I've has had a busy shoot schedule for the last couple days. Yesterday Emily and I did a two camera switched shoot for Rand Corporation. The event was held at the new visitor center of the US Capital, a beautiful facility which is well suited for these type of policy meetings. Plus they always serve delicious cookies. Immediately after that shoot, Malcolm and I walked over to the Heritage Foundation and shot an interview for Newsmax with former Attorney General Ed Meese.

Today I was at the National Press Club shooting a story on Diarrheal Disease for the South African Broadcasting Corporation. They also served nice food, but the topic sort of killed my appetite. I got back to the office just in time to leave again for our first two camera interview for Newsmax. The interview subject was Senator Kit Bond of Missouri. It was held in his office conference room. It is always easier to shoot interviews with people in the Senate rather than the House of Representatives, because they generally have much larger offices. You can check out the interview on the Newsmax website in the next couple days.

Saturday was the White House Correspondents dinner. Emily and I attended a brunch for the Washington big-wigs at Tammy Haddad's house. Most of the people there were from the news networks, but there were some Hollywood types there too like Val Kilmer and Christian Slater.

We arrived at the hotel where the Correspondents dinner was being held in the late afternoon and claimed our spots along the red carpet. Murry (our freelance cameraman friend) was shooting on one end and I was on the other. We hired Kat for the evening and got her to conduct the celebrity interviews. Before anyone even arrived, the photographers were trying to push their way in. There were a few photographers who showed up late and tried to squeeze into a spot up front. Those of us who were there early to claim our spots weren't having any of it. Some of them got pretty mouthy with me, claiming that I was taking up too much room with my tripod. I just said, "too bad, in this business you have to be on time." The guy next to us was from Extra, and he seemed to be personal friends with all of the celebrities. Kat just stood next to him and stuck her microphone near whoever was there. I will try to list the people we spoke to and hopefully I wont forget too many: Louis Gossett Jr., Barbra Walters, Woopie Goldberg, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Christian Slater, Samuel L Jackson, Wanda Sykes, Denis Leary, Jon Hamm, Mayor Villaraigosa, Alicia Keys, Carrol King, Ludacris, Rick Schroder, Al Sharpton, Clinton Portis, and Richard Belzer.

Last night I was really angry with someone in my dream. Emily had to wake me up when I started punching her. This morning, I let the dogs out. It was raining, so I grabbed an umbrella from my porch. When I opened it, a dead bird fell out and hit me on the head.

Monday, Emily and I did a multi-camera shoot for The Week magazine. The event was their 6th Annual Opinion Awards. All of the usual Washington political pundits and media types were there. Emily, Kate and I were at the office until 6:00 am editing the videos.

Does anyone else find this whole global warming debate a bit misguided? It's not the Earth that we should be worried about. It has been here for billions of years. The climate has and will always be changing, regardless of our involvement.

The Human Race is the one we should be worried about. We need to drop this biblical notion of mankind being dropped into a world ideally suited to our survival, which is only changing as a result of our behavior. The real question is how to adapt to the planet. I doubt that even the most dire predictions about global warming will have much effect on our ability to survive. At most, it may impact the number of humans the Earth can sustain.

We should instead be worried about actual threats to our survival. In that regard, we are our worst enemy. Man's quest for dominance over other men will kill more people than global warming ever could. But, I guess it is much easier to build a windmill or recycle a can than to look within ourselves to the root of the problem.

Oh, and we should probably worry about diseases too.

Emily and I have been really busy lately. It's good though. We get bored easily. This week is the Spring meetings for the IMF / World Bank. These things are getting old very quickly. They meet twice a year and it's always the same thing. Yesterday I attended the Sub-Saharan Africa forum. I could have conducted the meeting myself. "Africa has been affected by the global economic slowdown. The continent as a whole will experience negative growth this year. Blah blah blah." And I'm sick of hearing economists use ridiculous phrases like "negative growth".

I have to head down to the IMF early tomorrow morning to shoot an interview with the South African finance minister. It always takes awhile to arrange for these high profile interviews, which will probably mean that I will be waiting around for a long time. Luckily, the meetings are the only time I can get good shots of the World Bank and IMF buildings without being shooed away by security. So that should give me something to do.

