How can a vegetarian graze on D.C.’s essential dishes? Glad you asked.

"The four-cheese hoagie has everything in it that the Italian does," explains Arlene Wagner, the cheery co-owner of Bub and Pop's. "You've got that nice sloppy sandwich." Vegetarians know it wasn't always this easy to dine out. But a veggie sandwich became one of Bub & Pop's bestsellers late last year, Wagner tells me. Our appetites are changing. Bangkok Golden chef Seng Luangrath A vegan version of Bangkok Golden's crispy rice salad was introduced a year after the meaty Lao dish made the menu. (Photo by Lavanya Ramanathan/The Washington Post) I didn't need so much convincing. I happily wrapped spoonfuls of my vegan naem kao in lettuce leaves and devoured them. I've never eaten meat, a fact that had probably kept me from ever trying Lao food. This tourist was simply grateful for the warm welcome. Read on for all the dishes that are or can be served vegetarian or vegan from our essential eats list: Pumpkin curry at Thai X-ing Pork sausage, habanero and litchi salad at Rose's Luxury Palak chaat at Rasika The palak chaat at Rasika is based on two popular Indian street foods, chaat and pakora. Spinach is lightly battered and flash fried, then topped with sweet yogurt, tamarind-date chutney, chili and black salt. (Photo by Lavanya Ramanathan/The Washington Post) Falafel at Amsterdam Falafelshop Mezze Rigatoni with fennel sausage ragu at Red Hen Margherita D.O.C. at 2 Amys The Margherita D.O.C. at 2 Amys. (Photo by Michael Williamson/The Washington Post) Naem khao at Bangkok Golden and Thip Khao Frito pie at Meats Foods Chocolate onyx at Co Co. Sala Pasqualina tart at Del Campo The pasqualina tart at Del Campo in the District features three kinds of greens -- charred kale, spinach and chard, cooked with maitake mushroom, in a pastry-like tart topped with a runny egg and a mountain of shaved parmesan. (Photo by Lavanya Ramanathan/The Washington Post) Chocolate-chip cookies at Bread Furst Healthy breakfast taco at District Taco Falafel burger at Zaytinya Zaytinya's falafel burger features the restaurant’s popular falafel rendered as a patty stacked with mint, cucumbers dressed with a lemon vinaigrette and tomato. It can be ordered with fries dusted with Za'atar, a mix of spices that is sumac based. (Photo by Deb Lindsey for the Washington Post). Sakhoo yat sai at Doi Moi Italian Hoagie at Bub and Pop's Burrata cheese at Republic Khachapuri at Compass Rose Georgian Khachapuri at Compass


Traffic, transit tips for the weekend

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon will affect travel in all four quadrants of the District from 7:30 a.m. to about 2 p.m. Saturday. Looks like the main impediments to local travel this weekend will be man-made, rather than those recently supplied by Mother Nature. On Saturday, about 30,000 runners will pass through all four quadrants of the District in the annual Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon. At noon Sunday, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade begins on Constitution Avenue NW. Throughout the weekend, schedules on four of the Metrorail lines will be altered for the long-term rebuilding program. There’s not much highway department activity on the roads to interfere with daytime travel, but watch out for crews that are out filling potholes. They’ve been very active for the past few days, which is good, because there are an amazing number of places that need patching. See how to report potholes in the D.C. region. Sunday is the better of the two days for weather. (Sorry, marathoners.) The Capital Weather Gang expects rain Friday night into Saturday afternoon. Sunday is likely to be sunny, with a high approaching 60 degrees. Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon The marathon will disrupt travel on District streets from 7:30 a.m. Saturday till about 2 p.m. Capitol Hill, Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, Southwest Waterfront and Anacostia are among the communities where streets will close. Major roadways affected include Constitution Avenue NW, Arlington Memorial Bridge, Rock Creek Parkway, Calvert Street NW, Columbia Road NW, Harvard Street NW, North Capitol Street, K Street NE, H Street NE, East Capitol Street, Minnesota Avenue SE, South Capitol Street and Maine Avenue SW. “>See a pdf listing of the street closings. Metrorail will open at 5 a.m., two hours early, to help participants and spectators get into position. The transit authority advises participants to use the stations at Federal Triangle, Smithsonian or Archives. Many Metrobus routes are likely to encounter delays during the marathon: 30N, 30S, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 42, 52, 54, 64, 70, 74, 79, 80, 90, 92, 96, A42, A46, A48, B2, D4, D6, D8, G2, G8, H2, H4, L2, M6, P6, S2, S4, U2, U5, U6, V8, X2, X8. During the marathon hours, riders can transfer from Metrobus to Metrorail for free if they ask the bus driver for a special transfer. St. Patrick’s Day Parade The grandstands are between 15th and 16th streets. You need tickets to sit


Six local college basketball teams are in action today. Here’s where to watch.

With the NCAA Tournament on the horizon, local basketball teams are attempting to punch their tickets or solidify their seeds in conference tournament play. There are six members of the Atlantic 11 in action today, and you can watch them all while enjoying food and drink deals. The Virginia Cavaliers face the North Carolina Tar Heels in a semifinal of the ACC Tournament. (Photo by Rich Barnes/Getty Images) University of Virginia University of Maryland [Have the Terps gotten lucky this season?] In D.C., the primary viewing spot is Lou's City Bar in Columbia Heights, where the local alumni club offers $5 Heavy Seas drafts, $6 Old Bay Tots, $4.50 "Bohtinis" (Natty Boh in an Old Bay-rimmed glass) and $18 buckets of Boh. Terps Red Ale, brewed in honor of the University of Maryland Men's Basketball Team by Geoff Lively at the Rock Bottom Bethesda brewpub. The hoppy red ale was tapped March 11, 2015. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) Virginia Commonwealth University Georgetown University George Washington University


How expensive medications are increasingly out of reach

for patients to access and afford their drugs. And in the middle are patients, whose lives could depend on these advances in medicine. Expanding drug tiers The fight centers on how drug benefits are designed in health plans, particularly the use of benefit tiers. Health plans usually put lower-cost and preferred drugs at lower tiers that come with smaller out-of-pocket costs. But in the last few years, tiers have become more complex. The tiers have grown from two to three, four and five. Plans now often distinguish between preferred generics and non-preferred generics, as well as preferred and non-preferred brand name drugs. Specialty medications, which according to one estimate cost 50 times more than a traditional brand-name drug, are found in the highest tiers. Patients usually pay a percentage of the cost of these expensive drugs, or co-insurance, in contrast to the set co-pays charged for medicines in lower tiers. Specialty drug tiers are sweeping the insurance world. As of 2014, virtually all seniors in Medicare's prescription drug program or Medicare Advantage were enrolled in plans that had a specialty tier for drugs that cost the insurers at least $600 per month, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study. The KFF study shows more seniors with private Medicare coverage are enrolled in plans that have specialty drug tiers charging the maximum coinsurance rate allowed by law, which is 33 percent. Last year, nearly half of enrollees in Medicare's prescription drug program were in plans with with that maximum coinsurance, up from 13 percent of enrollees in 2006. About 80 percent of enrollees in Medicare Advantage, an alternative to the traditional program, are also enrolled in plans charging the maximum coinsurance in specialty tiers. That's about triple the 2006 rates, as the following chart shows.Specialty tiers over the past decade have also become more prevalent in employer health insurance, which covers about half of all Americans. A decade ago, just three percent of Americans with employer-sponsored insurance had plans with at least four tiers of pharmacy benefits, according to an annual KFF/HRET survey of workplace coverage. By 2013, that rate had grown to 23 percent, the survey found. New health plans sold through Affordable Care Act exchanges may also be relying on higher tiers for drugs treating complex conditions. The Avalere Health consulting firm last month compared drug plans for coverage sold through California's exchange against select employer plans. As the


State marijuana legalization and the Necessary and Proper Clause

regular readers probably have learned all too well, one of my current academic projects is revising our understanding of the Necessary and Proper Clause, something I tried to do in two recent papers. For the tireless, I have a third paper coming out soon on the topic, this time on why current doctrine ought to give a little more weight to state implementation of policy, with special reference to the current debates about marijuana federalism. Here’s the abstract: The new marijuana federalism is here, but is it here to stay? In this Article, I address that question by way of two related points, a practical one and a technical one, and I ultimately argue that state regulation should have a bigger role in fixing the limits of federal constitutional power. The practical point is that the current regime of state marijuana legalization is unstable, and it is a miracle that it is working as well as it is. Because marijuana remains contraband at the federal level, businesses and lawmakers who invest in responsible legalization at the state level have no guarantee their investments are safe from the whims of federal law enforcement. Moreover, even if the federal drug laws are not actively enforced in those states, the laws create serious problems for banks, lawyers, and others who might otherwise want to work with the in-state marijuana industry. The technical point is that this instability can be traced to an importantly erroneous footnote in the Supreme Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Raich. Footnote 38 claims that state law can never be relevant to the scope of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper Clause. That conclusion is wrong, is not required by the rest of the Court’s enumerated powers jurisprudence, and should be cast aside. The Necessary and Proper Clause should be interpreted to give states a bigger role in determining when the federal drug laws are constitutional. Congress’s power to reach purely in-state conduct is premised on the possibility of interstate spillovers. If a state legalizes and regulates a drug in a way that minimizes the risk of spillovers into the interstate black market, the federal drug laws should be forbidden to apply within that state. This both creates a more stable set of incentives for states to responsibly manage local behavior and provides a more satisfactory formal grounding for the executive nonenforcement policy. The paper


James Carville does Hillary Clinton no favors with his defense of her e-mails

James Carville did his best Sunday to downplay the whole controversy over Hillary Clinton's e-mails. He didn't do very well. In the context of arguing that 1) People don't care much about it, and 2) It's just the latest attack from Clinton's enemies, the former Clinton adviser also offered this not-so-helpful quip. Carville: I 'Suspect' Hillary Used Private Email to Avoid Congressional Oversight "I suspect she didn't want Louie Gohmert rifling through her e-mails, which seems to me to be a kind of reasonable position for someone to take," Carville said. "Just like everything else before it, it amounts to nothing but a bunch of people flapping their jaws about nothing." For those unfamiliar, Gohmert is an outspoken conservative member of Congress who often jousts with Democrats. But he's also a member of Congress, which is precisely the body that Republicans are accusing Clinton of trying to avoid with her "homebrew" e-mail server. Clinton has said using the homebrew account was a matter of convenience rather than an attempt to subvert oversight. Carville apparently didn't get the memo.


