Dead man walking?

of place in the austere surroundings of a federal court building. They had been brought directly from obscure corners of the old country to testify. Far from home, these cousins and aunts described the child they had known and the child they have lost. All were women. Some, especially those from the obscure mountain villages of Dagestan and Chechnya had a beautiful stoicism in their features. Each in turn cracked and cried when confronted with questions about Dzhokhar’s childhood. An elderly aunt from the caucuses simply couldn’t stop crying and had to be helped from the court. I was tucked in the back right corner of the courtroom for most of these sketches — drawing with binoculars again. These hardened beautiful faces were a challenge, with their windswept features and emotional eye creases moist with tears, but I was determined to do them justice. The family resemblance from one generation to the next was unmistakable. During one portion of their tearful testimony, Dzhokhar reached for the tissues himself to wipe his eyes. An incident I honestly admit I never thought I’d see, and one that after his inability to shed a tear for his victims, can’t have done him much good in the eyes of the jury. As he was being led from the court he turned and blew a kiss to his aunt (sketched below) who was prostate arms outstretched across the barrier. One of the other strains of dissent that the defense is attempting to nurture in the jury is the belief in Dzhokhar as one of the victims – a victim of a broken family, a victim of elder brother traditions, and a victim of the extremity of his deceased brother Tamerlan’s personal politics, and as a victim of his brother’s religious extremism. To foster all this we heard from expert witnesses on Dagestani and Chechen traditions, childhood brain development and multiple family, friend and acquaintance testimony on the gradual and creeping depravity of Tamerlan’s slide into jihad. On Tuesday the contents of Tamerlan’s laptop was discussed at length by Michael Reynolds, a Princeton professor on Eurasia Studies, who had been hired by the defense specifically to review its contents. He described the bulk of the work he found there as being broken into three categories; instructional videos on Islam, atrocity videos (many of which were from Syria), and lastly motivational videos many showing jihadis fighting in


Quantum computing is about to overturn cybersecurity’s balance of power

this. D-Wave says it has created the first scalable quantum computer. (D-Wave) Quantum mechanics is now being used to construct a new generation of computers that can solve the most complex scientific problems—and unlock every digital vault in the world. These will perform in seconds computations that would have taken conventional computers millions of years. They will enable better weather forecasting, financial analysis, logistical planning, search for Earth-like planets, and drug discovery. And they will compromise every bank record, private communication, and password on every computer in the world — because modern cryptography is based on encoding data in large combinations of numbers, and quantum computers can guess these numbers almost instantaneously. There is a race to build quantum computers, and (as far as we know) it isn’t the NSA that is in the lead. Competing are big tech companies such as IBM, Google, and Microsoft; start-ups; defense contractors; and universities. One Canadian start-up says that it has already developed a first version of a quantum computer. A physicist at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, Ronald Hanson, told Scientific American that he will be able to make the building blocks of a universal quantum computer in just five years, and a fully-functional demonstration machine in a little more than a decade. These will change the balance of power in business and cyber-warfare. They have profound national-security implications, because they are the technology equivalent of a nuclear weapon. Let me first explain what a quantum computer is and where we are. In a classical computer, information is represented in bits, binary digits, each of which can be a 0 or 1. Because they only have only two values, long sequences of 0s and 1s are necessary to form a number or to do a calculation. A quantum bit (called a qbit), however, can hold a value of 0 or 1 or both values at the same time — a superposition denoted as “0+1.” The power of a quantum computer increases exponentially with the number of qubits. Rather than doing computations sequentially as classical computers do, quantum computers can solve problems by laying out all of the possibilities simultaneously and measuring the results. Imagine being able to open a combination lock by trying every possible number and sequence at the same time. Though the analogy isn’t perfect — because of the complexities in measuring the results of a quantum calculation


Sea levels are rising at faster clip as polar melt accelerates, new study shows

West Antarctica. The findings appear to contradict earlier studies suggesting that the rate of sea-level rise had actually slowed slightly in recent years. Australian scientists detected the increase in a study that analyzed decades of records from tidal gauges around the world, together with satellite data that show changes in water levels as well as subtle shifts in land formations. Using these more precise measurements, the researchers discovered that scientists had slightly overstated sea-level rise that occurred in the 1990s, and underestimated the rate of increase since 1999, said Christopher Watson, a University of Tasmania geodesist who co-authored the study along with colleagues from the university and from Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. [A Harvard study also documented faster sea-level rise] The adjusted figures showed ocean levels rising over the past two decades at a rate of between 2.6 and 2.9 millimeters a year — or just over a tenth of an inch, he said. That rate is consistent with the projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N.-sponsored scientific body regarded as the internationally accepted authority on global warming. “The acceleration is also consistent with what we expect, given the increasing contributions from the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets,” Watson said in an e-mail. Watson noted that sea levels can fluctuate naturally as water is exchanged between the sea and land, and for that reason, the higher rate of increase described in the study is too small to be regarded as statistically significant. What is clear, he said, is that sea levels are rising at roughly double the average rate observed in the last century, with significant implications for coastal cities around the globe. The IPCC projects that, at current rates of warming, global sea levels could rise by as much as three feet by the end of the century. “Accelerating sea level is a massive issue for the coastal zone — the once-in-a-lifetime inundation events will become far more frequent, and adaptation will need to occur,” Watson said. “Agencies need to fully consider the impact of accelerating sea level and plan accordingly.” Also in Energy & Environment: Troubling new study suggest global warming will reduce wheat yields The key climate and clean energy problem of 2015: Doing a lot is not the same as doing enough Why the best place for solar panels may not be on your roof


In Baltimore, Prince sets an agenda for change

as bully pulpits for the unrest in our communities. It was hard not to keep asking for just a few more songs, a few more soothing words from an icon. From the center of the arena, a chant rose: “No curfew!,” a defiant call Prince had been using all night to reference the citywide 10 p.m. lockdown the mayor had first imposed on residents last month. He had mentioned it to open the show: “They said there ain’t no curfew so I’m not sure how long we’re gonna go.” Every time he burst back onstage, we heard it before the stage lights went up and we could see him again. “No curfew,” his low tenor teased. We were only giving it back to him. First we called out hopefully, then we got louder, hungrier, more demanding. “Don’t leave now,” we seemed to be saying, “because none of us have to.” I wondered how many concertgoers were remembering the National Guard presence that had been so visible just weeks before. Not too far from this very arena, cars had burned, protesters had yelled at a line of shield-bearing police, and a few marchers had boldly decided to remain in the streets after 10, breaking the curfew each time it was imposed. Street activity is more stable now. But as a city, we’re still traumatized. Staying out late and cutting this loose is still a huge luxury. Prince returned to close the show once and for all. “I could get used to this,” he cooed into the mike, acknowledging how much we wanted him. We could, too. To be seen, heard and affirmed by someone who’s known and beloved by the entire world is a heady sensation. Prince coming to town in response to the death of Freddie Gray meant Baltimore’s pain had resonated with someone in the unique position both to amplify and to ease it. Getting tickets to his show was like our first time accepting a party invitation after a period of mourning, and then upon arrival, discovering that the host acutely understands our grief and made it his mission to ensure that we had the best time possible. “We’re here for you. We are your servants,” he said at the beginning of the show and in the fourth and final encore. He and his band, 3rdEyeGirl, as well as special guests Doug E. Fresh, Miguel and Estelle, had


PM Update: Showers or rumbles possible into tonight ahead of a hot Tuesday

2-hour radar loop. Refresh page to update. It’s been quite a cloudy and muggy day, but for the most part not too rainy. As the remnants of Ana depart to the northeast, the main rain threat from here out is probably associated with showers and storms to the west. They might not make a big impact either. The potential for 90 degrees tomorrow could be the big news of the day, and even better it’s the kind of heat that won’t last long. Through Tonight: Tomorrow (Tuesday): See Jason Samenow’s forecast through the weekend. And if you haven’t already, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter Nice weather for a sidewalk sale this past weekend in D.C. (Joe Flood via Flickr) 90… Already? Hi resolution NAM forecast highs for tomorrow. (Weatherbell.com)


Tom Brady suspended four games, Patriots fined $1 million and docked two draft choices as ‘DeflateGate’ punishment

offense in the AFC title game resulted from environmental conditions in a cool-weather game. Under NFL rules, each team supplies the footballs that it uses while on offense. Wells’s report found no wrongdoing on the part of Kraft, Belichick or the team’s assistant coaches. “As you know, we regard violations of competitive rules as significant and deserving of a strong sanction, both to punish the actual violation and to deter misconduct in the future,” Vincent wrote in his letter to the Patriots. “In this case, the footballs were intentionally deflated in an effort to provide a competitive advantage to Tom Brady after having been certified by the game officials as being in compliance with the playing rules. While we cannot be certain when the activity began, the evidence suggests that January 18th was not the first and only occasion when this occurred, particularly in light of the evidence referring to deflation of footballs going back to before the beginning of the 2014 season.” The fine against the Patriots is the largest ever imposed on a team by the NFL, surpassing a $968,000 fine of the Denver Broncos in 2001 for salary cap violations. The NFL treated the Patriots far more harshly than it treated two other teams, the Atlanta Falcons and Cleveland Browns, punished earlier this year for violations of the competitive rules. The Falcons were fined $350,000 and stripped of a fifth-round pick after being found guilty of using artificial crowd noise at home games. Team president Rich McKay was suspended from the NFL’s competition committee, and the employee directly responsible for the violation would have been suspended for eight games if he’d remained with the organization. The Browns were fined $250,000 and their general manager, Ray Famer, was suspended for four games for improper in-game texting. The Browns did not lose a draft choice. Goodell or a person appointed by him would be empowered to hear an appeal by Brady. If Brady’s suspension is not reduced, he would lose about $1.88 million of his $8 million salary for the season; He would not be paid for the bye week that occurs during the suspension but would be reimbursed for that later. Brady’s second-year backup, Jimmy Garoppolo, would be in line to take over as the team’s starting quarterback during his absence. Brady last missed a game in the 2008 season. He suffered a season-ending knee injury in the


