Another medicine-related post, this time dealing a little less with the abstract numbers that go into medical decisions. Did you know that Norway represents the most MRSA-free country in the world? Neither did I. When you read the article, though, it becomes immediately clear why: less wide-spread, reflexive, knee-jerk use of broad-spectrum antibiotics. Add to that the antibacterial crazy nature of household cleaning products, foams, sprays, soaps, anti-germ surfaces and you get what western society has now: ever-rising numbers of MRSA, VRE, and multi-drug resistant bacterial infections. I find this very interesting how the use of sane government-implemented policies and laws created an atmosphere in Norway that allowed physicians to treat appropriately rather than as a reflex or because a patient asked for antibiotics. What are the chances American politicians might move in a similar direction. Hmm. Zero.

Yes. I’m a pessimist.

This morning my alarm, set to our local NPR station, blared at 7:30 am, and as I slowly emerged from my morning stupor and the consciousness began to flow, I found myself listening to an “interview with Conductor George Matthew”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7048846 of Carnegie Hall. He was discussing the parallels between Verdi’s _Requiem_ and the genocide in Darfur, the show playing clips of music that my mind instantly put to eerie scenery he described. Apparently top-notch musicians in New York area banded together recently to play this music to raise awareness of Darfur and the millions of people affected.

Having played the piano for many years, I always found the exercise intriguing—utilizing imagination to enhance the meaning of a musical piece. While I would do this at my piano teacher’s urgings and arrive at scenes that echoed my personality or current mood, this morning’s foray into the imagination was jarring, the dark music mirroring the untold horrors of living in constant fear. Jarring in that we allow ourselves to live so peacefully while such things are happening elsewhere to other innocent human beings.

The exercise inevitably aroused existential questions of why I am here and not there. We’ve all had these reflexive musings of purpose and destiny and why our consciousnesses were so lucky as to end up in these bodies in this, the richest country on Earth. Such questions, though not germane to solving the crisis, underscore the urgency to find a solution: Those are real people dying. The world has an obligation to end “this conflict”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict. As _the_ world superpower, we should lead by example and be the first to commit to ending this by whatever means necessary. Estimated dead range from a conservative 50,000 to 500,000. The “Washington Post cites”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/15/AR2006101500655.html 2.5 million displaced. It took much prodding for our government to come forward and call this genocide, but the UN has still refused to do so.

We should do more. We owe it to humanity. The cost of doing nothing is too great in light of even a single life lost.

For those that have it, Verdi’s _Requiem_ truly does wake your soul to the true magnitude of the human plight in Darfur. I listened to it twice today, and you should too, if only to remind yourself of another world far away where people are hurting every day.

Medicare Part D, which passed as part of the “Medicare Modernization Act”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Prescription_Drug%2C_Improvement%2C_and_Modernization_Act in 2003, gives seniors better access to life-saving medications. Although expensive, this program helps older Americans afford prescriptions whose prices have otherwise been increasing at twice the rate of inflation. Something had to be done.

h2. Flawed

Although the primary aims of giving seniors better access to medicines has been achieved, the law itself has two glaring problems.

First, some seniors are left out of any coverage at all in what has become known as the “doughnut hole.” Basically, when someone enrolls in a drug plan in 2007, this person pays a $265 deductible and 25% of total drug costs up to $2,400. After this total $2,400 cost for the year is exceeded (out-of-pocket expenses up to this limit are only $865), the person must pay _all_ drug costs beyond $2,400 up to $5,451. This is a problem because it leaves people that fall into this hole potentially out $3,916. Regardless of income bracket, if you fall into the gap, you have no options but to come up with this sum of money or go without medication.

Second, and equally insidious, is the inclusion of the non-interference clause, which prohibits the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from negotiating drug pricing with pharmaceutical companies. While the non-interference clause does not prohibit private insurance companies that create drug plans from negotiating, the government has clearly been put at a disadvantage—artificially bound to pay higher prices despite buying in bulk for a huge number of seniors across the country. Some have rightly called this the “sweetheart deal.” It basically amounts to a handout to drug manufacturers and an artificial barrier in the marketplace, which is ironic given that Republicans—who normally champion free market principles—were behind slipping it into the final bill despite a majority of Senators (composed of Democrats and Republicans) opposing this clause.