Your desktop computer is wasting a surprising amount of energy while you’re not using it

current policies to reduce them,” said Alan Meier, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who studies MEL. “California’s actions are a step in the right direction.” The rule goes far beyond mysterious home energy uses — desktop computers are particularly prevalent in offices and commercial settings. The most significant changes in the standards would be to these desktops, and in particular, to the amount of power that they guzzle when they’re idle — “when the computer is on but not being used,” as the commission put it. “Idle modes are the largest opportunity to reduce energy consumption because computers spend roughly half of their time in this ‘on mode,'” noted the CEC. In fact, a study of 125 office desktop computers released by the CEC last year, conducted by the California Plug Load Research Center at the University of California, Irvine, found that these machines spent 61 percent of their time “on but user-inactive.” The commission wants to slash by half how much power desktop computers use in their idle modes, for computers made starting in 2018. A buyer looks at flower information on a desktop computer monitor at FloraHolland, the largest flower auction in the world, in Aalsmeer, Netherlands, on Tuesday, March 11, 2014. Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg The proposed standards have already been heralded by some environmental and consumer organizations, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Consumer Federation of America. “California’s the first state to write a rule here, a little bit ahead of the world, but that’s what California does,” said Mark Cooper, director of research at the Consumer Federation of America and author of a February 2014 report that heralded the potential for the state to blaze a new policy trail in this space. The document cited what it termed “household digital devices” as a key part of home energy use that, thus far, have “not been addressed by energy standards.” California’s move could reverberate in the computer industry, given the size of its population and market and also the presence of key parts of the tech community within the state. According to the California Energy Commission, computers, monitors, and signage displays consume 5 percent of the state’s overall electricity — and even more in some commercial buildings and offices, where the total can rise to more than 10 percent. The benefits of savings will be fairly large — the commission projects cuts


We gave D.C. food writers a chance to name their essential dishes. Here’s what they chose.

Readers and critics name the city’s top hoagie, pho and Korean barbecue. www.elephantjumps.com www.breadfurst.com www.atlasbrewworks.com www.rroysters.com/restaurants www.pizzadorodc.com www.popsseabar.com www.republictakoma.com - Skip Ad × - D.C.’s best dishes of 2015 - View Photos - Readers and critics name the city’s top hoagie, pho and Korean barbecue. - Readers and critics name the city’s top hoagie, pho and Korean barbecue. Khachapuri at Compass Rose Walk through Compass Rose, and it's impossible not to notice this dish on nearly every table, a cheese-and-egg-filled canoe so good-looking that it practically beckons you to order it, too.The dough of this Georgian delicacy is filled with ricotta, feta and mozzarella, baked, then presented at your table piping hot, with a heart-stopping pat of butter and runny egg. 1346 T St. NW. www.compassrosedc.com. $14.Related: See the rest of Washington's reader-nominated essential dishes of 2015. Greg Powers for The Washington Post Buy Photo .wp-volt-gal-preroll-video{width:100%;height:100%} Ask a food writer to name the most memorable dish of the year, and you'll get a pained look in response, as if you've asked them to do the impossible, like pick their favorite child. "Only one?" (Studio Muti) In a region brimming with food that's only getting more compelling, a favorite dish in January is often trumped by the new morsel you tried in March. Which is why, in compiling our reader-nominated list of Washington's essential dishes, we can never settle on fewer than 40 best dishes -- choosing 20 leaves out far too many excellent meals. Our critics would probably argue 40 doesn't even cover it all. So, what would our city's critics pick if they could name the best dishes on menus right now? (Yes, just one.) Here's what writers from The Washington Post, Express, Eater and Northern Virginia Magazine said: [Related: D.C.'s most essential dishes of 2015] Crab meat fried rice at Mango Tree "It’s impossible to single out one dish from so many terrific candidates, so I’m going to make the challenge easier on myself and pick a favorite from among the restaurants I’ve reviewed just this year. The one dish I order every time I visit the new Mango Tree is the fried rice scattered with crab and edamame. I love the sweetness of the seafood and the texture (and color) of the green soybeans. The side dish is good by itself but blossoms with the addition of fish sauce and tiny bird’s eye chilies. There’s nothing terribly


Here’s the chemistry that makes your beer taste good (or bad)

The flavors and aromas of beer all come down to chemistry. Reactions, a series from the American Chemical Society, takes a look at craft beer chemistry. St. Patrick's Day is imminent, and that means the world is about to consume a lot of beer: 13 million pints of Guinness alone are expected to be consumed. Obviously you will be thinking about science when you down those holiday libations, so the American Chemical Society's Reactions series on YouTube has everything you ever wanted to know about beer chemistry in the video above. Here are some highlights, along with additional facts of our own: All beer (cheap and steep) is made the same way The ingredients may change, but the process is the same: Malted (a.k.a toasted) grain is heated in water, where its starch is broken down into sugar. Yeast makes that sweet stuff bubbly (and alcoholic) by eating the sugar and producing carbon dioxide and alcohol. Different kinds and amounts of hops (the female flowering cones of plants from the hops family) go into the mix as well. There are tons of ways to change a beer's flavor Different kinds of malts produce different chemical flavor compounds, and different temperatures of grain soaking activate different enzymes with different flavor results. And then there are the hops: In addition to adding essential oil aromas from their flowery origins, hops produce alpha acids, such as humulone, which give IPAs that quintessential hoppy taste. Personally, I think it tastes like chewing on a piece of pine tree. This is apparently not a common opinion, so enjoy your hops or whatever. Hops also interact with alcohol to make compounds called esters, which have a fruity flavor. When a beer is left to age, hops can produce another bitter note -- beta acids. Eww, you can have mine. Beer can skunk even in the cold (it's all about sunlight) [The science of skunky beer (and how to prevent it)] Only you can prevent skunked beer. Many think that beer only "skunks" (or turns nasty) when it's left out in the heat. But it's actually a matter of getting left out in the light. From a previous post of ours: When hops are boiled down to make beer, they release chemical compounds called Iso-Alpha Acids. They're bitter on their own, but when exposed to sunlight they break down and interact with other molecules in the beer


How to drink beer like a local around the world

Travel the world, and you'll find there's quite a bit of disagreement about what the best—or at least preferred—beer looks like. Sure, Americans love Bud Light (and a lot of other watery stuff). But just north of the border, in Canada, the beer of choice is Bud Light's heavier cousin Budweiser. Down in Mexico, people choose Corona most often. In China, beer drinkers down a lager beer called Snow; in India, people like a pale lager called Kingfisher best; in Brazil, the most popular brew is a Pilsner called Skol; and across the ocean, in Australia, it's a beer called Victoria Bitter (here's an old ad for those unfamiliar). Beverage industry site Vinepair culled data from market research firm Euromonitor and corporate reports by beer companies around the world to come up with a list of the most popular beers, as measured by market share. Using that data, they created a map, which paints a surprisingly varied picture of beer preferences around the globe. In North and Central America, favorites range from the well-known brands listed above to lesser known brews like Gallo, which is Guatemala's favorite, and Imperial, which Costa Ricans buy most often. Source: Vinepair In South America, some countries prefer their local brews, while others have gained an appreciation for ones made elsewhere (sometimes, even, by next door neighbors). Polar, Venezuela's favorite, is brewed domestically. And Quilmes—Argentina's beer of choice—was originally founded in the country, though it now operates out of Luxembourg and has plants all around the world. Paraguay, meanwhile, drinks Brahma beer, which is Brazilian, the most. (Source: Vinepair) In Europe, beer preferences tend to stay true to each country's own brewing culture. The French prefer Kronenbourg 1664, which is owned by Denmark-based Carlsberg, but brewed in Strassbourg, France. In Ireland, the beer of choice is locally-made Guinness. In the Netherlands, it's Heineken. In Italy, it's Birra Moretti. And in Spain it's Cruzcampo. (Source: Vinepair) In Africa, preferences include Tango beer in Algeria (which, though originally Algerian, has been owned by Heineken since 2008), Star beer in Nigeria (where Guinness happens to be peculiarly popular), and Carling Black Label beer, which originally comes from Canada, is owned by global beer giant SABMiller, and is South Africa's most-bought brew. In the Middle East, popular brands range from Gold Star in Israel to Moussy in Saudi Arabia, Efes in Turkey, and Delster Classic in Iran, a light


This scientist rates and describes insect stings as if they were fine wines

The bullet ant pushes the limit of Schmidt's pain index. (REUTERS/Juan Carlos Ulate) "Light, ephemeral, almost fruity," isn't the description of a nice champagne -- it's a bee sting. That tantalizing description comes from entomologist Justin Schmidt's pain index, which is surely one of the most delightfully absurd scientific endeavors in the bug world. The pain index was first published in the 1980s and revised in the '90s, but the BBC reports that Schmidt is working on an updated version with new species. Contrary to popular belief, Schmidt didn't set out to get stung by everything capable of stinging him. But as an entomologist studying the baddest bugs out there, it just sort of happened. He's been stung by over 150 insects, mostly by accident. Here's a sampling of the current pain index - Sweat bee, 1.0, short pain "Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. As if a tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm." That kind of makes you want to get stung by a bee, right? - Fire ant, 1.2, 2-5 minutes of pain "Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch." - Bullhorn Acacia Ant, 1.8, 4-6 minutes of pain "A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek." Oh. Okay, then. - Bald faced hornet, 2.0, 3-4 minutes of pain "Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door." - Yellowjacket, 2.0, 4-10 minutes of pain "Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue." I don't understand how pain can be irreverent, but I dig the poetry. - Honey bee, 2.0, 4-10 minutes of pain "Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin." - Red harvester ant, 3.0, 1-8 hours of pain "Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail." Well that escalated quickly. - Paper wasp, 3.0, 5-15 minutes of pain "Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut." - Tarantula hawk, 4.0, 3 minutes of pain "Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath." I would like to not feel that feeling, please. - Bullet ant, 4.0+, 12-24 hours of pain "Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch


