Zagat's 8 Must-Try Cheap Eats in D.C.

1.  Amsterdam Falafelshop
2.  Cava Mezze Grill
3.  El Pollo Rico
4.  Five Guys
5.  Shake Shack
6.  Sweetgreen
7.  Taqueria Distrito Federal
8.  Taylor Gourmet

What I’ve learned since moving to D.C. (some of which should be obvious): 0033

1601.  Pay the cost to be the boss;

1602.  Remember the sun burns out in 3 billion years and none of this is going to matter; you might as well go for what you want;

1603.  Your actions and behaviors are manifested from the thoughts you host most often.  If you think a group of thoughts enough times with enough emotional intensity, they eventually become beliefs.  Once these beliefs are hardwired, all of your actions will be filtered through this belief system.  A strong belief system will lead to strong action and a long-term proactive outcome.  Weak belief systems will result in weak or non-action and low self-esteem, and restrict you from achieving your goals;

1604.  Sadly, it’s easy to take on weak belief systems and harmful mindsets.  Due to the fact that most of these mindsets and beliefs are picked up from the combination of modeling others and from our own positive or negative reference experiences, we often pick up mindsets that don’t serve us;

1605.  Your freedom lies in your ability to take control of your thoughts and engineer beliefs and mindsets that serve you.  Don’t be a slave to old mindsets and beliefs you accidentally absorb from those around you;

1606.  Compete only with yourself;

1607.  Set realistic goals.  Always have a list of small goals leading to your bigger long term goals.  These small goals will help you create momentum;

1608.  Competence builds confidence.  Remember that confidence is your mental capacity to rise above a mistake in that situation;

1609.  Be willing to try new things – push your comfort zones – that’s the only way you evolve;

1610.  Become self-correcting, but not self-punishing;

1611.  The Jack Rose Dining Saloon is only a few blocks away from Rosemary’s Thyme Bistro . . . and Adams Morgan is only a few blocks away from the Jack Rose Dining Saloon;

1612.  Even the sun sets in paradise;

1613.  The people in Cumberland, Maryland, are really nice;

1614.  I can say I’ve been off-roading;

1615.  There aren’t a lot of Asian, Persian or (for that matter) black hippies;

1616.  Hippies are pretty friendly;

1617.  When you go camping, remember to bring toilet paper;

1618.  People ride ATVs (i.e., all-terrain vehicles) instead of motorcycles in West Virginia;

1619.  (Some) hippies do like sports;

1620.  (Young) hippie girls are fit and thin (even though they drink like fish);

1621.  Hippies aren’t on their phones (i.e., taking pictures, texting, recording videos, etc.) during concerts;

1622.  (Some) hippies do have “real” jobs and careers;

1623.  It's probably not a good idea to take a swig from an opened bottle from a (total) stranger . . . especially from a hippie;

1624.  There is such a thing as hippie electronica;

1625.  Sleeping on the ground isn’t so bad with a sleeping pad;

1626.  It's amazing how (simply) brushing your teeth can make you feel so much better;

1627.  There’s a hard way to get to the Sunshine Daydream Memorial Park in Terra Alta, West Virginia, and then there’s the easy way;

1628.  Apparently, there’s “commercial grade” diesel fuel;

1629.  If there’s a wad of chewing tobacco lying next to a gas pump, you might be in West Virginia;

1630.  There are a lot of “Liberty” gas stations in West Virginia;

1631.  You’ve got a better chance at winning (concert and/or movie) tickets and other prizes from DC101 at one of their events than you do calling or entering online;

1632.  During the summer, Pentagon Row in Pentagon City, Virginia, hosts a free concert series (PentagonRow.com/Events) out on the plaza on Thursday nights;

1633.  District of Pi (Pi-DC.com) in D.C. has deep-dish pizza that isn’t swimming in grease;

1634.  Attraction is a feeling that manifests as a result of the emotional state the other person puts us in;

1635.  People buy for emotional reasons and backwards rationalize their purchase with logical reasons;

1636.  The Ritz-Carlton in D.C. (by Foggy Bottom) is really nice;

1637.  Cornmeal cookies are like shortbread cookies;

1638.  After regaining power, (most) HVAC (i.e., heating, ventilation and air condition) units wait (at least) five minutes before continuing to heat or cool. . . . It’s to protect against power surges damaging the unit;

1639.  (Most) HVAC technicians are paid (at least partially) on (sales) commission;

1640.  ALDI (ALDI.us) is really cheap;

1641.  Some hippies will tour ten months out of the year;

1642.  You should break up bagged ice before ripping open the bag;

1643.  The members of “DELTAnine” (and their friends) are pretty good camping neighbors;

1644.  “Molly” tastes awful;

1645.  When you go camping, remember to bring a jacket. . . . It gets cold at night;

1646.  Being the only person awake while camping on a cold, rainy day without anything to read or listen to is really boring;

1647.  Every Thursday, Lucky Bar (in D.C.) has baskets of fish and chips, cheeseburgers and fries and chicken tenders and fries for $5.75;

1648.  It’s okay to be scared; when taking on something new being a little scared is natural and can inspire you to prepare well and do your best.  It’s fear that we have to watch out for.  Fear is paralyzing and stops you from taking chances in life;

