A few things around town

— A six-year-old girl was killed in a hit and run on 6th Street NE just below Florida Ave near Gallaudet yesterday as her mother watched from their front stoop. According to the story, she wasn't in the crosswalk when she got hit by a green Toyota 4-Runner with tinted windows and Maryland plates. Just terrible...

I do think it's interesting that the victim's brother concludes that it was a man when he tells the chicken-shit driver to "be a man." I wonder what the gender break-down is on people convicted of hit-and-run.

— The ever lovable Tai Shan will be here at least two more years, after National Zoo officials were able to reach an agreement with the Chinese Government, which apparently loves Pandas almost as much as censoring the internet and squelching freedoms.

— Lastly, don't miss Rob Goodspeed's comparison of Mt. Vernon Square here in DC with its counterpart in Baltimore. In one of his planning classes at UMD, he compared the qualities of urbanism between the two while trying to explain why filmmakers chose Baltimore to stand in for D.C. The reasons likely have everything to do with buildings doing a poor job of framing the streetscape, the design of the convention center, an underused (BEE-U-tiful) civic building which is at the terminus of a closed street that no one walks on, and a massive agglomeration of negative space with no rhyme or reason. Learn yo'self something about some basic principles of good urban design and check out this post.