Severe geomagnetic storm spurs beautiful aurora, could continue Tuesday evening (Photos)

horizon in dark locations. (Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks) Should the geomagnetic storm continue at its current intensity into the evening, locations in the middle U.S. — and even the D.C. area — could have the opportunity to see the aurora on Tuesday night. In previous geo-storms of this magnitude, “we have seen reports of aurora as far south as Tennessee, New Mexico, and Oklahoma,” said Brent Gordon, the center’s branch chief. “A lot of factors go into whether you can see the aurora, cloud cover most importantly, and proximity to city lights. We are favorable in terms of the moon being crescent, which will give us pretty dark skies.” [D.C. area forecast: Skies clear tonight after cold front] Here in the D.C. area, skies are expected to clear out behind the afternoon cold front, which means — if the storm continues at its current intensity — sky-watchers in the darker, rural parts of our area could get a chance to see the northern lights on the horizon. Original story: A severe geomagnetic storm is whipping through Earth’s magnetosphere, causing disruption to power systems and spawning a beautiful green, St. Patrick’s Day-themed aurora that stretched as far south as Oregon and Illinois. The storm, which began late Monday as a weak G1 intensified Tuesday morning, climbing to a G4 on the five-point scale, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center. It’s the fourth G4-magnitude storm in the current solar cycle, and is “in-season,” so to speak, since they are most common around the equinoxes. Space Weather Alert: Geomagnetic K-index of 8 (G4) http://t.co/tXRoN2egxx #spaceweather As of 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, the storm’s K-index has reached K8, which suggests that if it were dark out, the southern edge of the aurora could be seen as far south as Pennsylvania and Ohio, Iowa, Nebraska and Oregon. It’s possible the aurora could even be seen in the northern D.C. area — if only it were dark! A map of K-index across the Northern Hemisphere, which shows how far south the aurora can be seen as the geomagnetic storm gets more intense. Tuesday’s storm has a K-index of 8. (NOAA) According to our contributing space weather expert, Joe Kunches, the solar wind is not particularly fast, but it’s potent enough to cause the severe geomagnetic storm. It’s possible that polar flights — like those on their way from the eastern United States to Asia — may


A year later, BICEP2 astronomer is upbeat as he hunts for elusive Big Bang signal

that the BICEP2 team had to account for the presence of dust in our own galaxy, which also produces polarized light. The BICEP2 scientists used the best data available to estimate the amount of dust and concluded that, even if some of what they were seeing was caused by dust, they still had a robust cosmological signal. But then new data from the European Planck satellite showed that there’s a lot more dust in that part of the sky than the BICEP2 team had realized. After peer review, the BICEP2 team had to revise the initial scientific paper to acknowledge that the entire “signal” might be caused by dust. There was no discovery in any scientific sense — just a lot of tantalizing but ambiguous data. Did BICEP2 see gravitational waves from cosmic inflation? Maybe. But this is not a business in which maybe is good enough. Last month I visited one of the BICEP2 leaders, John Kovac, at his office at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and, despite going through a very rough year, he remains upbeat and optimistic that he and his colleagues can resolve the mystery. They’ve got a new instrument at the South Pole, the BICEP3 telescope, and are continuing to sort through data from a number of experiments. “We’re very far along in the next analysis of the next data set. It’s going to be much more powerful,” Kovac told me. This is a man who has devoted his professional life to South Pole astronomy, making 24 trips there, each as arduous as you can imagine (fly to New Zealand, then to the McMurdo station on the Antarctica coast, then to the South Pole). In his early 20s, he overwintered at the South Pole, spending 14 months straight at the bottom of the world. In the early 1990s, South Pole astronomer was a much more rugged affair with primitive equipment and a lot of exposure to the elements. He showed me a photograph in which, dressed almost like an astronaut, he’s climbing onto a telescope with a giant tank of liquid helium on his back. This kind of astronomy requires very cold instruments, which is why he has spent two decades lugging liquid helium to the South Pole. As he puts it, the South Pole just isn’t cold enough by itself. It’s safe to say that if Kovac and his colleagues can’t detect the signal


Village Sweet bakery opens in Arlington

Even more good news on the local bakery front: Village Sweet is now open in Arlington. Dawn Hart officially flung open the doors this morning on her first storefront, located in the Westover neighborhood next to popular neighborhood hangout Lost Dog Cafe. [New Washington-area bakeries are making us feel like kids again] Village Sweet is now open in Westover. (Becky Krystal/The Washington Post) Hart's road to bakery owner and operator started with her Monster Cookie Co., a custom-cookie business she operated out of her home. "I call them event cookies," Hart said of her impeccably decorated creations. Repeat customers began to ask her if she'd make other treats, such as cupcakes, and then the business "took on a life of its own." Eventually Hart ran out of production space at home, and she and her husband began looking at real estate. One night, they were commiserating at Westover Beer Garden about the fact that it was hard to find a smaller, reasonably-priced space in Arlington with enough room for Hart to cook. [Tiffany MacIsaac set to open Shaw storefront for Buttercream Bakeshop] The next day, Hart's husband noticed an empty storefront across the street from the beer garden. The rest, as they say, is history. And so, in a sense, are the recipes. Hart is "taking all these recipes I grew up and putting my own twist on it," she said. Her sugar cookie recipe, for example, comes from her grandmother. Some of Village Sweet's offerings, clockwise from top: gluten-free peanut butter chocolate chip cookie, birthday cake chocolate cupcake, raspberry oat grain bar and zucchini walnut muffin. (Becky Krystal/The Washington Post) Hart will continue to fill custom cookie orders and will stock the bakery with a variety of seasonally themed offerings as well. The menu will change throughout the year, but current offerings include zucchini-walnut muffins, raspberry oat grain bars and two types of cupcakes, "brown sug'ah" and birthday cake chocolate. There will always be vegan and gluten-free options, with the current lineup consisting of a gluten-free peanut butter chocolate chip cookie and vegan brownie. Featured savory options are a vegetable quiche and a "carnivorous" quiche made with bacon, Irish cheddar cheese and baby spinach. "It's more than just your cupcake and your cookie," Hart said of her neighborhood bakery concept, which will also host classes and custom events for children and adults. Running a shop is new for Hart,


On marijuana, Obama is content to evolve rather than to lead the way

stopped short of endorsing any recent Congressional bills seeking to ease federal marijuana laws, including a bipartisan Senate medical marijuana bill introduced last week or full legalization measures introduced in the House last month. Indeed, he didn't venture a personal opinion on the marijuana question at all. Rather, he appeared content to let changes unfold at the state level. “At a certain point, if enough states end up decriminalizing, then Congress may then reschedule marijuana,” he said. States, in fact, have been leading the way on overhauling marijuana policy for decades now, starting in 1973 when Oregon became the first state to decriminalize marijuana possession in the wake of the federal Controlled Substances Act. Today, four states plus the District have fully legalized the use of marijuana. 10 states have both decriminalized recreational marijuana and legalized medical marijuana, while an additional 13 states have done one or the other. All told, 27 states plus the District have relaxed their marijuana laws in some significant way. These states are home to 176 million Americans, or 55 percent of the population. If you add in the handful of states that have also allowed limited access to a specific type of marijuana-derived oil to treat certain ailments, that number becomes even higher. As the gap between state and federal laws widens, pressure is likely to build on Congress to update a federal marijuana policy that hasn't changed since 1973. But change will come slowly at the federal level. In the Senate, marijuana legislation would have to pass through the judiciary committee, currently chaired by Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Grassley, who first ascended to national office in 1975, is not exactly what you'd call an advocate of criminal justice reform. He's already signaled his opposition to the Senate medical marijuana bill. In the VICE interview, Obama positions himself above this fray, commenting as a disinterested observer. But his word still carries great weight with the public. Throwing his support behind a bill or staking out a clear position on the issue could have a considerable effect on public opinion -- we saw this happen after the president's "evolution" on gay marriage, for instance. Obama has little to lose from clarifying his stance on the marijuana question six years into his presidency, free from the constraint of a re-election battle. But on marijuana as with other social issues, Obama has been content to evolve.


An interview with Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny

these threats that in a civilized, educated society would seem funny. I’ve said many times: The main lever of Putin’s rule has not been repressions, as many people think, but bargaining. He pays, in the broad meaning of the word. He increased salaries to the state propaganda outfits, he raised salaries for the special services, he paid bribes to the opposition parties, and then also Western elite. He hired propaganda people who could work in the West, and this was much more efficient than repressions. But now the situation is different, and repressions will be carried forward. In Washington there’s a discussion about arming Ukraine to increase the cost for Russia. Is this a good way to help Ukraine? Is this a good way to calm the situation? I do not think that supplies of weapons, well, lethal weapons, will change the situation dramatically. Just because the fact is that a military victory of Ukraine over Russia is impossible. Putin will get new facts that Americans are fighting the war in Ukraine and not Ukrainians. But I cannot assume that the Ukrainian army, even armed with American drones, will win a victory over the Russian army. The supply of weapons is a somewhat popular step inside the United States. This is something for the American public opinion. “We armed Ukrainians so that they could resist.” I would say that introduction of visa and financial restrictions for oligarchs would hit Putin’s regime harder than drones. If it had not been for economic and sectoral sanctions, Putin would have seized Odessa by now. And I think that self-confidence of Putin and his circle was, “The West is weak, the West is amorphous, and they will not be able to introduce economic sanctions." So, of course, there was a certain effect. However, the idea to split the elites via personal sanctions did not succeed. Because personal sanctions should be introduced not against 12 people but against the party of war, against a thousand people. So how long of a timeline are we talking about for your goals? As long as is necessary. I’m asking this question very often, but for me the answer is obvious. I don’t have an alternative. So I will do what I am doing. It doesn’t matter how much time it takes. Of course I wish I could be more efficient and of course I wish I could have