When I first learned about these ludicrous restrictions, I was incensed. No other word better captures how wrong this sort of sly politicking truly is. One can further argue that the money lost from not being able to negotiate created the doughnut hole. Solve one and you can potentially close or eliminate the other completely.

h2. Clear proponents

Enter Senators Wyden (D-OR) and Snowe (R-ME). In a bipartisan effort, they proposed Amendment 3004, which aims to remove the non-interference clause and allow Medicare to negotiate pricing with drug manufacturers directly. The amendment was applied to a larger budget bill.

Senator Wyden, on March 15, 2006 stated[1] in very clear language the implications of allowing the government to negotiate prices on the millions of prescriptions being bought for seniors. Apparently, the major bug-a-boo surrounding this legislation (which had a majority of support in the _Republican_ Congress last year!), is the misconception that removal of the non-interference clause would allow HHS to set price controls and a single formulary. Per last year’s amendment co-sponsor, Senator Wyden, this is just not true:

bq. Let me repeat that to the Senate. The bipartisan Snowe-Wyden legislation at line 13 and line 14 includes a bipartisan statutory ban on price setting as an effort to control the cost of medicine. This is about using marketplace forces to hold down the cost of these drugs that are clobbering our older people. [...] I don’t see how anyone can oppose this amendment and, in fact, Secretary Tommy Thompson, the former Secretary of Health and Human Services, said in his last press conference that he just wished he had this authority.

Clearly, this amendment a good thing.

h2. Obfuscation

In response to the debate on Amendment 3004, Senator Grassley (R-IA) states:

bq. First of all, we heard the words “sweetheart deal” for drug companies. If drug companies had their way, they would want no formularies, which is what the Wyden amendment would require. These drug companies would want all drugs covered regardless of cost. So don’t tell me this is a sweetheart deal. If we didn’t have formularies like we would have if the Wyden amendment is adopted, then all drugs would be covered regardless of cost. Then they would not have to compete. But this legislation requires competition building upon the practices that we have used for the Federal employee health plan for 40 years. We patterned this legislation after that because that is what saves money.

bq. …

bq. It is an absurd claim that the Government will not be negotiating with drugmakers comes from the noninterference clause in the Medicare law. The noninterference clause does not prohibit Medicare from negotiating with drugmakers. What it does is it prohibits the Center for Medicare Services from interfering with these negotiations.

bq. To be clear, the noninterference clause is at the heart of the bill’s structure for delivering prescription drug coverage. This clause ensures those savings will result from market competition rather than through Government price fixing.

Where to start? There seem to be three huge problems with Grassley’s fierce language here.

1. His speech starts out nearly incomprehensible, but he seems to interpret negotiation of prices as removing competition from the market. Last I checked, capitalism revolved around negotiation between buyer and seller for a fair market value based on current supply and demand. Tongue in cheek: need we repeat Econ 101, Senator Grassley?

2. He correctly states that in its current form Part D prohibits Medicare from negotiating prices, but allows individual plans to do so. However, anyone who understands basic market principles knows bigger buyers have more clout. Take a look at WalMart[2]. Here lies the core of the argument of those for negotiation: greater efficiencies can be achieved with greater numbers. By allowing Medicare to directly negotiate prices, all medicare beneficiaries are pooled together creating a collectively larger buyer with more clout in the market place.

3. Grassley seems intent on associating removal of the non-interference clause with price fixing. Price fixing and allowing market forces to determine fair prices could not be at further ends of the same spectrum. The rabbit being pulled out of the hat here is named obfuscation.

h2. Deft conclusion

Despite the incoherent rambling of Grassley and the transparent “I’m in your pocket” vote by many Republicans, the “amendment passed”:http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00050, 54-44, with 2 abstentions. Because it never made it into law, though, the parent bill must have died.

