Aaron in DC

Atmospheric shot of Washington Mall

2008-02-23T09:38:00.003-05:00

Believe it or not, these are the colors as they came out of the camera -- I like how it has a feeling of a sepia-toned black and white photo, with a few hints of color (like around the US flags). It was raining while I took the picture, but the clouds were breaking in the distance.

Orchid show

2008-02-23T09:34:00.003-05:00

The US Botanic Gardens have a show of Orchids on until April. More pictures at picasaweb.google.com/AaroninDC/Feb2008.

Light painting

2008-01-22T20:15:00.000-05:00

Light painting with the moonlit vista (25 second exposure at f/5, ISO 400 -- spot lit with two bursts of manual flash on trees). Moonlight only, along with faint city lights/glow. Large version here.

US National Arboretum

2008-01-22T20:08:00.000-05:00

More at http://picasaweb.google.com/AaroninDC/Jan2008

Orange

2008-01-22T20:04:00.000-05:00

New pictures available at my webalbum at http://picasaweb.google.com/AaroninDC/Jan2008. This one was taken with my new flash!

Great Falls, VA

2007-11-05T20:17:00.000-05:00

From beautiful Great Falls, VA. That is the Potomac River falling -- later it flows through the capital city.

See more at http://picasaweb.google.com/AaroninDC/November2007

Solar Decathalon

2007-10-11T20:58:00.000-04:00

Images from the Solar Decathalon competition. The challenge: build an entirely solar-powered house on the National Mall in ten (?) days.

Note the aquatic plants above.

The Lone-star state team. Yes, those cowboy hats are actually hard hats. Take a close look.

The Maryland team.

Solar Decathalon

2007-10-11T20:55:00.000-04:00

There were lots of plants in all the designs (above and below).

The best part about this was I simply stumbbled on it as I was walking around. I love this city!

40 Rounds

2007-10-11T20:53:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite pictures I've taken recently. From a statue a stone's throw from the White House, right next to the Treasury Building. Sorry, forgot the name of the little square it is actually in.

Montgomery County Cultural Fair 2007

2007-10-01T19:50:00.000-04:00

The fair had flamenco dancers...

And lots of food.

See more at http://picasaweb.google.com/AaroninDC/MontgomeryCountyCulturalFair.

Politics more unusual than normal

2007-09-18T14:28:00.000-04:00

A very odd article in the Washington Post about courting the "alien"vote in 2008. From the article:

The Paradigm Research Group ... held a news conference at the National Press Club yesterday to demand that presidential candidates support a "truth amnesty" to end the "government-imposed truth embargo on the facts confirming an extraterrestrial presence."

"The truth amnesty disclosure project is reportedly recommended by the participating extraterrestrials themselves," Alfred Webre of the Institute for Cooperation in Space announced to the humans-only gathering. ...

"Let me check in with the mothership," Phil Singer, a Hillary Clinton spokesman,
More than anybody, Bassett has been working to elevate alien affairs as an issue in 2008. He filmed video questions for the CNN-You Tube debates; they weren't selected. He urged George Stephanopoulos to ask the candidates about ETs; no luck.

He wrote an article titled the "ET Ticket" -- it gives the nod to Clinton and Richardson -- for publications such as UFO Magazine. And, fresh from the weekend's "X-Conference 2007" convention in Gaithersburg, he rented a room at the press club yesterday to announce "new efforts to introduce the UFO/ET issue into the ongoing presidential campaigns."

It reminds me of a West Wing episode where someone is trying to convince Sam of extraterrestrials. Only this is not TV.

Silver Spring Jazz Festival 2007

2007-09-09T17:13:00.000-04:00

Kids jamming to the music

Playing harmonica

The crowd on Saturday afternoon

Hand grenades at the Funky Pirate

2007-08-19T09:50:00.000-04:00

Photo by Beth from New Orleans. The bar next door sold hand grenades, hence the sign. As always, click image for full size.

Tomatoes

2007-08-17T22:03:00.000-04:00

My father-in-law grows tomatoes, and other vegetables, in New Jersey. When they weren't going to be around for a week, he gave me this entire basket of tomatoes. And did I mention Beth was gone all week too? That's a lot of tomatoes for one person to eat!

But I did get this nice shot of (a small portion of) them on the counter.

Georgetown, DC

2007-06-19T22:27:00.001-04:00

Along the C&O Canal Towpath in Georgetown.

Lancaster, PA

2007-06-19T22:24:00.000-04:00

Long time no post, I know. Here is an image from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where we recently took a family vacation.

National Archives

2007-05-14T11:25:00.000-04:00

"We the people..." The U.S. Constitution in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

School

2007-04-24T11:06:00.000-04:00

Just finished my Substantial Research Paper (sort of like a master's thesis), entitled "Political Parties in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan - A Comparative Perspective". Now just one more paper to produce by Thursday and I'm done with writing, and nearly done with my master's program. Woo hoo!

In other news, I am looking for a job. That takes a lot of work too.

Ok, back to work now.

The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (Edward Tufte)

2007-04-19T07:34:00.000-04:00

Isn't this commentary on PowerPoint brilliant? And Stalin says "next slide please"... (May need to click the image for a legible version).

From Edward Tufte, professor and author of many books on the presentation of data -- analytical design -- including the book from which this print comes: The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint

DC Cherry Blossoms

2007-04-12T07:37:00.000-04:00

DC Cherry Blossoms with Jefferson Memorial

I like the composition of this picture, but I was using my old camera (the Casio Exilim) and the lack of quality (lack of sharpness, lots of compression artifacts, poor color) really bothers me. I think what I'm learning is that image quality is not just about how many megapixels you have (my Casio = 4, Sony = 10), but also the quality of those pixels. When zoomed in to 100%, the Sony blows the Casio away. But I suppose that's to be expected for a camera that twice the price and 4 years newer.

Washington Memorial - the Casio did really well on this shot.

This was the snow we got on the Saturday before Easter, after temperatures had been up to the 70s the previous week.

Web Albums

2007-03-15T07:50:00.000-04:00

Using the new Picasa Web Albums from Google, I've started uploading more photos. To view the new image galleries, click here: http://picasaweb.google.com/AaroninDC. The "Aaron in DC" folder is simply a collection of all the images on this blog, while other folders go into more detail on other subjects.

I've also added a link to the albums on the blog sidebar. I believe you can also subscribe to the album via RSS, but I haven't tried it yet.

Cathedral

2007-03-14T09:03:00.000-04:00

I corrected the perspective and punched the colors a bit from the previous shot, resulting in this much better picture.

Zoo - Cheetah

2007-03-14T08:41:00.000-04:00

More zoo pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/AaroninDC/NationalZoo

Zoo Pictures - Birds

2007-03-13T18:54:00.000-04:00

More Zoo Pictures

2007-03-13T18:50:00.000-04:00

Neighborhood Pictures

2007-02-13T08:11:00.000-05:00

The Cafe Deluxe restaurant near our house.

National Cathedral at Sunset

Russian Tea

National Zoo Pictures

2007-01-31T08:09:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Josh for the tip that the last post of the pictures (now deleted) was not working. Sometimes Blogger is not very good about posting pictures. I'm looking at other options right now -- such as specialized photo-blogs like PixelPost -- but for now Blogger seems to be the best and free-est option.

