Photo of the National Gallery of Art tunnel taken by Digital Obscura, posted in DCist Photos
Thank our lucky stars, it’s Friday. And all this weekend, we’ll be in for a spectacular sky show. Venus, Mercury and Saturn will be closely aligned that’ll make it look like they’re forming a new constellation. Then Mercury comes into the picture on Monday night. The “separation of Mercury and Venus by one-tenth of one degree — or one-third of the visible surface of a full moon — isn’t expected to happen again until 2070,” according to Knight Ridder.
Do you have to be out in the country away from the city lights to see this? From what we hear, no. Look toward the north-northwest 45 minutes after sunset. We’re bummed because we’re going to be on a train to New York this evening, but we think an awesome place to planet-gaze would be from the William Howard Taft Bridge over Rock Creek, looking toward the National Cathedral. Please take photos and drop them in DCist Photos!
Danger of the Water: Speaking of Rock Creek, WTOP reports that you probably shouldn’t touch it, swim in it or eat anything from it. It, along with other waterways, is filled with so much lovely crap including “fecal coliform bacteria, PCBs and other chemical contaminants.” You can blame the city’s inadequate sewer system on that.
Hounds of Love?: President Bush, accompanied by former “Win Ben Stein’s Money” host Ben Stein (at right), attracted numerous protesters out at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring where the president was speaking at a Social Security event. The Post reports that “many of the demonstrators broke away and briefly disrupted traffic on University Boulevard.”
And speaking of motorcades, the Iraqi prime minister, Ibrahim Jafari, was around town and we hear that shuttling him around D.C. was something out a scene in a war zone, with mobile protection authorities armed with heavy weaponry. We realize that masses of hot, irritable downtown tourists could be viewed as a threat by the Secret Service, but then again, we aren’t in Baghdad. We hope we aren’t at least.
The City Is (Not) Here for You to Use: We never knew that the District of Columbia would ever be used as a jurisdiction for official torture or renditions. The New York Times reported a while back that Dulles Airport is often used as a stop-over point for charter planes being used to transport terrorist suspects to points abroad for rendition. But the D.C. City Council has taken up a piece of legislation, the Examiner reports, that’ll — in theory — put a stop to all future torture.
Briefly Noted: DOJ clears U.S. Airways merger … New cheetahs now on public display at Zoo …