The real kicker arises when people realize that the Pentagon and Veterans Administration both negotiate with drug companies for lower prices given their purchasing power for soldiers and veterans. The Costco phenomenon[3] perfectly parallels the economics at work here: If you buy in bulk, you get more bang for your buck. You wouldn’t walk into a Costco to shop for your family and buy toilet paper one roll at a time. The Pentagon knows this. The VA knows this. Why don’t our elected leaders? In essence, the non-interference clause forces such a restriction on the Department of Human Health and Services (HHS), who manages and administers the Medicare program.

Still, there is hope. On January 12, the House of Representatives “voted to send”:http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=2007&rollnumber=23 the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act to the Senate for approval. This time, the legislation is contained within its own bill, and will not suffer at the fate of a doomed budget resolution. Sometime soon, the Senate committee in charge of the bill should submit it for a full floor vote. If and when that does happen and if it passes, it will be up to the President to sign for it.

Pass the word, and contact “your Senators”:http://www.senate.gov just as I have. If your Senator was in the Senate last year, you can see how (s)he voted on this issue by taking a look at “the vote on Amendment 3004″:http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00050 mentioned above.

fn1. All of these quotes come directly from the “public record of the Senate floor”:http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2006_record&page=S2165&position=all. The debate on Amendment 3004 starts in the third column.

fn2. While I hate WalMart with a passion, it truly has used its buying power to wrestle market prices lower. There exists no better example.

fn3. While I use the word “phenomenon,” Costco is hardly novel, but some of these East-coasters do not know what it means to purchase in bulk. I borrowed this apt metaphor from Senator Wyden.

As I have stated before, I will state again: the national media acts like the fourth branch of government. Given their access to people via the Internet, TV, radio, and newspaper and their ability to peddle that influence, for all intensive purposes, they _ARE_ the fourth branch of the federal government. This week, after Vice President Cheney’s hunting mishap, has been especially telling about their relationship with the Executive branch. Through David Gregory’s unprofessional tantrum on Monday, preposterous questions like, “Would it have been worse if [Harry Whittington] had died?” and the “continuing”:http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/02/19/coverstory.tm/index.html, self-serving coverage (read: whining) from virtually every national mainstream news outlet, I can take it no more.

For the sake of completeness, let’s review the facts.

• Fact: Dick Cheney shot a man.
• Fact: Dick Cheney shot a man while hunting.
• Fact: Dick Cheney accidentally shot a man while hunting and did not fatally injure him.
• Fact: Dick Cheney reported the incident to the local authorities _after_ first attending to Harry Whittington.
• Fact: At no time did Dick Cheney or those around him attempt to hide any information about the incident or prevent its release to the public.

Too many reporters get off on the need to pass information onto viewers/readers/listeners while injecting their experience at the same time. These reporters and editors delude themselves into thinking that these actions are a true service to the American people—that in the same vein of investigative reporting the likes of which Woodwoord and Bernstein have never seen—they are keeping tabs on the Administration and any run-away powers that might attempt to mislead constituents. Here’s what I have heard over the past week that the media purports to be important information:

• Not fact: The White House press corps deserves or needs to have this information first in order to disseminate it.
• Not fact: The White House press corps is _the_ sole source of Presidential news information.
• Not fact: The Vice President owes it the American public to hold a national news conference (with the White House press corps) to explain himself.
• Not fact: By not using the White House press corp as a means to disseminate the information, a disservice was done to the American people due to a time delay in getting that crucial information out.

You know what would be nice? News with just the facts. Maybe there was a time delay. Who cares? The man who was shot was in the hospital getting better, while the media whines that it should have been notified quicker. How pedantic! Well… Well… If the media shouldn’t be notified quicker, then let’s find something else to quip about: Dick Cheney had a beer at lunch. Oh, no! The man was shot late in the afternoon, for crying out loud! OK, well, if that doesn’t work, then….let’s read into Cheney’s relationship with the President. “Chris Matthews”:http://www.thechrismatthewsshow.com/ must be right about a growing rift between the President and the Vice President because the VP didn’t speak about it for a whole day and half to Bush. You know, now that I think of it, Monday reminds me of, well, the first work day of the week after a weekend. That is probably when the two were back in the office together. (Note, Bush’s staff has already been notified.) Coincidence, the media thinks not!