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Why bourbon’s incredible popularity might actually be a problem

age bourbon, are in such great demand that barrel production is actually struggling to keep up. "People are drinking more bourbon and that's increasing the demand for barrels," said Judd Johnson, the editor of the Hardwood Market Report. The data certainly seems to bear that out. Bourbon production, in response to the growing craze over Kentucky-distilled whiskey, jumped more than 70 percent between 2009 and 2013, according to data from the Kentucky Distillers' Association. And that's actually a bit of a problem. Bourbon barrel production is a particular process, which requires the use of only higher quality wood. As it happens, that fancier wood isn't as easy to come by. "Very little of the wood out there is fit to be used for bourbon barrels," said Jeff Stringer, a professor at the University of Kentucky who studies hardwood silviculture and forestry. "Only a small fraction of stave logs are high enough quality. That makes it really hard for the wood industry to adjust." Stave logs are the oak planks that barrel-makers piece together and then hold in place with metal loops to make the bourbon barrels. Part of the reason it will be difficult to continue to supply enough stave logs to meet the demand of the bourbon industry is that chopping down trees is contingent on the ability to use all the wood—not just that which is fancy enough for bourbon barrels. "It takes strong timber markets to allow the flow of stave logs out of the woods," said Stringer. "The number one concern is not the amount of logs out there—it's the ability to get them out." Unlike barrels used to age other spirits, including tequila, those used for bourbon are also never used twice, complicating the issue further. "The barrels have limited use," said Johnson. "Since they can't be used endlessly, that definitely adds to the problem." But this problem could also, eventually, prove to be a blessing for the industry down the road. Growing demand from a skyrocketing bourbon boom, which laps up new white oak, never using it twice, means there will be an opportunity for loggers so long as they can supply the demand. And what better incentive than the current markup in wood prices? White oak staves, in response to the rush to supply bourbon barrels, are selling for more than 20 percent above what they were at the start of the year.


City Tap House is hosting a fundraiser tonight for Baltimore bar and restaurant employees

The City Tap House will put Baltimore beers on tap tonight to raise money for Baltimore bar and restaurant employees. (Photo by Maura Judkis/for The Post) When Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake imposed a curfew on the city on April 27, there were some unintended consequences for bar and restaurant employees. In a town where bars regularly stay open until 2 a.m., businesses were closing around 9 p.m. or earlier to give customers and employees time to make it home before the curfew went into effect. Those lost hours of service translated to a lot of lost income, especially for staff who depend on tips for the majority of their take-home pay. In a show of solidarity, City Tap House is hosting the D.C. to Baltimore Service Industry Benefit tonight from 9 p.m. to midnight. Five Baltimore beers will be on tap for the evening, and City Tap House will also serve cocktails made with Mr. Katz' Rock & Rye whiskey. (Founder Allen Katz is a Baltimore native.) A portion of sales will be donated to the Baltimore Bartenders Guild, and attendees can also make cash donations, which will be logged before being donated. The money raised "won't just go to bartenders," says Jeff Wells, the founder of beer and spirts distributor Craftsmen of Zymurgy, who spearheaded this event. "It's going to bussers, servers and waitresses." Wells says that the Baltimore Bartenders Guild, which includes staff from W.C. Harlan, Fork & Wrench, Rye and Bad Decisions among its members, will distribute the money based on need. "The timing [of the curfew] couldn't have been worse," he says. "That landed on the last week of the month. A lot of restaurant employees live paycheck-to-paycheck, and a lot of people had trouble making rent that week." The lineup of beers City Tap House, 901 Ninth St. NW. 202-644-9433. www.citytaphousedc.com.


New NASA images shed a little light on those mysterious Ceres bright spots

detailed yet -- of the planet's surface, we do know that there are a lot more of those little bright spots than first thought. And NASA experts now have a pretty good idea about what sort of phenomenon is behind them. "Dawn scientists can now conclude that the intense brightness of these spots is due to the reflection of sunlight by highly reflective material on the surface, possibly ice," Christopher Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, said in a statement. The new images came from NASA's Dawn spacecraft after it completed its first mapping orbit around Ceres. [The Curiosity Mars rover caught a stunning blue sunset on the Red Planet] Image of Ceres spots. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA) "The brightest spots within a crater in the northern hemisphere are revealed to be composed of many smaller spots," NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory said in a statement. Ceres orbits the sun in the main asteroid belt of the solar system, between Mars and Jupiter. Dawn entered the dwarf planet's orbit in March. It's currently on its way in for a closer, second orbit around Ceres. [Andy Weir and his book ‘The Martian’ may have saved NASA and the entire space program] Although there are all sorts of things scientists hope to learn about the early solar system from Dawn's mission, the mystery of the dots has captured quite a lot of attention as the spacecraft produces better and better images of the surface. First, a crater on Ceres appeared to contain just a single, round speck of brightness. As Dawn approached orbit, a better image of the crater containing the dots showed two distinct spots, not just one. As it moved even closer, scientists noticed that the surface of Ceres is littered with other, less dramatic bright spots. Now, it's obvious that the single crater containing the brightest spots contains not one, not two, but several of them. As Dawn approaches even closer to Ceres, researchers will be able to learn even more about the dwarf planet's surface, dots and all. Want more science? Give these a click. Mystic Mountain: Is this the Hubble Space Telescope’s greatest image? A fantastic idea Carl Sagan showed Johnny Carson in 1976 is about to become reality Astronomers measure most distant galaxy yet March 2: NASA’s historic Dawn mission set to reach the mysterious Ceres on Friday April 20: New images of Ceres show more mysterious white spots


Metro to sell Alexandria’s Royal Street bus garage

Metro buses like the one above are no longer being stored in a bus garage in Alexandria, so the facility is going up for sale. (TWP) Metro plans to sell the Royal Street bus garage in what may become the next in a string of major redevelopment projects in and around Old Town Alexandria. The garage, built of red brick and located along North Royal Street a couple of blocks from the Potomac River, is being replaced by a new bus garage in Fairfax County. Metro’s board previously approved exploring a sale and on Tuesday the agency’s real estate arm posted details of the proposed sale online, with a deadline for bids July 17. The bus garage is the latest in a succession of industrial properties and other sites that have become subject to major development projects in and around Old Town. Two former warehouses, previously owned by Robinson Terminal Co. for shipping purposes, then part of the former Washington Post Co., were sold to developers, who are planning mixed-use projects. [Related: Developer proposes upscale housing, restaurant on Alexandria warehouse site] Edens, the South Carolina-based developer behind Union Market, in D.C., is preparing a major overhaul of a nearby shopping center long-anchored by a Giant grocery store at 530 First St.. Built on two acres of land — a complete city block — about a half-mile north of King Street, the City of Alexandria organized a committee to guide the Metro garage’s redevelopment. Its members recommended that the site be redeveloped as a mainly residential project with some ground-level retail and heights capped at 70 feet on some portions of the site and at 50 feet on others. Alexandria Mayor William D. Euille issued a statement through Metro calling the move “another important step in creating a vibrant community.” “We look forward to redevelopment of the site that is appropriate for the neighborhood, improves our quality of life, and benefits our residents,” Euille said. Metro similarly began seeking offers from companies interested in buying some parcels the agency owns in the Brookland, neighborhood of Northeast D.C. Follow Jonathan O’Connell on Twitter: @oconnellpostbiz


Defense firm that employed drunk, high contractors in Afghanistan may have wasted $135 million in taxpayer dollars

Afghan security personnel arrive at the site of a suicide car bomb attack targeting a NATO convoy near the airport in Jalalabad on April 10,2015. (AFP PHOTO/Noorullah Shirzada) The defense contractor investigated in 2012 after cellphone videos surfaced of its employees drunk and high on drugs in Afghanistan may have misused almost $135 million of U.S. taxpayer money, an audit finds. A financial audit done on behalf of the independent Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) alleges Arlington-based Imperatis Corporation, formerly Jorge Scientific Corporation, couldn’t produce documents to show whether some payments to a subcontractor were allowed under its contract with the Army. The IG report, released in April, Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), the ranking Democrat and chairman, respectively, of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on investigations, are now demanding a full briefing from the Army Contracting Command about all its contracts with Imperatis, which over time have totaled nearly $1 billion. In a letter Tuesday “After allegations of frequent drug and alcohol abuse, bar brawls, and out-of-control parties among its employees in Afghanistan, this contractor is now facing additional scrutiny into its business practices to the possible tune of more than $130 million in taxpayer dollars, and we intend to get to the bottom of it,” McCaskill said in an e-mail to the Loop. The Army uses Imperatis to provide counterinsurgency intelligence training for Afghan security forces through its Legacy Easy Project. In 2012, two former employees filed a complaint that there was rampant use of drugs and alcohol by then-Jorge Scientific personnel in Afghanistan. They took cellphone video of wasted employees that they gave to ABC News, which first reported the story. After that story broke, McCaskill wrote to Secretary of the Army John McHugh asking for a review of Jorge Scientific’s contracts. She received a response that the Army was looking into it, and had subsequent briefings. She was assured everyone involved had been fired and there would be more oversight. Imperatis has responded forcefully to the recent independent audit, asking that the findings be reconsidered or that SIGAR “provide more time and funding to complete the audit.” More funding?


