Semi Pickup Truck

This absurd pickup truck/semi tractor truck hybrid is sometimes parked at night around 14th and K streets.

UPDATE: An anonymous commenter said that the pickup is an International CXT, the "world's biggest production pickup truck".

The Trial of Socrates: Appellate Version

A couple of weeks ago, Melody forwarded me an email that said:

THE LAW FIRM OF STEPTOE & JOHNSON

SUMMONS YOU TO APPEAR FOR

THE TRIAL OF SOCRATES

"SOCRATES: INNOCENT OR GUILTY"

She asked if I wanted to go. Of course I did! Reading The Apology always renews my affection for philosophy. I wanted to see what lawyers would do with it. 

We showed up at the DC office of Steptoe & Johnson and were directed by a couple of young lawyers into an elevator that took us down to the basement. We followed the signs for the TRIAL OF SOCRATES/CONFERENCE CENTER and found a packed conference room. So many people showed up they had to open a room where people could view the trial remotely. 

A guy introduced as the architecture critic for the Washington Post made some confused opening remarks about the significance of the decision that we would make about the trial. He tried to make a kind of time-travel paradox by saying that voting to acquit Socrates seems the obvious decision to make, but that if we voted to acquit Socrates we might "ruin the Western tradition", so maybe we should think about maybe declaring him guilty.

The structure of the trial was to be as follows: two speakers would argue that the verdict should be overturned, one addressing the corruption of youth charge, and the other addressing the impiety charge, then two speakers would defend the court's original decision. We were disappointed that there weren't any snub-nosed actors in a Socrates costume. It turned out that the trial was structured not as a reenactment of the original trial, but as an appeal of the original court's decision to convict Socrates. So the arguments were all new.

THE ARGUMENTS TO OVERTURN

The first argument for overturning the verdict was absurdly anachronistic. It was argued that Socrates should only be held guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens if the youth posed an "immanent danger" to the state directly as a result of Socrates's teachings. Melody called this the "lazy student" defense. As long as they didn't do anything, Socrates can't corrupt them.

The second argument, addressing the impiety charge, was a little better. The terms invoked by the accusers, "disbelief in gods", "worshipping gods of his own invention" are just too vague to be rigorously evaluated, and are likely being misapplied by those who have a grudge against Socrates.

THE ARGUMENTS TO SUSTAIN THE COURT'S ORIGINAL DECISION

The arguments for preserving the court's original decision were more interesting.

First it was argued that in Athens, "impiety was a national security issue", since it was believed that the gods directly intervened in the state's military affairs. (I wonder whether that's true.) Then it was claimed that the only evidence that we have of the trial proceedings are from Plato and Xenophon, who, as friends of Socrates, can't be counted on as unbiased reporters of what happened. Finally, the attorney asked, if Socrates was pious, why didn't he just accept the Delphic oracle's word as the word of god, instead of determining its truth for himself? (There was no suggestion that irony was involved in Socrates's behavior at any point.)

The final speaker who argued in favor of upholding the original verdict was a Greek lawyer whose biographical blurb says "He has authored the legal thriller 'The War of Art' under the pseudonym Philip Blackpeat". He argued that it was right to convict Socrates of corruption of the youth of Athens. First of all, he pointed out that Socrates's student Alciabiades was responsible for an unnecessary war, and that Socrates's associate Critias was one of the Thirty Tyrants. Furthermore, Socrates himself professed anti-democratic ideas. As an example of his anti-democratic beliefs, the lawyer produced the argument that if you want a ship built, you go to a shipwright, if you want a bridle made, you go to a bridle maker, and so on, and yet, when we want the state governed, we don't ask a specialist--we ask a bunch of people whose expertise is in other fields.

When the judge asked why such a large portion of Socrates's jury voted to acquit him, the final speaker said that it was because all of them were Socrates's aristocratic, anti-democratic friends.

With that remark, the appeal came to an end, and we cast our ballots. Melody was strongly in favor of not overturning the verdict. One serious problem with the ballots was that instead of having the options listed as "Overturn" and "Sustain", or something similar, the options were "Innocent" and "Guilty", which made it look like we were supposed to decide Socrates's guilt or innocence, not the status of the verdict. With that conflict in mind, I voted "Innocent".



It turned out that the result was very close: something like 48 votes for innocence/overturning the decision and 42 for guilt/sustaining the decision.

