Baltimore Impressions, and some Art

As usual, bigger pictures after the original post link.

Snowstorm, Historic

Crawling Around with Baltimore Street Rats

Baltimore and rats: They are smart enough (in a non-individual, Darwinian way) to ambush a garbage truck.

And of course there was this giant rat from China news.

Homewood, Medical School, and Mt. Washington

A few random pics from when my Mom was here for a visit.



As usual, hit the link and view the original post.

Baltimore Artscape, and Lab space

Two completely unrelated picture sets, one from the annual Baltimore Artscape festival that regularly draws crowds to music, art sales, movies, and food, and one from our lab, deserted at night.



As usual, click on the slide show to see bigger pics.

2010 JHFCU Calendar

"Congratulations on having your photo(s) selected for JHFCU’s 2010 calendar photo contest. We received many entries and had only a limited number of slots, so we picked the photos that we felt best represented the Hopkins community and Baltimore area. [...]"

Since I sent them three and got only limited information, I guess that the one below got chosen! The value of the R1 got proved again!



(Yes, I know the pic is full of artifacts. However, I only accept criticism from somebody who has ever tried to take pictures of dark objects against the sun in snow conditions.)

JHU Robofest 2009

Saturday, the robotics people at Hopkins organized a "Robofest" - lots of young kids from neighboring highschools came in and competed in several different robotics tasks... like finding dark spots or navigating a slalom course.



As usual, larger pictures after the click (on the slideshow above).

Baltimore in Spring

Obama Was Here!

Today was a big day in Baltimore's history: Obama passed through the city on his train "Whistle Stop Tour" to Washington DC for the inauguration on Jan 20. Maybe this was not one of the greatest days Balto has ever seen (I don't know enough of its history yet), but definitely a major thing.



Obama obviously copied a travel that before him another president-elect had undertaken - Abraham Lincoln, commonly seen as one of the greatest presidents of the U.S., and who guided the country through one of its greatest challenges, the Civil War. Obama alluded to great difficulties ahead as well, talking of the economy in blood-sweat-and-tears terms.





He obviously drew a huge crowd (Maryland having been one of his staunchest supporters in the elections), the anticipation of which had driven mayor Sheila Dixon (a black woman, in a city of around 2/3 blacks) to instate road closures across a large part of downtown. Instead of opening the streets up to people completely, they were instead partitioned into go- and no-go-streets, and then in turn cascaded into a kind of gigantic rat maze that the visitors had to pass through, circumnavigating the same blocks over and over from different sides, completely uselessly and annoyingly. Obama's speech (as well as MLK III's and the (probably) governor's before) were transmitted on big screens across downtown.