This guy’s doing some cool things: EcoLanguage
These animated diagrams are great to visually show how economics works. He should switch to Flash, so the images are clearer, and larger, without the download time. And a professional voice-over would be good. But this is by far the clearest way to explain economics.
And people need to understand economics, badly.
This is Information Architecture approaching it’s highest potential.
We wrapped up our DC vacation by going out to Virginia.
Actually, the day started with a trip to the National Zoo. Laura and I found the zoo a depressing place. We saw pandas (the new baby panda was not out in public, yet) leopards, and more. But we were glad when we got a call from my brother-in-law Richard saying he was ready to go on an expedition. We cut the visit short and headed to the gate on Connecticut Ave. NW, where Richard picked us up.
Our final destination was the beautiful Harper’s Ferry National Park. Richard took us there in his new Honda Accord, which is equipped with a navigation system. We set the destination as the National Park, and it took us there. Only, it didn’t take us to the entrance. Instead it took us the the nearest border of the park, which is across the river, just under the railroad bridge. This is some distance from the actual entrance to the park.
This turned out to be a good thing. Instead of turning and going back to the highway, we looped out through the Blue Ridge Mountains, lovely farm country, in full fall colors! It was stunningly beautiful.
When we looped back around to the highway, it was a short trip in, over the river and along it, up to a parking area, then a short (about a mile) shuttle ride in. By this time it was late afternoon.
When we finally got back through traffic to DC, we met Wendy at McCormick and Schmick’s, a really great restaurant! There are about 50 restaurants started by the same guys. All of them that I’ve tried have been really, really good. Our favorite was Splendido’s in San Francisco, which unfortunately seems to have closed. The Kuleto’s restaurants seem to be related to these, too. The Apple Pie was the best I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a few.
We flew out from Dulles at 7:30pm, and with the time change we arrived in Sacto at 10:30, but it felt like we’d been on the plane all night. It was windy and bumpy on approach, but the landing was smooth. We stayed at my sister Betsy’s overnight and made our way home the next day.
Great Trip!
After our marathon day (previous post) we slept in a bit, had a relaxed breakfast at Bread & Chocolate, and caught the bus and Metro to the Smithsonian Station (with one transfer, to the Orange Line).
From there we walked to the Air & Space Museum. This place is incredible. The scale is huge. Rockets, airplanes, lunar landers and re-entry vehicles, skylab and more fill the lobby areas. Side rooms include a hands-on exhibit—which the kids love so much the adults can’t get in edgewise—to a complete exploration of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Oddly, my favorites were the more recent additions of the Gossamer Condor (first human-powered flight across the English Channel), the Voyager (first nonstop around the world) and Spaceship One (first commercial spacecraft). Two out of three involved Burt Rutan, who is the coolest aircraft designer since the Wrights.
Every exhibit here is amazing, because they have almost every unique item in aviation history.
From there we went to the Hirshorn Museum which had some cool stuff. There was a great video display of tops spinning in big crowds which is hard to describe but incredibly fun to watch. My usual experience with museums is that most of the work gets a glance, but the few that are fun really hold my attention. There were several fun pieces here. I also tend to appreciate those with the greatest craftsmanship and complexity. So the prized exhibits often don’t get the reverence they presumably deserve.
We made our way back and had dinner at a nice Greek place in Chevy Chase, with Wendy and Richard.
The next day (yesterday) same pattern. We did the Natural History Museum and the Freer Gallery. The Natural History Museum had bad food, good Gelato and a wide array of displays. For me the Geology exhibits which range from explanations of plate tectonics, rock formation, earthquakes and volcanoes to displays of gems, including the hope diamond… was clearly the highlight. I’m fascinated by natural crystal formations.
There was lots from Northern California in this section… Gold from our own Grass Valley mining district, much about earthquakes and volcanoes (extensive mentions of the Lassen area), and the raising of the Sierra.
A huge display of animal skeletons was pretty interesting, and off to the side was a history of the Sikh culture and religion which I’d been curious about for some time topped it all off. After that, we came back to CC join up with my sister Wendy at Guapo’s, in Bethesda. Great Mexican food!
After my last post, we’ve done 3 more days.
The marathon day started with a tour bus. The Old Town Trolley left from Union Station. It runs approximately every 25 minutes in two loops that intersect. You can get off and on as many times as you want, for one not-so-low price. One benefit is that it provides easy transportation to the memorials, the National Cathedral and Embassy Row, which are not convenient to the Metro lines.
