My buddy Rik comments on his web site about the cherry blossoms at UN Park, and how no one is allowed to see them.

NYC, DC, two sides of the same coin. Another friend was here in DC a few weeks ago for a security briefing, and her meetings at the Pentagon were cancelled. Seems that some Ph.D. students who were Not From Here were too dangerous to be allowed in, and so the whole venue had to be moved and several briefings cancelled.

But hey, if the armed services want to say that they need to keep their 23,000 troops with heavy weaponry and metal detectors safe from Chinese academics, that’s fine with me. It seems a little silly, but I can buy not letting some people into your military HQ.

What gets me are the Men in Public with Large Guns. Like the SWAT teams that now make regular patrols on Capitol Hill with automatic rifles. Or the cop on the Metro the other day guarding the Money Train, who stepped out on the platform and held up his shotgun in a classic “Arnold Schwarzenegger at the motel window in T2” pose.

I probably have 5,000 words on this topic, so more later.