Why Amtrak trains derail

of safety analysis. But the first two months of 2015 have seen more derailments than comparable periods in previous years. An Amtrak train derailed in North Carolina in March. An Amtrak train derailed in Massachusetts last June. An Amtrak train derailed in South Carolina the year before that. Amtrak derailments have increased in recent years, according to the Federal Railroad Administration’s office of safety analysis. There were two in 2012, three in 2013, six in 2014, and there have been nine this year. Why do Amtrak trains derail with such frequency? Although the cause of Tuesday’s derailment was still undetermined, the answer has a lot to do with the United States’ crumbling transportation infrastructure, and a little to do with freak accidents. The United States’ lack of interest in funding rail transportation has been long-lamented. Amtrak, a federally subsidized for-profit corporation that doesn’t turn a profit, is a Republican punching bag — the subject of a perennial struggle for funding on Capitol Hill. [Amtrak loses a ton of money each year. It doesn’t have to.] “While Amtrak isn’t currently in danger of being killed, it also isn’t likely to do more than barely survive,” Simon Van Zuylen-Wood wrote in the National Journal last month. “Last month, the House of Representatives agreed to fund Amtrak for the next four years at a rate of $1.4 billion per year. Meanwhile, the Chinese government — fair comparison or not — will be spending $128 billion this year on rail.” The result: a system that connects the nation and posted record ridership in 2013 but can’t always pull its freight. “The problem that you have — and you’ve had it since 1976 and even before — is that there’s never been an investment program that would bring the infrastructure up where it belongs on existing capacity,” Amtrak chief executive Joseph Boardman told the Atlantic last year. “There isn’t even an understanding about the need to increase capacity in order to continue to increase the GDP in this nation. Not only on the Northeast Corridor but all over the country.” Amtrak was faced with mechanical problems almost immediately after opening for business in May 1971. A month later, it was counting bodies. “Amtrak train No. 1, a southbound passenger train operating on the tracks of the Illinois Central Railroad between Chicago, Illinois, and New Orleans, Louisiana, derailed near Salem, Illinois, on June 10, 1971,” the


Orioles will pay employees for work they missed because of Baltimore riots

(Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) The Orioles postponed two games and played a third in front of an empty stadium as a result of the widespread riots in Baltimore following the funeral for Freddie Gray last month. A scheduled three-game home series against the Rays was relocated to Florida, meaning stadium employees were out of work for six days. On Tuesday, Lindsey Adler of BuzzFeed reported that the Orioles will reimburse hourly employees who lost wages as a result of the postponed and relocated games. Class act by Angelos family, paying employees for missed games. #Orioles @1057TheFan @JohnPAngelos @cbsbaltimore http://t.co/y9W7RM8xqy In a letter obtained by BuzzFeed and tweeted by 105.7 The Fan host Steve Davis, the Orioles wrote: Due to the extraordinary circumstances that led to several cancelled or rescheduled games, the Orioles organization will compensate all hourly employees for hours that would have been ordinarily worked the week of April 27. This adjustment will be added [sic] will be added to your 5/29 paycheck. On the day that the Orioles hosted the White Sox without allowing fans in the stadium, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes asked Orioles chief operating officer John Angelos if stadium concession workers were simply out of luck. [Orioles celebrate ReOpening Day] “No, I think that that would be an unfair result,” Angelos said. “I think we need to do something that will make people whole. This is an extraordinary situation that happens — well, hopefully, it never happens — but when it does happen, you gotta solve the larger problem, but you don’t want individuals to pay the price.”


Mango Tree has a new chef after four months

Mango Tree, CityCenterDC's glitzy Thai import, has a new chef in charge after four months. Former sous chef Adrian Salazar is taking over for opening-day chef de cuisine Paul Kennedy. Mango Tree in CityCenterDC has a new chef. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) Kennedy's cooking helped Mango Tree earn a positive 2.5-star review from The Post's Tom Sietsema in February: "Eating his papaya salad, funky with dried shrimp and pulsing with heat, puts me in mind of Bangkok," Sietsema wrote. "If there’s a more elegant yet swashbuckling green curry with chicken and eggplant to be found, it has managed to miss my spoon." [Mango Tree review: Why it doesn’t matter that it’s part of a chain] Salazar, 29, began reworking the menu two weeks ago. His new menu will debut on Monday. Mango Tree general manager Robert Hall said that even in a short period of time, Salazar has already made a difference by giving the plating a "sexier" look and bringing on staff. "The level of creativity and the attractiveness of the plating ... matters hugely to the Washington diner," Hall said, especially as he said he thinks diners used to suburban Thai restaurants are still coming around to the higher-end experience, and higher prices, that places such as Mango Tree offer. Before joining the opening team of Mango Tree, Salazar served as a sous chef at Zaytinya. The former artist had worked in Vietnamese restaurants in the past, but other than a stage (a kind of unpaid culinary internship) at New York's Pok Pok, he'd not cooked much Thai. (His predecessor, Kennedy, started cooking Thai five years ago at Mango Tree's Middle East locations before the D.C. restaurant's opening.) [Meet Paul Kennedy, Mango Tree DC’s British chef who promises authentic Thai without compromise] "It's mostly the complexities," Salazar said of what attracts him about Thai cuisine. "It's kind of like a wild ride." The chef hopes to go to Thailand in June for two weeks for additional research and inspiration. Kennedy said he preferred not to comment about his departure. "At the moment, I'm not too sure" what's next, he said, though staying in the area is a possibility. Mango Tree, 929 H St. NW. 202-408-8100. www.mangotreedc.com. Lunch 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday; dinner 5 to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 5 p.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday; brunch 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday


TargetExpress is coming to Rosslyn in October

Rendering of planned TargetExpress store in Rosslyn. (Coutesy of Target) Target said Wednesday that it will open one of its small, convenience-focused TargetExpress stores in Rosslyn this year, a part of the retailer’s push into dense, urban areas. The store is set to open in October and will be located at 1500 Wilson Blvd. David Best, Target’s vice president of new formats, said the Rosslyn location was selected because of the mix of customers the company can target in the growing cluster of office buildings, apartments and condominiums near the Metro station. “There’s a really strong daytime population, there’s residents that are nearby, there’s commuters that are passing through, and we saw it as an opportunity to go into an area that’s, frankly, a little bit underserved,” Best said. The TargetExpress concept is the big-box retailer’s new experiment for unlocking fresh sales growth from neighborhoods where it wouldn’t be practical to put up a sprawling superstore. TargetExpress stores are typically about 20,000 square feet, a small fraction of the 135,000 square feet a regular Target typically gobbles up. The retailer plans to open eight of them nationwide this year, including a previously announced store on Baltimore Avenue in College Park. The expansion of TargetExpress is part of the mega-retailer’s plan to bounce back from a tough stretch that included a data breach that wounded customers’ trust and a botched expansion into Canada that was ultimately shuttered. Under chief executive Brian Cornell, who started at Target last August, there have been early signs of a turnaround: Traffic to Target stores rose in the most recent quarter, and sales were up 4.1 percent. Target is not the only major retailer that sees potential in small-footprint stores. Its chief rival, Wal-Mart, has accelerated the expansion of its Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market and Wal-Mart Express concepts. Wal-Mart has said it sees these formats — not its iconic supercenters — as the key to its short-term growth. Last week, Whole Foods also announced it plans to open a small-format organic grocery store that caters to millennial shoppers. With TargetExpress, the retailer is aiming to be a go-to destination for the “fill-in trip,” when you just need a few essentials but don’t have time for a major shopping outing. That’s why executives say they are betting that the new stores won’t simply cannibalize business from their existing big-box stores. “Guests are going to our bigger stores in


Why Wegmans really is the best supermarket in the U.S.

as special as people say it is," said Burt Flickinger, who is the managing director of consumer industry consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, and has closely studied the supermarket industry for over 35 years. At the moment, there are just over 80 Wegmans sprinkled across the Northeast, most which are found in New York (46) and near Washington D.C. (14), according to Wegmans' website. And all of them are huge. The new outpost in Brooklyn will be 74,000 square feet, which will both be Wegmans' smallest and Brooklyn's largest. The recently opened Whole Foods in Gowanus, which is thought to be big, is some 20,000 square feet smaller. "Inside each Wegmans is the equivalent of 8 to 10 other supermarkets," said Flickinger. "The produce department by itself in Wegmans stores is twice as big as the total supermarket store volume of its average competitors in the U.S." Wegmans is also unlike most any other chain, in that it has what Flickinger calls 360 degree competition. It can compete with Whole Foods, because its produce is some of the freshest in the business; it can compete with Trader Joes, because its prices are some of the most reasonable; and it can compete with Wal-Mart, because its stores are, well, massive. "Wegmans has achieved that trifecta by anticipating things others simply weren't thinking about 30 years ago," said Flickinger. "They were already emphasizing fresh, but then they bet on volume, and that has allowed them to not only sell high quality fruits and vegetables, but ones that never sit on the shelves for long." At the moment, the average supermarket turns over its inventory between 18 and 20 times a year, according to Strategic Resource Group. Wegmans, by contrast, goes through its produce as many as 100 times a year. "That's why their produce is almost always fresher than their competition's," said Flickinger. But Wegmans' food isn't merely fresh, it's also cheap. An independent analysis of prices at grocery chains by Washington consumer group Checkbook found that Wegman's prices were 13 percent lower than the average prices found at Giant and Safeway. Consider that Whole Foods, whose food quality has been compared to Wegmans, just announced it is working to open a new chain of cheaper stores, effectively conceding that its current, decidedly pricey model is ill-suited for the future. Part of the reason Wegmans manages to maintain low prices is that


compete with Wal-Mart, because its stores are, well, massive. "Wegmans has achieved that trifecta by anticipating things others simply weren't thinking about 30 years ago," said Flickinger. "They were already emphasizing fresh, but then they bet on volume, and that has allowed them to not only sell high quality fruits and vegetables, but ones that never sit on the shelves for long." At the moment, the average supermarket turns over its inventory between 18 and 20 times a year, according to Strategic Resource Group. Wegmans, by contrast, goes through its produce as many as 100 times a year. "That's why their produce is almost always fresher than their competition's," said Flickinger. But Wegmans' food isn't merely fresh, it's also cheap. An independent analysis of prices at grocery chains by Washington consumer group Checkbook found that Wegman's prices were 13 percent lower than the average prices found at Giant and Safeway. Consider that Whole Foods, whose food quality has been compared to Wegmans, just announced it is working to open a new chain of cheaper stores, effectively conceding that its current, decidedly pricey model is ill-suited for the future. Part of the reason Wegmans manages to maintain low prices is that its turnover is so efficient. Wegmans has historically been very good about managing food waste, which can be a sizable cost for other grocers, according to Flickinger. Another is that, similar to Trader Joes, Wegmans has recognized long ago that by being less reliant on big brands, and instead selling house-owned, private brands, they could manage their own prices. Lastly, Wegmans is self-reliant in a way other grocers are not. Whole Foods outsources its distribution and doesn't own its warehouses, which means it relies on (and has to pay) a third party to ensure timely and proper delivery of its food. Wegmans, on the other hand, is much more vertically integrated, and controls its entire distribution process. And then there's Wegmans' unique store experience. "You can't talk about Wegmans without talking about its emphasis on the experience, on the theatricality of going to the grocery store," said Jon Springer, who is the retail editor for Supermarket News. "It's really very different in that respect." Within the seemingly endless spaces are a number of twists on traditional supermarket makeups. Wegmans has a food bar and prepared food section, much like Whole Foods', ample sampling opportunities, like Costco, and customer service that