1649.  As a rule, the strongest frame in an interaction wins;

1650.  The Yards Park (YardsPark.org) in D.C. has a little something for everyone.  For the adults, it’s a great place for a picnic.  For the kids, they can run around and play in the water features.  And, for man’s best friend, there’s even a dog park;

What I’ve learned since moving to D.C. (some of which should be obvious): 0032

1551.  Weak men lie to get what they want.  Strong men are honest about their desires;

1552.  A drink “straight up” means that it’s been chilled, strained and served in a stemmed glass (without ice). . . . A drink “neat” means that it’s unmixed liquor served without being chilled and without adding water, ice or any other mixer;

1553.  Experience and willingness to learn breed perspective;

1554.  Rush hour traffic in D.C. starts before 4 o’clock in the afternoon;

1555.  “Toad the Wet Sprocket” can now say they’ve played at a(n outdoor) shopping mall;

1556.  Most people’s social lives can be mapped to a series of concentric circles.  There’s an innermost “core” of one or two close friends.  Then, there’s an inner core of another 3-5 people and an outer core of another 5-15 people.  These aren’t arbitrary numbers – this is how the human mind subconsciously qualifies social relationships.  The people in these cores comprise the people who most influence your life.  It has been said that “You are the average of the five people that you hang around the most.”  This is partially true, but it is more accurate to say that most people are influenced by up to fifteen people at a time, as different relationships ebb and flow in intensity;

1557.  Alexandria’s Food & Wine Festival (AlexandriaFoodAndWine.com) is in June . . . and so is the Del Ray Music Festival (DelRayMusicFestival.com);

1558.  You can't really know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been;

1559.  Life is full of rules and you have to play within them.  But once you know the rules and accept them, they can be bent to great effect;

1560.  The optimal state of affairs is not to feel like you have to be the sole dominant male in every group that you are a part of and to “out-alpha” all the other males.  The optimal state of affairs is to be considered among the “leadership of men” in the groups that you are part of;

1561.  People align to value.  Value or perceived value augments almost all human social behavior;

1562.  By being the connector and by having the perception of the opportunity to add value (even if only perceived value), you are far more likely to be considered amongst the leadership of men;

1563.  When you bet somebody a dollar to steal a cupcake from a bachelorette party, make sure that that person knows the cupcake’s for you and not him/her;

1564.  (Stretched) Hummer limousines are terrible on (steep) inclines;

1565.  Even though the human sex drive is actually highest in the afternoon, most people are culturally attuned to associate sex with nighttime;

1566.  Don’t count the days, make the days count;

1567.  You might spot Mike Isabella (i.e., former contestant on “Top Chef”) at his restaurant, Bandolero (BandoleroDC.com), in D.C., but be (fore)warned, on Mondays, it doesn’t open until 4 (o’clock in the afternoon) and it doesn’t serve food until 5;

1568.  The grilled salmon B.L.T. (with tomato jam, bacon vinaigrette and smoked pepper chips) at Rustico Restaurant & Bar is pretty tasty;

1569.  People will make judgments about you based on your friends and how you interact with them;

1570.  Watch out for molesters at rooftop barbeques;

1571.  (Some) flies do bite;

1572.  The Chesapeake Bay seafood stew (i.e., clams, mussels, oysters, shrimp, crab, tomato-saffron broth, Old Bay aioli and croutons) at the Majestic (formerly the Majestic Café) in (Old Town) Alexandria is really tasty;

1573.  For lunch on weekdays, the Majestic has the “Royal Pick” (from 11:30 AM to 2:30 PM).  You get an entrée and an iced tea or soda for $12.00, but only at the bar;

1574.  You increase your chances for a heart attack when you run in hot weather.  The heat and humidity make you sweat more, which in turn dehydrates you faster.  The dehydration reduces your volume of blood.  With less blood, your heart has to pump harder to circulate the blood you do have, which can induce a heart attack;

1575.  If you like French pastries, you should go to PAUL (Maison de Qualité) (Paul-USA.com) in D.C.  Their desserts are phenomenal;

1576.  What do you get when you run into the fountain at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden?  The answer is: An angry security guard;

1577.  I can say I’ve been water boarded at “Jazz in the Garden;”

1578.  Women are looking to share their lives with a man.  It’s not particularly compelling for a woman to share her life with a man when she is the most interesting thing going on in it;

1579.  You don’t get extra time at the end to enjoy your life just because you were late getting started;

1580.  There are a lot of foreign nationals at a Coldplay concert;

1581.  You waste a lot of your life by trying to make people like you;

1582.  Who do you call when luggage is left in front of a federal courthouse and the bomb squad’s not around?  The answer is: A homeless man;

1583.  July 11^th is free (7.11 oz.) Slurpee day at 7-Eleven (from 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM);

1584.  The Brazilian men’s Olympic basketball team can (really) play (some) ball;

1585.  Barack and Michelle (Obama) aren’t fans of the “Kiss Cam” (at the Verizon Center) . . . at least not initially;

1586.  London is the largest city in Europe with a population of twelve million people;

1587.  If you like piano bars, go to Mr. Smith’s (MrSmiths.com) in D.C.  It’s a sing-a-long piano bar.  Performances are from 9 o’clock in the evening until last call Sunday through Tuesday nights, from 9 o’clock in the evening until after midnight on Wednesday and Thursday nights and from 10 o’clock in the evening until after midnight on Friday and Saturday nights . . . and there’s no cover (charge);

