More Virgin blogging: I'm on my way *back* from a one-day visit to Washington DC for a NEMA WG6 meeting.  It was a great trip featuring a couple of wonderful meals, a visit to the Capital Mall, and (last but most importantly) a productive meeting to get Whole Slide Imaging for Pathology incorporated into DICOM.  Right now I am bouncing around in the sky trying to blog...  yes I have WiFi and power and snacks and room but no I cannot work while the plane is all over the sky!

So on the flight into Washington yesterday I started reading Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol (on my Kindle of course) which starts with the main character flying into Washington and ruminating on the Washington Monument...  an ancient Masonic symbol of *power*.  And so I had to drive over there to see it.  And I did :)

Tonight I had dinner at Tallula in Arlington; highly recommended!  (thank you, Open Table)  Man what a meal; rare Venison with yellow beets, spectacular, with a smokey Argentinean Malbec, and finished off with the cheese plate of the world, Nancy's Camembert, Pecorino, Epoisses, and Salem Bleu, accompanied by wild honey.  Oh my.  And yes I did almost miss my flight and yes I did have to abandon my rental car in front of Dulles terminal.  But it was worth it! 

Awesome: where the meltdown started.  [ via Powerline ] 

Daring Fireball notes a legendarily bad call by John Dvorak, who's made quite a few over the years: "The nature of the personal computer is simply not fully understood by companies like Apple (or anyone else for that matter).  Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need.  It, unfortunately, leaves the 'why' out of the equation - as in 'why would I want this?'  The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse'.  There is no evidence that people want to use these things.  I don’t want one of these new fangled devices."  Wow, breathtakingly wrong. 

Kottke discusses one-handed computing with the iPhone: "The easy single-handed operation of the iPhone is not one of its obvious selling points but is one of those little features that grows on you and becomes nearly indispensable."  That's weird because I would have thought the virtual keyboard would be virtually unusable without two hands.  Huh. 

Want to know the size of a cell compared to other objects?  Check out this great zoomable demonstration.  Wow, really brings home just how small 10 microns really is... 

Trizilla aka BMW Oracle 90 is back in the water, back sailing, and this video shows just exactly how cool it really is :)  Wow.  Yes, yes, yes I *still* want to sail on it and no, no, no I am no closer than I ever was... 

ZooBorns of the day: little Tasmanian Devils :)