I just booked our tickets to Cairo for the fall, which is ridiculously exciting, and even more so because I found a great fare. But then there’s this little man behind the curtain at the bottom of my itinerary:

Fare Calculation: 7 SFO NW X/DTT NW PAR Q75.00KL X/AMS KL CAI548.00NW X/AMS NW SFO Q75.00 454.00NUC1152.00 END ROE1.00NW XT29.00US5.00XA 5.00AY15.68FR5.05IZ8.98QX 10.38CJ11.52RN5.06VV1.00EQ 12.88QH9.00XF SFO4.5DTW4.5

Huh? The only thing that makes sense in there is SFO, the airport code for San Francisco. Maybe there’s a Paris and an Amsterdam in there, but the rest looks a lot like the stuff that older versions of OS X used to spit out when you had a kernel panic. Pretty much the same thing I think, except one gets you to Cairo and back and the other makes you sad you forgot to back up your hard drive. I believe this is why people have such a hard time figuring out how airfares work, because the methodology is pretty much the same as when your computer gets mad at you for running 12 applications at the same time when you plug in a scanner from 1992 using a SCSI-USB converter.

Brace yourselves, this is a post about the media, which is what this blog was supposed to be about in the first place, but then I got distracted.

This is an exercise for me in news judgment, so feel free to weigh in. All of the following is factually true, though I have deliberately stripped out identifying details. The background:
-”Some people” offended by the use of two words in decriptions next to two portraits in a museum.
-Descriptions were seen before museum opened to the public; descriptions changed before the museum opened.
-Original news story said a senator and a congressman complained to the museum
-Museum claims the labels were under review and would have been changed anyway, without any intervention from lawmakers. The complaints from the original viewers were apparently enough to prompt the museum to make the changes.
-One congressman’s office said they heard from one person, and that no formal complaint was lodged against the museum, and one call made to “gather information.”
-Church which counts the people in the portraits as two of their most significant figures said it would not weigh in on the issue.

Some questions to consider:
-Is “it” news if a small number of people take offense at something?
-How big does that “something” need to be to elevate it from “small detail” to “significant”? How many offended people does it take to make it newsworthy?
-If people on all sides aren’t talking, does that make it a coverup?
-If it is a coverup, does that make it a story ipso facto, even if the original issue was subjectively deemed to be “minor”?

The Democratic Republic of Congo is having its first multi-party elections in 40 years this Sunday. Though there have been allegations of irregularities already, including 1.5 million people missing from voter rolls and an unusually large number of extra ballots printed, the elections are still notable and worth keeping an eye on. The U.S. media is doing a pretty poor job on this, but the BBC has a number of reporters in the country covering the event. Check out their stuff here.

And some food for thought once you bone up: Why isn’t the U.S. involved at all here? The DRC has substantial offshore oil reserves and some of the richest mineral reserves in the world, including diamonds, gold, silver and copper.

You probably remember my last encounter with Bluetooth. I got my hopes up again after installing the latest point update of OS X a couple days ago, which claimed to improve iSync functionality. A glimmer of Progress, I thought, that maybe it would now support my cell phone. Powered it all up, Bluetooth in System Prefs recognized the phone…and iSync once again said the phone wasn’t supported. After a little googling, I discovered that you can sync stuff using the Bluetooth File Exchange utility on Macs. Cool, so I can transfer one address at a time, or put photos on my phone, or vice versa. But synchronize full address books? No, never. That would be silly. I’m not quite sure whether to be mad at Apple, mad at Samsung, or both. The AppleCare lady admitted it was a bit half-ass (I believe she said “contradictory”) that you could partially sync, so I guess that is sort of almost a stumble in the right direction.

I ask again: Technology, where art thou? And where is my hoverboard?

It’s baseball, duh. My friend Anna, aka DJ Banana from the early days of the Weekday Hump, wrote a 160-page thesis about baseball as religion. And while I haven’t read it all, she was basically right: Americans and baseball are like, uh, summer and BBQ. Or the Metro and Washington, DC. They just go together.

We hit up the Nats/Cubs game last night to get in our own slice of spirituality to start the weekend. The weather was only slightly gross, and we were lured by the prospect of free hats and new concessions this weekend, both efforts to boost RFK’s sagging ticket sales.