This is such a fascinating time we live in. The pace of technological innovation is faster than it has ever been, thanks in part to electricity, computers and the internet. It is amazing how quickly our lives are changing. I was just reading about new hard-drive technology and wondering when it would be available for use in video cameras. Even now, most professional video cameras are moving from tape to flash based memory cards. One day I will be telling young videographers about how I use to shoot on tape. It makes me feel old just thinking about it.

I spent the morning at the South African embassy in Washington DC filming ex-pats voting in their national election. There was a steady stream of voters, despite the fact that it is cold and rainy here. The photo is of ambassador Welile Nhlapo casting his ballot.

FSN has a new blog. There are some pictures of Emily and I, as well as a link to the video we did for Rand a couple days ago. Yes, I will be duplicating posts to both blogs, so don't give me crap when you read the same post twice.

Emily has been editing the India pieces for Newshour all week. I helped finish the last one, which will air today.

Here are the first three: Four Months On, Slum Rehabilitation, and Two Indias. Click on "Streaming Video" to watch them.

In other news, we finally got another offer on our house in Orlando! It is great timing too, because our tenants will be moving out May 31st and the buyers want to close around that time. Unfortunately the house is worth so much less than our mortgage, that we have to do a short sale. It will affect our credit, but not like a foreclosure. The buyers are certainly choosing the right time to buy. If only we had such foresight.

About President Bashir of Sudan being indicted by the International Criminal Court... Most people I have spoken to, both here and in Sudan, think the ICC decision was long overdue. Bashir has sanctioned and even supported the atrocities in Darfur. It is widely assumed that his government supplied arms to the Janjaweed militias. As a result of the ICC, Bashir has kicked all international aid organizations out of Sudan.

We have seen the Sudanese people protesting the ICC's decision and their position is hard for many of us to understand. Don't they know what is happening in Darfur? Today I got a very different perspective from one of my Sudanese friends. She was trained as a doctor and recently opened her own medical clinic in Khartoum.

She writes, "The crisis is not just in the states its double here in Sudan with the international financial crisis & the ICC. Work in the clinic is not fine. The number of patient shrunk because of the ICC & no one is talking about this in the media. The number of sales in the pharmaceutical companies is also decreasing. I am looking for another job beside the clinic & trying to leave Sudan as soon as possible! Something I want to say to you is that people in Sudan hate the Americans now because of the ICC & what happened in Palestine. But for me you are still my best American Jewish friend & I think is one of the last bright points in me now. I still can judge people according to their behavior not from their skin color, nation or religion & I'll love you whatever they are saying about Jews & how much that they are bad, because I know you are good person."

Friday I got stuck at the White House for a good part of the day. I was there to film the daily press briefing, because Priscilla was hoping to get a question in about Roxana Saberi. We cleared it ahead of time, but they gave me some crap about where to setup the camera. I ended up being stuck in the far back corner against the wall. And after standing there for an hour trying to shoot over some lady's shoulder, Priscilla didn't even get to ask the question. After the briefing, Mayor Bloomberg, Gov. Rendell and Gov. Schwarzenegger were giving a press conference after meeting with Obama. I got there just in time to set up my tripod next to a big thorny bush, which I then stood in while they answered questions.

Yesterday I covered a protest organized by Answer Coalition. As with any of these protests, the participants seemed to average one shower a year. It was a fairly typical event - speeches and a march. The march, however, went on forever! They started near the Lincoln Monument and went all the way past the Pentagon to Crystal City Virginia! Manalisi and I were exhausted when we finally got back to the office.

I did a two camera interview with Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (the South African equivalent of Hillary Clinton). The interview was originally scheduled for 4:00, but I got a call at 3:00 to get to her hotel right away. Priscilla, Mima and I quickly set up the lights and cameras. She walked in just as we were finishing. There was no time to check the shots or the audio; luckily everything looked good. The interview itself was incredibly boring, but at least it looked good. So that's all I care about.

Yesterday, Emily and Kate shot an interview with the President of Palau. The secret service didn't know that it was a video interview, so they had to wait half an hour for the bomb sniffing dog. Emily said that the president was very friendly and even stood around afterward to watch the recording of the interview.