5 sneaky ways to harness clean energy

signals. Researchers at Duke University have converted them into electricity. Employing a special microwave-scavenging metamaterial, they were able to build a device capable of generating up to 7.3 volts. The goal is to eventually incorporate the technology into cell phones, which in many instances can use a little extra juice. Here’s a prototype of RCA’s Airnergy WiFi signal energy harvester device. (YouTube screnshot) While the idea has been kicked around for some time, the challenge has been figuring out how to implement it on a consumer level. RCA, an electronics brand, caused a bit of stir back in 2010, when representatives unveiled an early prototype of a USB dongle they claimed can give laptops a power boost by trapping stray WiFi signals and storing them as converted energy in an internal battery. However, the Airnergy charger was never released. A new chip, developed at MIT, is equipped with a radio transmitter that’s powered by natural processes occurring deep inside the human ear. (Patrick P. Mercier/MIT) 3. Body energy Every person is, in some respect, a walking power plant. Even at rest, the human body generates as much energy as a 100 watt light bulb. Much of this dissipates in the form of heat, though a coat with good insulation properties can momentarily trap enough of it for us to stay comfortably warm at times when temperatures are unbearably cold. The Kungsbrohuset building in Stockholm receives heat energy from the harvested body heat of commuters passing through the city’s central train station. (Jernhusen AB) With that line of thinking, Jernhusen, a Swedish real estate firm, had an ambitious proposal. In 2008, the group outlined a plan to construct an office building in Stockholm equipped with a unique heating system that so happened to be powered by the excess body heat of 250,000 some commuters that pass though the nearby central train station each day. The system, in operation today, is made possible through a series of heat exchangers situated inside the train station’s ventilation system. This is where body heat is converted into hot water and piped in to warm the building. In total, costs are reduced by about 25 percent compared to regular heating systems. And closer to home, the Mall of America in Minneapolis recycles body heat from shoppers to more better regulate the indoor climate. A “nano-ribbon” implant channels energy from heartbeats to power a pacemaker. (PNAS) On


Why are there so many freaking beetles? Science may finally have the answer.

An emerald ash borer. This tree-killing beetle is a pest in the U.S., but it turns out that fighting spirit is something all beetles share. (AP Photo/Michigan State University Photo) There are so many species of beetle that you can find new ones pretty much without trying. According to new research, that may be because beetle lineages hardly ever go extinct. [98 new species of beetles discovered in Indonesia] We've talked about the beetle's prolific speciation before: There's an old story that gets tossed around about evolutionary biologist J.B. Haldane on the origin of what would become one of his favorite phrases. Someone asked him what his studies of the natural world had revealed about the nature of "the creator" if one existed. Well, Haldane replied: If he exists, he has an inordinate fondness for beetles. And indeed, the world has an awful lot of beetles. When you ignore bacteria (which are obviously ridiculously diverse), beetles are probably the most diverse kind of life there is. If you stuck your hand into a bag full of one of every plant, fungi, animal and insect species on the planet (ew), you'd probably pull a beetle out. So what's up with beetles? Do they just divide into new species more rapidly than most creatures on the planet? Probably. But according to a new study published Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, they may also have a knack for avoiding extinction. "By looking at the fossil history of the group, we can see that extinction, or rather lack of extinction may be just as important, if not more important, than origination," Dena Smith, lead author and curator of invertebrate paleontology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, said in a statement. "Perhaps we should be focusing more on why beetles are so resistant to extinction." [This scientist rates and describes insect stings as if they were fine wines] Smith and her research group looked Beetles might not be alone in this resilience -- Dena and her colleagues believe that other insect groups may show similar records if they're examined as closely -- but they're almost certainly at the top of the anti-extinction heap. They're incredibly resilient, able to survive in a variety of habitats and on lots of different food sources, so it isn't surprising that they're so good at adapting to environmental changes. MORE READING: The monarch butterfly


How SpaceX and Elon Musk could conquer the market for military satellite launches

ULA is in a tight spot. Its main workhorse for national security launches is the Atlas V, which uses a Russian-made engine. Late last year, Congress imposed a ban on the RD-180, saying they should be phased out by 2019. ULA may not be able to get some of the engines it already ordered because of the legislation, Tory Bruno, ULA’s chief executive, said in a statement. “Not only is that anti-competitive, it puts the Air Force national security mission requirements at risk,” he said. To replace the Russian engine, ULA has partnered with Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin, which is developing a new engine, and has a separate engine development project with Aerojet Rocketdyne. (Bezos also owns the Washington Post.) The problem for ULA is that this new engine won't be certified for Air Force launches until 2022 at the earliest, Bruno told a House committee Tuesday. And ULA's other alternative for doing the launches, the Delta IV, is pretty pricey — about 30 percent more costly than the Atlas V, Bruno said. (ULA says it will eventually phase out the Delta IV.) You could say this poses a risk for the U.S. military; ULA, the Air Force's longtime launch partner, won't have a way to put some Pentagon payloads into space between 2018 and 2022. "We are at war. We have to have these … platforms up in the air," said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.). Here's the twist. SpaceX's rocket, the Falcon 9, is about to be cleared by the Air Force for military launches. Final approval could come as early as June, said SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell in Tuesday's hearing. You can see where this is going. Could the Pentagon be trading one monopoly for another? "The fact is, [ULA] is a monopoly today—competition is re-entering the program because SpaceX is committed to helping assure access to space,” SpaceX said in a statement. Rogers picked up on that dynamic and questioned Shotwell about it. "If [ULA] stops the Delta IV rocket launches," said Rogers, "is there anybody else that can compete with you for those missions?" Shotwell struggled to answer, referring vaguely to there being international launch providers. She then went back and conceded that the Pentagon probably wouldn't trust those international services with sensitive military payloads. That was precisely the point, said Rogers. "You would have a monopoly, is where I'm going on this," he said. Correction:


Andean bear cubs tumble and play at the National Zoo

Andean bear Cub No. 1. (National Zoo). The two Andean bear cubs are tumbling in a baby-proofed yard at the National Zoo in Northwest Washington. The brother cubs have been acclimating to their yard since early March, according to zookeepers. Andean bears are described as being very adept climbers. There is hay spread around the yard to cushion the cubs as they roll and tumble. In the video from the zoo, the bears are shown climbing trees, logs and walls — and occasionally falling — as their mother, Billie Jean, looks on. The cubs were born in November. They are expected to make their public debut March 28 after they are given names. Zoo officials are seeking the public’s help in naming the cubs and asking for votes. The name choices are in the languages of the Quechua and Aymara — the indigenous populations in the Andes region, which is the native habitat of the bears. Voting ends Sunday; zoo officials expect to pick the winning names on March 26. The cubs have different personalities, said zookeepers: Cub No. 1 is said to be a bit more rambunctious; Cub No. 2 is playful and “likes to wrestle but is more laid back.” Andean bear cub No. 2. (National Zoo). The cubs are Billie Jean’s third litter. She had two previous ones, in 2010 and 2012. Andean bears are very rare, so the birth of the brothers at the zoo has been a treat for animal keepers. Only four litters of these bears have been born in North American zoos in the past nine years. In the wild, Andean bears are a threatened species, with only 2,000 said to be left in the wild. They are the only bear species in South America. The father of the two latest bear cubs is 21-year-old Cisco, who came to the National Zoo in September from the Queens Wildlife Center. The pair were bred in April.


The Savor craft beer festival returns to D.C. in June, and tickets go on sale next week

The Savor craft beer festival brought 76 craft breweries to the National Building Museum in May 2014. (Photo by Eddie Arrossi/Courtesy of Savor) Savor, one of the country's biggest craft beer events, will return to the National Building Museum the weekend of June 5-6. This is later than usual for Savor, which is usually held in May, but the beer lovers who travel from around the country probably won't care. Seventy-four "small and independent craft breweries" each bring two of their beers to Washington for the party, where they're paired with hors d'oeuvres for unlimited sampling. For aficionados, this is a chance to try beers that don't usually make it to Washington -- when was the last time you saw a bar with Short's (Michigan) or Surly (Minnesota) bar on tap? -- and an opportunity to meet and greet the rock stars of the beer world. [Beer Madness 2015: Vote for your favorite craft beers in the Sweet 16] Tickets go on sale to the general public through Ticketmaster March 25 at noon, and purchasers are limited to two tickets per night. Prices are the same as last year: $135 for general admission, and $155 if you want to attend one of the popular educational salons. The salon schedule hasn't been announced yet, but last year's sessions included Sam Adams founder Jim Koch discussing the brewery's barrel-aging program and offering rare samples; the brewers of Stone, Green Flash and Coronado talking about San Diego beer culture and sharing West Coast IPAs; and the founders of Dogfish Head and Left Hand demonstrating how drinking proper glassware enhances the flavor of beer. If you're trying to get tickets, you need be online as close to noon as possible: Tickets generally sell out within half an hour. (There's a Tuesday pre-sale open only to the American Homebrewers Association, so ask any homebrewing friends if they're members.) And if dropping $135 for one night sounds like too much money, you don't need to go to Savor to sample rare and wonderful beers: Many of the breweries hold tasting events and meet-and-greets at D.C. beer bars in the days before the festival. (Here are a few of the highlights from Savor Week 2014.)


