I didn’t recognize the place. We lived in around here when we were studying Norwegian. It was not very nice. There were a few restaurants, but the area was seedy – vaguely troubling during the day and dangerous after dark.
Now it is great. They call it District Wharf or Southwest Waterfront. I have to come down here with Chrissy. There are lots of nice restaurants with outdoor seating, places to drink beer in pleasant surroundings.
The pictures are from District Wharf. Notice the nice pub and new buildings. There is also a bike path. Notice the newly planted trees. They are American elm and should be great in a decade an magnificent in a two. The last picture shows a planter. The planters feature longleaf pines, just coming out of the grass stage. Of course, they are just decorative. In its natural environment, a longleaf pine that size will have roots reaching 10-12 feet.
After I am long dead, I hope that anthropologist discover my fossil remains and do whatever future scientists will do to figure help understand humanity. Never know what that might be.
I went to a lecture today at Smithsonian about ancient DNA. The speaker was David Reich who wrote a book, “Who We Are & How We Got Here,” about the subject. The field is been revolutionized in the last few years, so much of what we thought we knew has been overtaken by events. In the last ten years, testing DNA has become 100,000 times cheaper. Scientist can now test DNA from ancient human remains and compare them with other ancient and modern populations.
One surprising finding is that modern populations often are not much related to the “original” inhabitants of their regions. People have always moved and they have always mixed. This brings us to another truth. Groups as we define them just did not exist in the past. The mixing and moving has created our modern populations and they are never permanent. To take the dust to dust analogy, people and our ethnicity are based on dust. They come together for a short time but are recreated again and again each time in different ways.
We know a lot more about European populations than others because the science has been concentrated in Europe. In “deep time” – 5000 – 6000 years ago – there are four identifiable groups. Back then, these groups were more different from each other than East Asians are different from Western Europeans are today. The four groups from what is now Iran, Levant, Western European hunters and gatherers and people of the steppe north of the Black Sea. These groups mixed and matched to produce today’s European populations. Genetic diversity has been declining as people mix.
An interesting finding was that Western European populations are related to American native populations. Did they cross the Atlantic? Probably not. Rather both Native Americans and Western Europeans had common ancestors in a “ghost population.” This was a population in what is now Russia that is no longer extant as a population, but has left its genes in populations in America and Europe.
When you talk about genetics, somebody will bring up race. Reich was questioned about why he did not use the term. He explained that the term is meaninglessly imprecise but loaded with imputed meaning. Genetically, there is no such thing as a race, at least as we define it. He mentioned categories like “Hispanic” as especially meaningless from a genetic point of view.
The more we learn about genetics, the more we see that all human categories are impermanent. I like this idea, since it fits my historical conception. My belief is that when anything passes from living memory, it become the common heritage of humanity – good, bad or neutral, we are all one people.
My first picture is the lecture, held at the Smithsonian Indian Museum. Next two pictures are the Museum of the American Indian and last is the White House.
Sunlight is special this time of year, especially near the end of the day when the shadows are long and the sunlight hits the sides instead of the tops of the buildings.
The pictures are from my walk to the Metro today. American elm trees are common around the Mall. They are their bare branches are particularly interesting this time of year.
My Gentleman of Leisure job description included episodic work as WAE (I will include my GoL plan in the comments.) Unfortunately, by the time I got up to speed, the President froze hiring.
Now I have the opportunity as part of the “FOIA Surge,” State Department’s attempt to get through a backlog of FOIA requests, some going back years. My top secret clearance is still good for another year, so I thought I should make hay while the sun is still shining.
FOIA adjudication is one of the least favorite things I would do. On the plus side, hours are very flexible and it is not very hard. It is sort of like paying dues. I have a year long appointment. I wanted to get “on the roster.” What I really want to do is go overseas on TDY, ideally someplace where I can use my Portuguese. The thing I liked about the Foreign Service was the foreign part.
The first thing you need do to achieve any goal is to get over the wall. Once inside, you can take advantage of inside opportunities.
I also have a couple very prosaic considerations. I like to have the State ID so that I can get in to use the shower and locker room in SA 5 and get into lectures at Wilson Center w/o having to pass through the usual security. And I like to be in Washington. When it gets a little warmer, I can ride my bike. In the meantime, I walk from HST to the Metro at Federal Center SW. It is a nice walk. My pictures are from that.
Reference page on biotechnology and forest health Went down to the National Academies of Science today for a public meeting on biotechnology and forest health. A committee is working on a report assessing how biotechnology may address problems associated with invasive pests and climate change.
Biotechnology is not a panacea. It is only one tools we might use to address the challenges from the rapid changes unleashed invasive species, rapid climate change and habitat destruction, but I believe that w/o this tool success in dealing with these factors will be difficult or impossible.
Nature is robust and resilient, but natural selection acts over centuries or millennia. Humans have accelerated the rate of change to decades or even years. Humans created this situation. We do not have the zero option anymore of doing nothing.
Many people are uncomfortable with novel genotypes. I would prefer to avoid them if I thought there were other options. But we already have novel ecosystems that require new adaptations.
Risk and uncertainty exist. Yesterday’s solutions are often today’s problems and I don’t doubt that some of today’s solutions will be problems tomorrow. This seems a grim prognosis, but is the way of all life. It is the nature of adaptation. We are in this game whether we play or not
One of the insights of the conference was that we probably cannot expect biotechnology to be effective against particular pathogens in real time. We will always be behind the curve. But biotech might help with general health and adaptation to conditions of the non-living environments. Trees and forests suffering less stress can better fend off whatever pests attack.