Observation #1: What is wrong with the world when there are people scalping tickets for a game in which there were more than 20,000 unsold seats? I mean, really now. At peak there were about 35,000 people there, which means vast swaths of the upper decks were empty, and you could get a pair of seats in pretty much any section, including right behind the plate.

With so many options, we chose Section 543, which is basically dead-center upper outfield. It was like sitting on top of the world, only in an uncomfortable yellow wood seat. We were also part of the Nats Magic in our own special way, as a big guy drinking beer, whistling and yelling in a booming voice got the wave started in our section. We got it as far around the stadium clockwise as Section 506, which pretty much completely dropped the ball. Thanks a lot, guys.

Anyway, the game had long stretches of intense boredom, interspersed with short periods of ridiculous glee. Witness Geoff and I doing our victory dance with rally caps on after the Nats came back with a two-run single in the bottom of the eighth inning to win it 7-6. But I always like a game with a double play, and this one had none. Maybe it had something to do with two of the worst teams playing each other.

Heard on the way out
Guy with 20 Nats hats in hand: “Get your hats…I know they were free inside, but they’re five dollars here, so get your goddam hats.”

We saw Superman Returns last weekend like millions of other Americans, and as many of my friends know, whenever there’s a movie with airplanes involved, I’m bound to find something wrong with the aviating. So here we go, roughly in order of most-offensive to least-offensive…

1. Remember that ridiculously long scene with the Boeing 777 and the space shuttle thing? That posed a lot of problems, especially on the aerodynamics front. When the shuttle’s first-stage rockets ignite, the plane started to climb. No. Nononononono no. With the additional thrust so high above the plane/shuttle centerline, and with the two already in longitudinal equilibrium (i.e. the thrust supplied by the 777’s engines below the centerline is balanced by a slight amount of nose-down elevator trim), the addition of the shuttle’s rockets would have put the plane into a significant nose-down attitude. Since I’ve never flown a 777, I don’t know how much travel the elevator trim would have to compensate, but I’m guessing not enough. Let us move on.
2. The rockets, of course, set the tail on fire, and soon the empennage (that would be the horizontal and vertical stabs) is engulfed, as one might reasonably expect. The 777 has three independent hydraulic systems, so that wouldn’t necessarily disable roll control, but with the tail in flames, it’s safe to say that rudder and elevator control would be nonexistent. So we return to #1, and even if the pitch-down from the thrusters had been overcome, the loss of elevator control would pitch the plane down again…but that doesn’t happen until the tail finally falls off.
3. Somewhere in there, there’s a shot out of the passenger windows that shows the spoilers deployed on the tops of the wings. Nope. Most planes with spoilers are placarded against using them at speeds above 250 knots.
4. Switch aircraft, to Richard’s seaplane. After he picks up Lois, Superman and the kid and they fly away, Lois comes up to the front seats. Recognizing her, Richard removes his headset to talk to her. Huh? What? Say again? I can’t hear you over the ridiculous drone of my seaplane engine, which is quite probably at least 350 hp and turning at 2,500 rpm. Put your headsets on, both of you. Then talk. Really now.
5. The second time they take off from Lex Luther’s crystal island thing, Richard seems to have difficulty getting the plane on step, and then seems to forget about using ground effect (yes, it still works on water) to gain speed. His flying abilities aside, he apparently flies slightly above VS1, the clean-configuration stall speed, and then feels the need to pull up to get over some rocks…at which point the plane plunges over a cliff, and keeps on plunging for several hundred feet. That right there was the worst recovery from a power-on stall I’ve ever seen. Really, Richard, you suck as a pilot. As soon as the plane pitched down over the cliff, it would have gained enough speed to fly again, and should not have lost more than 75 feet of altitude.

That about takes care of all the atrocities for the moment. I’m still accepting donations for the Buy Peter An Airplane Fund.

I’m not going to lie, Interfaith Voices did a pretty quality job putting together my interview segment on this week’s show. The full program is right here; skip ahead to 18:50 for my delightful segment and insightful commentary. I think it’s safe to say that the full groove of DJ P-Dogg from the Weekday Hump is back in full force…at least when he’s properly edited.