Meet Gen. Mark Milley and Adm. John Richardson, the new picks to lead the Army and Navy

Senate confirm him, I am confident that Gen.Milley will be an exceptional chief of staff and member of the Joint Chiefs,” McHugh’s statement said. “I also want to thank Gen. Odierno for his many years of service, particularly his support and partnership as the [chief of staff of the Army] over the last four years.” Since August, Milley has been the commanding general of U.S. Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., which provides soldiers to be deployed to combatant commanders across the world. He took on a number of high-profile assignments prior to that, including leading tens of thousands of soldiers with III Corps at Fort Hood, Tex., commanding combat troops in Afghanistan in 2013 and 2014, and overseeing the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y. [These generals could replace Dunford as the next top Marine] Milley and Richardson share a recent history of managing some of their service’s most sensitive issues. Milley was the top officer at Fort Hood, Tex., in April 2014 when a soldier opened fire on colleagues, killing three and wounding at least 12 others before turning the gun on himself. More recently, he has overseen the criminal investigation of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who was recovered last year after five years in captivity. Bergdahl was charged in March with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Richardson was tapped to investigate the Sept. 16, 2013, mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard by a defense contractor who killed 12 people and injured at least three others before police killed him in a shootout. The admiral found that if erratic behavior the shooter, Aaron Alexis, displayed earlier had been reported, the violence could have been prevented. More recently, Richardson led a probe of Navy personnel accused of cheating on nuclear proficiency exams, prompting at least 34 people to be tossed from the service. Carter said Wednesday that Milley impressed him while he was the commander of the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command in Afghanistan. Carter, then the deputy defense secretary, traveled with Milley to the U.S. consulate in the western province of Herat after it was attacked by insurgents on Sept. 13, 2013. “Mark and I flew to Herat the day after an attack on the U.S. consulate there, and I saw Mark take command of the scene and stand with our people there,” Carter said. “I was impressed by his candor


The future of train safety lies in drones

Emergency personnel work the scene of a deadly train wreck, Tuesday, May 12, 2015, in Philadelphia. An Amtrak train headed to New York City derailed and crashed in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/ Joseph Kaczmarek) Officials are still struggling to piece together what happened to Amtrak Northeast Regional Train 188 when it derailed Tuesday night near Philadelphia. But the incident has already raised questions about the overall safety of America's aging railroads. With Congress weighing deep cuts in Amtrak's budget, the crash is drawing renewed attention to ways that rail operators could more cheaply and reliably keep everyone safe. Soon, that may include the use of unmanned drones. Last week, Texas-based BNSF Railway became the first to receive permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to use drones to inspect some of the 32,500 miles of track in its network. The freight railroad currently sends humans out to do its safety inspections. But, the company says, it can be a dangerous and difficult job, with employees sometimes clambering over slippery objects to reach their sites or working in risky high-traffic areas. BNSF argues that using drones could be safer for track workers and in some cases more effective than using fixed-wing aircraft, which can't fly as close to the bridges and tunnels that may need inspection. With the FAA as a partner, BNSF is gearing up to use drones in what are called beyond-line-of-sight operations — in which a ground-based operator is allowed to fly the unmanned vehicle without keeping the device in their visual range. The FAA's current proposed rules for drones requires operators to be able to see the drone at all times. But this new research is expected to help loosen the FAA's drone rules someday. BNSF, which operates mostly in the western United States, says it plans to use three types of drones for the tests, the AirRobot AR180 and AR200 as well as the 3DRobotics Spektre Industrial Multi-Rotor Aerial vehicle. "BNSF is constantly exploring additional ways in which it can improve safety for its employees, its customers, and the public," the company wrote in its initial petition to the FAA. "BNSF anticipates that use of [drones] will enhance safety in railroad operations." Along with BNSF, two other companies — CNN and drone manufacturer PrecisionHawk — are collaborating with the FAA to study how to expand drone usage in the United States. "We anticipate receiving valuable data from each


Tom Sietsema’s 2015 Spring Dining Guide Now Available

The Washington Post Magazine today released its sixth annual Spring Dining Guide, in which food critic Tom Sietsema revisits 14 previously-reviewed restaurants to see what’s changed for better or for worse. In addition to browsing restaurant reviews, star-ratings, prices and locations, readers can try three rhubarb recipes created by sous-chefs Jonathan Heeter of Trummer’s on Main in Clifton, Va., Krystal Cripe of the Red Hen in Bloomingdale (DC) and Faiz Ally of Del Campo (DC). The trio competed to see who could create the best savory rhubarb dish for spring. Post food writers and editors along with CulinAerie’s Susan Holt judged the dishes and picked Faiz Ally’s grilled smoked foie gras with burnt rhubarb vinaigrette as the winner, praising its creativity and plating. Recipes can be found here. Here’s a sneak peak on how some of the restaurants fared: - Bryan Voltaggio’s Volt, under new chef Scott Muns, is up by .5 stars from 2012, garnering 3 stars - Vin 909 holds steady from 2013 to today with 2 stars - Marvin, a 14th Street mainstay, dropped from 2.5 stars in 2008 to 1.5 stars The complete Dining Guide is available online here and will appear in The Washington Post Magazine Sunday.


Sweden denied this Bangladeshi blogger a visa. Now, he’s dead.

A police officer investigates at the spot where Bangladeshi blogger Ananta Bijoy Das was killed, in Nurani area of Sylhet, Bangladesh. (European Pressphoto Agency) Ananta Bijoy Das, a secular Bangladeshi blogger, was hacked to death by masked men wielding machetes on Tuesday morning while on his way to work in a city in northeastern Bangladesh. The grisly murder was the third such deadly attack this year alone on secular-minded bloggers by avowed Islamists, marking a disturbing trend in a country known for its volatile political divisions. Das, 33, wrote for the same blogging collective of humanist bloggers as Avijit Roy, the Bangladeshi American atheist writer who was butchered on a Dhaka street in February. His murder, followed by the grotesque fatal assault of another 27-year-old blogger in March, sparked a public outcry. But it's clearly open season on religious skeptics in Bangladesh, technically a secular state. A day after Das's death, new details emerged making the incident all the more galling. The writer, it appears, had been expected to attend a conference in Stockholm on press freedom this past week. But Swedish consular officials in Bangladesh had declined his visa application. According to the Swedish branch of the PEN writers' association, which had invited to Das to speak at an event on May 3, the writer received this notice from the Swedish Embassy in Dhaka: You belong to a category of applicants where there is always a risk involved when granting a visa that you will not leave Schengen area after the visit. Furthermore, the purpose of your trip is not urgent enough to grant you visa. "It's horrific that the embassy is more concerned that he will stay in the country than that he will be murdered," Swedish PEN official Elnaz Baghlanian told Agence France Presse. "He would have been alive if he had been here, he was supposed to be here for two weeks." Of course, a two-week sojourn in Sweden would not have entirely shielded Das from death threats at home. It's not known whether Das may have filed for asylum while abroad — Sweden is one of the more generous countries when it comes to welcoming asylum-seekers. Das was victim to an experience common in the developing world, where visa-seekers — often young men — get defeated by the bureaucratic vagaries and indifference of Western consular officials, many of whom are expected to occasionally reject visa


U.S. 4×100 relay team stripped of medals from 2012 Olympics because of Tyson Gay’s doping

The United States’ Justin Gatlin hands the baton to Tyson Gay at the 2012 Olympics in London. (Hassan Ammar/AP) Tyson Gay and the rest of the U.S. Olympic 4×100 relay team will forever have an asterisk attached to their second-place finish at the 2012 London Olympics. On Wednesday, the International Olympic Committee stripped every member of the team that ran with Gay either in the final or qualifying races of their medals because of Gay’s history of doping, The Associated Press reports. Olympians Trell Kimmons, Justin Gatlin, Ryan Bailey, Jeffery Demps and Darvis Patton are the runners affected. Gay, who served a one-year doping suspension after testing positive for steroids at the U.S. championships in 2013, forfeited his medal last year, at which point Kimmons told The Indianapolis Star that he would do the same if asked. “If it comes to that point to give that medal up, I can’t speak for the rest of the guys, but I would give mine up,” he said last May. None of the runners have commented publicly on the IOC’s decision to strip them of their medals, including Kimmons, Gatlin and Bailey, who ran the final with Gay, but the IOC’s decision did not come as a surprise to the U.S. Olympic Committee. “As expected, following USADA’s decision in the Tyson Gay case, the IOC today confirmed that the U.S. team has been disqualified from the 4×100-meter race that was part of the athletics competition at the London 2012 Olympic Games,” USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky said in a statement. “We will begin efforts to have the medals returned, and support all measures to protect clean athletes.” With the U.S. team removed from the podium finishes, the silver would go to Trinidad and Tobago, which finished third in 38.12 seconds, while France, who finished in fourth in 38.16 seconds, would now get the bronze. It is still undetermined if the IOC will choose to reallocate the medals, according the AP.