After the results, there was a big reception in the Steptoe and Johnson cafeteria. We talked to the architecture critic about the Lautner Motel and Richard Serra's Tilted Arc, and to a young lawyer about his idea to write an introductory logic textbook for lawyers.

Socrates: Guilty

Melody displays her verdict at the mock trial of Socrates held at Washington offices of Steptoe & Johnson.

I'll describe how the trial went later.

Xmas time

I found this Thomas Kinkade-like scene behind Georgetown's Healy building when it snowed the other night.

The Dog House

The Dog House, in New Castle, Delaware.

Another Roadfood recommendation--not the pinnacle of Roadfood, but it was worth driving about 20 miles out of our way for. The mayo and American cheese liquifies into sauce on the cheesesteak, the footlong is covered in chili, and the fries were flavored with Old Bay seasoning.

It was one of the few places open between New York and DC at 10pm on a Sunday night.

So Good

Neon in Lexington Market.

$500 of Crab

At Faidley Sea Food in Baltimore.

Faidley Sea Food in Lexington Market

Lexington Market is Baltimore's central covered market. It's crammed with food stalls selling seafood and cakes and BBQ and chicken. It appears in an episode of the second season of the Wire, when McNulty takes his kids and they tail Stringer Bell out to his car. It also contains possibly the best crab cakes in the world.

I have more pictures to post, but blogger is uploading incredibly slowly, so I'll put them up later.

Baltimore

Photo by Melody. Taken through the windshield while driving on the Baltimore Washington Parkway headed for Lexington Market.

John Lautner Motel

The John Lautner Desert Hot Springs Motel is for sale.

It's a great building, though what once was probably an isolated desert location is now on the edge of a housing development and trailer park. When we stayed there last year, our room got broken into:


But the price is reasonable.

Evening Tea

This weekend we enjoyed a very pleasant dinner at the Adams's, followed by mint tea by the fire. We talked about the abandoned embassy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, John Lobb shoes, The Cult of Isis, tea that unfolds into a flower as it steeps and a house containing Faberegé eggs.

Thanks to Zed for the first and last links, and to Robert for the picture of the fire.

The Holidays in the District

Behind the West Wing of the National Gallery. The horse is wearing a santa hat, the parks policeman is wearing a balaclava.

The East Wing of the National Gallery of Art

Melody and I tried to see the Hopper show at the National Gallery of Art this afternoon, but there was an enormous, Disneyland-size line to get in. So we checked out some old favorites in the permanent collection instead (the Flavin fluorescent light Monuments to V. Tatlin (similar to this) and Anselm Kiefer's Angel of History (a four-engined airplane made out of lead, which looks like a B-58 Hustler).

We also got a chance to look at the interior of the East Wing of the National Gallery itself. Both Melody and I thought that the central atrium is one of the most impressive interior spaces in DC (with the atrium of the World Bank). Looking at this shot, the inside of the museum looks like an Apollonian city of the future.

The Disgusting English Candy Drill, Part II

Inspired by a passage from Gravity's Rainbow, I ordered a box of English candy: rhubarb and custard hard candy, pear drops, Army & Navy, licorice torpedos, fizz bombs, and ginger creams.

English candy was difficult to find online. So difficult, I had to order it from Australia.

So far, I've tried the rhubarb and custard, which in their blandness resemble a rhubarb crumble drowned in Bird's custard, the pear drops, which are a pleasant variation on a lemon drop, and the fizz bombs, which are weapons-grade sour. They could be dropped behind enemy lines to deplete strategic saliva reserves.

Check Please: Poochie's

I reviewed Poochie's for the new Check Please segment on NBC 5 in Chicago. The review is one minute long. I don't say anything interesting, and I use the phrase "down home", which isn't the way I normally talk. They cut out the part where, as an indication of my competence in judging hamburger quality, I say that I've tasted the full range of burgers available in Chicago, from the deluxe foie gras topped burger at Sweets and Savories to the ones offered at Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap.

I wanted to review Alinea, but they just laughed at me when I suggested it.

Poochie's was Zed's original find.

Georgetown Library Steps

This is the gloomy entrance to campus. The steps lead to Georgetown's Lauinger Library.