Regardless of politics or ideology, this asinine approach to news is retarded. The American people deserve the facts. Leave the editorializing to the last section of the newspaper.

Journalists have an obligation to investigate and report current events, but to what end? I would argue that once the information is disseminated in a complete manner, regardless of the means, then the duty is done. Certainly, if the information comes from a small-town newspaper, broader coverage is warranted. For some stories, this is what happens. Yet, the national media apparatus, when slighted or directly involved in some event feels compelled to inject whatever new nuances possible (i.e. time delay, beer, imaginary growing rifts within the administration, “we’re being demonized” excuse) in an attempt to distinguish themselves from one another in the vain attempt to win at the ratings contest. They have their faces so buried in the story (because they have made themselves a part of it), they cannot even see that they are doing themselves a disservice by forgetting “all”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/18/AR2006021801571.html “the”:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-riot18feb18,1,1222506.story?ctrack=1&cset=true “other”:http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/02/17/philippines.landslide/ “worthy”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/international/middleeast/19cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1140411600&en=54e8a0daf52f9a76&ei=5094&partner=homepage, and “important”:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10704051/ news of the week.

Fortunately, the internet provides for a way to bypass the stifling atmosphere of that looming fourth branch of government. The average person was over this story on Tuesday or Wednesday, yet we are still going to be subjected to another week of non-news that speaks more about the media than current events. Sites like “Newsvine”:http://www.newsvine.com/ (sorry, membership required) have long since moved onto relevant news. Too bad we cannot elect members of the mainstream press, for then we might see some effort to change their dubious ways.

p.s. I have free membership passes to Newsvine to give away. If you would like one, please post your name in the comments.

!(alignright)http://www.sensoryoutput.com/wp-images/postings/stage.jpg! Imagine, for a moment, that you are a news producer for one of the top news stations. Your job is to create meaningful clips of news-worthy events for broadcast, and in order to ensure you are on top of current events, you keep tabs on the other networks.

The White House correspondent for your network emails your Blackberry, urgently requesting a satellite uplink be ready for a telecast of the President speaking candidly with soldiers in Iraq. This spontaneous event will allow the President to field questions to the soldiers, allowing them a response. The event is to take place in a few hours.

In the meantime, you setup the uplink and find the soldiers busily practicing their lines. A little odd, perhaps. After a few minutes of watching, you see a DoD spokesman rehearse the following:

bq. The President will open up with some remarks. He’s going to kind of shape this discussion today by highlighting the importance of what you’re doing, by letting you know how much the American people appreciate your hard work, and how important this vote on Saturday is to the process in Iraq. And so you’ll hear him shape those comments today.

The cogs start clicking, and you come to the realization that the spontaneous Q & A session with the President of the United States is not so spontaneous. The soldiers have been prepped, given a list of questions, and rehearsed. As a dutiful member of the free press, you must report this clandestine effort by the current administration to bolster its failed policies in Iraq. Suddenly, this news piece has gone from filler material to a top-of-the-hour news bulletin!

You frantically start emailing your boss and the nightly news anchors to alert them to the situation. Clearly, this deserves some major coverage, so you need the heavy-hitting reporters to snap into action. The Q & A session takes place, but the major news is clearly the recorded practice session. Congratulations, you’ve just made some news.

[/end "I'm a reporter" delusion]

Welcome back to reality. The mainstream press is disgusting. All too often, it is injected with superlatives, exaggerations, drama to the point that it is no longer news. The good ol’ days of reporting like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are long gone. Now, we have cable network news 24/7 with charming personalities like “Rita Cosby”:http://rita.msnbc.com/ and “Anderson Cooper”:http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/. The sensationalism is so shrill that I can hardly stand to watch anymore. I like the news because I like to stay current with the world around me, but when I have to learn about the news as it is filtered and injected with steroids by the big networks, I find myself thinking twice.

