Perhaps some of my early enthusiasm was misplaced. Obviously, as you can see from the quote above, Mac Dictate has absolutely no idea what to do when I talk to my dog.

gunston hall, mason neck, va

background: on june 28, 19-year-old ronnie white is charged with the june 27 slaying of a PG county police officer. he winds up dead while in police custody on june 29; on june 30, the medical examiner rules it a homicide. righteous community anger to follow.

attorney for the family holds news conference today, and states the following:

[whoever killed white] took it upon themselves to be both the judge, the jury and the executioner.

you got it. math is hard.

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.

this is the google search trends from ‘04 to ‘08 from florida for the words “surfing,” “apple pie,” and “orgy.”

for a moment i couldn’t figure out why “apple pie” kept spiking each year - until i realized it was likely a recipe search spike for thanksgiving/christmas. “orgy,” on the other hand, had a spike in early 4th quarter ‘06. anyone know if anything was going on around halloween that year?¹

(the trends are being used to argue that “contemporary community standards” are much more pro-sex than prosecutors in an obscenity case would have you believe. but what i find interesting, as you can see, are the trends themselves, rather than the relative popularity of the terms.)

hat tip: mr. pogue
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¹ a google search on the terms “orgy” “2006″ “halloween” indicates i’m not the only one making that connection. interestingly, a likely culprit from that time seems to be the coverage of the arrest of the guy who is the defendant in the case at hand.

first, the food, because that’s what i said i’d post. i started off with the chilies and yak cheese served with bhutanese rice. the red rice is the bhutanese rice; i gathered from other sources that the white rice was added as filler. all in all, it was pretty good - a bit like queso dip, actually. only somewhat runnier. i ate almost all of it, and was still hungry.

so then i meandered down to the viet-tex fusion tent (”texas noodles,” i think is the name of the place) and ordered some steamed pork buns. they were the spitting image of dim sum pork buns, but the filling was a bit more western barbecue-like. also yummy.

but what was really neat to see at the folklife festival was the buddhist monk working on a sand mandala:

so if you’re in dc, go check it out the festival. it’s pretty cool.