Sen. Boxer quietly backs bipartisan medical marijuana bill

marijuana and offer clarity to states that have approved the drug for medical use. Among its many features, the bill would reclassify marijuana in the federal government’s eyes, moving it from the Schedule 1 category of drugs deemed to have no accepted medical use to Schedule 2. “Senator Boxer is a strong supporter of California’s medical marijuana law and she believes that patients, doctors and caregivers in states like California should be able to follow state law without fear of federal prosecution,” Zachary Coile, Boxer’s communications director, said in a statement. According to federal records, Boxer, who is not seeking reelection next year, cosponsored the bill on Tuesday, although her office issued no announcement of her support. Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) also sponsored the bill last week, saying in a news release that “the time has come for the federal government to stop impeding the doctor-patient relationship in states that have decided their own medical marijuana policies.” Boxer’s support is in line with her past comments on marijuana. In 2010, her campaign manager told Talking Points Memo that Boxer opposed a state legalization measure “because she shares the concerns of police chiefs, sheriffs and other law enforcement officials that this measure could lead to an increase in crime, vehicle accidents and higher costs for local law enforcement agencies.” But, the spokeswoman added, Boxer does support California’s medical marijuana law. “Sen. Boxer represents the state that led the way on medical marijuana, and it’s about time she took some action to defend the will of California’s voters from federal interference,” Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority, an advocacy group, said in a statement. California in 1996 became the first state to pass a medical marijuana law. Nevada’s medical marijuana laws went into effect last year. In addition to rescheduling the drug, the federal bill would exclude some strains of cannabis-derived oil from the federal definition of marijuana. Such oils used to treat epilepsy and seizure disorders have very low or no levels of THC, the ingredient associated with the drug’s pscyhoactive effects. The Compassionate Access, Research Expansion, and Respect States Act would also let Department of Veterans Affairs doctors recommend marijuana for patients, expand opportunities to research the drug, and let banks and financial services companies offer their services to the industry. Read more: The Republican argument to end marijuana prohibition Sens. Booker, Gillibrand and Paul unveil federal medical marijuana bill


Forget baby pandas: Andean bears are the best at being bears

I'm going to lay this disclosure out at the top: I am not a big fan of giant pandas. This has been documented. You can disagree with me. That's okay! The clashing of opinions gives rise to truth. Plus, it's a fool's errand to try to convince a giant panda lover that these animals aren't the cutest and best animals ever. But we can all agree that giant panda fans shower a lot of attention on these creatures, and perhaps some of that excess love can be reserved for another bear deserving affection. May I present the Andean (a.k.a. spectacled) bear. Oh, hey, what's up? (Smithsonian) You probably haven't heard too much about these bears, what with giant pandas hogging so much of the media spotlight. The most famous Andean bear is Paddington. So, like, B-list celeb status? Just four litters of these animals have been born in American zoos over the past nine years, one of which includes two cubs born in late 2014 at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington. (Aside: you can help name them.) Here are some reasons why they are deserving of your love: Industrious According to the National Zoo Oh, a cool log -- maybe I'll use it for my treehouse. (AFP/Getty/Roland Weihrauch) Don't attack people Man, it's always about us, isn't it? Well, these guys are pretty gentle by bear standards, although humans have been increasingly expanding livestock grazing grounds and some rogue bears have developed a taste for cattle. But human attacks? This is from a 1999 report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature: Spectacled bears are perhaps the least aggressive of all bear species towards humans. During four years of field work throughout Perú, B. Peyton (unpubl.) heard of only one human death caused by a spectacled bear that fell on a hunter after he shot it, and one woman who was bitten on the cheek after a surprise encounter with a bear in a cornfield. An Andean bear escaped its Berlin Zoo enclosure in 2004 by paddling on a log across a moat then scaling a wall (this counts toward the industrious point). But get this: The escapee headed to the children's area of the zoo, and this is what it did: Attack kids? No. This bear was more interested in learning how to ride a bike. (Reuters) Zoo employees eventually shot the bear with a tranquilizer gun,


Bucking the trend, this African leader wants to shorten his term in power

2016 a proposition to reduce the presidential term from seven to five years, enabling the organization of elections in 2017. SEYLLOU/AFP/Getty Images From Zimbabwe to Sudan, Equatorial Guinea to Gambia, there are still far too many strongmen and despots in power in Africa. The continent's crisis in leadership gets highlighted each year nobody is awarded the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, aimed at celebrating responsible, democratic African statesmen, as my colleague Adam Taylor noted earlier. Some African leaders use the trappings of democracy to cloak their decades-long rule. Last year, we saw a military coup remove a sitting president in Burkina Faso who sought to extend his mandate through a constitutional amendment; this year, undeterred, rulers in four other African countries are considering similar constitutional reforms to win a third term in power. Then there's Senegalese President Macky Sall. Earlier this week, Sall announced that he's considering holding a referendum in 2016 on the length of his term in power. But he doesn't want to extend it. Bucking the continental trend, Sall wants to curtail his seven-year term to five years in order to "strengthen" his country's democracy. "Have you seen a president decrease their mandate? Me, I am going to do it," Sall said at a news conference. "People must see that in Africa, we are capable of setting an example and that power is not an end in itself." Depending on the outcome of that vote, the next presidential election in Senegal could be in 2017 rather than 2019. Sall came to power in 2012 after defeating Senegal's long-ruling President Abdoulaye Wade in a runoff vote. Sall had earlier served as prime minister under Wade, but joined in popular protests against his former boss once Wade made clear he wanted what would have been a third term in office after Senegal had passed a new constitution in 2001 capping presidential term limits at two. Sall apparently did not answer reporters' questions on whether he would contest for the presidency again after his first term is up. If he doesn't, and helps ensure a peaceful democratic transfer of power, he would at least put himself in the running for that other prestigious prize. Related links - 5 crazy things about Gambia's dictators - 5 insights into the mind of Sudan's president, who is wanted for war crimes - The sad story of Africa's most prestigious prize


Lost boys: Returning Burma’s former child soldiers

spit betel juice though the cracks in the worn boards and the women fan each other to keep cool. Younger children peek in from outside, their fingers clawing through the steel mesh in the glassless window. Since the violent crushing of student protests in 1988, the army’s need for rapid expansion has encouraged the forced recruitment of boys–many as young as 11–to fulfill quotas. Kidnapping, beatings, even drugging are common tactics used to lure boys off the streets and on to the front lines, to sweep for mines and fight. An exact number of missing children is hard to ascertain because of speculated identity forgery committed within the army. Photojournalist Spike Johnson has documented humanitarian aid issues throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States. In 2014, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting funded Spike to produce a body of work on the Burmese Army’s release of its forcibly recruited child soldiers. The military government stepped down in 2011, and the new government has undertaken reforms, although the process has been contentious. For the past few years, the army been releasing the boy soldiers as part of an agreement with the United Nations. As recently as December 2014, the army released 80 child soldiers from active service, bringing the total of freed children to 845 since 2007. There has been steady pressure on the army and militias to fall in line with ASEAN human rights recommendations, and International Labour Organization conventions. However, although Burma is a member of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, the use and recruitment of child soldiers is still commonplace. Slowly though, soldiers who were forcibly recruited as children are returning to their villages, to their families who have long thought them dead. Tun Tun Win remembers playing football at the edge of his village. A patch of dusty ground squeezed between an army base and a shipping port was used as a pitch. It was here that Win was lured into the army by a civilian broker at 14 years old. “If the military released all of the child soldiers, there would be no one left,” he said. (Spike Johnson) Yangon Train Station. The Burmese Army and its civilian brokers use the city’s dark bus stations, train stations, and ferry ports as recruiting grounds for young conscripts. Boys who are traveling home late at night are approached by the army and threatened with false


7-Eleven is taking over Washington, one hot wing at a time

recent count by the National Retail Federation, but it had more locations (7,974) than most others on the list, putting it on par with Walgreens (7,998) and CVS Caremark (7,621), though well behind McDonald’s (14,267). At local stores, signs outside promote Big Bite hot dogs or “melt” sandwiches, in varieties including Italian and chicken bacon ranch. A number of local stores also reserved their most valuable display space — on the counter right beside a register — for their hot foods display. During an hour of morning rush at a location on Georgia Ave. NW, part of a gas station, customers bought dozens of wings and more than a dozen beef patties from the case. After working hours at a 7-Eleven on U Street one of the newest offerings, Doritos Loaded — deep-fried cheese-stuffed triangles with Doritos flavor — enjoyed a prominent location in the front of the case. “They’re going after a select component of items that people need daily, convenience items. Mostly food,” said Henry Fonvielle, president of McLean-based real estate developer the Rappaport Cos. Fonvielle said that while traditional grocery stores are now battling Wal-Mart, Target, CVS and other companies over grocery sales, 7-Eleven has doubled down on prepared foods, particularly in markets like Washington. “There’s a lot more food in each 7-11 store,” he said, “and they’re doing a pretty good job with quick service.” While 7-Eleven is pushing for new locations, that doesn’t mean every landlord or developer wants its own Slurpee on the map. David Dochter, a retail broker who focuses on D.C. neighborhoods, said the chain would likely be limited because branding your property as a “7-Eleven building” doesn’t always attract the customers interested in luxury apartments, which are often built upstairs from new stores. “They want to open a lot of locations because they see the growth in residential and they see the urbanization,” he said. The challenge is a lot landlords may not be that interested.” “It doesn’t necessarily fit from a merchandising standpoint,” he continued. “You’re attracting a customer who is coming in and coming out. They’re buying a Slurpee. They’re buying a pack of gum. If you’re opening a restaurant, you’re creating an environment. A 7-Eleven doesn’t create any real value.” But in a fast-moving metro market, a corner store that serves as a restaurant with hot, cheap fare, seems to be just the ticket. Follow Jonathan O’Connell on


by the National Retail Federation, but it had more locations (7,974) than most others on the list, putting it on par with Walgreens (7,998) and CVS Caremark (7,621), though well behind McDonald’s (14,267). At local stores, signs outside promote Big Bite hot dogs or “melt” sandwiches, in varieties including Italian and chicken bacon ranch. A number of local stores also reserved their most valuable display space — on the counter right beside a register — for their hot foods display. During an hour of morning rush at a location on Georgia Ave. NW, part of a gas station, customers bought dozens of wings and more than a dozen beef patties from the case. After working hours at a 7-Eleven on U Street one of the newest offerings, Doritos Loaded — deep-fried cheese-stuffed triangles with Doritos flavor — enjoyed a prominent location in the front of the case. “They’re going after a select component of items that people need daily, convenience items. Mostly food,” said Henry Fonvielle, president of McLean-based real estate developer the Rappaport Cos. Fonvielle said that while traditional grocery stores are now battling Wal-Mart, Target, CVS and other companies over grocery sales, 7-Eleven has doubled down on prepared foods, particularly in markets like Washington. “There’s a lot more food in each 7-11 store,” he said, “and they’re doing a pretty good job with quick service.” While 7-Eleven is pushing for new locations, that doesn’t mean every landlord or developer wants its own Slurpee on the map. David Dochter, a retail broker who focuses on D.C. neighborhoods, said the chain would likely be limited because branding your property as a “7-Eleven building” doesn’t always attract the customers interested in luxury apartments, which are often built upstairs from new stores. “They want to open a lot of locations because they see the growth in residential and they see the urbanization,” he said. The challenge is a lot landlords may not be that interested.” “It doesn’t necessarily fit from a merchandising standpoint,” he continued. “You’re attracting a customer who is coming in and coming out. They’re buying a Slurpee. They’re buying a pack of gum. If you’re opening a restaurant, you’re creating an environment. A 7-Eleven doesn’t create any real value.” But in a fast-moving metro market, a corner store that serves as a restaurant with hot, cheap fare, seems to be just the ticket. Follow Jonathan O’Connell on Twitter: @oconnellpostbiz