UPDATE 2/13/07: This post seems to be having real problems, as the pictures keep disappearing. I hope they're up for good now.

Tulips

2007-01-30T08:40:00.000-05:00

An old picture from the college days. We don't get many tulips out here, although we do get wonderful spring cherry blossoms!

Flowers

2007-01-27T10:10:00.000-05:00

I just can't resist photographing flowers. This is a crop of a much larger picture I took. From the close of the Washington Cathedral.

Sony Alpha

2007-01-27T09:18:00.000-05:00

This is the new camera, the Sony Alpha A100K. That's the lens that came with it, an 18-70mm, f/3.5-5.6. It's a good lens though a bit slow, as it reaches f/5.6 by the 35mm mark (which is about equal to the field of view of a 50mm lens on a standard 35mm film camera). But it sure takes better pictures than my old Casio Exilim (which I used to take this picture!).

Searches

2007-01-23T10:08:00.000-05:00

I was looking through the statistics on the blog, specifically how people get to this site. Yes, in case you didn't know, when you click on a link to get to a wesbite such as this one, it knows where you came from.

If you were searching using Google, I can even tell what search phrase you were using. Here are two of the more random searches that somehow ended up with someone coming to my page:

Is Matt Fellowes married?
How much does it cost to operate a forklift

The highest number of people I get to my site, actually come through my friend Josh's site. Out of the last 20 people who clicked on a link to get to the site, 10 came from his site: www.intemporal.org/blog. Out of all links to me, that site accounts for over 20%. So go visit him!

Other stats:

53% of users used Microsoft IE browser, 37% used a Mozilla version (which includes Firefox)
84% used Windows, 15% Mac OS X
Screen resolutions: 1024x768 (53%) & 1280x1024 (29%)

DC Voting Rights

2007-01-23T09:34:00.000-05:00

Being in DC tends to make one acutely tuned to politics, and this writer is no exception. Noting that much of the city is invovled in some aspect of the government, it is, of course, ironic that DC's residents do not have the right to vote. Our license plates sport the motto, "Taxation without Representation," as a form of protest.

The Washington Post recently ran an editorial with Bush's "views" on the issue:

Quasi-Freedom Agenda; For President Bush, democracy doesn't begin at home.

POLITICIANS OFTEN treat the disenfranchisement of U.S. citizens who live in the District of Columbia as a parochial issue, a concern of Washingtonians alone. It is parochial, of course, in the way that achieving democracy in Iraq is a parochial issue for Iraqis and achieving democracy in China a parochial issue for Chinese. But as President Bush has stated so eloquently, the freedom of Iraqis and Chinese is also a concern for all humanity. "[I]t is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture," he said in his second inaugural address. So why not Washington, D.C.?

Post reporters asked Mr. Bush that question during an interview last week. Here is how he dodged:

Do the residents of the District of Columbia -- should they have a vote in the House?

I will look at what Congress proposes. I will look carefully at what Congress proposes.

But what is your philosophical view of that? Because we've gone to Iraq to provide freedom for people in Iraq, and the people in this country --

I understand that. You're trying to get me to opine on specific legislation that may be forthcoming, and I look forward to working with Congress on that.

I'm actually asking you to opine on general --

That's my answer. (Laughter.)

-- philosophy on whether --

I know what you're trying to ask me to opine on, and I'm answering that there is -- I will look and see what Congress proposes.

In fact no one was asking that the president comment on specific legislation. He could easily have responded this way: "I know that citizens of the District of Columbia pay taxes for their country, and I know many of them have gone to war for their country. They should have a say in how their country is ruled. I look forward to working with Congress to find the best way to make that happen."

Instead we get squirming evasions and feeble humor. To be honest, we don't find it funny; if anything, it's pathetic that six years into his presidency Mr. Bush can't bring himself to endorse basic rights for residents of his current hometown.

In that same stirring address two years ago, Mr. Bush said that "rights must be . . . secured by free dissent and the participation of the governed." He didn't qualify the principle; there was no asterisk, as in: *except for majority-Democratic cities. Either he believes in democracy, or he doesn't.

When it says "majority-Democratic city," it means it too. In the last mayoral election, the Democrat won with 85% of the vote.

Many dictators running in rigged elections don't win by that big of a margin. So yes, I want a vote!

Air and Space Museum

2007-01-13T12:33:00.000-05:00

I took the new Sony DSLR camera out for a spin at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum.

One of the famous "Flying Tigers" from World War II. I love the name of the airplane.

DC-3 mail planes.

A series of firsts, from left to right:
Charles Lindberg's Spirit of St. Louis, first to cross the Atlantic
SpaceShipOne, first privately funded spaceship
Chuck Yeager's Bell X-1, first to fly faster than sound

How aerial reconnaissance used to be performed (before the U2 spy plane), with the camera operator hanging over the edge with the camera.

On the Dangers of the Internet

2006-12-16T10:14:00.000-05:00

On my school listserve email distribution list for my program we get all sorts of messages. They're mostly about school events and goings-on, notices from our student government, and ocassionally they are personal messags trying to espouse a particular point of view (we got lots of them urging us to kick out our university president when he was found to be misusing school funds for personal events, such as a 13 course birthday dinner for his daughter, paid for by the school).

Last week, we got an impassioned letter telling us about a new "reality TV show" (somewhere in Europe, if I recall correctly) that was supposedly going to follow the training of suicide bombers, eventually culminating in their supposed death. Only what was really going to happen is that the TV show was going to convince them they were dead and in heaven, making a mockery of their "sacrifice".

Needless to say, my school is highly public service-oriented, and this student was wanting to orchestrate a boycott, get the show canceled, etc. And I don't disagree in principle -- this sounds like a disgusting TV show.

Keep in mind this email goes out to thousands of students and alumni.

So imagine my surprise when we get a follow-up email several hours later. Evidently, the sources were checked and the story originated from The Onion, the humor newspaper.

Oops!

Moral: Look before you leap, especially when it involves mass emails.

Roses

2006-12-12T08:12:00.000-05:00

From a bouquet I bought for Beth.

Wedding

2006-12-11T09:24:00.000-05:00

In answer to Shannon's plea, I am posting a few pictures from the wedding. Here are the lovely bride and groom:

Bride and groom both looked really happy, and bit relieved, too! Also looking happy and relieved are mom and dad:

And here are the decorations that Beth and I, along with lots of help from a few friends (especially from college friend KD) and from both families. We transformed the flourescent-lit office space into a party-worthy room (IKEA to the rescue!). Notice all the candles and favors on the tables that Beth made and K helped coordinate.

UPDATE (12/12): Just thought you should know that I hung all those IKEA globe lights from the ceiling. 21 lights, 9 extension cords and 1260 Watts in all.

Thanksgiving

2006-11-26T10:07:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. We were up in New Jersey for the weekend, and did lots of Black Friday shopping too. We didn't go at midnight, but we were up by 5:00 AM.

My sister's wedding is next weekend, which means we leave for Seattle on Thursday night. Traveling this much has worn us down, and both B and I are looking forward to post-Christmas rest. But for now we keep going.