1588.  To create more (office) space for coordinating the war effort during World War II, the U.S. Patent (& Trademark) Office was moved from (the Commerce Building in) D.C. to (the old Export Leaf Tobacco Co. warehouse at 900 North Lombardy Street in) Richmond, Virginia;

1589.  Don’t believe her/him when your server says s/he can’t split the check.  S/he can, s/he just doesn’t want to;

1590.  Apparently, I look like I’m married;

1591.  Everything I say is right.  Everything is going according to plan;

1592.  A(dding a) little (dried) oregano on frozen (and/or reheated) pizza, gives it a nice little (flavor) boost;

1593.  Repetition is the key to mastery;

1594.  The more times you do something, the easier it becomes and the less you have to ‘consciously’ think about it.  This hardwiring process is called “long term potentiation.”  Short term potentiation is obviously the opposite.  It is when you do something so few times or with so much distance between the repetitions that the brain decides it must not be important and decides it must not be worth hardwiring;

1595.  Nothing in life means anything until you decide to apply a meaning to an event;

1596.  Rejection means nothing.  It’s simply feedback telling you to try a slightly different approach next time.  Have a 3 second memory only lasting long enough to learn whatever lesson might help you correct your course for the future;

1597.  You must set numerous small goals on the road toward your larger goals;

1598.  In order to change the world, you have to change yourself first;

1599.  Do what you’ve always done and you will get what you’ve always gotten.  If you want something different, then it’s time to change and try something different.  As humans, change (which is essentially jumping out of our comfort zones) feels weird.  You’ll hate it, and people will react differently to you.  But that’s okay; just accept that and realize it will feel weird for a while.  Once you are comfortable with this, it makes the learning process ten times smoother.  So unless you’re happy with what you’re always getting, you have to make a change, and you have to become comfortable with it feeling uncomfortable at times;

1600.  Rejection isn’t a great feeling, but it’s what you relate rejection to and how you handle it that really matters;

What I’ve learned since moving to D.C. (some of which should be obvious): 0031

1501.  Of all of Hofstede’s Dimensions, though, perhaps the most interesting is what he called the “Power Distance Index” (PDI).  Power distance is concerned with attitudes toward hierarchy, specifically with how much a particular culture values and respects authority;

1502.  The Korean language has no fewer than six different levels of conversational address, depending on the relationship between the addressee and the addresser: formal deference, informal deference, blunt, familiar, intimate, and plain;

1503.  Western communication has what linguists call a “transmitter orientation” – that is, it is considered the responsibility of the speaker to communicate ideas clearly and unambiguously.  But Korea, like many Asian countries, is receiver oriented.  It is up to the listener to make sense of what is being said;

1504.  If you forget your contact lens case, a(n empty) shot glass is a decent substitute;

1505.  It’s not a good idea to go hiking in sandals.  But if you do, you should probably wear socks;

1506.  As human beings we store digits in a memory loop that runs for about two seconds.  We most easily memorize whatever we can say or read within that two-second span;

1507.  Playboy Playmates (i.e., Crystal Harris) are undoubtedly attractive in person, but they don’t look like their pictorials . . . hair and makeup, lighting and camera angles (and, most likely, photo manipulation) definitely make a difference;

1508.  Working in a rice field is ten to twenty times more labor-intensive than working on an equivalent-size corn or wheat field.  Some estimates put the annual workload of a wet-rice farmer in Asia at three thousand hours a year;

1509.  What redeemed the life of a rice farmer was the nature of that work.  It was meaningful.  First of all, there is a clear relationship in rice farming between effort and reward.  The harder you work a rice field, the more it yields.  Second, it’s complex work.  The rice farmer isn’t simply planting in the spring and harvesting in the fall.  He or she effectively runs a small business, juggling a family workforce, hedging uncertainty through seed selection, building and managing a sophisticated irrigation system, and coordinating the complicated process of harvesting the first crop while simultaneously preparing the second crop.  And, most of all, it’s autonomous.  The peasants of Europe worked essentially as low-paid slaves of an aristocratic landlord, with little control over their own destinies.  But China and Japan never developed that kind of oppressive feudal system, because feudalism simply can’t work in a rice economy.  Growing rice is too complicated and intricate for a system that requires farmers to be coerced and bullied into going out into the fields each morning.  By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, landlords in central and Southern China had an almost completely hands-off relationship with their tenants: they would collect a fixed rent and let farmers go about their business;

1510.  The Fisker “Karma” (plug-in hybrid sports sedan) looks like the lovechild of an Aston Martin (DB9) and a BMW (Z4);

1511.  We sometimes think of being good at mathematics as an innate ability.  You either have “it” or you don’t.  It’s not so much ability as attitude.  You master mathematics if you are willing to try.  Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds;