Nightlife Agenda: Forward Festival, Dogfish Head and French party tunes

but you need to RSVP for tickets, and then arrive early, as space is limited and putting your name down isn't a guarantee of entry. Friday, May 15 For Virginia beer lovers, Route 151 is the Yellow Brick Road. Three of the commonwealth's top brewers are located along a 13-mile section of blacktop known as the Rockfish Valley Highway in Nelson County – the Blue Mountain Brewery, Wild Wolf and the Devils Backbone Brewing Company – as is the Bold Rock Cidery. This weekend, the Black Squirrel is paying tribute to all four producers. Try four beers each from Blue Mountain, Devils Backbone and Wild Wolf, including such rarities as Blue Mountain's Mandolin Belgian-style tripel, Devils Backbone Montpelier’s Best Ambition Amber Ale, and Wild Wolf's Exquisitely Evil Imperial IPA and a trio of Bold Rock ciders. Pair the drinks with Virginia ham biscuit sliders and fried chicken biscuit sandwiches. Doors open at 5 p.m. Saturday, May 16 After generating a huge amount of buzz, including showcase slots at both SXSW and CMJ, D.C.'s own Shark Week is finally set to release an album of its garage-meets-surf-meets-punk rock. Get a preview of the songs on "Beach Fuzz" – and pick up a copy – at what promises to be a huge at the Dance Loft studios on upper 14th Street NW. The five-band bill includes roaring punk from Loud Boyz and New York City's Desert Sharks, who also fuse surf and garage rock. When the live sets are done, DJs Smudge, Stereo Faith and Nightmoves will keep the music going until 6 a.m. Doors open at 8 p.m. and admission is $10; if you're just coming for the after-party, it costs $5 after 1 a.m. A full bar is available, with drinks for $5 each. If you've ever had a drink at ChurchKey, Iron Gate or the Partisan, you've put yourself in the hands of an all-star team of beverage directors: Greg Engert (beer), Jeff Faile (cocktails) and Brent Kroll (wine). Those three are teaming up for a brand-new festival at Canal Park called ABV. Each expert has selected his favorite seasonal libations: Engert chose saisons and sour beers; Faile went with cocktails made with small-batch gins and mezcals; Kroll selected small-producer roses from Germany and Spain. (Advance tickets include 10 tastes.) Pair your drinks with a menu of smoked brisket, wings and gourmet hot dogs, and you've got a true


Why is Amtrak such a mess?

with Marshall Plan aid that was almost immediately channeled into the powerful rail ministries. Lavish infrastructure spending ensured that tiny hamlets across France, Germany and Italy got multiple daily visits from locomotives pulling cars of food, mail and people. And automobile ownership across Europe lagged far behind America in the postwar rebuilding years, so the rails were economically indispensable. All the willpower in the United States, meanwhile, went to building the Interstate Highway system — a pet project of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had been impressed with German autobahns and also wanted a rapid way of evacuating American cities in case of a nuclear strike. Congress also saw it as a bonus to Texas oil companies and Detroit carmakers. The public-private prosperity dynamic had no patience for trains anymore. As diesel trucks gradually chewed into the cargo business and the Boeing 707 made coast-to-coast air travel affordable to middle-class Americans, the glorious American trains lionized by folk musicians and poets began a slide to irrelevance. New York destroyed its magnificent Penn Station, carriages got grimy, speeds got painfully slow, tracks rotted to the point where some of them cracked and collapsed under the weight of a stationery train — an event known as a “standing derailment.” The system improved a bit in 1970, when Richard Nixon signed the Rail Passenger Service Act, merging all the battered passenger trains under a government umbrella with an expectation of profitability. Profits, though, never followed, because the agency known as Amtrak has an impossible mission. Congress must approve its annual budget — at a rate of subsidy that lags far behind that granted to European railroads — which barely pays for maintenance, let alone the kind of costly improvements that would make it a genuine alternative to the car or bus in places outside the Boston-Washington corridor. The Northeast, where rail traffic between Philadelphia and New York remained suspended Tuesday afternoon, carries 11 million passengers each year in one of the only parts of the nation that retains a robust cultural identity with trains. Even there, the high-speed disappointment known as the Acela must run along a right-of-way first surveyed in the early 19th century with many anachronistic curves, including the one jumped by the train Monday morning. So don’t blame Amtrak for the mess. Blame history and the law. If Americans really want anything more from their passenger trains besides a future


Case against former Green Beret accused of murder is delayed because of CIA ties

Army Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn is shown here in Afghanistan in 2010. (Courtesy of the office of Rep. Duncan Hunter) The hearing for a former Green Beret soldier accused of murder by the Army has been delayed in part because of the same organization that brought him scrutiny in the first place: the CIA. Army Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn was to face an administrative board of inquiry hearing on May 18 about his fate in the service, but it has been pushed back because of complications in allowing members of the board to review the highly classified information involved, military officials said. The delay is needed to “resolve issues surrounding clearances required for some portions of the proceedings,” said Maj. Allison Aguilar, a spokeswoman for Army Special Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C. [CIA job interview leads to criminal investigation of Green Beret] The Army has accused Golsteyn, a former member of 3rd Special Forces Group, of confessing to the murder of a Taliban bomb maker during a CIA job interview, according to a leaked Army document describing the case. The insurgent was involved in the death of two U.S. Marines who had been working with Golsteyn’s Special Forces team in Afghanistan in 2010, the document said. Golsteyn’s alleged confession occurred during a CIA polygraph test. The CIA referred comment to the Army. The Army launched a lengthy criminal investigation after the CIA turned over information it had gathered to the service, but the investigation was closed last summer because of a lack of evidence required to charge him with any crime. Golsteyn’s case has since received international attention, after Army Secretary John McHugh decided to nonetheless strip the soldier of a Silver Star he had received for heroism during the same deployment in the iconic Battle of Marja. Golsteyn’s attorney, Phil Stackhouse, has said that the Army’s allegation that his client confessed to murder is filled with inaccuracies. Stackhouse, who could not be reached for comment, also has underscored that the Army investigation found no evidence to corroborate the Army’s allegation. The polygraph test is not admissible in court, but Army officials are likely to review aspects of it during the administrative hearing. Army Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn in Afghanistan in 2010. (Courtesy of the office of Rep. Duncan Hunter) The case against Golsteyn also has been decried by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R.Calif.), a former Marine officer who has


Honeybees dying, situation ‘unheard of’

The number is preliminary, but is the second-highest annual loss recorded to date. “What we’re seeing with this bee problem is just a loud signal that there’s some bad things happening with our agro-ecosystems,” study co-author Keith Delaplane of the University of Georgia told the AP. “We just happen to notice it with the honeybee because they are so easy to count.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture continues to research problems facing honey bees and pollinators. The cause of the bees’ demise was not noted, but researchers said colony collapse disorder — which causes mass deaths of the bees for reasons not fully understood — was not necessarily the culprit. As the Times put it last year: “What has emerged is a complex set of pressures on managed and wild bee populations that includes disease, a parasite known as the varroa mite, pesticides, extreme weather and poor nutrition tied to a loss of forage plants.” “The winter loss numbers are more hopeful especially combined with the fact that we have not seen much sign of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) for several years, but such high colony losses in the summer and year-round remain very troubling,” Pettis said in a statement. He likened summer deaths to having “a higher rate of flu deaths in the summer than winter.” “If beekeepers are going to meet the growing demand for pollination services, researchers need to find better answers to the host of stresses that lead to both winter and summer colony losses,” he said. VanEngelsdorp called the situation “unheard of.” “We traditionally thought of winter losses as a more important indicator of health, because surviving the cold winter months is a crucial test for any bee colony,” vanEngelsdorp said. “But we now know that summer loss rates are significant too. This is especially so for commercial beekeepers, who are now losing more colonies in the summertime compared to the winter.” The state worst affected was Oklahoma, which lost more than 60 percent of its hives. Hawaii escaped relatively unscathed, losing less than 14 percent. “Most of the major commercial beekeepers get a dark panicked look in their eyes when they discuss these losses and what it means to their businesses,” said Pennsylvania State University entomology professor Diana Cox-Foster, who didn’t participate in the survey. Her state lost more than 60 percent of its colonies. The USDA estimated “If losses continue at the 33


How to teach climate change to a conservative community

piece: A few weeks ago, I wrote here about C.W., a new environmental science teacher in rural Pennsylvania who was criticized by local parents when he attempted to teach climate change using materials from the book and movie, An Inconvenient Truth. It may not surprise you to learn that C.W.’s story was not unique. At the same time, on the other side of the country, another environmental science teacher, N.C., ran into a similar problem in his Colorado classroom. N.C. started teaching environmental science at a new school, and wanted the students to watch An Inconvenient Truth with a substitute teacher when he was out for the day. When he returned from leave, there was a detailed report from the substitute teacher—things had not gone well. Apparently one of the students had flat walked out of the class during the movie, and other students refused to engage in the ensuing discussion or assignment. They had been told by their parents that if climate change came up in class, they were not to engage in any activity or complete any assignments. And their attitude was that if their parents didn’t agree with it, it did not need to be part of their schooling. N.C. was surprised by this response, but was willing to chat with the students to come up with a temporary solution, which involved them writing a short paper to explain their perspective. This was not ideal in N.C.’s view, though, since it didn’t really address the science. So the next year he decided to switch approaches, adopting a data-first style. He compiled data collected in Colorado that discussed regional impacts of climate change, including wildfires, animal migrations, average temperatures, and snowmelt. He had groups of students look at graphs and answer questions about the data. Was it complete enough? What else would they like to see? A larger sample size; longer time periods? From there, the students looked for data that went deeper into time, which N.C. provided through paleo-data, and global data he found through scientific agencies such as NASA. The students were still learning about climate change, but now they were driving the conversation and asking the questions, rather than being told by the teacher what to think. It turns out this technique was better for a variety of reasons. First, student-driven discovery is just good pedagogy: the students are doing what scientists actually do, asking


