some dc photos

Moon Phase: Last Quarter
Weather: Warm, sunny, and melting

Been busy. Here's some photos from my last week in DC.

Took this on a weirdly foggy day. We hardly ever get fog, and it just made the woods look so cool.

A friend and I went up to Sugarloaf Mountain, a small mountain north of DC which wouldn't be remarkable except that the surrounding area is generally flat. Sometimes you can see it from DC, a small lump on the horizon on clear days. We went there every fall in high school and had meeting at the top, and while I generally hated those silly school trips and all the assholes at that school, I always loved being up there, looking around at the Maryland countryside below. I think that place must have been a sacred spot to Indians, before the settlers killed them all.

Took this photo from the road at the base of the mountain. In real life, this field had the most amazing shade of green, which the camera just couldn't seem to capture, but it turned out okay anyway. The branches dripping down from above with the little balls all over are sycamore branches.

Some photos I took at the zoo. I broke my vow never to go to the zoo, which I made 8 years ago when I became vegetarian, partly because I figure if I'm eating animal products again, why the hell not, and partly because I was hoping to see cheetah cubs. Well, the cubs weren't on display yet, but I took some nice pictures of other animals: tigers, a gorilla, an adult cheetah, an African crowned crane, and a hooded merganser. I also saw a couple of Mexican wolves and a red tailed hawk, but I couldn't get good pictures of them through their cages.

In the big cats section, there was this caracal which was pacing angrily back and forth in its tiny enclosure, clearly suffering extreme anxiety and stress from its captivity. The other animals all looked frustrated and bored as well. It just really reminded me of why I'd been boycotting zoos for so long. I mean, the fact that we put living things on display for our own amusement, in completely inadequate environments, is just wrong. I know zoos get people to care about animals, and some zoos (including this one) do reintroduction and work for habitat conservation, but they don't have to do it like that. What about wildlife sanctuaries, where the animals have some room to move around, to get food for themselves instead of sitting around waiting to be fed? That would be much more interesting for visitors anyway.

The pledge

Moon Phase: Waxing Crescent
Weather: So so very cold

You might remember that a few years ago an atheist by the name of Michael Newdow succeeded in getting a federal appeals court to declare the words "under God" in the pledge unconstitutional, but that the Supreme Court threw out the case on a technicality. Well, he's back on the case, now joined by other atheists, so once again we might have a chance at getting the words removed. Predictably, the fundies are up in arms over this, which is just so stupid. Can you imagine how pissed they would be if our pledge mentioned Ganesha instead? But no, they just can't seem to see the world from someone else's perspective. A good example of that bias is this article (from Human Events Online, a conservative news site), which is titled "Newdow Sues on Behalf of 'Pantheist' 3rd Grader". "Pantheist" needs to be in quotations? Like it's not even a real religion, just something made up. Can you imagine anyone putting quotes around Christian, Muslim, or Hindu?

Anyway, I'm really hoping we win this time. It's a travesty that our country has so many promotions of the Judeo-Christian god everywhere, especially since it's a recent addition due to communist panic. This isn't just about atheists, either. Plenty of people in this country believe in gods other than Yahweh, and it's an obvious violation of the First Amendment for the government to force children to pledge to the Judeo-Christian god. Thankfully, this was never a problem for me; we only had to recite the pledge in elementary school, and I didn't become an atheist until I was 13. But when I became one, it started to bother me that they were still forcing kids to do it, and I was always complaining about the "In God We Trust" on dollar bills. Hmm, maybe if we win this one, we can fix that, too. You know, ever since Lawrence vs. Texas I've felt a new sort of hope about the court system. Even if the legislation from our now overwhelmingly right wing government gets completely out of hand, the courts can still throw it out, and they're at least a little more concerned about the constitution than Congress. When it comes right down to it, there's just no excuse for things like this, and I think enough of the Supreme Court recognizes that to take another step forward for civil liberties.

National Cathedral

Moon Phase: Waxing Crescent
Weather: cold as shit and snowing (can you tell I'm back in Wisconsin?)

I went to the National Cathedral last week and spent several hours wandering around taking photos. I ended up taking about 50, but these are the best. The National Cathedral isn't nearly as cool as Notre Dame, but it does have some advantages, such as the fact that it's only a mile from my house, and it isn't nearly as full of tourists. It doesn't have the centuries of history of Notre Dame, but it's still a nice gothic revival building, with some interesting features, such as the stained glass window which contains a moon rock, and there's a gargoyle shaped like Darth Vader.

Tsunami thoughts

Moon Phase: Last Quarter
Weather: Cloudy and 58F (warm for January!)

I've been thinking about this tsunami ever since I heard about it last week. The death toll has climbed to over 150,000 now, and I bet it'll top 200,000 very soon. Things like this really make me wonder how anyone can believe in God—I know it's an old atheist argument, but it's still valid: what sort of benevolent god would allow such a thing—and more importantly, cause it? I've never heard a satisfactory answer. All they ever say is "He works in mysterious ways", which is just evasive bullshit. People like to comfort themselves by thinking that there's some rhyme and reason for all the suffering in the world because they find that easier than admitting that there may be no reason at all. But personally, I would prefer there not to be a reason—aside from the fact that logically there can't be, I would much rather think that suffering happens for no reason, just as a result of a chaotic and constantly shifting universe, than because someone chose to cause suffering, chose to create a world where evil exists when it doesn't need to. And it wouldn't need to, if God were omnipotent—He could create any sort of world he wanted, could create humans who can appreciate good without needing to experience evil.

Humans have always invented stories to explain the things we couldn't understand, blaming the gods, whether they were callous like the Greek gods or caring like the Judeo-Christian one. But they're just stories. This tsunami didn't happen because God willed it that way; it happened for purely physical reasons and without regard for the lives it would destroy. And it might seem as callous as the Greek gods, but nature isn't unfeeling or indifferent, it just doesn't take sides. Why expect nature to choose organic life over the inevitable shifting of tectonic plates?

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't mourn. That many lives extinguished in so short a time—I like humans, and it makes me sad to think of all those people gone, all their loved ones suffering that loss. And the other life forms, too—how many plants torn out of the ground and washed away, or drowned in salt water? One nice thing, though, is that the animals mostly escaped: they felt the water coming before the humans did, and left for higher ground.