1512.  Every four years, an international group of educators administers a comprehensive mathematics and science test to elementary and junior high students around the world.  It’s the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and the point of the TIMSS is to compare the educational achievement of one country with another’s.  When students sit down to take the TIMSS exam, they also have to fill out a questionnaire.  It asks them all kinds of things, such as what their parents’ level of education is, and what their views about math are, and what their friends are like.  It’s not a trivial exercise.  It’s about 120 questions long.  In fact, it is so tedious and demanding that many students leave as many as ten or twenty questions blank.  As it turns out, the average number of items answered on that questionnaire varies from country to country.  It is possible, in fact, to rank all the participating countries according to how many items their students answer on the questionnaire.  Now, what do you think happens if you compare the questionnaire rankings with the math rankings on the TIMSS?  They are exactly the same.  In other words, countries whose students are willing to concentrate and sit still long enough and focus on answering every single question in an endless questionnaire are the same countries whose students do the best job of solving math problems;

1513.  The psychologist James Flynn points out that the overwhelming majority of Chinese immigrants to the West – the people who have done so well in math here – are from South China.  The Chinese students graduating at the top of their class at MIT are the descendants, chiefly, of people from the Pearl River Delta (i.e., rice farmers).  He also points out that the lowest-achieving Chinese Americans are the so-called Sze Yap people, who come from the edges of the Delta, “where soil was less fertile and agriculture less intense;”

1514.  There is actually a significant scientific literature measuring Asian “persistence.”  In a typical study, Priscilla Blinco gave large groups of Japanese and American first graders a very difficult puzzle and measured how long they worked at it before they gave up.  The American children lasted, on average, 9.47 minutes.  The Japanese children lasted 13.93 minutes, roughly 40 percent longer;

1515.  Brian Marshall’s (the bassist for “Creed”) birthday is on April 24^th;

1516.  In the Pearl River Delta, the rice farmer planted two and sometimes three crops a year.  The land was fallow only briefly.  In fact, one of the singular features of rice cultivation is that because of the nutrients carried by the water used in irrigation, the more a plot of land is cultivated, the more fertile it gets.  But in Western agriculture, the opposite is true.  Unless a wheat- or cornfield is left fallow every few years, the soil becomes exhausted.  Every winter, fields are empty.  The hard labor of spring planting and fall harvesting is followed, like clockwork, by the slower pace of summer and winter.  This is the logic applied to the cultivation of young minds.  A mind must be cultivated.  But not too much, lest it be exhausted.  And what was the remedy for the dangers of exhaustion?  The long summer vacation – a peculiar and distinctive American legacy that has had profound consequences for the learning patterns of the students of the present day;

1517.  When it comes to reading skills, poor kids learn nothing when school is not in session.  Virtually all of the advantage that wealthy students have over poor students is the result of differences in the way privileged kids learn while they are not in school;

1518.  The way in which education has been discussed in the United States is backwards.  An enormous amount of time is spent talking about reducing class size, rewriting curricula, buying every student a shiny new laptop, and increasing school funding – all of which assumes that there is something fundamentally wrong with the job schools are doing.  Schools work.  The only problem with school, for kids who aren’t achieving, is that there isn’t enough of it;

1519.  Fennel tastes like licorice;

1520.  Robbie thinks wax figures are creepy;

1521.  Panna cotta is kind of like custard;

1522.  When you’re out, you can get free stuff (or discounts) just for “checking in” on foursquare (foursquare.com);

1523.  It’s kind of nice getting a free (alcoholic) drink when you get your measurements taken (e.g., at Alton Lane);

1524.  Every Tuesday, Lucky Bar (LuckyBarDC.com) in D.C. has $.25 wings from 5 o’clock to 11 o’clock (with a minimum order of ten);

1525.  Any vehicle maintenance outside of what’s specified in the owner’s manual is unnecessary;

1526.  Any (vehicle) fluid flush is more than just emptying the reservoir.  It means draining and refilling the lines as well;

1527.  On game days, the (Washington) Nationals have 400 (or so) $5.00 grandstand tickets.  They’re only available at the box office and ticket sales start between 2 and 2-½ hours before the game.  For a seven o’clock game, they’ll probably sell out around 5:30;

1528.  American University is just down the street (i.e., Massachusetts Avenue) from the (Washington) National Cathedral;

1529.  The Embassy of Brunei would make a great place for a (wedding) reception;

1530.  Wax figures are kind of creepy;

1531.  We grow up and form a certain view of our parents.  It’s interesting to meet their friends and coworkers and listen to their stories about them.  You might see another side of your parents you haven’t known before;

1532.  (Caffeine free) Diet Coke, two years after the best use by date, doesn’t taste anything like it should.  It’s watered down and tastes more chemically;

1533.  A strange thing about life is that ambition and satisfaction are at war.  If you’re ambitious, you aren’t satisfied and if you’re satisfied, you aren’t ambitious.  Most of us are plagued by ambition;

1534.  The optimal way to influence the emotions, moods and feelings of others is to change your own emotions, moods and feelings instead of trying to make them feel a certain way consciously.  If you change your own feelings first, then the other person’s mirror neurons will cause that person that you are interacting with to feel what you are feeling, without them consciously knowing that their state just changed;

1535.  You have a sense of when you are emotionally overreaching when it feels as if your actions are being based on, or influenced by, your desire to cause a response in the other person rather than by the way that you feel, your mood or your intent;

1536.  The good thing about having an education is that it'll be a lifelong consolation to you.  It'll be a pleasure every day of your life.  Because of it, you'll be more aware.  You'll be more interested in things.  It isn't what an education does for you that makes getting one worthwhile.  It's having one.  Being educated is an end in itself, and it sets you apart from most of the people on the planet;