We visited the Jefferson and Roosevelt memorials. The first is classic the second modern, but they’re both great in completely different ways. I won’t bother to describe them here. Then we bussed back to lunch at the American Indian Museum (for the second time). Then we took the second loop up to the National Cathedral, then caught the last bus from there (at 4:30) back down embassy row, through Georgetown and Foggy Bottom, to the Chinatown area. We thought we’d eat dinner in Chinatown, but ended up at Georgia Brown’s where we had a 45 minute wait to be seated. In Washington, you can’t smoke in restaurants, but you can in bars. And at GB’s, the bar is the waiting area to be seated. Naturally we waited outside.
Despite the smoke, the folks running the restaurant were so nice and the food was so good, it was worth it, in a big way.
After dinner, we walked around the White House, where there was a demonstration by (I think) Nigerians. We went around the other side for the view then walked down to the WWII Memorial. This is a really great piece of work. Then we walked along the reflecting pond to the Lincoln Memorial. From there we went to the Vietnam, and then the Korean War Memorials. These are all really brilliant. I think the Vietnam Memorial really set a standard for modern public architecture that the Korean built on. The WWII is more classical and it’s own thing. But they’re all truly great, and capture the nature of each conflict in many subliminal and symbolic ways.
We saw all the three after dark. I think the Vietnam is somewhat better during the day, while the other two are good either at night or daytime.
Now it was late, about 10pm. We went to a bus stop to catch a ride back to the metro station. It was a long-time coming—about 25 minutes. A very nice older man, who worked the concessions at the memorials, reassured us that it would arrive, and he told us where we would transfer. Once we got on the bus it was a short ride (but would have been a loooong walk) to the Metro station in front of the IRS building.
From there we rode to Metro Center and transferred to the Red Line back to Chevy Chase circle. Late at night, all the trains and busses run less often. At each transfer, it took 20-25 minutes until the next ride came. We didn’t get in until after midnight, exhausted.
The American History Museum is really amazing… it goes on and on, has hugely significant stuff in it, and is really fun. The most fun was Julia Child’s kitchen. They took her real kitchen and moved all its contents into the display. You look into the kitchen through glass doors, and see how the most famous cook in America organized everything.
There was a great presentation on Brown vs. Board of Education. It has a classroom in it. On the left: Linoleum floors, metal desks, blackboards, books… On the right: unfinished wooden plank floors, benches with no writing surfaces… and that’s it. It was spooky seeing a real KKK uniform, and you could follow every step in the legal struggle to overcome segregation, city by city.
In another section was a military display titled “Freedom isn’t free” which you see on bumper stickers all across America. Of course, for blacks, freedom was won with lawyers and with marches. The bloodshed that happened was less organized than with war. But we should see that throughout history, the real freedom for real Americans mostly came from fighting in the courtroom. And that was only possible because we had a good constitution in the first place.
For American Indians and for other minorities, including blacks, the enemy wasn’t “over there.” It was right here. For Rosa Parks, there was a noble battle to be fought, but it was fought with words and actions that did not include guns.
Recently we had an option, as a nation, to solve a problem with legal action, backed by enforcement. Instead, we opted for force without legal authority. We opted for pre-emptive war.
The enemies of America mostly are the enemies within. Others can attack, but only sporadically, only effecting a few in our population. But the people running the House, the Senate, and the White House are destroying America from within. It amazes me that 39% of Americans still support Bush, and that those who are criticizing Bush don’t all seem to realize that it is the entire party working together to create this nightmare.
Up next to the Capitol, the first two museums in the Smithsonian, are the Botanical Gardens and the American Indian Museum.
We arrived at Union Station via the Metro. We wandered around and then ended up down in the food court. Had a decent hamburger and onion rings at Johnny Rockets. While we were eating, at least 30 Chinese male students in matching blazers, and a smaller contingent of young women came into the food court area (which is huge, BTW) and started looking for food. It was kind of amazing just to see so many people dressed alike.
We tried the Gelato. Not recommended.
We walked over to the Capitol and checked out where the line would start for the Rosa Parks memorial. There were already some people holding the first positions in line—maybe 100, or so. It was around 1:30pm.
We went into the Botanical Gardens. It was very interesting. There was an art display with picture frames around video screens. These showed videos of stop-action photography of plants growing. Then there was a room with scents of various spices that you could bend over and whiff. I didn’t sneeze once! There were desert and jungle regions, as well as a “forest primeval” which had only the earliest plants—pre-seed and flowers. It was also nice to get warm in the jungle zone. Here, a huge variety of incredible flowers and plants were arrayed along a creek, and you could go up onto the catwalk and see it all from above.