This 81-year-old Army veteran called 911 because he was hungry

Clarence Blackmon, an 81-year-old North Carolina Army veteran, called 911 not because he was hurt, but because he needed food. Blackmon, who is battling cancer, had no family living nearby and no way to get to the grocery store. An 81-year-old North Carolina Army veteran touched an emergency operator earlier this week when he dialed 911 — not because he was hurt, but because he was hungry. Clarence Blackmon had just returned to his apartment in Fayetteville, N.C., after spending months in a hospital and rehabilitation facility where he has been battling cancer. When he got home, his refrigerator was empty. He had no family living nearby and no way to get to the grocery store. “I can barely walk without holding onto a chair,” he told the 911 dispatcher. So he made an unorthodox yet desperate plea. “What I need is someone to get to the grocery store and bring me some food because I need to eat something,” he said on the 911 tape. “Whatever you can do to help. I can’t do anything. I can’t go anywhere. I can’t get out of my damn chair.” [America’s oldest vet is turning 109. He celebrated with cigars and burgers.] Within moments, the dispatcher, Marilyn Hinson, was jotting down his grocery list: a head of cabbage, two bananas, a can of beets and a can of green beans, tomato juice, three Pepsis, some processed ham and, his “absolute favorite,” popcorn. He told her he had the money to pay her back. Hinson, along with Fayetteville police officers, delivered the items to his door. She said she stuck around to make him a few ham sandwiches. “He was hungry,” she told WTVD-TV. “I’ve been hungry. A lot of people can’t say that, but I can, and I can’t stand for anyone to be hungry.” [This 94-year-old is graduating from college, more than 70 years after he started] Blackmon told the Huffington Post he has prostate cancer. “It’s unreal how devastating one thing can be,” he said. “Sometimes I just fall down and pray.” He said his doctor gave him “maybe another six months. But he doesn’t know and I don’t know. Only God knows and I thank God I’m still here.” Blackmon is getting a home health nurse soon, he told WTVD-TV, but, he’s thankful someone was there to help him this week. “It was like a little miracle ringing in


D.C. area forecast: Spectacularly sunny and springlike today, summer returns this weekend

TODAY’S DAILY DIGIT 10/10: EXPRESS FORECAST Today: FORECAST IN DETAIL Days don’t get much better than this. More importantly, our premature summer visit earlier this week takes a break. But then, the heat and humidity surge back in for the weekend. Some shower dodging may be necessary at times as well. But, before you complain, know any rain will bring smiles to many gardeners. In fact, those who the showers miss will be in full battle cry for a real rain event. Today (Thursday): Tonight: For related traffic news, check out Dr. Gridlock. Keep reading for the forecast through the weekend… Tomorrow (Friday): Tomorrow night: Sunset on the Potomac, May 12, 2015 (Joe Flood via Flickr) A LOOK AHEAD Saturday Sunday Monday


In Arena’s ‘The Blood Quilt,’ reunited sisters try to preserve their heritage

(and one’s daughter) reunite at their family’s house on a Georgia island for a weekend quilting bee, as most of them have for years. Only this time, things are different: The family matriarch has recently died, one long-absent sister has returned and a tax burden threatens to take the ancestral home. Stepping in as the new head of the family is oldest sister Clementine (played by Tonye Patano), who stayed on the island while her sisters left to pursue their own lives. “She is the most connected to the family’s history,” Patano says. “She never liked going to the mainland. She likes the groundedness from whence she comes. She is that soil.” But that soil is taxed, and the family is far behind on the payments. The house is on one of the Gullah Geechee islands, a chain along the south Atlantic coast that is mostly inhabited by the descendants of slaves. The Gullah Geechee people have a distinct cultural history that includes their own rituals, religious beliefs and even language. In part because of that unique link with history, Clementine has a problem with the home being taxed. “[She] thinks we shouldn’t have to pay this stuff,” Patano says. “This is our land. You not only brought us here, abused us, but we created something. Now you not only want to take it, but make us pay for it? How much more do we have to put on the block?” When it’s suggested that the family sell their valuable antique quilts — each of which is associated with a different story — Clementine is the strongest voice of opposition. Still, even she recognizes the family is caught: They can keep the quilts or the house, but not both. “What these quilts represent goes far beyond the physical,” Patano says. “But [the house] is your nest. That’s the beauty of it. It’s about the legacy, about what we have created and who our ancestors are.” The sisters’ choice is clear, but not easy: To protect the future, they may have to sell the past. Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St. SW; through June 7, $45-$90. Check out other stories about stage shows: Creative staging brings Alliance for New Music-Theatre’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ ’ insect-like man to life For ‘Murder Ballad,’ Studio Theatre turns into a killer dive bar ‘Five Guys Named Moe’ at Arena Stage is sure to get the joint jumping


Bill Nye’s plan to bring Carl Sagan’s sailing spacecraft to life was funded in a day

Society to launch a satellite that will ‘sail on sunbeams’] The LightSail would propel a CubeSat spacecraft about the size of a loaf of bread. CubeSat is another low-cost space exploration project -- the tiny satellites have already become somewhat popular with amateur, university, and student initiatives. These days, CubeSats usually get into space as passengers on a larger craft. The Planetary Society is planning a test launch of their LightSail prototype on May 20, hitching a ride on an Atlas V rocket. While the launch won't take the craft out of the Earth's atmosphere enough to enable a test of the actual sailing functions, researchers are hoping to "test our sail deployment sequence and snap some pretty pictures." The team plans a full test of the craft in 2016. LightSail is not the first proposed solar sail mission. In the 1970s, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed -- and eventually scrapped -- a mission to send a solar sailing vessel to catch up with Halley's Comet as it made a close pass by Earth in 1986. The Russian Space Agency launched Znamya 2 in 1993, a satellite featuring a large foil reflector that some say behaved a lot like how a solar sail might, as NASA's history of solar sails explains. But the satellite couldn't control its own flight, and its mirror eventually burned up in the atmosphere. [A fantastic idea Carl Sagan showed Johnny Carson in 1976 is about to become reality] The Japan Aerospace Exploration agency deployed the first true solar sail ever in 2005, but the sail was not a fully-functional, free-flying craft. At around the same time, NASA notes, the Planetary Society was working on its own previous solar sail project. That project came to a sudden end when the rocket that was supposed to propel it into orbit failed. NASA also notes Clearly, there's a lot of intrigue and enthusiasm for this latest attempt to send a solar sail out into the universe beyond Earth. There are also a lot of things that can go wrong. As Nye's campaign sums it up in a word of caution to its backers, "space is hard." Want more space? Give these a click: Scientists want to send a fish-like ‘soft robot’ to swim the oceans of Europa This cosmic ‘dinosaur egg’ is about to hatch The Curiosity Mars rover caught a stunning blue sunset on the Red Planet


Dying honeybees, and the uncertain future of honey

recorded. Foreign sources of honey seem for the moment to be adequate, so we have enough of the sweet stuff to put in our tea, mix with our Greek yogurt and cook with overall. But the growing reliance on imported honey has raised concerns in recent years about the safety and purity of the honey supply — the European Union several years ago banned Indian honey, for instance, out of concern for unhealthy toxins in it. Some American honey producers have suspected that purportedly better-quality honey from a place such as Turkey, which is renowned for its honey prowess, isn't really Turkish honey. The United States has put high tariffs on Chinese honey, but China is thought to have gotten around them by exporting through other countries. It's hard to say how much of this reflects genuine concerns about the quality of honey or, on the other hand, economic competitiveness. But there are other problems, too, with the disappearance of bees for our food supply. Bees are responsible for contributing about $15 billion each year in increased crop value, according to the USDA, thanks to their help in various aspects of the food industry. They are essential to the commercial production of almonds, tree nuts, berries, fruits and vegetables. The collapse of the bee population this year is not, by itself, any kind of cataclysmic event. The dying of honeybees is a natural and generally acceptable phenomenon. The national honeybee population has always ebbed and flowed in response to changes in weather and environment. "It's really important to understand that the actual number of bee colonies, which is counted each August, has remained constant," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, who teaches entomology at the University of Maryland and studies bee populations. "Yes, bees are dying every year, but you have to distinguish between losses and declines. What's happening is it's becoming more expensive to maintain the current levels." In other words, it's not that bees are going extinct. Rather, beekeepers are increasingly finding it harder to make ends meet. "To be honest, some beekeepers are doing it out of love more than anything else," vanEngelsdorp said. "They're doing it because it's a family tradition, not because it makes a lot of business sense." For nearly a decade running, the loss of honey bee colonies has exceeded what researchers view as an "acceptable" level, according to a new industry survey that vanEngelsdorp helped


Bee hotels: One way to help native bees

A bee collects pollen in a sunflower field, Monday, Sept. 1, 2014, near Lawrence, Kan. A new “bee hotel” in the area could provide a home for the area’s at-risk native bee population. (Charlie Riedel/AP) It’s a rough time to be a bee. Their habitats as vanishing, their food sources dwindling, they’re being poisoned by pesticides, more than 40 percent of honeybee colonies have died in the past year. Solitary, hive-less, native bees buzz around the hostile landscape, desperately seeking a place they can call home. They might find it near Lawrence, Kan. At least, that’s the hope of researchers at the University of Kansas, who teamed up a local construction company and an architecture firm to build the area’s first ever “bee hotel.” The facility has no lobby or check-in counter, but it does contain more than 3,000 tiny tunnels made of rolled-up paper, bamboo and wood where bees can rest their weary wings. https://twitter.com/KUnews/status/597914088207884288 “Bee hotels are [there] to provide that habitat. So they’re little tubes so that they can crawl in individually and do their work and live,” Kay Johnson told Kansas TV station KSHB. Johnson is environmental manager of Prosoco, the construction company that built the hotel. The bee hotel isn’t a new idea: biologists at the University of New Hampshire built an even more elaborate example last year, and beekeepers in Europe have been using them for centuries. Still, as far as hotel guests go, bees can be fussy ones. They have to “warm up before they go out and do their work,” so the “rooms” at KU’s arched, wooden hotel (which has been planted near a trail at the school’s field station) all face toward the sun, architect Steve Clark, who also worked on the project, told KSHB. Other construction concerns included making sure that the hotel was sheltered from wind, rain and other inclement weather. But Johnson believes it’s worth the effort. Unlike honeybees, which gather in colonies and were imported from Europe centuries ago, most North American bees usually live on their own, according to the New Hampshire Business Review. But it’s a dangerous world for a small, flying arthropod (see: pesticide, habitat loss, hunger) and the 4,000 species of native bees also need a safe place to make their nests. They may not produce honey, but they are still essential to pollinating the nation’s crops, gardens and wildflowers. “If we can