1537.  After sampling five different Scotches, your taste buds are pretty much blown;

1538.  Every Wednesday, Lucky Bar (in D.C.) has ½ off burgers (including turkey and veggie);

1539.  No person was ever honored for what s/he received.  Honor has been the reward for what s/he gave;

1540.  On Monday and Tuesday nights, you can get two entrées and a bottle of wine for $28.99 or one entrée and a glass of (house) wine for $14.50 at Laporta’s Restaurant in (Old Town) Alexandria;

1541.  The “Dewar’s 12 Clubhouse” (at the Verizon Center) is rather spartan;

1542.  The Italian “commedians” were the first professional acting troupes and they were also the first to employ women;

1543.  If the (ice) hockey career doesn’t work out for him, John Carlson (of the Washington Capitals) could make a living cleaning (hockey) helmets;

1544.  During “Museum Walk Weekend,” you can visit the member museums of the “Dupont Kalorama Museums Consortium” (DKMuseums.com) for free. . . . It’s in early June;

1545.  Woodrow Wilson is the only president to live in D.C. after his presidency;

1546.  The NoMa-Gallaudet U Metrorail station is just the New York Ave-Florida Ave-Gallaudet U stop;

1547.  Robbie likes pinot noir . . . and the zoo;

1548.  Campari and soda isn’t bad . . . as long as you don’t mind bitters;

1549.  People can look quite a bit older after losing a lot of weight.  Their features can sink in without fat to fill them out and the excess skin can dangle loosely;

1550.  Honesty is not having to remember what you’ve said;

What I’ve learned since moving to D.C. (some of which should be obvious): 0030

1451.  Flowering cabbage are creepy;

1452.  You can have your fortune read using the marks left on your cup by the (coffee) grounds in your Turkish coffee;

1453.  You can project movies onto the façade of the Hirshhorn Museum in D.C.;

1454.  Time and again a person is reminded that the hardest thing in life is not meeting some challenge but knowing what the challenge is that needs to be met.  Challenges have a way of slipping by unnoticed; most lives are the story of a series of unseen challenges;

1455.  The debate between conservatives and liberals boils down to which comes first, politics or culture.  Conservatives argue that the culture drives our politics, that a politician can do only what the culture allows him to.  Liberals argue that government policies shape the culture;

1456.  The tomato marmalade and the Ottoman rice at Agora (AgoraDC.net) in D.C. are tasty;

1457.  The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are;

1458.  It makes a difference where and when we grew up.  The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine.  It’s not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words.  It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t;

1459.  If you make a decision about who is good and who is not good at an early age; if you separate the “talented” from the “untalented;” and if you provide the “talented” with a superior experience, then you’re going to end up giving a huge advantage to that small group of people born closest to the cutoff date;

1460.  Parents with a child born at the end of the calendar year often think about holding their child back before the start of kindergarten: it’s hard for a five-year-old to keep up with a child born many months earlier.  But most parents, one suspects, think that whatever disadvantage a younger child faces in kindergarten eventually goes away.  But it doesn’t.  The small initial advantage that the child born in the early part of the year has over the child born at the end of the year persists.  It locks children into patterns of achievement and underachievement, encouragement and discouragement, that stretch on and on for years;

1461.  You should bring sunglasses if you visit South Beach (in Miami). . . . The sun is really bright;

1462.  You don’t need to tip in South Beach.  The bars and restaurants automatically add gratuity;

1463.  Clothing is optional in the “Garden of Eden” on the top floor of “The Bull” (BullKeyWest.com) (in Key West);

1464.  (During Fantasy Fest, some) bartenders in Key West don’t mind if you have sex in their bars . . . as long as you don’t bother the other customers;

1465.  Achievement is talent plus preparation.  The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play;

1466.  Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works.  That’s it.  And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else.  They work much, much harder;

1467.  The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise.  In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours;

1468.  Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good.  It’s the thing you do that makes you good;

1469.  The other interesting thing about that ten thousand hours, of course, is that ten thousand hours is an enormous amount of time.  It’s all but impossible to reach that number all by yourself by the time you’re a young adult.  You have to have parents who encourage and support you.  You can’t be poor, because if you have to hold down a part-time job on the side to help make ends meet, there won’t be time left in the day to practice enough.  In fact, most people can reach that number only if they get into some kind of special program – like a hockey all-star squad – or if they get some kind of extraordinary opportunity that gives them a chance to put in those hours;

1470.  We pretend that success is exclusively a matter of individual merit.  But there’s nothing in any of the histories we’ve looked at so far to suggest things are that simple.  These are stories, instead, about people who were given a special opportunity to work really hard and seized it, and who happened to come of age at a time when that extraordinary effort was rewarded by the rest of society.  Their success was not just of their own making.  It was a product of the world in which they grew up;

1471.  There's an open container law in Key West, but the police look the other way if you have your drink in a plastic cup;

1472.  If you like dive bars and/or live music, go to Key West;

1473.  In general, the higher your (IQ) score, the more education you’ll get, the more money you’re likely to make, and – believe it or not – the longer you’ll live;

1474.  The relationship between success and IQ works only up to a point.  Once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn’t seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage;

