Briefly noted, Thursday;

MPD Chief Cathy Lanier has a lot on her hands. A shooting in Columbia Heights, and a murder and stabbing in Bloomingdale. As noted last night, sources at MPD made known the victims were apparently transgendered. Today, ABC7 reports the names of the victims. ABC7 cites "sources close to the investigation" for the gender identification information. Some say the media should be blamed for reporting the information, but reporters will run with what the police tell them. A whole lot of confusion and violations of privacy resulted. Shame on MPD, and to a certain extent shame on the media. The Sexist at the City Paper has a bit more.

105.9FM switches format to "Classic Rock for Men," only those with Y chromosomes can hear signal. Gone is the "True Oldies" station, now replaced by "The Edge." Coming soon, play-by-play wedding broadcasts by Washington Post Radio, to be called "Sports Talk Radio for Women." Radio in DC has been poor since HFS went off the air, and I also remember listening to sappy "adult alternative" as played by Haber and Erin. Anyone remember that?

Fire department higher-ups like parking in front of fire hydrants? City Paper's Mike DeBonis writes about fire department brass parking their squad cars in front of a fire hydrant near the U Street Metro. The photo really is worth a thousand words, but there's also a couple hundred in the article.

Gotta name something after Ted Kennedy. Slate suggests federal buildings, let's beat them to the punch. Revoking Regan's name from the airport seems unlikely, and if DCA still exists in 40 years it'll likely be renamed for Obama anyway. So what will we name after Ted? Obvious answer, move the Redskins back to DC and build them a dome at the RFK site. Call it the Edward and Robert Kennedy Memorial Dome. Actually, no, let's not give Fenty any ideas.

Metro ridership is still trending down for August, I'll have a full analysis at the end of the month. Again it is unclear what role the 6/22 accident plays into this decline. WMATA does occasionally make a good point, which is that ridership will of course be down when they are unable to provide full service (as was the case in July). In other moderately-related WMATA news, for some reason Unsuck DC Metro has decided to block me on Twitter. Stay classy, whoever you are.