Indonesia’s crudely invasive ‘virginity tests’ for female military recruits

a group of 35 forensic specialists argued that hymen examinations don’t indicate anything about a woman’s sexual history and don’t help to detect sexually transmitted diseases. What’s more, they said that health professionals have no reason to be testing a woman’s virginity in the first place. “There is no medically significant value that can be attributed to virginity,” they wrote. “… The examinations are irrelevant and harmful to women, and serve as a form of social control of their sexuality.” If virginity tests serve no purpose to doctors, they have a profound effect on the women who are subjected to them. A woman who underwent the examination when applying to Indonesia’s police force (which also requires the test) told Human Rights Watch that the experience was traumatizing. “I feared that after they performed the test I would not be a virgin anymore. It really hurt. My friend even fainted because … it really hurt, really hurt,” she said, according to HRW. In their statement in “Torture,” the forensic specialists argued that mandatory hymen examinations are a form of rape, since they invade a patient’s body. “These examinations can cause physical pain and can lead to damage to the hymen, bleeding and to infection,” they wrote. “Psychologically, the pain and suffering caused by these examinations is especially acute.” Virginity testing is a contentious issue in Indonesia. The country came under fire last November when Human Rights Watch published an investigation of virginity tests on police recruits. Some officials denied the practice, but others acknowledged it openly and defended it. “The procedure has been practiced for a long time. We need to check the quality [of the candidates] by checking their virginity,” Inspector General Moechgiyarto, head of the National Police law division, told the Jakarta Post. He implied that the goal of the test was to prevent prostitutes from joining the force. A proposal to subject female high school graduates to the test sparked an outcry earlier this year, with advocacy groups calling the test a human rights violation, and the country’s top Muslim clerics saying it discriminated against female students and conflicted with Islamic teachings, according to Reuters. That proposal was ultimately withdrawn, but it appears that police recruits are still tested, as well as candidates for the military. “It should be stopped,” Human Rights Watch spokesman Andreas Harsono told Reuters in February. “It is degrading. It is discriminatory. It is


Take off that Fitbit. Exercise alone won’t make you lose weight.

Amy Luke, a public health scholar at Loyola University of Chicago, concludes that “numerous trials have indicated that exercise plus calorie restriction achieves virtually the same result in weight loss as calorie restriction alone.” It’s calorie intake that is really fueling the obesity epidemic. But it’s not just the number of calories we’re eating as how we’re getting them. The sugar calories are particularly bad. Stanford University researcher Sanjay Basu recently led an analysis of 175 countries that evaluated the amount of sugar in each nation’s food supply. As sugar availability increased by 150 calories per person per day (the equivalent of a can of cola), there was a 1.1 percent rise in the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes in the population — an increase that was 11 times larger than if people consumed 150 more calories from nonsugar sources — independent of average body mass index and physical activity levels. The experience of Timothy Noakes, a leading sports and exercise medicine scientist, exemplifies those results. Despite being an almost daily runner and completing more than 70 marathons in his lifetime, Noakes developed Type 2 diabetes in his late 50s, which he attributes to his excessive consumption of sugar and other refined carbohydrates. Yet the public continues to be smothered with messages about the importance of maintaining a healthy weight through calorie-counting and physical activity. The food and beverage industry is most guilty of perpetuating the false belief that the obesity epidemic is simply due to lack of exercise, spending billions to market nutritionally poor products as “sports drinks” while simultaneously promoting the benefits of physical activity. Sadly, many doctors’ understanding of nutrition is influenced by bogus industry advertising. In July 2012, I stopped drinking the popular sports drink Lucozade after Oxford University researchers found a “striking lack of evidence” to support claims that such products enhance performance and recovery. Instead of wasting close to $10,000 over the previous 15 years drinking a product loaded with seven teaspoons of sugar, I would have been better off drinking tap water at the gym. The World Health Organization now recommends no more than six teaspoons of sugar a day for the average adult. Misconceptions about diet and exercise are paralyzing efforts to curb the worsening obesity crisis. The food industry has been central in pushing these misconceptions, using tactics similar to those employed by big tobacco, to elide its culpability in spreading


A professor on what commencement speakers should be telling graduates

hunger a basic human right?,” I create an occasion for people to disagree; I invite them to choose sides. Fifth, lines are drawn strategically, to bias the definition of the issue and to bias it in such a way so that there are more supporters who end up on your “side” than there are opponents who end up on the other side. For example, if I were to follow the above question with another, “Would it be better if the starving ate their children?,” I am hoping that moral repulsion will drive most people to my side and thereby strengthen my cause. Sixth, to draw a line strategically, you must know what people care about and you must choose words that resonate with the values they hold most dear. You must know what they most desire and most fear. Over time they may most desire, and most fear, many different things. You will have to find out for yourself. (I suspect, however, that usually, people most desire and most fear the same thing: intimacy.) Seventh, to know how to touch people you must be in touch with them. “Being” in touch, of course, means “getting” and “staying” in touch and that, of course, is a never-ending task. To perform it, you simply have to find — or invent — ways to get and stay close to people, close enough so you can hear their words and sense their thoughts. Eighth, you must know them but they cannot know all that you know. If it is true that people most desire and most fear intimacy, then they long for an assurance that they are seen and accepted for what they are — and, mostly, for what they wish they were. They, of course, are not yet who they wish to be and, even more disturbingly, they may never be. They know this better than you and they need to keep you at that distance: close enough to seem accepting; distant enough to be non-threatening. To help them maintain the distance, you cannot let them know what you know. That is, they cannot really know you. Ninth, people will follow when they sense that you give to them what you deny to yourself; you give them intimacy and you suffer loneliness. That makes you comforting — and safe. Tenth, that’s why you get to wear the crown. Unfortunately, all crowns have thorns.


Morning Plum: A bipartisan uprising may end most government bulk spying

some other way. But even so, the rising bipartisan opposition underscores once again that a real left-right alliance, of libertarian conservatives and civil liberties progressives, may be coming together to put an end to most bulk surveillance. The potential drama here is also a reminder of just how rare such bipartisan alliances are these days. And a great deal is at stake in this battle. But that brings us to our next item. ******************************************************************* * WHAT’S AT STAKE IN NSA FIGHT: Secrecy has always been traditional and accepted in wartime, but traditional wars have an end. Under two administrations now, as the United States has remained on a permanent war footing against Al Qaeda and its splintering, morphing progeny, tensions over fighting battles in the shadows have steadily escalated. If this is a forever war, can a democracy wage it in secret? Civil libertarians worry that parts of the surveillance program will still continue in secret even if the U.S.A. Freedom Act becomes law, but it would be a step in the right direction. * THE LATEST ON THE AMTRAK CRASH: The system that would have automatically slowed the train before it headed into a turn at twice its authorized speed is in operation on just 50 miles of the 226-mile route from Washington to New York City. Though Amtrak may meet the Dec. 31 deadline set by Congress for its Northeast routes, most of the rail lines in the rest of the country will not meet that mandate. Meanwhile, the Associated Press has a look at how “positive train control” works and the back-story on Congress’ mandating of its installation. * WHY AMTRAK DIDN’T HAVE TECHNOLOGY IN PLACE: Because lawmakers failed to provide the railroads access to the wireless frequencies required to make the system work, Amtrak was forced to negotiate for airwaves owned by private companies that are often used in mobile broadband….the railroad struggled for four years to buy the rights to airwaves in the Northeast Corridor that would have allowed them to turn the system on. There will be a lot more reporting on this angle in the days ahead, one imagines. * GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN LOOMS IN FLORIDA: The letter comes as Florida lawmakers confront the possibility that they may fail to resolve their budget impasse without federal money to cover health care — which Scott and state House Republicans continue to demand on the condition


An astronaut’s surprisingly helpful guide to pooping in space

Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti explains how toilets work aboard the International Space Station. Poop. Everybody does it. Even in space. Some of you are uncomfortable talking about poop. Sorry. We're in favor of discussing poop on this blog. Thankfully, Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti is also pro-poop talk and provided a stellar (pun definitely intended) tutorial on how to make No. 2 on the International Space Station. "Let's say you're up here on ISS, and you need to go to the restroom," said Cristoforetti, as she began her tutorial. Excellent. That's among the first five questions I'd ask when I got up there. Cristoforetti — a member of the Orbital Outhouse Team — provided the delightful tour in a clip from the European Space Agency. The main takeaway: The weightlessness in space means you need to use suction to get rid of your business. [Uranus might be full of surprises] The seated space toilet, meant for pooping, has a fan connected to it that creates the suction. Waste ends up in a plastic bag that astronauts push down into a solid waste container, which is changed "roughly every 10 days," according to Cristoforetti. (Urine gets recycled, she noted.) Pooping in space has sure come a long way from the 1960s, when astronauts used adhesives to attach fecal collection bags to their butts. Going to the bathroom back then could take up to an hour. Now, astronauts have toilets and require special training, as this 2010 NASA video explains: "Alignment's your friend," said Scott Weinstein, a crew habitability trainer with the space agency. The toilet on ISS has a seat that "sort of looks comfortable, but you don't really sit in weightlessness," Cristoforetti said. [This beetle’s butt is basically a machine gun] Most of the astronauts prefer to open another component on the toilet and hover the contraption, according to Cristoforetti. That's a delightful piece of info — a space-pooping pro-tip — and I like to imagine that the astronauts casually traded pooping techniques with one another. Here is Cristoforetti's tour of the rest of the bathroom: Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti demonstrates how astronauts on the International Space Station keep clean. Cristoforetti is living and working on board the International Space Station as part of the six-person Expedition 42 and 43 crew. READ MORE: This distant galaxy looks like a flaming ring in space The Hubble spotted this smiley face in space