The American Indian Museum was beautiful. The waterfall and river wandered along the sides and the shape was reminiscent of the cliff dwellings. The food in the cafe was awesome. A variety of foods from different regions are available in a cafeteria environment. I had some spicy buffalo chile and a Mexican brownie… Laura had a watermelon-tomato salad and dried mangos. We also had some very nice mint tea. Unfortunately we got there about 3:30, so the selection was greatly diminished. They shut down about half the restaurant at 3pm. Still, it got us through the long period in line to see Rosa in the Rotunda.
The displays in the museum were of mixed quality, I thought. Some beautiful kayaks in the main area of the first floor were great, the movie got us off our feet in comfortable seats for quite awhile. It was very interesting… not the usual documentary fare. It covered the lives of native Americans struggling to integrate modern life with their traditional lives. The movie—in fact the whole museum—was not limited to the natives of the Continental U.S. but extended to Central and South America. There were some great clothing and weapon displays… but the items themselves were grouped together fairly tightly with no explanations of the stories behind them. The interactive displays were pretty, but didn’t have great UI, and didn’t seem to go into depth (or maybe I was missing something). The art display on the second floor was really great—it was only about two artists so it was very in-depth.
The top floor was the most educational, but the most frustrating. There were bottlenecks in the flow of people, and the plexiglass covering the displays was highly reflective and curved in a way that was very distracting to me. I didn’t find anything on California Indians, but the way the displays were arranged I could have missed it.
Our second day in Washington D.C. and we were invited to attend a special party. Two friends of Richard and Wendy were celebrating the adoption of a little girl. The restaurant where the party happened, happened to be the one where my nephew Luke is a cook.
This is a very fine restaurant, Zagat rated, called Persimmon. Really great food! Luke was working the grill, and made some very nice crab cakes, according to Laura. I had chicken, which was exceptional.
The really special thing was the couple adopting little Ruby, are a gay couple. This, so soon after my sister Barbara and her partner Renee adopted a little boy, is a remarkable coincidence. All the folks at the party were very good people. I was seated next to “Big John” who is in charge of all contractors for Dulles Airport. This is how we found out about the leaky roof that caused our detour when we flew in… He said it had not been a good day at all.
After the dinner, we got a tour of the kitchen, which was brief, because it was not large. It always amazes me how much great food can come out of a such a small area.
We flew to DC on Jet Blue leaving Sacto on the 28th very late and arriving at Dulles on the 29th 6:30 am. Jet Blue was very good. No wheel problems… I guess the fired the shopping cart mechanic.
It was an adventure getting thru Dulles. We found out later that their was flooding in the tunnels between the terminals, so everyone had to get on the funny monster buses, that are unique to Dulles.
We took the Super Shuttle to my sister, Wendy’s, house. That’s in Chevy Chase, DC (Not Maryland) near Chevy Chase circle. We had a little misdirect there… Wendy had transposed a couple numbers in her address, when she emailed it to me. A quick cell phone call saved the day.
When we arrived we were given the “Penthouse Suite” on the third floor. Big house. This is a great place to stay!
We went to a nice little cafe called Bread and Chocolate a few blocks away with Wendy. Very nice. Then we napped.
In the evening we went to a nice Italian place in the same area. Also very good. As we were walking out I noticed Tim Russert waiting to be seated.
Next day, Saturday, Laura and I went to Bread & Chocolate again in the morning, after sleeping in. Then we walked down to Friendship Heights to see where the Metro station was. After walking through nice neighborhoods, suddenly we were among these large commercial buildings; mostly shopping. We went down the looooong escalator, bought some passes, then went back out. On our way out we decided to exit into the Hecht’s dept. store, just for the hecht of it. We found a decent sale in progress, and because we had found out earlier we were going to a special dinner (more on that later) and I hadn’t packed anything but my standard ratty Merril shoes and Levi’s, we shopped a bit.
Then we walked back, and had just enough time to start a puzzle before Wendy got home (around 1pm) and we all left for a grand tour of DC. Through Rock Creek Park, down around the Smithsonian, up around the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and Congress itself. Then we drove down to the river, across, back into Georgetown (where my Nephew Ethan is attending) up the canal road, then back home.
A little later we went to a party. More on that later.
But last night (our second full day here) we did something extroardinary, so I’m leaving the chronological description for a moment. We went to see Rosa Parks lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda. When we arrived at 4:30, there were maybe 1000 people there, in a switchback line on the far side of the reflecting pool from the capitol building. We were in the 4th or 5th switchback, each about 100 yards long. 5 hours later we emerged from the capitol building. When we did we saw that over 30,000 people had gathered, and had yet to enter, or even to enter the park where we started the whole thing. It was a great turnout!