Sorry I haven't updated in a long time. I originally started the blog to showcase my pictures. Now that I'm taking so many, because of my busy-ness, I really haven't been posting that many. But I'm thinking that I want to move back in that direction, of posting more pictures and suplementing them with text.

So here is a picture, taken a couple years ago in the Badlands. I like the texture of it:

Dreams

2006-11-08T11:02:00.000-05:00

I dreamt that I was back in Kindergarten, along with my old friends David and Ian. The odd part (all dreams have this, don't they?) is that we were our current age and size. I kept thinking - I already know these people, why am I back here? It was odd.

Seattle

2006-10-28T10:30:00.000-04:00

Beth and I were in Seattle over last weekend to go to my sister's shower.

My sister's fiance got pretty excited over this one present - his favorite childhood lamp:

Sorry to those Seattlites whom we didn't get to see - we were in late Friday night and out Sunday morning, so we didn't have a lot of time. Perhaps around the wedding time we'll have a little more time to hang out.

Tavurvur Volcano, Papua New Guinea

2006-10-16T07:55:00.000-04:00

"Oct 7 - Matapit Islanders watch the Tavurvur volcano erupt, sendin ash and rocks over the already devastated city of Rabaul in Papua New Guinea."

Washington Post, Images of the Day, Monday, Oct 16, 2006

Into fall

2006-10-13T08:23:00.000-04:00

The weather has taken a sudden plunge here, from highs in the 70s earlier this week to this morning when we both left for work it was just 41 degress! The high is only 57. It looks like fall and winter are definitely coming.

Welcome to the 20th Century

2006-10-03T18:19:00.000-04:00

Our home phone is back to working condition after more than a week of being out. The tech couldn't find anything wrong, so he suspects that somehow the wiring between our apartment and the junction box downstairs got damaged, either by humans or rodents. It took him an hour and a half of coming into our apartment, then going downstairs to test, then back up again, but he was able to find an older wiring system to hook our phone into so we're back in business. I asked him if he enjoyed the challenge of trying to fix things and he said that he used to, but now doing 16 housecalls a day was catching up with him.

In related news, I have joined the twentieth century and purchased myself a fancy cell phone! Ok, so really it's a prepaid phone, and the cheapest one they had (there it is in all its glory on the right). I won't be using it for chatting much (at 10 cents a minute) and I don't get any free calls at nights or on the weekends. But I still feel really cool.

Textbooks changes in China

2006-09-19T10:50:00.000-04:00

This is amazing. From a Sept. 1 NYTimes article:

When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise. The new standard world history text drops wars, dynasties and Communist revolutions in favor of colorful tutorials on economics, technology, social customs and globalization.
Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese Communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao only once -- in a chapter on etiquette.
Nearly overnight the country's most prosperous schools have shelved the Marxist template that had dominated standard history texts since the 1950's. The changes passed high-level scrutiny, the authors say, and are part of a broader effort to promote a more stable, less violent view of Chinese history that serves today's economic and political goals.
Supporters say the overhaul enlivens mandatory history courses for junior and senior high school students and better prepares them for life in the real world. The old textbooks, not unlike the ruling Communist Party, changed relatively little in the last quarter-century of market-oriented economic reforms. They were glaringly out of sync with realities students face outside the classroom. But critics say the textbooks trade one political agenda for another.
...
J. P. Morgan, Bill Gates, the New York Stock Exchange, the space shuttle and Japan's bullet train are all highlighted. There is a lesson on how neckties became fashionable. ... Mao, the Long March, colonial oppression of China and the Rape of Nanjing are taught only in a compressed history curriculum in junior high.

As the article later states, this is simply trading one ideology for another. But it is fascinating, especially only mentioning Mao once.

School

2006-08-29T22:47:00.000-04:00

School started this week - all night classes this semester. I'll be interning during the day as well, so I'll be busy.

Beth is searching for a job right now. Looks like Starbucks will hire her, but she's set her aim a little higher. We both agree, however, that a free pound of coffee a week doesn't sound bad.

Beth and I are also beginning to make favors for my sister's wedding. We are also in the beginning stages of planning a shower for them. Beth informs me that proper etiquette prohibits family members from throwing showers, however, we are not proper. Nor average.

In other news, I cut two of my fingers trying to catch a falling knife. Don't do that. It hurts. And it makes it hard to type.

Updates

2006-08-21T21:17:00.000-04:00

Again a long time since an update. Let’s see...

We just got back from a trip to the New Jersey beach, or “shore,” as it is called there, with the New Jersey family. We saw our little niece, who is chubby as ever, and can now rudimentarily grab at things. She really likes her green stuffed frog which goes “rabbit” and does not like being held by anyone but her parents.

We got tans at the beach, of course, and ate lots of fried seafood. Mmmm... It was good for the first few days, but by the last day my stomach was complaining that it wanted something fresh and not fried. I think I’ve eaten three salads since we got back on Sunday.

My sister is getting married in the beginning of December, and we’re planning on a shower for sometime in October. If all of these trips pan out, it will mean well be in Seattle four times this year. And since we’re going to Hong Kong for Christmas, we’re really racking up the frequent flier miles.

I just accepted a fall internship at the Mansfield Foundation, which focuses on the East Asia, so I’m excited to be at a place that is doing work in my field. My current internship is winding down – I have two weeks left there – and we’re finishing up a piece to send to the fall issue of World Policy Journal, and after that preparing for my director’s visit to South and North Korea in September. My director was also doing some consulting for a documentary ABC wants to do on North Korea, including a possible unprecedented interview with North Korean leader Chairman Kim Jong Il. You heard it here first.

My fall classes start in one week. Beth is busy looking for work, as she is going to take the year off from law school. The cut-throat competition isn’t exactly her cup of tea, especially since it seems that almost everyone in law school is there just so they can make lots of money and get drunk a lot. Beth would rather do something a little more productive with her life, and so she’s going to take a year off and do just exactly that.

That’s all the news from here.

Why Being Poor is Expensive

2006-07-31T09:32:00.000-04:00

Here's an excellent piece - The High Price of Being Poor - that appeared in the LA Times by Matt Fellowes, who is a Fellow at the Brookings Institution (which is next door to where I work this summer). It explains why the poor must often pay more for basic goods and services than other income brackets. It also provides evidence that the poor cannot simply "work hard and save money" to get themselves or their families out of poverty. On the other hand, it also recognizes that legitimate businesses face higher costs and lower profits when they operate in poor neighborhoods, and thus there is no silver bullet to end poverty.

The Dentist

2006-07-14T09:56:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the long time of no posting. As I said before, this work thing really puts a crimp in my blogging lifestyle!

I went to the dentist last week for the first time in at least two years. I inherited week teeth from my dad and, needless to say, my teeth were riddled with plaque – which would require “deep cleaning” – and cavities, including one which the dentist thought looked so bad that I might need a root canal. I went back to the dentist yesterday and, sure enough, it needed a root canal. So I got to sign away my rights and they started to work.

I think the worst part was when they had to put two pins in my teeth. I could actually feel them poking around in my teeth. The other worst part was the price, even with insurance. Double ouch!