The above parody was written as just that: a mini day in the life of a news producer. Although I am not that familiar with the technical terms and exact hierarchy of a news organization, you must be able to see my glaring sarcasm and disgust. Oddly enough, after writing my little parody, I happened across an excerpt of NBC anchor Brian Williams’ blog ["via":http://newsbusters.org/node/2192]:

bq. My day, at least editorially, started just after I’d chosen a spot on the couch for the 9:30 a.m. editorial daily planning meeting. I arrived early and was finishing up the newspapers when an e-mail came into my BlackBerry—it was from a producer in our control room, watching the incoming feed from Iraq. The President was minutes away from what was billed to us as a “give and take…a back and forth” with soldiers on the ground in Iraq. The e-mail said they were rehearsing their answers to the President’s questions. It went on to say they were receiving coaching from yet-unnamed government officials on HOW to deliver their lines once the President appeared.

A huge lapse in understanding of _what_ they were seeing during the pre-event broadcast occurred. Not only did *all* the major networks misinterpret the independent rehearsal of the soldier’s answers to questions, but overreacted to the simple instructions given by DoD spokeswoman, Allison Barber. None of the facts surrounding the pre-event broadcast are in question, simply the interpretation. A list of questions was forwarded, the soldiers were told what to expect from the President, and they rehearsed out loud in order to sound articulate on camera.

Giving a list of questions to the soldiers beforehand to give them some idea of what to expect seems perfectly normal. “Slashdot”:http://www.slashdot.org/ does Q & A all the time with people from across the tech sphere, and submitting questions ahead of the responses is normal practice. *Unless the DoD spokesperson were to explicitly give both question _and_ answer to the soldiers, there is nothing to report here.*

The fact that NBC Nightly News chose to lead with this story on Thursday night is simply stunning. How delusional are these guys? First, “they plant questions”:http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2004/12/value_added_rep.html (relevant, yes, but not the soldier’s own question), then call foul on this supposedly non-spontaneous, staged event. Please, you guys are flattering yourselves. Be sure to “check out this ironic twist”:http://newsbusters.org/node/2199 involving a media crew’s own staged event that took place just before more coverage of the whole fake-Bush-conspiracy-staged-event was going to rear its ugly head on NBC’s Today show.

Oh, and by the way, journalists, stop _making_ value-added, sound byte-compatible news and start _reporting_ it. The difference is minute, I know, but maybe then, you’ll earn some respect.

P.S. The fact that you have cameramen parked outside my house (literally) does not help you. What possible reason could you have to get a new picture of a certain member of my household everyday? Do you think he is going to come out dressed in a Halloween costume or something? Get real.

!(alignright)http://www.sensoryoutput.com/wp-images/postings/info_design.png! [Note: I have placed a small addendum at the bottom of this entry for those that have already read it.] Whilst I was wandering the web in search of new information, I came across an old article by Greg Storey of “Airbag”:http://www.airbagindustries.com/ fame entitled “A Better Tighty Whitey”:http://www.airbagindustries.com/archives/005675.php. I probably saw it last year when it was written, but never followed the discussion. Intrigued by my initial perusal, I read it all.

If you have not read the article or do not care to read it, I shall summarize for you: Greg explains his dismay at the lack of design in important government documents, such as the President’s Daily Briefing. The “infamous August 6, 2001 PDB”:http://www.airbagindustries.com/bucket/declassified.gif was declassified last year, prompting Greg to react. His solution was to “redesign the document”:http://www.airbagindustries.com/bucket/betterintelligence.gif to a better standard. A lively discussion of the redesign and purpose of design in information presentation ensued.

In all fairness, many of the commentaries differ between the necessity and usability of Greg’s redesigned PDB(President’s Daily Briefing). The pragmatists state that the document is purposefully made to be hard to read and that the President does not actually read it at all. In addition, some nay-sayers pointed to the misleading usage of color and boldness to highlight passages in Greg’s redesigned document. These are all valid points as the color and bolding can be used to sway the reader into seeing only certain pieces of the larger puzzle, yet I would argue that if the document were peer-reviewed, the most important information would come out on top, instead of a biased subset of the briefing.