1475.  The four socially and personally most important threshold regions on the IQ scale are those that differentiate with high probability between persons who, because of their level of general mental ability, can or cannot attend a regular school (about IQ 50), can or cannot master the traditional subject matter of elementary school (about IQ 75), can or cannot succeed in the academic or college preparatory curriculum through high school (about IQ 105), can or cannot graduate from an accredited four-year college with grades that would qualify for admission to a professional or graduate school (about IQ 115).  Beyond this, the IQ level becomes relatively unimportant in terms of ordinary occupational aspirations and criteria of success.  That is not to say that there are not real differences between the intellectual capabilities represented by IQs of 115 and 150 or even between IQs of 150 and 180.  But IQ differences in this upper part of the scale have far less personal implications than the thresholds just described and are generally of lesser importance for success in the popular sense than are certain traits of personality and character;

1476.  Practical intelligence includes things like “knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect.”  It is procedural: it is about knowing how to do something without necessarily knowing why you know it or being able to explain it.  It’s practical in nature: that is, it’s not knowledge for its own sake.  It’s knowledge that helps you read situations correctly and get what you want.  And, critically, it is a kind of intelligence separate from the sort of analytical ability measured by IQ.  To use the technical term, general intelligence and practical intelligence are “orthogonal:” the presence of one doesn’t imply the presence of the other;

1477.  The middle-class parenting style is “concerted cultivation.”  It’s an attempt to actively “foster and assess a child’s talents, opinions and skills.”  Poor parents tend to follow, by contrast, a strategy of “accomplishment of natural growth.”  They see as their responsibility to care for their children but to let them grow and develop on their own.  One style isn’t morally better than the other.  The poorer children are often better behaved, less whiny, more creative in making use of their own time, and had a well-developed sense of independence.  But in practical terms, concerted cultivation has enormous advantages.  The heavily scheduled middle-class child is exposed to a constantly shifting set of experiences.  She learns teamwork and how to cope in highly structured settings.  She is taught how to interact comfortably with adults, and to speak up when she needs to;

1478.  Key West has feral chickens;

1479.  The restaurant prices in South Beach are actually reasonable.  They’re less than what they are in D.C. and you can find a lot of breakfast and lunch items for under $10.00;

1480.  The plain truth of the Lewis Terman study is that in the end almost none of the genius children from the lowest social and economic class ended up making a name for themselves.  They lacked something that could have been given to them if we’d only known they needed it: a community around them that prepared them properly for the world;

1481.  Lewis Terman’s genius study was an investigation into how some children with really high IQs who were born between 1903 and 1917 turned out as adults.  And the study found that there was a group of real successes and there was a group of real failures, and that the successes were far more likely to have come from wealthier families.  In that sense, the Terman study underscores the argument that what your parents do for a living, and the assumptions that accompany the class your parents belong to, matter;

1482.  The sense of possibility so necessary for success comes not just from inside us or from our parents.  It comes from our time: from the particular opportunities that our particular place in history presents us with;

1483.  Jewish immigrants were not like the other immigrants who came to America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  The Irish and the Italians were peasants, tenant farmers from the impoverished countryside of Europe.  Not so the Jews.  For centuries in Europe, they had been forbidden to own land, so they had clustered in cities and towns, taking up urban trades and professions.  Seventy percent of the Eastern European Jews who came through Ellis Island in the thirty years or so before the First World War had some kind of occupational skill;

1484.  Autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.  It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five.  It’s whether our work fulfills us.  Work that fulfills those three criteria is meaningful;

1485.  Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning;

1486.  Jewish doctors and lawyers did not become professionals in spite of their humble origins.  They became professionals because of their humble origins.  The conventional explanation for Jewish success, of course, is that Jews come from a literate, intellectual culture.  They are famously “the people of the book.”  There is surely something to that.  But it wasn’t just the children of rabbis who went to law school.  It was the children of garment workers.  And their critical advantage in climbing the professional ladder wasn’t the intellectual rigor you get from studying the Talmud.  It was the practical intelligence and savvy you get from watching your father sell aprons on Hester Street;

1487.  A “culture of honor,” it’s a world where a man’s reputation is at the center of his livelihood and self-worth;

1488.  In Albion’s Seed, Fischer argues that there were four distinct British migrations to America in its first 150 years: first the Puritans, in the 1630s, who came from East Anglia to Massachusetts; then the Cavaliers and indentured servants, who came from southern England to Virginia in the mid-seventeenth century; then the Quakers, from the North Midlands to the Delaware Valley between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; and finally, the people of the borderlands to the Appalachian interior in the eighteenth century.  Fischer argues brilliantly that those four cultures – each profoundly different – characterize those four regions of the United States even to this day;

1489.  The triumph of a culture of honor helps to explain why the pattern of criminality in the American South has always been so distinctive.  Murder rates are higher there than in the rest of the country.  But crimes of property and “stranger” crimes – like muggings – are lower.  The homicides in which the South seems to specialize are those in which someone is being killed by someone he (or often she) knows, for reasons both killer and victim understand.  The statistics show that the Southerner who can avoid arguments and adultery is as safe as any other American, and probably safer.  In the backcountry, violence wasn’t for economic gain.  It was personal.  You fought over your honor;