My pictures are from Washington today. It was a wonderful clear day, but a little cold. Last picture is Charles Darwin. He has the prominent place in the Science Academies
Went down to Washington today. We got lots of cold rain yesterday, but today was gloriously sunny, if a little cold.
My first photo is the Washington Monument looking good in the winter sun. Next is a pond cypress. The “knees” look like little animals trying to climb up. Last is a big oak tree near Dept of Agriculture. It looks stark w/o the leaves, but you can more easily see the beauty of the old wood.
Washington has become one of the world’s “greenest” cities in the last few years. The city won a LEED Platinum rating last year, the first in the world, for its commitment to sustainability. Being green means lots of things, but it generally is good management of buildings and land.
I went down to the National Building Museum for a program by Jay Wilson, Urban Sustainability Administration at DC Department of Energy & Environment, who talked about some of the things Washington has done and will do.
Washington sits on the confluence of two rivers, the Potomac and the Anacostia, much of the area is covered with pavement or buildings and lots of the land is flat and low. This means that storm water management is a key management concern.
Much of Washington’s sewer system was build a century ago. They did a wonderful job back then, but their situations and goals were different. For example, sanitary and storm sewers are combined. This seems like a bad idea today, since rainwater is fundamentally different from sewage and why overload the system? But the system was designed with horses in mind. In those days, streets were covered in horse manure. The rain washed this into sewers and so rain runoff in those days was not so different from sewage. The combined sewage system made sense in those days.
Rain gardens and green roofs are important ways the District address storm water management today. Both these examples of green infrastructure filter and slow water flow, making it available to plants, enhancing groundwater and mitigating overflow into the sewers. Green roofs and rain gardens are also beautiful, provide wildlife habitat, and like most green infrastructure they are to some extent self-renewing.
Washington is trying to become more bicycle friendly and I can attest to the fact that they have done a good job. I have been riding around the area for more than 30 years, so my opinion was based on experience. However, improvements make people demand more improvement. I don’t think that many bicyclists are quite as positive as I am. Most bicyclists are younger than I am and may not remember how it was before and us old guys sometimes forget.
The National Building Museum is a good venue for programs like this. This is the place where I got my first good look at Cross Laminate Timber, during the Timber City exhibit and heard some good lectures about it. One of the great things about Washington is all these sorts of programs available free or at low cost. A big part of quality of life for me is this kind of opportunity.
We have grey infrastructure, green infrastructure and intellectual infrastructure.
Went to the Brazilian Embassy for the 60th Anniversary of the Fulbright program in Brazil. I was glad to be invited, even though I have been away for a few years. I am a true believer in education exchanges and Fulbright is the gold standard.
On the down side, it was rainy. I took the subway to Dupont Circle Metro and then had to walk a bit more than a mile up Massachusetts. If not for the rain it would have been very pleasant and even with the rain it was interesting, as you can see from the pictures. The first group are statues along the way. Last is the tunnel down to the Metro – a little scary.
They said it was going to rain. My custom is to ride my bike if it is not actually raining when I set off, no matter the weather prediction. It turned out to be a beautiful day.
I was going to Washington to listen to a “First Monday” lecture about public diplomacy outreach to North Korea, sponsored by the Public Diplomacy Council. I am not really interested in North Korea. I took some notes on the presentations, but I like to attend these meetings more to see old colleagues and ride my bike.
Anyway, it was a great day, one with the kind of soft air, that kind of balmy but pleasant weather you experience only in spring and fall, warm enough to be comfortable but cool enough that the warm sun feels good on your back.
My first two pictures are slightly different aspects of the Capitol. Next is Grant’s monument. I felt a little trepidation posting this photo, lest some protestors see the beard and the Civil War uniform and seek to pull the statue down. Last is a big Japanese zelkova. I used to run around the Mall and this was part of my running trail, so it feels familiar. Grant and the Capitol have not changed much, although they cleaned up the Grant monument recently. The zelkova has grown a lot in the last ten or fifteen years. It is bigger, but I liked it better before. At one point in its life, it had a wonderful grace, a kind of hourglass trunk. It is still nice, but now it is just generally thicker.
Espen came along to this year’s forestry lobbying event. We went to see staffers involved in forestry or environment for the offices of Senators Warner & Kaine, and those of Representatives Connolly, Wittman, Goodlatte & Griffith.
We emphasized the urgent need to fix the way we fight wildfires and the important opportunity to use more wood in new ways through the Timber Innovation Act. I feel passionate about both these things. I know that we cannot avoid fires, but we can often choose place and times when they will be beneficial and not so dire. In the last year, I have become an evangelist for new uses of mass timber. I am eager to advocate for both these things. We also talked about tax policies. I let my colleagues do the talking. These are important issue too, but they are not among my key issues.
We were lucky enough to speak with Rep Connolly himself. Connolly is my Representative. We got to know him when he was Providence District seat on the Fairfax County Board. Chrissy met him a couple times when she was president of the Providence Park HOA. I always liked him and have voted for him. We talked a little about his support for the Mosaic District and the Gerald Connolly Trail, which we enjoy. There are no tree farms in Fairfax County, so we could not talk directly about that.
My pictures show similar views of the Capitol, the first with Espen. It was a nice, crisp day and the Capitol looked particularly beautiful today. The second last picture is General George Henry Thomas. He was a Virginian who chose to fight for the Union. Last is a sign on the Metro. I am not sure the prospect of turning an escalator into a slide would discourage young men.