Additionally, some expressed their discontent with the large number in the “Threat Matrix,” as they argued it could be used to mean how strong the threat spelled out in the briefing really is. As things go in the intelligence community, no one can be sure because information is sketchy, unreliable and often incomplete. No real assessment can be made. While this is all true, I would agree that this number might be used to represent the overall accuracy and credibility of the information contained within the document. It would be up to the President and his underlings to decide how to use the information based on that number. Lower numbers indicate a few unsubstantiated rumors and whisperings in the intelligence community while bigger numbers would indicate information from multiple reliable sources.

Some thought this a “tongue-in-cheek” posting by Greg, yet as he stated, there is a substantial increase in usability and comprehension of information when presented in a well-designed format. Although the exact details of what documents presented to the President ought to be designed in such a manner is debatable, there can be no doubt that the government needs a few lessons in such design.

For those interested, I have adapted Greg’s original Word format template to a “Pages template”:http://www.sensoryoutput.com/docs/PDB.template.zip for all to use. If you do not have Pages, part of Apple’s new “iWork bundle”:http://www.apple.com/iwork/, I suggest you go out and buy it (or at least try it somehow) because it is far less cumbersome to use than Microsoft Word, especially if you do not use all the bloated extra features of Word that are lost on most users.

*Addendum:* “Slashdot”:http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/22/120216&tid=227&tid=126&tid=1 was the source of the revival of this post, and that’s how I found it (again): full circle one year later. Greg did post a follow up to this story in a post called “Paperboy”:http://www.airbagindustries.com/archives/005792.php. Also, as mentioned in Greg’s later post, he mentions that this was picked up by the “Wall Street Journal”:http://www.wsj.com/. I would link to the article, but their stupid subscription model prevents linking to articles older than thirty days. So, I found an “alternate version that sums”:http://www.designbyfire.com/000089.html up WSJ’s take on this interesting revelation.

Note that these entries are part of a series that I am posting after the fact. (Sorry about that: I did not have any time to find a free WiFi spot to even check my email.) Please use the search box in the page header to look for other daily entries about my inaugural travels and activities.

Ah, the final day. School has already started, and we have missed several days. Still, these seven days have been fun-filled and memorable. Today, we focus on packing our bags, and one last excursion into the city.

Our flight was not scheduled to depart until 5:30 pm, so Diana and I decided to hit up the Capitol Building, which had thus far eluded our many trips around the city. Upon our arrival, we passed the Visitor Center, and walked all the way around to the North side of the huge complex. There, we were greeted by security that asked us our purpose and destination. Unready to give any sort of response, I blurted out, “We want to take a picture of the dome, inside.” To that, the guard quickly responded to my strange inquiry that we would need to be on a guided tour. Alas, our day could not withstand that, nor could we. So, at that, we returned to our hotel and readied our bags.

The whole family, now larger, gathered up our many suitcases, carry-ons, laptop bags, et cetera, and started our trek back down Downtown D.C. to the Farragut West metro stop. In no time, and $1.35 later, we found ourselves at Reagan International Airport. We had some coffee at the usual Starbucks, and moseyed through security.

Our flight plans took us back through Denver, where we left my Dad, Allison, Cory, and Sean Louis. Diana and I continued our trip back to Reno, arriving at 10:30 pm Pacific Time. The second leg of the trip was rather full, and we managed to get seats in Business Class (those posh, comfortable seats with lots of leg room) in asking to sit together.

At that, I am posting the last of this series (rather delayed, I know) about my Inaugural trip. In retrospect, I believe that we encountered much less political than historical. We did have the run-in with the right-wing Pro-life protesters, and some of the family saw a few political notables like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, but for the most part, we just had fun as a family and visited all the great sites around the city. Seeing my uncle, which only happens every so often—as he is so busy—was a lot of fun, and I will be staying with him for a few days in a week when I fly back for more medical school interviews. So long.