That’s what Ben told me when I was in San Diego a few weeks ago, repeating that age-old adage and probably insinuating that I needed to shave.

Well, he was right.

I just did an interview this afternoon with Interfaith Voices, a public radio program on religion. It airs on about 45 NPR stations at various times over the weekend, so the easiest way to check it out is probably online. I’ll post a direct link here, but it can also be found on their Web site after 4 p.m. EDT on Friday.

They do a regular segment talking with reporters about stories in the news, so I was the resident expert on refugees who have been caught up in our broad definitions of what it means to be a terrorist. You can read the print story here while you wait for my scintillating interview.

Oh, and lest the momentousness of this occassion be overlooked, it has been more than a year since my sultry voice has graced the radio waves anywhere.

Thank you for the saddest Fourth of July I have yet experienced. I may be only 23, I may not have collected the wisdom of the world, and I know there are people more knowledgable than I. I do know this much, though: That was a scam.

After a grand afternoon of sipping wine with my friends, watching Italy beat Germany in the final seconds, and eating barbecued bratwurst, we headed to the National Mall to take in the fireworks and round out the day. But no, arriving at quarter to 9 (the fireworks did not start until 9:15 p.m.), of course (of course?) the security checkpoints had already closed. For those of you not in D.C. for this fine holiday, there was a gigantic “security perimeter” around the Mall. Among the prohibited items and activites (no joke): oversized coolers, Frisbees, aerosolized insect repellant and “climbing on trees.” Let us briefly review the sites contained within the Security Perimeter.

1. National Mall
2. Korean War Memorial
3. World War II Memorial
4. FDR Memorial
5. Vietnam Veterans Memorial
6. Tidal Basin
7. The Ellipse
8. Smithsonian Museum of American History
9. Smithsonian Museum of Natural History
10. National Gallery of Art (West Wing)
11. National Gallery of Art (East Wing)
12. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
13. Department of Agriculture (North Annex)
14. Smithsonian Castle
15. Smithsonian Hirshhorn Gallery
16. Freer Gallery of Art
17. National Air and Space Museum
18. National Museum of the Native American
19. Old Executive Office Building
20. Treasury Building
21. Lincoln Memorial
22. Jefferson Memorial
23. Washington Monument
24. White House
25. U.S. Capitol Building

With the exception of the last three on this list (I will entertain the two above those as well), I have an exceedingly difficult time believing that anything else here constitutes a threat from “The Enemy.”

We came to the Mall expecting to be part of a celebration of our nation’s independence above and beyond what we had experienced before. It would be a tremendous unifying experience, we thought, maybe even a little spiritual. Us among those thousands of people, there for a same reason. To celebrate, to recognize our incredible rights, and to be proud of who we are. But instead, all that was blocked by a piddling line of green plastic fence.

With 700,000 people (plus or minus a few) anticipated on the Mall all at once, I can understand the need for some precautions, like water stations, medical tents, and ambulances scattered about. I have a harder time believing that three-foot-tall green plastic fence (the physical material comprising the “Security Perimeter” in most places), pre-placed fire hoses, uncapped fire hydrants and magnetometers will do much of anything when someone with a will or a giant asteroid comes within striking distance.

Attention over-zealous prosecutors. The following speech is protected under the definitions established by the United States Supreme Court in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (315 U.S. 568), Cox v. Louisiana (379 U.S. 536), Dennis v. United States (341 U.S. 494), Gitlow v. People of the United States of America (268 U.S. 652) and Near v. Minnesota (283 U.S. 697).

I will remind my readers that, on any other day, assuming good aim and a strong throwing arm, I could quite easily lob a grenade at pretty much anything on the above list, with the exceptions of the White House (throwing arm not strong enough) and the National Mall (area too big to hit with one grenade). Heck, in many cases, I would only need to place such a device on the ground and hope I could run the other way fast enough.

But no, today is a different kind of day, you are right. Today, we honor the Declaration of Independance and the Constitution (both read aloud outside the National Archives this afternoon), profound documents that provided a solid foundation for what would become one of the greatest countries yet. So great that, lest we become hazards to ourselves, we can only view the fireworks from a mile away and cropped by a tree on the left and the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art on the right. So great that, walking home, a police helicopter flying broad ellipses over the Mall shone its spotlight on us walking home along Pennsylvania Avenue every few minutes. And so great that as we walked home, utterly disappointed, a pall of smoke, fog and humidity hung over downtown and blocked our view more than a few blocks ahead.