The Seal of Georgetown University

The seal of Georgetown University, in mosaic form in the central entrance to Healy Hall. If you observe people coming and going from this entrance, you'll notice that almost no one steps on the seal. When I was an undergrad, the superstition was that stepping on the seal meant you wouldn't graduate.

The barely legible text around the edge of the oval reads: Collegium Georgiopolitanum Ad Ripas Potomaci in Marylandia: Georgetown College on the Banks of the Potomac in Maryland. There's more information about the seal here.

The eagle in the center of the seal is holding a globe (which looks like a bird cage) in one claw, and a cross in the other claw. That always struck me as a gesture of agression rather than respect.

National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature: Georgetown Bioethics Library

The Bioethics Library in Georgetown's Healy building is the most pleasant place to study on Georgetown's campus. Most of the time, I am the only person in there besides the librarians.

Very Large Array

About a 30 minute drive east of Pie Town is the Very Large Array. The VLA consists of a bunch of gigantic radio telescopes mounted on rails that can be moved around. When they're in their largest configuration, they cover an area the size of Washington DC.

On the official tour, the role the VLA plays in looking for aliens is downplayed. Melody thought that was suspicious.

Pie Town (Part 2)

More pie from Pie Town, this time from the Pie-O-Neer.

Just down the street from the Daily Pie Cafe, the Pie-O-Neer offered warm pies right off the cooling rack (pictured above is a slice of oatmeal-pecan). The crust on the Pie-O-Neer pies was fresh and flaky. We had a pleasant conversation with the crust maker herself as we ate our pie.

Pie town (Part 1)

After a day spent visiting the Lightning Field outside of Quemado, we stopped in Pie Town.

There were no more than half a dozen buildings in Pie Town, but two of them were pie shops. We stopped at the Daily Pie Cafe first.

The pie selection.

A serious banana cream.

Triple berry.

The Daily Pie Cafe was pretty solid. The banana cream was thick and creamy, the triple berry was tart and not too sweet. I only got a little taste of the New Mexico specialty, an apple pie with green chiles and pine nuts (not pictured), but it seemed good. We were warned to avoid the coffee by a couple of women who visited the Lightning Field with us, so we didn't get a full Twin Peaks-style pie and coffee experience.

40 Million-Year-Old Cave Now a Plush Hotel

Kokopelli's cave in Farmington, NM.

Remote Controlled F-102

While visiting the White Sands Missile Range Museum, I learned that technicians flew a modified, remote-controlled version of the F-102 supersonic fighter from a specially equippped van.



I found the picture online here.

And here's the control panel that was used to fly it.

Nuclear Waste

We spotted several flatbed trucks during our trip carrying big gray containers. When we went to the Museum of Atomic History in Albuquerque we learned that they are for the transport of nuclear waste (if you look closely you can see the radiation symbol on the lower part of the containers). We thought that these might be going from Los Alamos to Yucca Mountain.

Space Age Picnic

At White Sands National Monument, there is a space age picnic area composed of corrigated aluminum covered picnic tables. Some have grills. Under one of these Melody and I sheltered from the wind and sun and ate dehydrated space ice cream and drank coke from a bottle.

Space Cola

At the Alamagordo Museum of Space History.

These containers were part of the so-called Carbonated Beverage Dispenser Evaluation, which, according to Wikipedia was "an experiment where both Coca-Cola and Pepsi tried to make their drinks available to astronauts. Both fizzed excessively in microgravity."

The cola dispensers were part of the cargo of a space shuttle mission in 1985. (Wikipedia)

Tarantulas

While we were viewing the Judd aluminum box installation, one of the guys on the tour pointed out this substantial spider keeping cool in the shadow of one of the boxes. The tour guide explained that it was tarantula season in Texas and that they were "on the move". That explained why the highway to Marfa was covered in crawling things I couldn't quite identify from the speeding car. We had another run-in with a tarantula while driving to New Mexico.




We pulled off to the side of Highway 17 to take in the scene when Melody spotted another tarantula hanging out on the shoulder. I walked over and snapped a picture. Soon after the spider begins to amble out onto the highway. There isn't a lot of traffic, but about every 30 seconds a car or truck goes flying by. We began to fear that our arachnid friend would get smashed right in front of our eyes. The spider took about five minutes to cross the highway. During that time there were about ten absurdly close calls where the spider nearly got smashed.



But he made it.