We got home around 11pm, exhausted. Now, it is 10:20 am the next day, and we’re going to hop in the car and drive out the the Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah Valley, Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway, where the colors should be spectacular.
I’ll return to embellish the Rosa Parks experience, as well as the visit to the new Indian Museum and the Botanical Gardens. All Fantastic!
Not all Republicans are Repugnicans. But right now, Repugnicans are in charge.
Further evidence that the persona the Repugnicans try to project is BS… This article from The Navy Times:
“A group of House Republicans have proposed a plan to offset the costs of relief and rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina that includes trimming military quality-of-life programs, including health care.
Possible sources of funding cuts to free up money for Katrina relief include reduced health benefits, consolidation of the three military exchange systems and the closure of the military’s stateside school system.
The House Republicans Study Committee, headed by Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., is not singling out the military as it tries to raise the estimated $200 billion that the federal government will need for various Katrina-related spending.”
[Found originally on Bush’s America blog]
Do I have to say it again: It costs us more to not pay an appropriate amount of tax, than it does not to. The economy doesn’t grow as well with a lot of taxes, but much of America is paying too little. And the cost of not paying taxes is higher.
Welcome to Mexico II.
There’s a lot out there about crisis response for businesses. Much of this applies to what happened on the Gulf Coast. A lot can be inferred. Obviously larger companies can do more of this stuff than tiny companies. But tiny companies are usually in one place, and just are in survival mode after such a crisis. I’m also going to note the governmental failure to follow these principles:
1) Send the company CEO or president to as near the location of the incident as possible, as soon as possible. Immediately announce his/her intent to do so, if they can’t go immediately due to local conditions. Bush should have helicoptered in as soon as the rain stopped. He didn’t have to stay long.
2) Start with your people, money can be dealt with later. Take care of people. Basic needs. The people who were in the dome needed water, food, sanitation and healthcare. They were told to go there, and many arrived before the storm got intense. Yet there was no thought to what it would be like 3 days later. And during those days, no one was queued up to bring in supplies and transportation and law enforcement immediately after the storm cleared.
3) Figure out what you can do for your community. What resources and people power can you put to work to help people? Customer service and billing should immediately distribute statements of policy to customer-facing people that the company will work with effected customers, and no late fees, account closures, etc. will occur for those in effected areas. Accept vouchers from FEMA, Red Cross, etc. even if you’re not sure you’ll get compensated later.
3) IT matters. Recover PC hardware if possible, ignore the rest. Hard drives are enough. People who can work will need their PCs. But make it clear: people are what matter; real estate, insurance, etc. are secondary. Make sure that those you ask to work under these conditions are OK. Most will be relieved to hand over most responsibility and deal with their own issues, but will feel some guilt. So keep them in the loop.
4) Be prepared: multiple redundant data centers, digital infrastructure that is hosted, rather than local, etc. will all go a long way to keeping things moving under these crisis conditions. It is really stupid to host your website on an internal server. Hosting centers are built with security, power redundancy, and emergency plans that your company probably can’t do as well.
5) But mostly, cross training and management teams that are not spread too thin… lean budgets may seem like a great idea to provide the most benefit to shareholders… right up until a chunk of your company is under water, and “the only guy who knows how to…” is missing, or injured, or traumatized. This goes to company culture, too. Companies that collaborate can adapt under extreme circumstances, while those that rely entirely on internal competition to drive performance fall apart. This is due to information and power hoarding.
6) Use a blog. Post often. Internal and external blogs are great. Employees need to know, just as the public does. Have a great writer tag along with the boss, and go to it. Make sure the posts genuine and useful and about the Boss’s observations. He can take notes and the blogger can expand, but it’s better if the boss writes (quickly) and the blogger cleans it up. Under stress, the boss could say the wrong thing or write things that cause confusion. The blogger should have a frank relationship with the boss.
7) Make sure your organization has (at each office) a satellite phone and a laptop that can use the phone as a modem. Cell phones probably won’t work. Consider a wireless network. A local wireless network can be set up quickly. You’ll need inverters, batteries, even a solar panel or two would be good. You’ll be worse than useless if you go into an area and can’t communicate after the batteries go dead. Have battery powered lights, and radios stored for these occasions. Of course, first aid kits are already done, right?
If I come across more, I’ll add them to this article.