***

In happier news, my sister is got engaged last week! I’ve met the guy once, and he is quite nice. Here’s what my sister has to say about him:

He's 24.
He works at my church. (I met him in small group- yay for church small groups :)
He's got the cutest dimples and freckles ever.
He's from Louisiana, been in Seattle for 2 years, doesn't have an accent here, but when he goes back to the South, the drawl creeps back. :)
He's quiet, kind, thoughtful, honest, and an INFJ (I taught him the MBTI system :)

The plan for them is to get married in late fall, so that means Beth and I will be taking one more trip to Seattle this year, in addition to going there in two weeks to see college friends Josh and Adrienne get married, and going to Hong Kong this Christmas to see my folks. We’re racking up the frequent flier miles!

This weekend, however, we are taking the leisurely drive up to New Jersey to spend a little time at the in-laws and to see our niece. I think she’s about 3 months old now, or maybe not quite. She’s so chubby, in that cute baby sort of way! Maybe I’ll take some pictures to post.

Cheers

No Boss in Sight

2006-06-26T17:06:00.000-04:00

At work, my director has just left for the summer. He has a house on a small island in Maine and I am left here to access his emails and communications, and talk daily on the phone to get assignments from him. Since he just left yesterday, I don’t know what this means for my workload, but I’m guessing that I will be having less work than I used to.

I don’t want to complain about having less work to do, but it does get quite boring here. I could literally sit around for hours on end with little to do. My only defense against boredom is to be proactive: I’ve redesigned and updated a lot of the Asia program’s website, and now I’ve launched on my independent project.

Whew

2006-06-17T23:19:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the long hiatus from posting. Since I last posted I've been in New Jersey to see Beth's family, Minnesota to go fishing in the north woods with my family, Washington state to see my sister graduate from college, and Wisconsin to see my grandmother. Not to mention that I've finished school and started my new internship, which I'm finding leaves me with less time to blog and more work. Or rather, that my routine of doing school work at home incorporated more breaks than working at an office does. So sorry.

But I have read quite a few books recently. Here's my take.

Salt: A World History, by Mark Kurlansky. Excellent and fascinating read for anyone who likes trivia and interesting stories. Enlightening at times, like when it explains the role that salt has played in shaping modern history, and overall a good read. I liked it better than Cod.
Heaven Lake, John Dalton. Nice novel about a young adult who travels to Taiwan to work as a missionary, gets on the wrong side of a few people there, and ends up on a long trek to western China to bring back a bride for a Taiwanese businessmen. I enjoyed it overall, especially the Taiwan and China references that I knew, although I felt the whole loss-of-faith theme to be unconvincing and underexplained. But I liked it overall.
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver. An award-winning epic novel, and I can see why. Also about missionaries and loss of faith (it's coincidence, I promise!), although this family is in the Congo. It's written from the perspective of the family's four daughters coming to grips with history and a misogynistic and out-of-touch father. Utterly absorbing, heart-aching and beautiful.

Books

2006-05-25T21:50:00.000-04:00

I just read Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky, and I loved it. He tells the story of how cod was one of the main reasons why the "discovery" of Newfoundland by Westerners was such a big deal, because there was such great cod fishing there. And cod was a great fish because it's easy to catch and easy to preserve in salt (the fish has little fat, which is what causes things to rot). It was quite a good read, full of fun trivia and more information (and recipes) about cod then you ever knew existed.

Speaking of fishing, Beth and I went up to Minnesota and met my parents there to do a little fishing in the great north woods. It was Beth's first time fishing and she caught three fish - I caught none. But we had a good time with my mom and dad and we got suntans to boot.

And now I've started reading Kurlansky's longer but very similar book, Salt: A World History. I never knew salt was so important - I guess you easily forget that in this era of refrigeration.

I'm back

2006-05-17T15:53:00.000-04:00

Sorry everyone for leaving the blog for so long. Needless to say, I've been busy!

Last week I was finishing up schoolwork. I finished up my US Foreign Policy essays, on the power of the president in wartime, the ability of the media and other domestic actors to shape foreign policy, and applying themes we've learned in the class to the politics surrounding the current Iraq War.

Once I finished that I gave the final test to my undergrad class, then got to grade all the short answers and essays the next day so that grades could be turned in by Friday.

On Friday, Beth's little brother and girlfriend came down to DC and delivered an armoire to us that her grandmother had used and not needed anymore. We'll be moving our computer off our old IKEA desk and onto this much nicer looking piece of furniture, and we'll be able to close off the computer behind doors so it doesn't dominate our living room.

Then on Friday we drove with them up to Beth's parents house to spend the Mother's Day with them. We also got to see our little niece, who is now just four weeks old. Of course, she is so beautiful and adorable. But Beth and I are not ready to have a baby quite yet. There's something about the hourly crying that made us glad we still have independence.

Finally, we went to the outlet stores to go clothes shopping and both of us stocked up on dress clothes for the summer.

Picture Gallery

2006-05-07T22:10:00.000-04:00

Some of you may have noticed the new picture gallery I set up, but for those of you who haven't, go check out the gallery, located on the right of the page. I still haven't found a design for the pages that I really like, but the pictures themselves are all there.

*** UPDATE 1/23/07 ***

The site is no longer up, as my former university kicked me off the servers. I'm still looking for new space.

TV on the Internet

2006-05-06T12:28:00.000-04:00

Since we don't have a TV here, we've been enjoying watching ABC TV on our computer this past week. ABC is showing full-length episodes of four of its shows online in May and June. Most of the shows have only the last several episodes to watch, but our favorite show, Alias, has the entire season five up to what has been broadcast. So every night after we finish studying for our finals we've been watching a few episodes.

Evidently, the US is far behind other countries in what is called IP-TV, with South Korea being the most technologically advanced on this front. With the constant fighting between the telecoms and cable companies and all the monopolies in between, I'm not surprised. I don't know if this happens all over the country, or just here in DC, but I see advertisement signs everywhere by both the telecom and the cable industries, usually attacking the other side. Just think where we'd be if they spent that much effort and money on improving their service.

Computers

2006-05-05T15:05:00.000-04:00

Because our mail is delivered to central mailboxes in our building, we sometimes get our neighbor's mail (probably when the mailwomen gets a little too hurried). We usually just take the mail and drop it in front of the neighbor's door when this happens, but yesterday we got our neighbor's PC Magazine, so I decided I might flip through it before turning it over. I know, I'm evil!

So I was reading the John Dvorak column and he was commenting on the progress of computing in the last few decades, noting how fundamental shifts that we all expected have not yet materialized. Specifically, computers have not become more human-centric, i.e. they don't talk, listen to, or understand humans very well at all, unlike in the science-fiction movies such as Star Trek where the characters ask computers questions and they respond intelligently.

Dvorak likens the phenomenon to the 1950's notion that everyone would be driving flying cars by the year 2000. And what are we doing? We're still driving cars that are relatively the same as they were back then, with only marginal improvements. Dvorak writes,

"Instead, the car became merely a practical deviste that can double as a status symbol and a fashion statement. Can the same fate of practicality strike the computer?"