1490.  The “culture of honor” hypotheses says that it matters where you’re from, not just in terms of where you grew up or where your parents grew up, but in terms of where your great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents grew up and even where your great-great-great-grandparents grew up.  That is a strange and powerful fact.  It’s just the beginning, though, because upon closer examination, cultural legacies turn out to be even stranger and more powerful than that;

1491.  There were clear differences in how the young men responded to being called a bad name.  For some, the insult changed their behavior.  For some it didn’t.  The deciding factor in how they reacted wasn’t how emotionally secure they were, or whether they were intellectuals or jocks, or whether they were physically imposing or not.  What matters was where they were from.  Most of the young men from the northern part of the United States treated the incident with amusement.  They laughed it off.  Their handshakes were unchanged.  Their levels of cortisol actually went down, as if they were unconsciously trying to defuse their own anger.  But the southerners?  They were angry.  Their cortisol and testosterone jumped;

1492.  Cultural legacies are powerful forces.  They have deep roots and long lives.  They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behaviors that we cannot make sense of our world without them;

1493.  What you find is that northerners tend to give off displays of anger, up to a certain point, at which point they level off.  Southerners are much less likely to be angry early on.  But at some point they catch up to the northerners and shoot past them.  They are more likely to explode, much more volatile, much more explosive;

1494.  In a typical plane crash, the weather is poor – not terrible, necessarily, but bad enough that the pilot feels a little bit more stressed than usual.  In an overwhelming number of crashes, the plane is behind schedule, so the pilots are hurrying.  In 52 percent of crashes, the pilot at the time of the accident has been awake for twelve hours or more, meaning that he is tired and not thinking sharply.  And 44 percent of the time, the two pilots have never flown together before, so they’re not comfortable with each other.  Then the errors start – and it’s not just one error.  The typical accident involves seven consecutive human errors.  One of the pilots does something wrong that by itself is not a problem.  Then one of them makes another error on top of that, which combined with the first error still does not amount to catastrophe.  But then they make a third error on top of that, and then another and another and another and another, and it is the combination of all those errors that leads to disaster.  These seven errors, furthermore, are rarely problems of knowledge or flying skill.  It’s not that the pilot has to negotiate some critical technical maneuver and fails.  The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication.  One pilot does something important and somehow doesn’t tell the other pilot.  One pilot does something wrong, and the other pilot doesn’t catch the error.  A tricky situation needs to be resolved through a complex series of steps – and somehow the pilots fail to coordinate and miss one of them;

1495.  That’s what happens when you’re tired.  Your decision-making skills erode.  You start missing things – things that you would pick up on any other day;

1496.  “Mitigated speech” refers to any attempt to downplay or sugarcoat the meaning of what is being said.  We mitigate when we’re being polite, or when we’re ashamed or embarrassed, or when we’re being deferential to authority;

1497.  Mitigation explains one of the greatest anomalies of plane crashes.  In commercial airlines, captains and first officers split flying duties equally.  But historically, crashes have been far more likely to happen when the captain is in the “flying seat.”  At first that seems to make no sense, since the captain is almost always the pilot with the most experience.  Planes are safer when the least experienced pilot is flying, because it means the second pilot isn’t going to be afraid to speak up;

1498.  Roger Mason, Jr.’s (a guard for the Washington Wizards) favorite restaurant in Charlottesville is the Aberdeen Barn (AberdeenBarn.com). . . . The University of Virginia’s men’s basketball team used to go there for their pregame team meals;

1499.  Robbie likes the circus;

1500.  Each of us has his or her own distinct personality.  But overlaid on top of that are tendencies and assumptions and reflexes handed down to us by the history of the community we grew up in, and those differences are extraordinarily specific;

What I’ve learned since moving to D.C. (some of which should be obvious): 0029

1401.  Watching the ballet is kind of like watching a silent movie;

1402.  The ballet is more enjoyable if you read the program synopsis beforehand and actually have some idea of what’s going on;

1403.  Robbie has soft hands;

1404.  During basketball games, the event staff at the Verizon Center is more concerned about searching your (drawstring) bag than they are about searching your jacket;

1405.  Blake Griffin (of the Los Angeles Clippers) is an amazing dunker.  He’s so explosive and he throws the ball down with such authority. . . . He’s not bad at laying it up either;

1406.  Rabbit has a lot of tiny bones;

1407.  In some plays, the actors actually eat and drink.  They don’t have to pretend;

1408.  Apparently, the food at Jaleo (Jaleo.com) inspires public, late night make out sessions by the front windows;

1409.  Some bouncers go on power trips and try to threaten you even though they don’t have any authority.  They don’t have any power if you’re already leaving;

1410.  You can get entertainment, merchandise and service discounts at Recoup (Recoup.com). . . . Recoup also donates a portion of the purchase price to a designated charitable organization;

1411.  Nominal tax receipts have gone up every year–thanks to economic growth and inflation–but in general have risen less after taxes have been cut than after they have been raised;

1412.  The last big tax cut, during the Reagan administration, had no measurable impact on the economy’s growth rate.  And with tax rates now lower in the United States than any in the industrial world, it seems unlikely that they are the main drag, though of course you never really know;

1413.  When you fly, you shouldn’t pack your contact lens case filled with saline solution.  It tends to explode and spray everywhere;