Traffic, transit tips for the weekend

The Washington National Opera’s Opera in the Outfield event has featured everything from “Tosca” to “Showboat.” (Photo by Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post) Your weekend outings will be done in muggy weather, and you’ll need to watch out for the showers and storms that could develop in the afternoons, the Capital Weather Gang says. The Wizards have a playoff game in Verizon Center at 7 p.m. Friday, so watch for crowds in Chinatown and at Metro’s Gallery Place station. The Nationals are on the West Coast, but at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nationals Park will host Opera in the Outfield, a free event featuring Rossini’s “Cinderella.” Also on Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., the Fiesta Asia street fair will spread out across downtown Washington from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. D.C. police plan to close these streets from 2 a.m. to 10 p.m.: Constitution Avenue from Third to Sixth streets NW, Pennsylvania Avenue from Third to Sixth streets and Fourth street from Pennsylvania Avenue to Madison Drive. [Looking for more events? Check the Going Out Guide.] The Gaithersburg Book Festival will draw a crowd to Gaithersburg City Hall, 31 South Summit Ave., from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday. On Sunday, George Washington University is scheduled to hold its commencement on the Mall from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. near 15th Street and Madison Drive NW. The nearest Metrorail station is Smithsonian. Metro opens at 7 a.m. on weekends. The Taste of Arlington street fair is scheduled for noon to 6 p.m. Sunday in Ballston. See a map. Metrorail Red Line. Orange Line. Silver Line. Blue Line. Green Line. Yellow Line. D.C. signal changes The District Department of Transportation will be working on the signals at the intersections of K and 16th streets NW, and K and Connecticut Avenue NW from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.


Republicans defeat proposal that would cast undocumented immigrants as patriotic Americans

So it would mean only a few thousand potential enlistees. That’s not to mention that the measure wouldn’t have allowed them to join, it would have just instructed the Department of Defense to look into it. Republicans may be concerned that if you allow undocumented immigrants to serve in the military, then it will be a short hop to granting them citizenship in some future legislation. After all, if someone is willing to put their life on the line in service to this country, it would be hard to argue against making them a citizen, and there’s already an expedited process for legal immigrants who serve to gain citizenship. But why would that be something to be afraid of? The reason can be found in the fundamentally different ways Democrats and Republicans would like people to see undocumented immigrants. Republicans would rather they be thought of as an undifferentiated horde that only takes from America, stealing jobs from the native-born and sucking up social services. That’s not true of every Republican, but the ones who express any kind of human compassion toward undocumented immigrants (as Rick Perry found out in 2012 and Jeb Bush is discovering now) quickly get accused of being insufficiently “tough” on the issue. Democrats, on the other hand, want undocumented immigrants to be seen as individuals who want to contribute to America. And there are few better ways to tell that story than to highlight people who were brought here as children, grew up American, and are now willing to serve in the military. If the Republican view prevails, the logical policy solutions center around border security and deportations. If the Democratic view prevails, then comprehensive immigration reform including a path to citizenship seems like the solution to the problem. You can see those competing visions in the way the amendment that passed yesterday has been discussed by the two parties. Its sponsor, Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, tried to characterize DREAMers who want to join the military as takers and military service as some kind of gift we generously bestow on the right people. “To take military service jobs from Americans and from lawful immigrants in order to give them to illegal aliens is outrageous and unconscionable,” he said. Which is strange, because last time I checked, the military wasn’t turning people away because all the slots had been filled; go down to your local


Gourmet Symphony: Classical music goes to the saloon

Did you miss the splashy Valentine's Day debut of the Gourmet Symphony, which paired gourmet food with classical music? Now you have a chance for an even more intimate eating, drinking and musical experience with the group. [Gourmet Symphony: Wining and dining a new audience for classical music] Musicians from the Gourmet Symphony perform amid diners at its February debut. The group is hosting a smaller-scale event as part of its new Saloon Concert Series. (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post) On May 20, three performers will play four musical selections at Beuchert's Saloon as part of the symphony's Saloon Concert Series. The event, titled "Woodworking 101," will welcome 40 guests to the restaurant's garden patio. The goal is to create an experience that provides equal billing for the cuisine and the music, said Gourmet Symphony's artistic director John Devlin. The musicians will talk about how wood for instruments is curated and conditioned, leading to different sounds. Attendees will also learn about the role of wood in the barrel-aged bourbons of Michter's Distillery and in grilled foods. Beuchert's chef Andrew Market will prepare five dishes, included smoked pork pupusas, shrimp and grits and fried green tomatoes. Devlin hopes to reach people who many not ordinarily go to concerts. More than 60 percent of those at the February performance had never been to a classical music performance before, he said. His full orchestra of 60 players includes professionals drawn from other groups, such as the National Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra and various military divisions. "These are the best players in D.C.," Devlin said. He intends to continue the saloon series in the future, but most of the summer will be taken up by the symphony's Taste Your Music series. A grant from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities will allow the group and partner Capital City Symphony to put on six performances at soup kitchens, food banks and community service providers around the city. Food at Gourmet Symphony events is tied to the music. Here, sauerbraten-style beef cheeks with herbed spaetzle from February. (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post) The Gourmet Symphony's next large-scale performance open to the public will be in September, which will benefit the organizations that are part of Taste Your Music. Like the February event, expect musicians performing among diners rather than on a stage. Meal courses


Stanley McChrystal on how to shake up the military

up to the frustrations that many young Muslims feel. So, those are the issues we've got to look at or ISIS could be gone and a different ISIS would appear very, very quickly. Q. A. Q. A. So I started teaching at Yale. And I formed an organization that works only with civilian companies, because I thought that what we learned, particularly in Iraq from 2003 to 2008, was so transformational and was not unique to the military. That's been deeply rewarding, working with companies that face remarkably similar challenges in terms of silos and decision-making. Q. A. Then I started dealing with the civilian world, and I would be in meetings where leaders would say, "The military would never be this inefficient, would they?" And I'd smirk a little bit. I'd say, "This is us!" You are not hyper-greedy like I thought, nor are you hyper-efficient like I thought. It's just extraordinary how similar it is. But I guess it shouldn't be shocking. At the end of the day, you're getting people together to do things, whether they wear uniforms or suits. Q. A. If you think about it, we've allowed the concept of citizenship to erode. It's not a geographic boundary. It's not something you win in a lottery. It's not something that's automatically passed to you. It's a promise: If I accept citizenship, I promise I will do things in my relationship to other people. When we allow it to be cheapened, to be transactional, it’s like we've said, "Citizenship is some kind of birthright that I have. Wait a minute, it's here in my pocket or my purse." In reality, citizenship sits in your heart and in your head. I joined the Army because I thought it would be interesting and an adventure, not because I wanted to serve. But after I'd been in 10 or 15 years, the service part was deeply important to me. I know young people out of AmeriCorps, City Year, Peace Corps, and they're extraordinary. They see the world a little differently then anyone who didn't have that opportunity. Q. A. I guess some people learn just to beat that into a corner of themselves and ignore it, but I think that is inside everybody and you can call to that. Q. A. Listen to the full On Leadership podcast with Stanley McChrystal on iTunes or here on the Post's site.


Storms across D.C. area fading after sunset; Warm with storm chance again Sunday

2-hour radar loop. Refresh page to update. 6:40 p.m. update: For areas east of I-95, downpours, some gusty winds and lightning are possible in the storms coming through for the next 60-90 minutes. Activity should begin to wane between around sunset and 9 p.m. For the forecast for the rest of tonight, tomorrow and early next week scroll down below the 6:20 p.m. update. 6:20 p.m update: Storm line now right along I-95 and through DC heading east. Calm now in Loudoun & Frederick co http://t.co/XhICTNs8dn #BREAKING: Even as "Maryland, my Maryland" is sung, infield, grandstands of #Preakness Stakes evacuated due to severe storms in area. Original Posts TODAY’S DAILY DIGIT 7/10: EXPRESS FORECAST Today: FORECAST IN DETAIL We spend the next few days in the “battle zone” between a high pressure to the south/southeast, and an active jet stream nearby and to the north. This promises warmth, humidity, and also the chance to start catching back up on some needed rain at this point. The severe weather risk is generally fairly low, but we’ll be watching. Today (Saturday): Tonight: For related traffic news, check out Dr. Gridlock. Keep reading for the forecast through the weekend… Tomorrow (Sunday): Tomorrow night: Tons of ducks in Constitution Gardens earlier this week. (Phil Yabut via Flickr) A LOOK AHEAD Monday The cold front slowly sags through the region on Tuesday. We probably stay rather cloudy, at least early in the day. There could be some lingering showers as well. With time, drier air filters in, helping temperatures rising to near 80 feel much more comfortable than what we get on Monday. Another several-day nice stretch should follow…Confidence: Medium Earlier Storm Updates 5:55 p.m. update: North half of DC & points north under severe t'storm warning. Watch for torrential rain & flooding http://t.co/HyjYnAkNRo 5:50 p.m. update: Severe Thunderstorm Warning including Columbia MD, Rockville MD, Gaithersburg MD until 6:30 PM EDT http://t.co/bNfs8uov2U 5:35 p.m. update: 5:10 p.m. update: 4:25 p.m. update: Two severe t'storm warnings in effect. One in W Loudoun and another in NW Frederick co http://t.co/LefLKOWMtQ 1:50 p.m. update: (Storm Prediction Center) Given how the storms are progressing, and the ample heat and humidity in place around here, the Storm Prediction Center is now monitoring the region for an isolated severe storm risk. For now, they don’t expect to issue a watch, but note that some sporadic damaging wind is possible in