Although he doesn't consider many of the advances that the internet has brought, it still makes me wonder about how much more computers are going to do for us, at least in the near future.

Where is Aaron?

2006-05-03T10:05:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the long delay in posting. I had two paper due on Monday, so last weekend was completely devoted to paper writing, one on the statistics of corruption and one was the edit of my Clinton-China-MFN paper.

The statistics paper proved somewhat interesting, as I was able to show that greater civil liberties and political rights leads to lower levels of corruption in countries. This is somewhat notable, I suppose, because it is often argued that authoritarian governments, because of their centralized control, can run economies more efficiently than democracies. I have shown this claim has, at least, some problems. Horray! But not too revolutionary...

Bonsai

2006-04-24T13:00:00.000-04:00

This is my little jade plant bonsai that Beth gave me for Valentines day, in lieu of flowers. I used to have a little jade plant before, but it died on the long car ride from Seattle to the East Cost 2 summers ago. So now I have a real live one, and it's much bigger than the one I had before - they grow very slowly. This one also has little mosses on the top of its dirt, which is quite cool - sort of like a green carpet (which you can sort of make out in the picture).

Google logo today

2006-04-20T09:46:00.000-04:00

The google logo today is quite fascinating, as it celebrates one of my favorite artists: Joan Miro.
For the curious: learn more about Google's holiday logos or find out more about Miro. My favorite painting by him, which I used to have hanging in my bedroom in college, is Blue II.

Uncle Aaron

2006-04-20T09:36:00.000-04:00

I am now officially an uncle! My wife's oldest brother just had a baby girl yesterday! And to honor me, they gave her the middle name of Erin. Ok, ok, so his wife's middle name is Erin too... But unfortunately because of finals we probably won't get up there until the middle of May to see the little baby. Still, it is quite exciting for all involved - there have been baby preparations and excitement going on for months here. My wife even sewed a big wall hanging for the baby, and finished it yesterday, appropriately enough. It features Noah's ark (appropriate for a pastor's baby, yes?), with pairs of elephants, giraffes, penguins, ducks, and monkeys holding fish in the water. It's quite nonsensical, really, but very cute! That is what it looks like, at right.

The Ultimate Present

2006-04-17T14:13:00.000-04:00

I found the ultimate present for any science or math nerd: a giant poster of Pi. It lists the first million digits of Pi! My Pi t-shirt only lists 4493. I love being a physics major. Of course, not only does it cost a ton but you'd have to find a big enough wall to put it on. Better to be safe and just stick with science t-shirts.

3.141592653....

Interesting News

2006-04-13T10:47:00.000-04:00

Now for some interesting news and/or sites, after the depressing ones from yesterday:

A photo essay on American children growing up all too fast in Hollywood by Lauren Greenfield. She's published the entire collection in book form entitled Fast Forward. And while it's specifically about Hollywood, I think it's obvious that the rest of the country is not far behind. Recommended.
A rather bizarre but interesting anecdote on the economics of driving a taxi, as told by a Chinese taxi driver.
And since economics run the world, a review of Thomas Friedman's bestseller The World is Flat by Edward Leamer. While I haven't read the entire review yet, and I haven't read any of Friedman's book, here's an interesting snippet from the review:

“Is a computer more like a forklift or more like a microphone?” It doesn’t matter much who drives the forklift, but it matters a lot who sings into the microphone. Think about the forklift first. You might be a lot stronger than I, but with a little bit of training, I can operate a forklift and lift just as much as you or any other forklift operator. Thus the forklift is a force for income equality, eliminating your strength advantage over me. That is decidedly not the case for a microphone. We cannot all operate a microphone with anywhere near the same level of proficiency. Indeed, I venture the guess that I would have to pay you to listen to me sing, not the other way round. And I seriously doubt that a lifetime of training would allow me to compete with Springsteen, or Pavarotti.
The effect of the microphone and mass media have been to allow a single talented entertainer to serve a huge customer base and accordingly to command enormous earnings. This creates an earnings distribution with a few extremely highly paid talented and trained individuals and with the vast group of slightly less talented working in LA restaurants, hoping someday to hit it big. Thus, opposite to the forklift, the microphone creates a powerful force for inequality. Think Silicon Valley, with ext raordinary riches accruing to some, but with the manual service workers living in their cars.

I'm really starting to think I should study more economics, since it does seem to run the world. And statistics too. Plus, I like numbers. But for now I must return to my paper writing...

News

2006-04-12T11:41:00.000-04:00

Unsurprising news:

Bush lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction, this time about Iraq's "mobile labs".
When big pharmaceutical companies pay for their own research for clinical trials, their own drugs ending up looking better than when independent companies do research.

Sorry for not writing more. I'm in the thick of writing papers right now.

First up is my US foreign policy paper on Clinton's decision to delink China's MFN status from its human rights record in 1994. I've learned a lot from the paper, especially that the US had less leverage over China than many assumed. I think that trend will only continue, as China tries to ensure that it will be able to go about its business with as few encumbrances from the US as possible.

After that, I have another week to write my paper on democracy in China, specifically on whether Western style liberal, individual freedoms will contribute to the growth of democracy in China, or that China will have to find its own method for ensuring human rights and liberties by tying them into its Confucian culture.

Internship!

2006-04-08T18:25:00.000-04:00

I got an internship for the summer! It will be at the Center for International Policy in their Asia department. The funniest part is that I get to help the director type out his email - since he doesn't use computers, he types them out on a typewriter, and then I'll retype them into the computer! Sounds like I'll get to be directly involved in his communications, in other words. They will also give me time to conduct an independent research project, and let me go to any relevant lecutures or conferences that are going on in city.

Tibetan Plateau

2006-04-05T11:25:00.000-04:00

While putting together the PowerPoint slides for my presentation yesterday on Sino-India relations, I ran across this wonderful NASA photo of the Tibetan Plateau. The plateau is in the middle, the sandy desert looking area to the north is the Xinjiang minority region of China, and to the lower left in the green is India, with Pakistan and Afghanistan being on the far left. The Himalayas are the white diaganol line down the entire photo, with Mt Everest somewhere in the lower right hand side (but before the big white hump).

From Wikipedia, click for bigger view.

Also sighted among the cherry blossoms...

2006-04-03T15:16:00.000-04:00

Curiously enough, at the Cherry blossom festival we also ran into a garden of tulips - over 60 varieties were there, I think. The tulip garden is run by the National Park Service, I believe.

More Cherry Blossoms

2006-04-03T15:14:00.000-04:00

I like them!

Cherry Blossoms

2006-04-02T16:50:00.000-04:00

We joined most of the city yesterday as we went downtown and saw the cherry blossoms in bloom. They were gorgeous. More photos on the way...

Chinese

2006-03-30T09:59:00.000-05:00

I found a webpage that lists the 2,500 most common Chinese characters, in order of the frequency they are used. This is interesting to me, because it seems to mean that someone who is studying Chinese (such as myself) can effectively study the characters that are most useful in daily life. I decided this after the lesson in my Chinese book that was teaching us about Beijing and Shanghai opera - the stuff is marginally interesting but I kept thinking that for all the work I was doing to memorize characters and vocabulary, at least I should be doing it for something more useful than the remote chance I get into a discussion about opera with a Chinese person.

