One of the many reasons you’ll never see me running as a candidate is that I can’t really bring myself to laud the Great American Electorate as all that smart.  I was always wavering on the issue, but 2004 settled it for me pretty well. So I’m easily pleased with little bright spots like this:
McCain’s association with George W. Bush is more damaging than Obama’s association with Wright.
The Jam – A Town Called Malice
Wet Wet Wet – Wishing I Was Lucky
The Housemartins – Caravan of Love
Arlington’s 12th Annual Neighborhood Day is tomorrow. The usual parade is starting from Courthouse this year (and looping up and around Clarendon) at 1pm. However, that’s not all that’s going on – there are events all over Arlington. Full schedule here.
This is how extraordinarily foul the military junta ruling Burma is:
The Asia head of the United Nations’ World Food Program said Friday that the government had seized the contents of two flights that arrived in the morning at Yangon which carried enough food for 95,000 people. They contained 38 tons of high-energy biscuits, medical kits and other items.
I suspect this will be temporary, as even a regime as repressive as this won’t be able to hold on long without some form of outside support.  And relief efforts, stymied as they are, continue:
Agencies such as the Red Cross, World Vision and Doctors Without Borders already had staff inside Myanmar before the cyclone hit, but have been struggling to get permission to bring in more, AP said.
And if the Bush Administration had ever had an ounce of sincerity behind its “promoting freedom and democracy” BS, the people of Burma wouldn’t be suffering like this today.
I really have no idea what to say about the latest obstacle to the completion of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the Mall:
The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts thinks “the colossal scale and Social Realist style of the proposed statue recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries,” commission secretary Thomas Luebke said in a letter in April.
[ . . . ]
Commission members said the sculpture “now features a stiffly frontal image, static in pose, confrontational in character[.]”
I attended the ground breaking for the memorial couple of years ago, and had been looking forward to getting to the installation stage. But the Commission has the capacity to grind things to a halt until it’s happy. Frankly, I find the criticisms really strange at this stage, and looking at the sculptor’s previous work, I think it was pretty clear what they were getting. And let’s not even touch on the use of the loaded term “confrontational” in the criticism. I hope we’ll get a little more reporting on this, so public pressure can be applied if necessary, as I’m not particularly inspired by the quotes from Commission members:
“My image of Dr. King is of him leaning forward in anticipation, holding his chin or raising his arm,” rather than standing with his arms folded, Commissioner Michael McGill said.
Yeah? How about a raised arm and a closed fist? I should probably stop before I write something inappropriate.
One thing I hadn’t realized was that when they selected sculptor Lei Yixin last year was that this meant the memorial would actually be made in China. While I thought the criticism surrounding his selection was mostly sour grapes and silly nativism (and still do), I’ll have to admit that it does seem a bit strange that what may be the last memorial on the Mall will be made in China.
As part of the lead up to the pro U.S. Air Force Cycling Classic that took place in Arlington this past weekend, teams from the three United States military academies lined up for competition in the Service Academy Shootout (presented by Northrop Grumman, naturally). The format was a team time trial around a 12.5km course starting at the U.S. Air Force Memorial, passing around the Pentagon, and then on a loop through Crystal City before returning to the memorial. 
The Air Force men’s A team won, with the Navy men’s A team just a minute behind it, and the Navy B team not too far behind that. For the women’s comp, I believe it was Army, Navy, Air Force. The official results are appended, but you’ll note that they’re not entirely clear.
The Air Force men’s team looked, how do you say it . . . PRO. Seriously equipped and in good form. The Navy guys lacked the aero kits (in fact, one Navy guy seemed to have forgotten his Navy kit entirely), but were scrappy as hell. Army turned out en masse, and cleaned up in the sprint competition, taking first and second place. I’m honestly unclear on how the scoring worked, but this Air Force story reports that Navy ended up winning the day with the most points.
The Air Force team did manage to pull off a decidedly un-PRO move when one of the guys ran into a curb and launched his bike into the air. Even better than hitting a curb at slow speed? He was going uphill. D’oh. I can’t believe that we’ve not seen pictures of it yet, as at least one local reporter/photographer was standing right there, and I understand a local news camera was on it, too.
The most impressive crash of the day, however, was in the shootout sprints, in which I learned that there is the right way, the wrong way, and then the Army way, to win a sprint.
Photos from the Service Academy Shootout are available here. (Apologies for the lack of finishing shots – those are in the same place as my pro race podium shots). Official results are available after the jump.
As part of the racing action in Crystal City this past weekend, the organizers set up a 200 meter sprint competition in a “shootout” format. This involved two riders starting from a dead stop and sprinting for the line, 200 meters away. The winner advanced to the next round. So this is what the two guys below were trying to do.
Andrew Christian, riding for the Naval Academy, missed a shift and went down, while Nickolas Shamrell, riding for West Point, unsuccessfully tried to avoid the same fate. And yet the sprint was still contested by both riders, and one of them won. To see how, check out this gallery showing the sequence of events.
(For more on the Service Academy Shootout, including photos, click here.)
I saw two headlines at the newsstand, this morning. The first was “60,000 Dead or Missing in Burma“. The second was “Aid Trickles In To Myanmar”. There’s nothing we can do about the first headline, but we can each individually do something about the second. It’s hard to overstate what a mess Burma is, even aside from the cyclone. The military government there will be completely incapable of caring for its citizens in this situation. So please join the rest of the world in its efforts to provide at least some basic level of assistance to the Burmese people.
One organization on the way is AmeriCares, a nonprofit international relief and humanitarian aid organization. A representative working with AmeriCares told me that they have “assembled life-saving medical and other humanitarian supplies at their Stamford, CT and Amsterdam warehouses to be shipped immediately to their partners on the ground in Myanmar. AmeriCares staff are also en route to the region.”
If people would like to donate to AmeriCares efforts they can do so by visiting www.americares.org or by calling 1-800-486-HELP.
Another reputable organization is Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders., and they are also active in the efforts in Burma.
Without getting too personal about it, I’ll say that I try (and prefer) to live my life in a way that presumes the decency of others. I’m always thrilled to see this approach benefiting another.
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