I’m grocery shopping all wrong

The basket from … (Darlena Cunha) I have been grocery shopping all wrong. I know all you savvy shoppers will be rolling your eyes at this, but I found out the other week that I make every rookie mistake in the buying-your-food book. First of all, and this one I knew was wrong, I put my bananas and my eggs in the bottom of my cart. Why would anyone do such a stupid thing, you might ask. In my case, it’s because I go through the grocery store in one way only, and the bread is all the way across the store. So I had to choose at the beginning which delicate food items had to fend for themselves. Each time I go in, I play a game called “if you aren’t tough enough to make it out of the grocery store unscathed, screw you, delicates.” And hem and haw as one might, the eggs and bananas have never succumbed to the pressures of gravity or smooshitude. I don’t know how. Maybe my cart is magic. Anyway, I was informed that the little basket up front is for those items. I never use that basket for anything that’s not in a sealed container though. Do you know why? Baby butts, that’s why. I really don’t fancy yesterday’s poo-splosion on my fruit, if you know what I mean. Then I was informed that stores have sanitary wipes these days. So, I suppose I’ll consider scouting those out and using the basket from now on. Maybe. My second problem was my meats. I don’t put them in bags. I’m told because of this I’m one of the reasons grocery stores have started carrying sanitary wipes. I get it. I mean who wants raw meat juice up in their marshmallows? On the other hand, it’s not like there are magic meat bags just hanging out in the butcher section. There are no bags there at all. I was informed that I could ask for a bag, or walk the horrid eight feet to the produce section and use those. It makes sense; I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense. I just had never thought of it before. My whole life I’ve seen the meats, which are already wrapped in five layers of plastic sheeting, tossed carelessly into the shopping carriage (I grew up in New England) wherever they may land. It should be


Spring trifecta ends splendid week — solar eclipse, supermoon and equinox

solar eclipse, a supermoon and the vernal equinox. Friday at 6:45 p.m. will mark the vernal equinox and the first day of astronomical spring. At this point, the direct rays of the sun are passing over the equator, perpendicular to Earth. It might not feel like spring with snow still in the forecast for many in the eastern U.S., but it is the first day in the march toward summer as the sun’s direct rays return from their Southern Hemisphere vacation. [Aurora photos from the U.S. and beyond] This animation shows from where the partial and total solar eclipse can be seen. The shadow passing over the North Atlantic, Europe and northern Asia is where you’ll be able to see the partial eclipse. The fleeting black spot that passes within that shadow represents the locations where the total eclipse will be visible. (NASA) But earlier in the day on Friday, a possibly more interesting astronomical event will be occurring — a total solar eclipse. The eclipse, which reaches its greatest point at 4:45 a.m., can be seen in partial form across northwest Africa, most of Europe and northern Asia. The total eclipse can be seen from points in the North Atlantic, south of Iceland, on the Faroe Islands north of the U.K., and Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago halfway between northern Europe and the North Pole. To make the day triple-noteworthy, the moon will be a “supermoon,” even though it’s in a new phase and not visible. The moon reaches lunar perigee, its orbit’s closest point to Earth, on Thursday afternoon just before entering new. If the moon were visible, it would appear slightly larger in the sky. [Severe geomagnetic storm spurs beautiful aurora] Friday’s solar eclipse won’t be visible in North America, but you can watch it on Slooh.com‘s livestream starting at 4:30 a.m. They’re setting up shop on the Faroe Islands, north of the U.K. and close to the point of greatest eclipse. That means anyone with an Internet connection can watch the eclipse in its full, total glory. So how often do solar eclipse and vernal equinoxes occur on the same day? Good question! According to EarthSky, the next time this convergence will happen is in 19 years, on March 20, 2034. They’ve also written a thorough explanation of why they don’t necessarily coincide every 19 years in that story — recommended reading for any sky-watching enthusiast. (NASA)


Putin hates these Americans. And they couldn’t be prouder.

(This post has been updated.) A year after Vladimir Putin banned select U.S. officials from visiting Russia, reports Thursday claimed he updated the list. And once again, those chosen Americans can’t summer seaside in subtropical Crimea. And they wear the black-listing like a badge of honor. U.S. politicians and White House officials who made the cut, as reported by Russian media, appear to be no different than the people on last year’s no-entry list, which came out just after Putin annexed Crimea. (Yes, it’s been a whole year already.) [A year after Crimean annexation, threat of conflict remains] The White House confirmed it has seen the Russia media reports of a new sanctions list, but have not seen anything official that verifies it. Assuming the Russian reports are accurate (let’s be honest, it wouldn’t be a huge shock if there was some misinformation spread over there) former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer, who left the White House this month, is still persona non grata to Putin. So is former senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) who lost her reelection bid. Others on the list are deputy national security advisers Caroline Atkinson and Ben Rhodes; Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Dan Coats (R-Ind.); Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). (Poor Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) must feel so left out.) True or not, the news of an updated list gave those on it renewed bragging rights: I guess this means I’ll spend Easter in Sedona rather than Siberia - very proud to be sanctioned by Vladimir Putin http://t.co/cv81N6Ye3Q Much like Siberia, my nonexistent Bank of Moscow account is now frozen http://t.co/jl6uzGSF6a FLASHBACK:


Where to watch the NCAA tournament with fight songs and discounted drinks

tip-off, with $6 Bulleit drinks and $18 Miller Lite or Coors Lite taps. Other hotspots for Hoyas include Penn Social and the Tombs. Richmond's Virginia Commonwealth University is the last "local" school in the bracket. (Hey, they're a member of the Atlantic 11.) Alumni are hosting a game-watch at A-Town in Ballston, with a full slate of happy hour specials. In D.C., the Rams also take precedence on the TVs at the Pug, thanks to a bartender who's also a VCU alum. Where to find power teams The University of Kentucky is the popular pick to win it all -- even President Obama has the Wildcats going 40-0. Kentucky alumni head to Grevey's Restaurant and Sports Bar, the Falls Church sports bar owned by former Kentucky All-American Kevin Grevey. It's packed with TVs, and there's a large patio, too. In Washington, Plan B is to head to Town Tavern in Adams Morgan. Local Duke alumni meet at the Laughing Man Tavern, where this season's game-watches benefit the charity Partners in Education. The downtown bar is also a destination for Kansas Jayhawks. The University of North Carolina's bar of choice is Buffalo Billiards. Wisconsin UPDATE: Villanova The University of Arizona's games will be shown at Penn Social. General game-watching sites While Penn Social hosts a few big-name alumni groups, including Georgetown and Arizona, it's a good place for general basketball viewing, thanks to nine 10-foot projection screens and one monster 22-foot screen. Doors open at noon each day during the second round. With 48 high-definition TVs, including a 240-inch projector, Public Bar makes it easy to watch multiple games at once. The downtown bar will offer food and drink specials during all games. Town Tavern Meridian Pint Bracket Room Bethesda's top sports viewing destination is Caddies on Cordell, thanks to plenty of TV screens and cheap drinks, including $2.25 domestic drafts and $8.50 pitchers from 4 p.m. to close and $15 buckets of beer. For the first two days of the tournament, City Tap House will run a beer competition called Tap-It-Ology, in which 16 beers will face each other bracket-style. (Wonder where they got that idea?) The contending beers, which include Atlas Rowdy, Schlafly Kolsch and Devils Backbone Vienna Lager, will be $5 each while they're still in the competition, and the winner, crowned at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 20, will sell for $5 for the entire NCAA tournament.


New Watergate Hotel’s marketing plan feels phony, disconnected from reality

Center, the Georgetown waterfront and the Mall. “It will soon become the city’s most exclusive setting for high caliber meetings on an intimate tête-à-tête,” said Rakel Cohen, director of design and development at Euro Capital Properties, per the news release. If you’re holding a high-caliber meeting at the Watergate Hotel, you can go ahead and presume the person who called that sit-down is trying to set you up. Meanwhile, I asked an open question on Twitter about what “The Watergate” meant to followers. There were some interesting answers. @clintonyates no. to me n my friends its the place with the ridiculously expensive gas station...... @clintonyates this is what popped into my head: http://t.co/K8bQzyEcRq @clintonyates weirdly cool looking place near where I used to work. Bagels at Cuppa Cuppa (outer ring), pizza at Fresco (inner area). @clintonyates As a GWU grad, it was the closest grocery store to the campus for a long time. @Travis_Waldron @clintonyates i sometimes pop over there for a pre-Kennedy Center beverage... @clintonyates Frank Wills & how no good deed goes unpunished @clintonyates as someone who's only been in DC about a decade it's just a funny looking building. @clintonyates the liquor store was the only one open around GW during the 2010 snowpocalypse. Lotta memories. @clintonyates When I was a little girl my grandmother played a bridge game there. I thought it was exciting to go with her bec of scandal. @clintonyates But I was pretty disappointed when I did go. Just a gloomy apartment and old ladies playing bridge. @clintonyates my friends & I used to play a game of "Spot Ben Stein at the Watergate CVS" but other than that no. @clintonyates @DCbmyers also, the Chinese place there used to have a mean lunch special. @clintonyates it's one if the ugliest building complexes I've ever seen @clintonyates I think it's poor urban planning more than anything. VA ave. and all the parkway jumble make it impossible to get to. @clintonyates bad urban planning, but architecturally it's my favorite modernist apartment complex in DC @clintonyates It's fun to look at what's for sale there on Redfin. Highest HOA fees I can find! @clintonyates @MavisGary jus the inconvenient location of an old job's office and home of a lot of National Cathedral major donors ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Whatever the Watergate site means to you, let’s hope this new place can change that reputation to something newer and fresher.