I did a couple shoots on Capital Hill this week, including the meeting between John Kerry, Dick Lugar and Ban Ki-Moon. I shot a quick photo-spray (where you go into the meeting room and shoot a few seconds of video) before the meeting, then had to wait an hour for them to make statements afterward.

Yesterday Larry Summers spoke at Brookings. I always like shooting there, because they serve nice pastries and coffee. I got there 45 minutes before his speech and the whole back of the room was jammed with cameras. By the time everyone arrived for the speech, it was standing room only. Luckily I got the last available spot on the first row of cameras. My tripod is too short to go on the back row. The speech was boring, but at least it was much more comprehensible than when Bernanke speaks.

I had a pretty busy week. Manelisi (the SABC correspondent) did at least seven stories this week. Yesterday I had a shoot in the Rayburn building on Capital Hill and Ron Paul was there to liven things up. James Baker, Warren Christopher and someone who I didn't recognize were there to propose changes to the way the president interacts with congress when deciding to go to war. Ron Paul clearly disagreed with their proposal and he engaged James Baker in a heated debate.

Emily and I have a new intern named Mima. She came with us to the political conventions, so we know she is a good worker. We convinced her to go to Sudan and join SVP after her school semester ends. Now her parents, who are friends with Simon, are asking him about us and trying to find out how these crazy people convinced her to go to Africa. They are clearly not pleased with us.

I've been studying my chess books and playing games against my computer, but I have not improved much. I found out that the US Chess Center is a couple blocks from my office and they hold tournaments regularly. I'm going to play there when I have some time.

I'm working late tonight covering the Obama speech. Earlier I was at the State Department waiting for Hillary Clinton and the Pakistani foreign minister to make a statement after their meeting. They were 45 minutes late for the press briefing, which is really annoying when the whole thing lasts 3 minutes.

They let the still photographers crouch in front of the videographers. There were a couple journalists who were obviously not still photographers, but happened to have little cameras, so they were allowed upfront. Unfortunately they were not keen on the idea of sitting. The CNN cameraman and I told them repeatedly to sit down and stay down until Clinton has left the room. They finally sat down a couple minutes before the briefing, but jumped up as she was leaving the room, ruining the walk-out shot. Why are people so obnoxious?

I tried to make a nice Valentines day dinner for Emily and I, but failed miserably. The sauce was suppose to be a vinegar reduction to go on the steak, but the sugar caramelized and it turned into a hard, sticky mess. The worst part is that it didn't harden until I got it onto the steak. It stuck to the plates and silverware like vinegar flavored hard candy. We had to throw out the pot I made it in. The potatoes were good and the steak was good, but I didn't know that you are suppose to cut the ends off fresh green beans. Emily had to cut the ends off each one before eating them. I made bought chocolate covered strawberries for dessert. They were good, but the chocolate didn't stay on. We had to eat a bite of strawberry then a bite of chocolate. Even that was hard, because the chocolate flaked off all over us.

My poor, sweet sugar glider Morty died last night. He seemed fine yesterday, but today he was just laying at the bottom of his cage holding onto the bars. I picked him up and tried to feed him, but he was very lethargic and didn't want to eat. Emily and I brought him to the vet last night. They put him on oxygen and tried to figure out what was wrong. But about an hour after we got to the vet, he passed away. He was the nicest little guy and we will miss him.

We finally had the family Hanukkah party last night. Yes I know, Hanukkah was two months ago. It was held at the Hantman's house and all the usual people were in attendance. After dinner we played Taboo. Grandma Mitzi caught on quickly and became the hero for our team.

Yesterday I was shooting a briefing about the US arms deal with Israel. It was in one of the Congressional office buildings. A few minutes after the briefing started a tall, young, red-headed woman walked in. I thought, she looks like Dennis Kusinich's wife. Sure enough, following behind her was Dennis Kusinich. Would I have ever recognized any other member of congress' wife? Of course not. I'm a big fan of Mr. Kusinich's stance on the Israel / Palestine issue, so I'm glad he showed up to speak. It was pretty tacky, and I usually don't do this, but I couldn't stop myself from shaking his hand and complimenting him on the work that he does.