Thank you.

Love, Peter and Danica

One, the onions got here Thursday. I know many of you grabbed a couple, but if you didn’t, you’re missing out.

Two, have you ever noticed the odd ways in which federal and local governments entangle, even with our mystical system of “federalism”? Such was the case last week when Danica, who continues to refuse to blog herself, took on the incredible task of getting a passport. It went something like this.

A few weeks ago we got the brilliant idea to check out the “Passport Office” shop on 19th somewhere around L, but alas, that place exists mainly to stymy people like us. No, you can only go there if you have an appointment and if you’re getting expedited passport service, which is $60 more and gets you the document in 2 weeks instead of 6 weeks. We moved on. With all the paperwork filled out, and after a series of unrelated delays, Thursday she headed to the logical place to handle such matters, the passport office next to the post office at 12th and Pennsylvania.

But no, said office was closed due to flooding (you do go down two steps, after all, and in the days prior we had received more than 12 inches of rain…), and the next-closest “full service” post office was at 17th and Pennsylvania. Away she trundled, only to discover once she got there that “full service” means “we do everything besides process passports, dumbass.” All the other post offices that do handle passports require you to make an appointment, and the wait time right now is about 2 weeks.

So Danica fearlessly moved on to Plan D. Thursday morning, we emerged from the Metro at Judiciary Square, which I think is my least favorite station only because you find yourself surrounded by nondescript gray buildings when you emerge. It is rather unsettling and a bit disorienting. We lunged into the building lobby that seemed best, searched in vain for a building directory, found some DC tax forms instead, and then asked the X-ray lady. Yes, she told us, the D.C. Office of Notarizations and Authorizations was in here, up on the 8th floor. After a freakish encounter with the elevator door that would neither open nor close all the way (with us inside), we made it upstairs.

The Office of Notarizations and Authorizations shares part of the floor with the District of Columbia’s Office of Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs, and the door is plastered with a variety of printed-out signs blurting out the various policies most relevant to confounding visitors. Like this one:

Right. Excellent. This adventure is off to a great start, we told ourselves.

Inside, a lone (for the moment) bureaucrat who reminded me a lot of a Vogon, sitting behind her desk and talking on the phone about undecipherable matters. Seeing us, and greatly distressed that we had interrupted her, she got up, plodded to the counter, and started looking at the pile of paperwork Danica presented. But that didn’t last long, as the lady rebutted Danica’s attempt to pay by debit card. No debit, no credit, no cash, she said like we were the scum of the earth for suggesting such payment methods. We would have to go out the building, around the side, across the street to a convenience store to get us some money orders. Do we want expedited service? No.

But we had a change of heart on the way to the convenience store and sprung for the expedited service, getting a string of money orders. Back through the X-ray machine, where I didn’t bother to take all the crap out of my pockets, shamelessly set off the metal detector, and the security guards did not even bat an eye in the process. Your Homeland Security dollars at work, folks.

The Vogon looked a little disappointed and alarmed that we had returned so quickly. By now there were a few other happless citizens wandering aimlessly about the waiting area decorated with pictures of the ‘96 blizzard. We presented the three money orders. Did we have an envelope, the Vogon asked? Huh? Yup kids, for all that extra money to get faster service, the federal government, providing proxy service through this bizarre DC office that doesn’t do half the things you’d think it does, can’t find an envelope, a pen, or two stamps. But we decided not to explore that subject and moved on with the process. A few minutes and 83 staples later, the paperwork and Danica’s birth certificate vanished with a faint woosh behind the counter.

And finally, Three. A brief defense of Rogue Breweries, a fine West Coast/Best Coast beer maker that was unjustly maligned in another blog last week. Show me another beer maker that lists “free range coastal waters” as one of its ingredients, and I will show you a brewery that puts random symbols on its bottles to confound unsober drinkers. That would be Rogue, too. Also I once heard something about how the awards their beers have won spill onto five pages of rather small type. Those must all be wrong, I guess.