!http://www.sensoryoutput.com/wp-images/postings/day7.jpg!

Note that these entries are part of a series that I am posting after the fact. (Sorry about that: I did not have any time to find a free WiFi spot to even check my email.) Please use the search box in the page header to look for other daily entries about my inaugural travels and activities.

Today marks the last full day of fun here in our nation’s capital, and we began by getting up rather early (for me, anyways) at seven. We had a scheduled appointment at nine o’clock to meet a couple of my uncle’s interns at the east gate entrance to the White House where tours usually begin. We rode the metro to within a few blocks of the White House and stood outside waiting for security clearance and our guides.

The tour, which I had previously been on, was for the most part unremarkable. Unlike four years ago, we did not have the opportunity to visit the West Wing where the real action occurs, as the busy bodies there surely could not take on visitors. Then, there were no occupants in the West Wing as yet, given that the President had just been sworn in the very day our tour was given personally by my uncle. This time, things were not quite as glamorous in this regard. Oh, well.

In passing through security, though, I remarked to our young guide that I thought it bizarre that we were not required to remove belts, shoes, coats, scarves, and the likes as we passed through the metal detectors. The secure nature of the Presidency must be as or more important than airport security! The guide thought my remarks a bit funny but chose not to broach the subject further. Does this discrepancy between the two security standpoints strike you as weird, too?

Today, of course, had to be a huge protest by pro-lifers in the heart of D.C., throngs of church-going, sign-toting people and their obedient (and also sign-holding!) children marching through the streets. It is quite intimidating to be surrounded by so many people who are so adamant about that polar issue. Needless to say, we ran into them pretty much everywhere we went today.

After our tour of the East Wing of the White House, the family headed off to the Smithsonians, where those of us that had already visited the Natural History, American History, and Air and Space Museums opted to visit the “Jefferson Memorial”:http://www.nps.gov/thje/ instead. It was a bit of a walk from the National Mall, but it was worth it to see that memorial in person for the first time.

Afterwards, we visited the “Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden”:http://www.hirshhorn.si.edu/index.asp, which had some impressive modern art and sculpture. I wish we had had more time to look around, but after a few hours, we were hungry and tired, and said our farewells to that great museum.

We hopped back on the metro and went to “Union Station”:http://www.unionstationdc.com/ to get some food. As I mentioned above, we naturally ran into the throngs of right-wing peeps there taking up lots of space. We walked around a bit, tried to order the new “Chantico”:http://www.starbucks.com/retail/beverages_lineup.asp?subcat=21&cookie%5Ftest=1 drinking chocolate from “Starbucks”:http://www.starbucks.com/, but they were fresh out. After running around all day, bellies full, we headed back to the hotel to fall asleep to some other movie.

!http://www.sensoryoutput.com/wp-images/postings/day6.jpg!

Note that these entries are part of a series that I am posting after the fact. (Sorry about that: I did not have any time to find a free WiFi spot to even check my email.) Please use the search box in the page header to look for other daily entries about my inaugural travels and activities.

Today, the family decided to visit the “National Aquarium”:http://www.nationalaquarium.com/, which, bizarrely enough, is located in a “Department of Commerce”:http://www.doc.gov/ building. There were some interesting species, but I think the combination of not having anywhere to sit during the hour it took to walk all the way through and our level of fatigue really made this the most uninteresting part of this trip thus far. Still, the little ones found it fun. I guess that counts for something, right?

After our tour of life under the sea, we headed to the nearby “United States Holocaust Memorial Museum”:http://www.ushmm.org/, which reminded us of darker days in history and tugged at our heart strings. Security was especially strict here, given the sensitive nature of the exhibits, and one is required to obtain a pass for entrance to the main exhibit hall at a particular time. Plan ahead; we did not and ended up waiting just over two hours for our entrance slot. If you do get stuck waiting, though, there are exhibits one can visit outside the main portion of the museum. We walked through the Deadly Medicine exhibit and Remember the Children: Daniel’s Story. Overall, the museum contains potent images of the horrors that accompanied Nazi Germany’s rise to power just more than 60 years ago.