The site also has a table of how many characters one must know in order to reach a certain percentage of understanding of the language:

100 characters → 42% understanding
200 characters → 55% understanding
300 characters → 64% understanding
400 characters → 70% understanding
500 characters → 75% understanding
600 characters → 79% understanding
700 characters → 82% understanding
800 characters → 85% understanding
900 characters → 87% understanding
1000 characters → 89% understanding
1100 characters → 90% understanding
1200 characters → 91% understanding
1300 characters → 92% understanding
1400 characters → 93% understanding
1500 characters → 94% understanding
1600 characters → 95.0% understanding
1700 characters → 95.5% understanding
1800 characters → 96.0% understanding
1900 characters → 96.5% understanding
2000 characters → 97.0% understanding
2100 characters → 97.4% understanding
2200 characters → 97.7% understanding
2300 characters → 98.0% understanding
2400 characters → 98.3% understanding
2500 characters → 98.5% understanding
2600 characters → 98.7% understanding
2700 characters → 98.9% understanding
2800 characters → 99.0% understanding
2900 characters → 99.1% understanding
3000 characters → 99.2% understanding

It takes 1100 characters just to understand 90%, so it looks like I still have a lot of studying to do.

Good News!

2006-03-27T09:30:00.000-05:00

In an email starting with "As one of the top candidates for the CNAPS internship position this summer..." I got my first interview scheduled for an internship this summer. The internship is non-research based, so it's not necessarily my first choice, but it is at the Brookings Institution in their Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies. I'd rather take an internship that had me doing more research, but this is a great institution and I hope I make the cut. And since it's a phone interview, I won't even have to wear my suit.

Wall, Part 2

2006-03-25T18:29:00.000-05:00

Remember our wall? Well, our building maintainence finally came last week, while we were snoozing in bed one morning, to fix our wall.

So far, this is how much they've done: they've scraped off the old paint on one side of the wall, and put down some sort of primer. They have yet to get to the worst part of it, which is in the bathroom.

Unfortunately, when our building manager said that they were going to do "demolition" I thought that meant they were going to be knocking out our wall and putting in a new one. Evidently, that wasn't what they meant. It's disappointing to be so undramatic, but also much less of nuisance!

The guy assured us he was coming back on Monday, so we'll see...

Stories

2006-03-21T19:15:00.000-05:00

Some good reading:

Is the world going to the conservatives because liberals and modern city-dwellers are too busy to have kids? That's what Phillip Longman writes in Foreign Policy.
Newsweek has an interesting article about "Continuous Partial Attention", describing when we are we so attached to the instantaneous communication world of email and cell-phones that we lose the ability to focus in the real world.

Blessing

2006-03-20T11:14:00.000-05:00

I found the Lenten blessing in the Episcopal church yesterday to be quite profound:

Let your memory provide no shelter for grievance;
your heart no harbor for malice;
your tongue no accomplice for judgment.
May the blessing of God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit be with you now and always.
Amen

What I found most profound is that this is not an exhortation, but is rather a blessing, indicating that God will be the one doing those things to us. How interesting and comforting.

Another Black Mark

2006-03-19T13:15:00.000-05:00

Suggested reading:

An article by the NY Times details Camp Nama, just a few miles from Abu Ghraib, where US soldiers turned a former Saddam Hussein torture chamber into one of their own. Prisoners were abused so flagrantly that even the CIA would not participate there, which is saying something these days.

The report gives serious ammunition against the claims that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was committed by "a few bad apples". Instead, it points to an intelligence system that has implicitly accepted abuse and torture of "those who are not like us."

As an American, it should be disgusting. If we claim to be representing democracy and freedom, then we are doing a very poor job of it. Torture and the wanton ignorance of human rights and international accords are not hallmarks of our country. We learned this in Vietnam. Do we have to learn it again?

The first page of the article

March 19, 2006
Task Force 6-26
In Secret Unit's 'Black Room,' a Grim Portrait of U.S. Abuse
By ERIC SCHMITT and CAROLYN MARSHALL

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.

The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26. Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away.

Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.

The story of detainee abuse in Iraq is a familiar one. But the following account of Task Force 6-26, based on documents and interviews with more than a dozen people, offers the first detailed description of how the military's most highly trained counterterrorism unit committed serious abuses.

It adds to the picture of harsh interrogation practices at American military prisons in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as at secret Central Intelligence Agency detention centers around the world.

The new account reveals the extent to which the unit members mistreated prisoners months before and after the photographs of abuse from Abu Ghraib were made public in April 2004, and it helps belie the original Pentagon assertions that abuse was confined to a small number of rogue reservists at Abu Ghraib.

The abuses at Camp Nama continued despite warnings beginning in August 2003 from an Army investigator and American intelligence and law enforcement officials in Iraq. The C.I.A. was concerned enough to bar its personnel from Camp Nama that August.

It is difficult to compare the conditions at the camp with those at Abu Ghraib because so little is known about the secret compound, which was off limits even to the Red Cross. The abuses appeared to have been unsanctioned, but some of them seemed to have been well known throughout the camp.

For an elite unit with roughly 1,000 people at any given time, Task Force 6-26 seems to have had a large number of troops punished for detainee abuse. Since 2003, 34 task force members have been disciplined in some form for mistreating prisoners, and at least 11 members have been removed from the unit, according to new figures the Special Operations Command provided in response to questions from The New York Times. Five Army Rangers in the unit were convicted three months ago for kicking and punching three detainees in September 2005.

Some of the serious accusations against Task Force 6-26 have been reported over the past 16 months by news organizations including NBC, The Washington Post and The Times. Many details emerged in hundreds of pages of documents released under a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union. But taken together for the first time, the declassified documents and interviews with more than a dozen military and civilian Defense Department and other federal personnel provide the most detailed portrait yet of the secret camp and the inner workings of the clandestine unit.

The documents and interviews also reflect a culture clash between the free-wheeling military commandos and the more cautious Pentagon civilians working with them that escalated to a tense confrontation. At one point, one of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's top aides, Stephen A. Cambone, ordered a subordinate to "get to the bottom" of any misconduct.

Most of the people interviewed for this article were midlevel civilian and military Defense Department personnel who worked with Task Force 6-26 and said they witnessed abuses, or who were briefed on its operations over the past three years.

Many were initially reluctant to discuss Task Force 6-26 because its missions are classified. But when pressed repeatedly by reporters who contacted them, they agreed to speak about their experiences and observations out of what they said was anger and disgust over the unit's treatment of detainees and the failure of task force commanders to punish misconduct more aggressively. The critics said the harsh interrogations yielded little information to help capture insurgents or save American lives.

Virtually all of those who agreed to speak are career government employees, many with previous military service, and they were granted anonymity to encourage them to speak candidly without fear of retribution from the Pentagon. Many of their complaints are supported by declassified military documents and e-mail messages from F.B.I. agents who worked regularly with the task force in Iraq.