7 things to do in the D.C. area on the weekend of March 20-22

OPENING SATURDAY: Photographer Colin Winterbottom captured the work of crews fixing buildings and monuments damaged by the 2011 earthquake. (Colin Winterbottom/Via Emma Filar, National Building Museum) SATURDAY: SATURDAY SATURDAY: SATURDAY-SUNDAY SATURDAY-SUNDAY SUNDAY:


PM Update: Rain changes to snow early Friday morning, and back to rain in afternoon

A sloppy mix of rain and snow will zip into the D.C. region Friday morning — the official first day of spring. Capital Weather Gang's Jason Samenow has your forecast. A winter weather advisory is in effect for north and west suburbs through 2 p.m. Friday. 10:15 p.m. update: Like we’v’e been talking about for a couple days, the prime time for snow within a one county radius of D.C. – which could be heavy at times – should be between about 6 and 10 a.m. Most accumulation should be on grassy areas from near downtown to the southeast, with increasing chances for some slushy and/or slick roads as you go to the northwest and up in elevation. (Areas south and southeast of Fairfax County are more rainy than snowy). After mid-morning, the coverage and intensity of precipitation lessens, temperatures rise some, and the strong March sun angle will really limit additional snow accumulation potential in places which are slower to change to rain (north of the District). This is the last update of the evening. We’ll be back with coverage starting at 5 a.m. Friday. 9:30 p.m. update: Radar loop over the past two hours. Refresh page to update. From 5:45 p.m.: [SchoolCast and FedCast for Friday, March 20] We will be updating this post with new information tonight. Through Tonight: [Details on Friday morning snow, including timing and impacts] Capital Weather Gang snowfall forecast, Second version Tomorrow (Friday): [D.C. area snow forecast roundup] What could be the most notable data point in the forecast for this storm is the current road temperatures, which are 10 to 15 degrees warmer than the air temperature was on Thursday afternoon. They will cool a bit overnight, but those temps are working on our favor in terms of keeping the roads seeing too much snow accumulation. Having said, that slushy buildup is of course possible during heavier bursts, especially in colder areas. See David Streit’s forecast through the weekend. And if you haven’t already, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter Columbia Island Marina on March 18, 2015. (Brett Bowers via Flickr) Early morning model forecast: (WeatherBell.com) Jason Samenow contributed to this forecast.


A total solar eclipse seen in Svalbard, Norway, on March 20, 2015. (Haakon Mosvold Larsen/ European Pressphoto Agency) For a short almost three minutes early Friday morning, a total solar eclipse reached its greatest point as the moon passed between the Earth and the sun, blocking the sun’s rays entirely. This eclipse is extraordinary because the moon is a so-called “supermoon,” meaning it is at its closest point to Earth. And it all falls on the same day as the spring equinox. This will not happen again until 2034. Thousands of solar eclipse followers watched the skies above the Faroe Islands turn dark on Friday as the moon blocked out the sun. The total solar eclipse could only be seen from parts of the North Atlantic that are south of Iceland but north of Scotland. The moon passed between the Earth and the sun Friday morning treating sky watchers to a solar eclipse. Sky watchers took in the sight from the remote Faroe Islands, about 186 miles north of Scotland and 370 miles west of Norway, one of just two places on land where the total eclipse could be seen. On the islands, the moon covered the sun completely for two minutes and 45 seconds. “This is our 10th total eclipse,” Les Anderson, a 60-year-old from San Diego, told the Associated Press from the islands. Hotels there were fully booked for months. “We love to watch them and being able to look at the corona with your eyes in the middle of the eclipse is really an exciting moment, to experience the diamond rings coming and going,” Anderson said. The other place to view the total eclipse was Svalbard, Norway, an archipelago about 500 miles north of the mainland where it was visible for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Hotels on Svalbard were also booked solid. On Thursday, a Czech tourist was attacked by a polar bear while camping out for the eclipse. [Related: Solar eclipse signals he coming apacalypse] The eclipse was seen in partial form across northwest Africa, most of Europe and northern Asia. The eclipse in Cornwall, England. (Ben Birchall/PA via AP) Here’s what the eclipse looked like on social media: [ View the story “The beauty of a rare total solar eclipse" on Storify]


The solar eclipse signals the coming apocalypse, pastors say

The moon passed between the Earth and the sun Friday morning treating sky watchers to a solar eclipse. A celestial theory has seized Christians who are keen on these sorts of things. It has to do with today’s eclipse. Is it god talking to us? What is he saying? Does it mean the apocalypse is coming? To understand what they mean, first you must understand something called the “blood moon,” defined as a full lunar eclipse that makes the moon glow like a jack-o-lantern. We’re currently in the middle of a very important time for the blood moon. We’re in the midst of an 18-month period when a nearly unprecedented four blood moons will occur, all of them happening near or on a Jewish holiday. [Related: The beauty of a rare solar eclipse] Some religious folks, like evangelical Pastor John Hagee, discern something profound in this, pointing to passages in the scriptures that say such phenomena portend a day of judgement. “The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord,” Joel 2:31 said, as noted by Religious News Service. Thousands of solar eclipse followers watched the skies above the Faroe Islands turn dark on Friday as the moon blocked out the sun. It’s pretty heady stuff, and to some this means the judgement is upon us. (This, of course, is not a new assessment. Every year or so someone is talking apocalypse this, and apocalypse that, with little to show for it.) But right now, the rumors over the blood moon are getting a boost among some of this theory’s adherents. Today’s eclipse was said to be a once-in-100,000-years event. And the rarity of that fact surely means something very unusual is happening with the skies. It can’t be a coincidence, said Texan Christian Bob O’Dell. What’s more, we’re only two weeks away from the next blood moon, set to land on April 4, the first full day of Passover. Such lunar events are “almost like the opening and closing of a chapter” with “big picture religious meaning,” O’Dell was quoted saying in the Times of Israel. His pal Gidon Ariel, with whom he runs the ecumenical Web site Root Source, concurred. He advised prayer at a time like this. Who knows what messages the skies doth whisper? “While a worldwide call to prayer is not typical for


A single exploding star could build 7,000 Earths

(green). (NASA/CXO/Herschel/VLA/Lau et al) In a study published Thursday in Science, researchers led by Cornell postdoctoral associate in astronomy Ryan Lau made the first direct observations of cosmic dust -- the smokey wisps of raw materials that cloud around stars and build new ones along with planets -- coming straight out of a supernova. Lau and his team used NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) to closely examine Supernova Remnant Sagittarius A East in infrared. [One of the youngest, most distant galaxies ever observed is surprisingly mature (and dusty)] Scientists already knew that supernovas produced enough dust to seed the universe with new planets and stars, making for lively galaxies. But the explosion of a star is a violent process, and they weren't sure whether enough of the dust created by the explosion could also survive it. They found that the 10,000-year-old cloud of interstellar dust had retained a lot of the dust created by the supernova -- about 7 to 20 percent of it -- after the hard rebound that occurs when the outward blast of a star explosion hits nearby interstellar gas and dust and turns back inward. [Astronomers saw the same star explode four times in four places because of a rare cosmic phenomenon] "Our observations reveal a particular cloud produced by a supernova explosion 10,000 years ago contains enough dust to make 7,000 Earths," Lau said in a statement. That surviving dust was free to flow back into interstellar space and provide material for new galaxies. Lau credits the discovery to SOFIA, which sits on a modified Boeing 747SP jumbo jet. "We were on a flying observatory traveling at 600 mph (965 km/h) at an altitude of 45,000 feet (13,715 meters) to take images of a 10,000-year-old supernova remnant located 27,000 light-years away from us at the center of our galaxy," Lau told Space.com. "No other currently operating observatory other than the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy could detect this dust." Correction: A previous version of this post stated: Now, by tracking cosmic dust, scientists have found evidence that it may be the violent star explosions called supernovas that push these life-giving materials into future galaxies. It should have read "into the galaxy's future stars and planets." MORE READING: Astronomers may have found a new zombie star The Hubble spotted this smiley face in space Infrared images of space allow new views, reveal hidden stars


Vernal Equinox 2015: Solar eclipse, supermoon kick off spring in the Northern Hemisphere

Sunrise at the Tidal Basin on April 11, 2014, with cherry blossoms in peak bloom. (Kevin Ambrose) Spring officially begins with the vernal equinox today – though it hardly feels like it in the eastern U.S., where winter is making an unwelcome comeback. At 6:45 p.m. EDT on March 20, the sun appears directly overhead at Earth’s equator, marking the start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. This year, the spring equinox has the unusual distinction of coinciding with both a supermoon and a total solar eclipse. According to timeanddate.com, there hasn’t been a solar eclipse on either the March or September equinox since 1662! [Spring trifecta Friday — solar eclipse, supermoon and equinox] We won’t have to wait 353 years for the next equinox solar eclipse, however. Another total solar eclipse will occur on March 20, 2034, followed by an annular eclipse in 2053. Unfortunately, like this year’s eclipse, neither of these will be visible from North America. Thousands of solar eclipse followers watched the skies above the Faroe Islands turn dark on Friday as the moon blocked out the sun. But while much of the world missed out on today’s eclipse, there are still plenty of reasons to look skyward. The spring equinox is one of only two days of the year when all places on Earth (outside the polar regions) see the sun rise due east and set due west along the horizon. With neither hemisphere tilted away from or toward the sun, all latitudes get approximately 12 hours of daylight and darkness, as shown in the day and night world map below: Pattern of daylight and darkness at the time of the vernal equinox. (Credit: Earth and Moon Viewer) Although the word “equinox” means “equal night” in Latin, the sun is actually up for more than 12 hours in both hemispheres. Note how in Washington, D.C., the sun is already up for 12 hours and 8 minutes on the equinox, whereas sunrise and sunset were exactly 12 hours apart three days ago, on March 17: (timeanddate.com, adapted by CWG) What’s behind this? Blame Another factor is how we define su Together, these factors add a few extra minutes of daylight to the equinox. In the Northern Hemisphere, the exact 12-hour day occurs a few days before the spring equinox, typically March 14-18, depending on one’s latitude. Rapidly increasing daylight The spring equinox marks the halfway