That such events could have occurred so recently in the large span of human history is mind-boggling and sickening to the heart. Human beings are capable of experiencing and creating the most wondrous of things but can also inflict the deepest of pains.

Our stay at the museum lasted well until 4:30 pm, by which time, we were thoroughly exhausted. Still, some members wanted to go see the “Einstein Planetarium”:http://www.nasm.si.edu/visit/planetarium/ show, Infinity Express: A 20-Minute Tour of the Universe, at the National Air and Space Museum, so we headed over and caught the last show of the day.

Dinner was had at the Hard Rock Café, but the directions to the “nearest” metro stop from the National Air and Space Museum were wrong, and we ended up much farther away than anticipated. I knew the Smithsonian stop was the quickest, but I was not made aware of our destination until we actually found ourselves lost. Oh, well. In fact, the station to which we were directed was closed, but this small fact was not found out until halfway down the extremely long escalator when I noticed the gate was down. The up escalator was still running, so we promptly started back up, and half-way up the whole thing shut off, lurching all the family members forward. Funny stuff. Anyway, we made it to another entrance to the same metro stop (one of the big ones) that was open and headed out for dinner.

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Note that these entries are part of a series that I am posting after the fact. (Sorry about that: I did not have any time to find a free WiFi spot to even check my email.) Please use the search box in the page header to look for other daily entries about my inaugural travels and activities.

Today, we slept in until nine o’clock. We each had a continental breakfast at the hotel and caught taxi cabs to Georgetown for a small family reunion at Uncle Karl’s house. Note that the taxi fare was only $14 plus tip—a reasonable amount given the short distance from our downtown hotel.

Upon arriving, we had fun talking it up with family members from Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and of course D.C. It was great fun, seeing my uncle’s house for the first time. He has books everywhere, which is to be expected given his great love for history. For brunch, we dined in true Texas fashion: corn bread, eggs, bacon, Texas sausage, and fruit (I think). That’s all I can remember at the moment. The best item on that list was the Texas sausage, by far. I need to email my uncle and really ask how I can get some! For drinks, champagne (the real stuff, none of the Californian sparkling wines) and mimosas. Excellent.

After mingling for a few hours, family members started to leave, as some had scheduled White House tours to attend, so the rest of us began to filter out as well. By this time, snow had started to fall. Now mind you, it was a very light snow and nothing compared to the dumping of several feet Reno withstood just recently. Our taxi cab came and dropped us off at the hotel, where he stated that it would be the same price as when we were dropped off. (Apparently, we were the only large group that day to require numerous cabs to my Uncle’s house, so we had one of the same drivers who had dropped us off a few hours earlier.) I promptly handed him a $20 bill, at which he scoffed, “What’s this?” My fellow passengers and I exchanged a few confused looks and calmly stated that our previous fare was only $14. “It’s double fare! Hazard pay. You know, for the snow.”

Well, I don’t know where you, dear reader, hail from, but a sprinkling of snow hardly counts as a _hazard_ when driving! Still, who are we to argue with the cab driver? Not being from D.C., we gave him two twenties at which he resolutely said, “Thanks,” and got back into his cab. Change? Heh! Don’t count on it.

With half the day still to go, we decided to make a tour of the Smithsonian museums. In all, we visited the “National Museum of American History”:http://americanhistory.si.edu/, the “National Museum of Natural History”:http://www.mnh.si.edu/, and the “National Air and Space Museum”:http://www.nasm.si.edu/. There were some great exhibits in each, and we saw a 3-D IMAX movie at the Natural History Museum entitled “T-REX: Back to the Cretaceous.” It was more of a short drama movie with some cool 3-D effects rather than factual information, so that was a bit of a disappointment.

With those museums out of the way, we headed back to our hotel around five o’clock via the trusty Metro system and ordered Thai food from a place just down the street. Tonight, we fell asleep to the “Garden State”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005JNC2/102-9936411-1749731?v=glance DVD.

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