Pocket PCs

2006-03-15T10:49:00.000-05:00

For my birthday I got some money to buy a Pocket PC, but now I'm just trying to decide which one to buy. I know that I want it to have WiFi, so I can connect to the internet on campus and at home, and I want one with an attachable keyboard so I can type notes and emails on the go. Here are a few options:

Dell's Axim X51
HP's iPaq_hx2410

I'm leaning toward the Dell - it seems to do more for less money. Or I might look at used or older models.

Any suggestions anyone?

Design

2006-03-09T11:28:00.000-05:00

I've played with the links on the right of the page a little bit.

I'm also hoping that over spring break (next week!) I might have a little time to put together an online photo album. My last one was so out of date that I took it down. Of course, I'll still have to keep working on my homework, since I have three papers coming up on me.

Water Damage

2006-03-07T18:58:00.000-05:00

We've got a rather interesting problem in our apartment these days: our wall is collapsing. Or rather, it's peeling away. About the middle of last week we noticed that the wall that separates our bedroom from bathroom looked like it was getting water damaged, and by the end of the week it was so bad we called our building mechanic to take a look at it.

He confirmed that it was water, and that it was not coming from our apartment but rather from the one above us. No problem, he told us, we'll send someone on Monday to fix it.

Well, no one showed up Monday. On Tuesday, today, we got a note from our building manager saying that the master plumber would be around today to fix things up.

Well, no one showed up today either. So when I got home I called the manager and she gave me the story. Apparently the problem is huge - it goes down the same wall from the 4th floor to the basement! So "demolition" starts tomorrow, with the top floors going first, which should be interesting.

Supposedly it should take 1-2 days to get rid of the pipes, but of course, to do that they have to take out all the walls on five floors, and then they have to repair them when everything is finished.

So I have a feeling this place is going to be a disaster for a while. Our bedroom already looks like we are refugees, since all of our furniture is piled up on the opposite side of the room from the cracking wall. Fortunately, we haven't seen any actual leaks, but our wall does look pretty pregnant.

Good thing we're going to be away over the weekend. I'll try to take pictures if they knock anything out.

Secure Email

2006-03-02T15:10:00.000-05:00

Everyone should get secure email. It's free, it's safe, every email program supports it, and it doesn't mean you're a bad guy if you use it. Let's think about it: Would you want everything you've ever emailed to be revealed? No, of course not! Would you rather send a postcard or a sealed letter (let's forget about the pretty pictures for a second)? I'd rather send a sealed letter, because then you at least have some protection about someone reading it along the way.

Email was never designed to be secure, but now it can be. So everyone, go out to one of these sites, download a free certificate, and start sending secure email:

Unfortunately these won't work if you're using any form of webmail.

Project on Corruption

2006-02-27T16:13:00.000-05:00

I'm writing my research project proposal for my Statistics class. The paper is on"Measuring Corruption" and deals with what causes corruption and how it is measured. The graphic at left is care of the World Bank - aren't they great?

The minimum length is 2-3 pages, but mine is near 10! Yikes! I guess it really is a good thing, though, because that means I actually have a lot of the work out of the way for when I write the paper.

The only problem - I've got another proposal paper due on Wednesday! For a project that I haven't even picked a topic for yet! AHHHHHHH.......

We're looking forward to spring break here.... Only ... two ... more ... weeks ... ...

What I used to do in physics

2006-02-22T09:38:00.000-05:00

I found a report online from the physics lab that I used to work at, at the University of Washington Energetics Lab. It's pretty cool, since it actually has my name on it, as having worked on it! Click on the picture to see the thing.

If you want an explanation of what it actually does, however, you're pretty much out of luck. Even I didn't understand it completely after having worked there for a year. In a nutshell, there are three metal conductors at the end of each of the long green rods, and they measure the voltage inside a stream of plasma that moves across the tips. Because the plasma is several million degrees hot, the rods had to be made out of a special chalky material, and they could only be inserted in the very edge of the plasma stream, since it's "cooler" there -- only a few thousand degress there!

For more check out the report, since it also has a few graphs that I made while I was there.

Photo: Washington Cathedral

2006-02-22T09:27:00.000-05:00

This is the Washington Cathedral, two blocks from where we live. I took this last weekend when it was snowing. And it's now snowing again outside, although not quite as hard.

Slow

2006-02-19T23:14:00.000-05:00

Sorry it's been slow here. Life here has been pretty busy, and probably will be for the next couple of weeks.

At least I've decided on a few topics for my upcoming research papers.

For my Chinese Politics class I think I'm going to do something relating to the chances of democracy in China, and it's effects on China's foreign policy with East Asia and the U.S. I still have a bit of refining to do on the focus, but that's the start.

For Statistics I'm probably going to analyze data on what contributes to a country's corruption. The group Transparency International has some quantitative data on corruption by country, and I'll probably try to see how it correlates with a country's GDP, rural/urban ratio, political system presence or absence of political and personal freedoms, etc.

I still need an idea for my US Foreign Policy class.

New Suit

2006-02-15T12:56:00.000-05:00

I picked up my new suits today! I got one new grey suit (the Versini one) and a separate blazer that was also on sale.

I also got some new ties. According to the Men's Wearhouse staff, yellow is the new "power tie", so I got one of those, as well as a nice blue and grey one that matches the suit nicely (they both do actually).

Now I just need an interview...

Watercolors

2006-02-12T16:57:00.000-05:00

For Christmas my mom and dad gave me a Watercolor-a-Day calendar, where you get a little preprinted paper and you get to watercolor it in. It's like paint-by-numbers, without the numbers. And they even come with inspirational quotes! Here's one of my better ones...

I do well at the solid color ones, not so well at the impressionist types. I like the impressionist ones, I just can't do them!

Snow!

2006-02-12T16:47:00.000-05:00

We got snow here over the weekend. Here's the view out our back windows:

Wacky News

2006-02-12T16:42:00.000-05:00

Our Vice President accidentally shot a fellow hunter.

"The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it
and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty
good."

This is our new favorite news story here.

Business cards for Aaron!

2006-02-11T15:46:00.000-05:00

I've got a business card now. It's so that I can hand it out to potential employers while I grovel for an internship. Why is it so hard to get something that doesn't even pay money? Anyway, here it is:

The Media's Influence

2006-02-10T14:56:00.000-05:00

I think the answer to the question of "who has the bulk of the control over the US media?" is that the presidential administration has the most control in framing the news, followed by the other political elites in Washington.

Remember I've only had this class for 4 weeks, but here's my explanation. The media rely on sources for their information, right? And the best sources are the ones who have the most credibility - ie. administration sources, and the president is, of course, the number one source. What he says gets reported and quoted. So he has the most potential influence to shape events and news in ways that benefit him and his administration.

Because it takes journalists a while to develop their network of sources, and because they rely so heavily on these sources, it is argued, that they will be very reticent to report poorly on the administration, becuase then they'd be biting the hand that feeds them.

The time that other political elites can influence the news is when they have dissenting views from administration and they are willing to express those views. Of course, for various reasons they aren't always willing to express those views, from re-election reasons to thinking that they won't receive enough support to warrant sticking out their necks.

There's other reasons, too, but those are the main ones that I can think of right now!

My Classes

2006-02-08T22:42:00.000-05:00

I like my classes a lot this quarter!