1414.  You can actually get paid to watch TV;

1415.  Everybody in Las Vegas is trying to hustle you . . . from the club promoters to the people handing out cards (i.e., “porn slappers”) and even the women selling beauty products at the kiosks in the casino shops;

1416.  Be wary about the women who approach you (by themselves) in casino bars (and lounges).  They could be prostitutes;

1417.  According to some prostitutes, people don’t do that (i.e., hang out) here (in Vegas);

1418.  Is there something wrong with me that I feel bad for wasting a prostitute’s time? . . . She was talking to me when she could’ve been “busy” with somebody else (and making a living). . . . Sorry, “Taylor;”

1419.  It’s kind of sad when you have a hopeful, innocent (albeit somewhat naïve) sense of the world and all of a sudden it’s dashed away and replaced by a grim, callous reality;

1420.  Pee-Wee Herman (i.e., Paul Reubens) is a pothead;

1421.  They have $5.00 blackjack tables at Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall & Saloon (BillsLasVegas.com);

1422.  Billy Kraus and David Mauk, the dueling pianists at Napoleon’s (Dueling) Piano Lounge (www.ParisLasVegas.com/Casinos/Paris-Las-Vegas/Casino-Entertainment/Dueling-Pianos-Detail.html) inside the Paris-Las Vegas Casino, are pretty incredible.  They’ll play all sorts of requests from Metallica to the Eagles to even the Spice Girls;

1423.  I’m a fan of the $5.00 virtual blackjack machines at the Excalibur and Luxor casinos.  I like the cheaper minimums and the fact that I don’t feel pressured to make a quick decision about my cards because a (human) dealer is waiting on me;

1424.  Gale Sayers looks like any other Joe Schmoe.  From the looks of him, you wouldn’t think he’s in the Pro Football (and College Football) Hall of Fame;

1425.  The fabled $7.77 meal does exist in Vegas.  Mr. Lucky’s 24-7 (www.HardRockHotel.com/#/Dine/Mr-Luckys-24-7) at the Hard Rock Hotel has a steak and three shrimp dinner with mashed potatoes and a side salad for $7.77.  Don’t bother looking for it on the menu, it’s not there.  Just ask for it;

1426.  Waving to the cops when you’re inebriated probably isn’t a very good idea, unless you’re in Vegas;

1427.  Why do people (i.e., women in minivans) ask the inebriated guy from out of town for directions?

1428.  (Chef) Rick Moonen (from “Top Chef Masters: Season 2”) flies out of Newark Liberty International Airport . . . and he's a fan of the carryon backpack;

1429.  People who make a huge deal about being nice usually aren’t;

1430.  It’s strange seeing the building where you live in from a plane;

1431.  Gina has a strong tongue;

1432.  If you don’t like eating mushy apples slice them up so that each piece has some skin.  The crisp skin makes the apple seem less mushy;

1433.  The Hard Times Café in (Old Town) Alexandria has $5.00 hamburgers all day on Mondays;

1434.  As we go through life, we have visions about how important milestones in our lives should look and feel.  Most of the time, the reality of the situation is a mere shadow of our vision, but every once in a while the reality is actually better in unforeseen ways;

1435.  I’m sick of my life being “fine.”  I want to actually feel something.  I want to feel my heart pounding out of my chest in anticipation.  I want to feel my heart leap out of my chest with hope and at the same time feel a sense of trepidation at the possibility of falling into despair.  I want to be able to wake up in the morning and be glad it’s a new day and look forward to what the day brings and anticipate good things to come.  I want to go through the day and see the bright things in life instead of the dark.  Instead of wishing the cold winter day away, I want to be thankful for the warmth on my face as the sun shines down.  Instead of fearing the cold and not wanting to get out of bed, I want to be excited at the thought of curling up underneath the covers with someone I love and to wrap my arms around her and feel the warmth of her body against my skin.  Being “fine” isn’t so fine;

1436.  The (Toyota) Prius is disturbingly quiet at low speeds;

1437.  Sometimes there's a reasonable explanation and it's our worst fears that cloud our judgment;

1438.  I don't like to gossip, but I do like to listen;

1439.  Dress for the job you want not the job you're in;

1440.  People are people first and employees second;

1441.  The “endless popcorn” at the Verizon Center really is endless;

1442.  Celebrities (e.g., Boyd Tinsley from the Dave Matthews Band, Michelle Kwan and Alexander Ovechkin) come out to see the Lakers play even when they’re not in Los Angeles;

1443.  Kobe (Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers) sure loves the fadeaway jumper;

1444.  It can feel 10 to 20 degrees colder in the shade (especially in a windy stadium);

1445.  Explanation is where the mind comes to rest;

1446.  The lobster rolls at Hank’s Oyster Bar are better than the ones at Luke’s Lobster (LukesLobster.com);

1447.  The impulse to suppress appetites and sympathies in the name of principle is the mark of a radical;

1448.  If you vote for the lesser of two evils either you are the lesser of two evils, or you are not being represented;

1449.  Democratic politics depends on direct confrontation and commitment to ideas;

1450.  It’s not a good idea to drink John Dalys (i.e., iced tea with vodka) and shots of Jameson (Irish whiskey) starting at 1 o’clock in the afternoon;