When a solar eclipse was a terrifying thing

A solar eclipse as viewed by ESA's Sun-watching Proba-2 minisatellite, using it's SWAP imager to capture the Moon passing in front of the Sun in a near-totality on March 20. (Royal Observatory of Belgium/ESA via Reuters) Countries across Europe witnessed a solar eclipse Friday morning, which was most startlingly visible near the Arctic Circle. From Belarus to Britain, thousands gathered at outdoor viewing parties to watch the moment the moon passed between the Earth and the Sun. Not surprisingly in the age of social media, the eclipse generated more snark than anything else. In Britain, countless people tweeted images of the typically British scene that they saw: a drab expanse of featureless grey. The Guardian even did a round-up of "entirely underwhelming" solar eclipse photos. @guardiannews Spectacular over Camden and the @GettyImagesNews office #eclipse2015 http://t.co/oVI4qAXwIa That's about as much of an #eclipse I'm seeing..... #SolarEclipse #eclipse2015 #guttedastrophysicist http://t.co/pZRitnzUTM @guardiannews Dalston eclipse http://t.co/MQjIHZIdDH It may be easy to scoff, but for most of human history, eclipses were awesome, terrifying things. Court astronomers devoted their lives to predicting the occurrence of eclipses, as these events could be harbingers of a kingdom's collapse or an emperor's premature demise. In Shakespeare's "Macbeth," the treacherous murder of the king leads to an eclipse — “dark night strangles the travelling lamp." They were omens of a disturbance in the force, as it were. What ill deeds could lead to something as unnatural as the day's light being snuffed out, as Shakespeare asked: Is ’t night’s predominance or the day’s shame That darkness does the face of Earth entomb When living light should kiss it? Britons may be laughing now, but nine centuries ago, the fate of England seemed dictated by an eclipse. In August 1133, as King Henry I sailed for his domains in what's now France, a solar eclipse was observed by many. (NASA mapped it here.) Henry I would never return to English shores. Here's how William of Malmesbury, a contemporary chronicler, described it at the time: On the fourth day of the week, the elements manifested their sorrow at this great man [King Henry I]'s last departure. For the sun on that day, at the sixth hour, shrouded his glorious face, as the poets say, in hideous darkness, agitating the hearts of men by an eclipse: and on the sixth of the week, early in the morning, there was so great an earthquake,


Remarkable photos, video of the total solar eclipse

If you didn’t wake up early enough to see a live video of the total solar eclipse over the North Atlantic, hopefully these amazing photos will do the trick. The total eclipse was visible from points in the North Atlantic, south of Iceland, on the Faroe Islands north of the U.K., and Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago halfway between northern Europe and the North Pole. But it could also be seen in partial form across northwest Africa, most of Europe and northern Asia. It reached the point of greatest eclipse at 4:45 a.m. ET. This animation shows from where the partial and total solar eclipse was seen. The shadow passing over the North Atlantic, Europe, and northern Asia was the viewing area of the partial eclipse. The fleeting black spot that passes within that shadow represents the locations that were able to see the total eclipse. (NASA) Friday’s moon was also a “supermoon,” even though it’s in a new phase and not visible. The moon reached its orbit’s closest point to Earth on Thursday afternoon. If the moon were visible, it would appear slightly larger in the sky. And of course, today is also the first day of astronomical spring! It begins officially at 6:45 p.m., when the sun appears directly overhead at Earth’s equator, said CWG’s Justin Grieser. “According to timeanddate.com, there hasn’t been a solar eclipse on either the March or September equinox since 1662!” he writes. “We won’t have to wait 353 years for the next equinox solar eclipse, however,” Grieser continues. “Another total solar eclipse will occur on March 20, 2034, followed by an annular eclipse in 2053. Unfortunately, like this year’s eclipse, neither of these will be visible from North America.” The next total eclipse in the U.S. is on August 21, 2017, and it will be visible along a corridor from Washington state to South Carolina. For now, let these remarkable images quench your thirst for astronomy! A gorgeous view of snowy hills and the solar eclipse in Svalbard. (Ivar Marthinusen via spaceweather.com) A stunning, zoomed-in view from Norway. (Bernt Olsen via spaceweather.com) From Svalbard. (Eliot Herman via spaceweather.com) From Italy. (Giovanni Soligo via spaceweather.com) The solar eclipse through a thin layer of clouds in Scotland. (Sheri Lynn Karl via spaceweather.com) From Lincolnshire, U.K. (Andrew Greenwood via spaceweather.com) The partial solar eclipse and


Google celebrates first day of spring, but Europe got the better doodle

Europe gets all the good stuff. Well, at least they got the better Google Doodle on the the first day of astronomical spring. As I was browsing Twitter this afternoon, I was shocked (shocked, I say!) to learn from the Canada-based Weather Network that people Googling from a European IP address were treated to a much different Doodle: If you’re doing a search from North America, you’ll get the doodle below, which commemorates today’s spring equinox, the “official” start of the new season, when day and night are roughly equal in length. Spring flowers in bloom are fitting (we love the little bumblebee taking front and centre), a beautiful design by Kristen Lepore: (google.com) But if you’re logging on from Europe today, here’s what you’d see something a little different. For searchers in the UK, Germany and other countries, the middle flower has been replaced, a reference to the total solar eclipse that occurred over northern Europe Friday morning: (google.com) It’s true, North America got the bumble bee. But the eclipse-plus-spring is pretty darn cool. The solar eclipse was visible from northwest Africa, most of Europe and northern Asia. The next time a solar eclipse and the vernal equinox coincide will be in 2034. If you missed slooh.com’s livestream, we’ve compiled some great eclipse photos from Europe. Which one do you like better?


Male on male sexual assault in the military: Overlooked and hard to fix, investigation finds

U.S. soldiers on patrol in Afghanistan in 2012. (Photo by 1st Lt. Jason Uhlig/ U.S. Army) Here’s a scenario: A male U.S. service member is hanging out with others from his unit at a barbecue when he realizes he has had too much alcohol to drink. He’s taken back to his barracks to sleep it off, but wakes up several hours later to be “teabagged” — with another man putting his scrotum on his face. That notional situation was sketched out by officials with the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, in survey interviews with 122 American male service members across the country. Forty-eight of them — more than a third — said they have heard about something like that happening, the GAO said in investigative findings released Thursday. Thirty-four service members — more than a quarter — interviewed believed the scenario happens occasionally (21), sometimes (nine) or regularly (four), the new GAO report said. The new report adds to the growing conversation about sexual assault in the military, which senior military officials and the White House have both said repeatedly needs to addressed. But the GAO focused this time on an angle that is less commonly discussed: sexual assaults by men on men. The investigation found that while the Defense Department has made a number of changes in an attempt to reduce sexual assault in the military, the number of people who report sexual assault is about 40 percent for women, and 13 percent for men. The statistics don’t apply only to rape, but to a variety of activities that can be considered hazing, in which someone is initiated into a group through humiliation or abuse. GAO investigators who traveled to Camp Pendleton, Calif.; Keesler Air Force Base, Miss.; Fort Bliss, Tex.; and Norfolk Naval Base, Va.; found that although both hazing and sexual assault are against the law in the military, both continue to occur, and some of the incidents should be considered both. “For example, victim advocates and prosecutors at one installation described a series of escalating incidents that began with hitting the victim in the crotch, then throwing objects at the victim’s crotch, and ultimately then saying the hazing would stop if the victim performed oral sex on the assailants,” the report said. “These service officials added that training on hazing-type activities and their relationship to sexual assault would be particularly beneficial to males


A year ago he was the only Russian politician to vote against annexing Crimea. Now he’s an exile.

those close to Putin. Compared with these opposition leaders, Ponomarev got off lightly, but it's still an upsetting situation. His children remain in Russia, with their grandparents, and Ponomarev's wife recently fled the country in fear for her safety. Ponomarev now spends most of his time in California, but he's on a tourist visa and must stick to a strict set of rules to keep his seat back home in the Duma. "I am by law prohibited from having a [bank] account here," he says, "and I can tell you, without an account in the U.S., it is extremely hard to live here." As bad as the situation is for the opposition movement in Russia, Ponomarev isn't sure that Western intervention can really help. “Whatever interference there could be, in Russia it is definitely counterproductive," he said. "Whatever you touch turns to dust, at best." Instead, he said that the West should focus on helping Ukraine, even arming it. "Right now interference of the West is associated with misery, chaos and corruption, and that’s what we see in the Ukraine," he says. "If Ukraine can be successful, it’s a showcase that Western interference can be productive." He also suggests that economic sanctions against Russians should be expanded to all Russian government workers and their families. Ponomarev is well aware that for a Russian, his deep opposition to the government puts him in the minority: Polls have shown remarkably resilient public support for Putin's foreign policy. However, Ponomarev explained that this was a consequence of a wartime mentality and likened Putin's huge approval ratings to popular support for Czar Nicholas II in 1914. "These polls, they really show nothing," he says, adding that many of Putin's biggest critics were now, like himself, living abroad. As an exile, the Russian lawmaker has to try to make sense of the U.S. political world, and it's not an easy task. His own political leanings fall far to the left, though they are unorthodox (he's described himself as a "libertarian Communist"). Neither of the mainstream American political parties appeal to him, and he's disheartened by how much domestic debates weigh on international policy. He feels that the Democrats are "balanced" but "extremely passive," while the Republicans are very "willing to act" but don't grasp the nuances. Both parties need to do more to reach out to the Russians leaving Russia, he says, and be aware