In my Domestic Sources of US Foreign Policy we are studying the effect of the media and the president on politics and how people make up their minds about who to support or vote for. And guess what? The president doesn't have as much power as we necessarily think he does - most people already have their minds made up about what policies they will support or not, even if they haven't consciously made that decision. And this is partly because people tend to listen more and believe those (people, media, etc.) who already agree with them. This is great stuff!

In my Chinese Politics class we read a great book on Chinese history, heard a guest lecture on Chinese responses to terrorism, and watched a documentary on the Tiananmen incident.

You may already know how I feel about statistics class, but I do like the stuff we are actually learning. I find it quite fascinating. I think I'm also one of the few people who understands the textbook, mostly I think because we had to do so much statistics when I was studying physics (of course, I didn't understand it then!).

And I just graded my first bunch of papers for the US, Japan and China class that I am TA for. Now I just hope that nobody complains about their grades! Grading papers is so stressful! I'll be glad to go back to grading tests.

So I like my classes! Yay!

I'm getting old

2006-02-07T12:30:00.000-05:00

I have to get a suit. A business suit. A boring suit. But I'm at least going to try to get a gray suit, and not a navy one. To me, navy seems to be the most old. Gray is at least a little hip, and still boring enough to be professional. Maybe sometime I can get a black suit. My sister loves black suits - she was always trying to get my dad to buy a black Armani suit. I, however, will probably not get an Armani suit, because I am looking for internships, which are largely unpaid.

Here's one I like from the Men's Wearhouse. And here's one from Armani!

Fruit

2006-02-06T10:30:00.000-05:00

For Christmas, my mom and dad got me a mail order fruit basket from Florida. Here's the second mailing of them: tangelos and grapefruit, along with a mango and apple that were on sale at Safeway.

My own little still life...

Fish

2006-02-06T10:28:00.000-05:00

And the results from last night's salmon on the grill. Hmmmmmmm....

House

2006-02-05T16:31:00.000-05:00

It's surprising how much bigger our apartment looks when we clean it! Surprising especially in comparison with our apartment from last year, which was tiny. But I think it's good, since last year we were working so hard that we weren't at home as much. This year the extra space is a lot more useful, with our studying.

On the dinner menu tonight:

- Cajun spiced Salmon fillets (they were on sale at Safeway)
- Basil lemon pasta
- Broccoli (which has been in the fridge for a while, also purchased while on sale)

My birthday is only one month away! Yay!

Falling into the Subway

2006-02-01T13:47:00.000-05:00

You're in a subway, waiting for that train to come. Suddenly you think, it would be so easy to take just one small step and fall right in front of an oncoming train. Either that, or a little push - accidental or on purpose. I know I have. Well the NYTimes is running an article on just this topic. Quite interesting. It's from a study out of one hospital, finding that:

"We found that the number of subway injuries does correlate with the unemployment rate and the homeless rate in the city," Dr. Guth said.

and that

the highest number of cases occurred in 1992, when unemployment in the city peaked at around 11 percent

It even mentions Hong Kong, where the subway was used often for suicide, although it doesn't mention that Hong Kong has subsequently added doors to the metro platforms to prevent access to the tracks before trains arrive.

Media

2006-02-01T09:31:00.000-05:00

We learned in our US Foreign Policy class, where we're studying the media right now, that people who listen to NPR tend to have a greater understanding of alternate interpretations of the news. The scholarly evidence shows that mass media tends to do a poor job of being independent from the government.

So I've started listening to some NPR shows that are available as podacsts, which beats most of the podcast-only shows. I really like WNYC's Leonare Lopate Show which is updated everyday and includes NPR's great mix of views and insight.

Statistics

2006-01-31T21:13:00.000-05:00

I hate my Statistics class. Mostly it's because teacher is a jerk. He's crass and i's obvious that he thinks he's smarter than anyone else in the room. Which is ok with me - profs are supposed to be smart, right? But what bothers me is that he feels like he obviously has such low self-esteem that the only way he can raise it is by proving that he's smarter than his students. Now that's pretty dumb.

The worst part is that he tries to sugar-coat it by being funny... He says: "Think of a histogram like a human pyramid - no, not the ones from Guantanamo Bay." Anyone see the stupidity here? Yes! It's Abu Gharib, not Guantanamo! Stupid!

I wouldn't care about such a slip of the tongue, except that he's so arrogant to begin to with. Just act like a normal human being!

Other than that, the class is late at night, 8:00 - 10:00pm, which further aggravates the feeling of "why am I here?"

Sorry to rant...

Here's something interesting: the normal equation!

http://www.cap.ca/wyp/media/theStarEquations/

Hospital

2006-01-30T09:57:00.000-05:00

Beth's feeling better now. She had been in the ER a week ago on Sunday because she was very short of breath - it had been occuring for a couple days and got to the point where we wanted to make sure nothing was really wrong. The ER did X-rays, CT, blood tests, asthma checks, EKG - everything was ok and they thought it would heal up on its own, and it mostly has, with a little help from anti-inflamatory medicine.

So we're hoping this week will be easier than last week. Thanks to everyone for their concern.

Looking for a Job

2006-01-30T09:38:00.000-05:00

Time to get serious: I'm looking for jobs for the summer. Well actually they are mostly interships, and unpaid internships at that. I think international affairs is a field that doesn't make a lot of money, so they only pay people they actually hire. But an internship will be fun. Here's the different think-tanks that I'll be applying, I think:

Brookings Institution, Henry L Stimson Center, Atlantic Council of the US, Mansfield Foundation, CSIS, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Congressional Research Service (CRS), Council on Foreign Relations, Center for International Policy

Mostly interns at these places help with research, general administration (read: copying), writing news briefs, maintaing websites, and occassionally getting to go to meetings. That woud be the really cool part - getting to meet people.

For the fall I really want to try to apply to the State Department and see if I can get an internship there. That would be really cool.

In the meantime, I'm doing my teaching and research assistantship, which I like a lot. I'm helping my prof to edit and send out an article to the Asian Perspective journal - some of my actual words are going to get published! Too bad I don't get any credit!

Photo: Rodin and The Gates of Hell

2006-01-28T22:24:00.000-05:00

Wow, I just ran across this picture in my collection. It's from Auguste Rodin's La Porte de l'Enfer (The Gates of Hell) at the Rodin Museum in Paris. The work is based on Dante's Inferno. From this angle, it looks pretty hopeless, which is, I suppose, the point of hell.

Photo: DC Tree

2006-01-28T22:15:00.000-05:00

I like this one. It works better in black and white than the original color.

You can also clearly see the change in color about a third of the way up the Washington Monument in the background.

Photo: Jefferson Looks at Washington Monument

2006-01-28T12:01:00.000-05:00

Photo: Saint Sophia Cathedral

2006-01-26T14:26:00.000-05:00

This is Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral on Massachusetts Ave NW, right where we live, with the Washington National Cathedrdal in the background on the right.

The name Saint Sophia, means "Holy Wisdom," Hagia Sophia. The parish of this church was founded in 1904, but the cornerstone for this building was laid in 1956, in the presence of President and Mrs. Eisenhower.

Information from Washington Itself, E J Applewhite, Madison Books, 1993.