The Hidden Brain

Friday night, we made plans to check out Politics and Prose. This is a Bookstore and coffeehouse near where Connecticut crosses Nebraska in Friendship Heights. The coffeehouse features frequent live music, and the bookstore hosts authors on a near nightly basis. On this particular night, Shankar Vedantam was speaking about his most recent book, The Hidden Brain. Vedantam is a Washington Post columnist on sabbatical at Cambridge and his book is a series of stories illustrating the findings of several neurological and behavioral studies about how we act subconsciously in many situations. He read from his book a chapter about how we react in crisis situations with a story about different behaviours exhibited on 9/11 by people on two different floors of the World Trade Center. I found my heart racing as he read as it frequently does whenever I reflect on that day and I found the implications of the research fascinating.

The gist of the research in the crisis situation is basically that we rely heavily on the network of connections we have to others, and reach a subconscious concensus before taking action. He brought this home by putting us all in the familiar situation of what happens when a fire alarm goes off in the office and we turn to our cubicle mates to ask if they think it is a drill or not. We essentially are waiting for permission from our peers (who know as little about the actual situation as we do) to take action, and the larger the group, the longer this process and the more dependent on other input.

The author touched briefly on some other implications including how this applies to empathy and charity giving which he did not have time to delve into. So I bought the book (signed by the author) and bought an annual membership which gives you a 20% discount on event promoted books.

In the Red and Brown Water @ Studio

A lot has been written elsewhere about In the Red and Brown Water elsewhere, so we went to see it this past Wednesday night. This play is now playing in extended session at Studio J off of Logan's Circle on 14th and P. The theatre is a cool renovated modern building, with the small intimate stage being in the round. I found the experience enlightening and eye opening as to the variety and possibilities of live theatre. Specifically, with little in the way of props, Tarell McCraney (whose own story is also very compelling) manages a to weave a story through a complex layering of dialogue, hip hop, rhythm, and verbalized stage directions that is unique in my experience of the theatre.

I look forward to exploring the theatre options of DC and continuing to witness directors push the envelope of what is possible.

Pizza and Beer

A local gourmet pizza joint in Georgetown, Pizza Paradiso, holds a monthly dinner and micro beer tasting menu for $65/person including tax and tip. We attended this past monday and were greatly impressed. There are two seatings and we got the later one as these fill up fast and the early was already booked. So on a rainy cold night, we stomped down to M street at 9 to the basement of Pizza Paradiso. The room was already filled and a fire was burning in a cozy fireplace. We were seated at a communal table with another couple and a couple of college guys. There was already an apetizer on the table of brocoli pesto slaw on some toast points and an 8oz glass of one of the Troegs Brewery varieties. All in all, there were six courses, each with a different Brew. Sam really liked the Double Bock and the Mad Elf (11% alcohol... and tasted great... dangerous). I also liked the Mad Elf and enjoyed the Nugget Nectar, Hop Back, and Scratch (this is the micro micro brew). The food was amazing as well, especially the pizzas which included one with sliced beets. The dessert, a chocolate mousse with fresh whipped cream topping was decadent.

This will definately become a monthly event, as we have already made reservations for 4 for the earlier seeting next month.

Washington: Symbol and City

So I kicked off the tour of the Museums of Washington DC last Sunday with the National Building museum which had an exhibit called Washington: Symbol and City. I learned a couple of things but came away a bit disappointed as I found the exhibit a bit disjointed. First I should say that you really need to expect to spend at least 2 hours at any single museum exhibit. I biked there which was a nice 3.2 mile bike ride each way, but only got there at 3:30 when the museum closed at 5.

The Exhibit was basically two sections. The first was mostly about the urban planning of the city as a whole and its significant monuments. Had some pieces about the initial land acquisition, the thought behind the street layouts, and detail about the design and build out of the Capitol building, White House, Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and Jefferson Memorial. Also spent some time on the 1901-1902 Park commission which significantly influenced the look and contents of the diamond shaped Federal area between those significant buildings.

The second room was a series of sections focusing on different, somewhat related subjects like Education, Housing, Water, Trains and Canals, the Pentagon and Naval Yards, and some sections I admittedly did not get to. While there were some parts of the second section that I thought were pretty interesting, I think as a while, the exhibit lacked enough of a common theme pulling it all together other than the obvious that it is all part of the city of Washington. But duh, of course it is.

I think a 2 room 2 hour exhibit is not really enough to cover so broad a topic so it would have been better off piecing some things that had more of a narrative thread connecting them and leave off the other stuff. But then maybe different exhibits are aimed at different levels of detail and I came away judging this one against a goal it just had not set for itself.

Unfortunately, the exhibit I should have seen and maybe will make my way back to was House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage. This probably sounds like watching paint dry for most people, but this is right in my wheel house.

Lets Get Started - Base Camp

We'll see how long this lasts but for starters, this blog will be a public diary of exploring a new city, Washington, DC. Its not technically new, as I was born here and lived here for five years, but I was a kid and do not remember much of it so, for all intents and purposes, this is new.

I have been here for almost two months but the first month was really about moving in and getting settled, and much of February was about snopocalypse 2010. So the past couple of weeks really represents our setting out from base camp. So a little about base camp. We have a town home in Georgetown which is pretty great. I have always wanted to live in a townhome, probably my ideal residential mode. We have a small backyard meaning letting the dogs out in the morning and evening withough us having to accompany them. Hannah just scratches at the door when she is ready to come in. Electric/gas bill is decent even though the windows are ancient as we have townhomes on either side (no sounds through the walls though like living in a high rise though). We are one block off Wisconsin at the north end of Georgetown. For the unititated, living in Georgetown and walking along Wisconsin and M in particular is like living in a high end mall. We have all the great national (and some international) retail chains that we do all of our shopping at anyway, like Zara, H&M, Sisley, Club Monaco, Reiss London, Tommy Hilfaeger, Northface, etc, etc. There are also tons of restaurants and bars (I will try to review the ones we go to in more detail).

I work in Reston, VA which is not great. The job is fine but the commute is about an hour and 15 minutes each way via bus and shuttle. It would take about 35 minutes to drive so why do I take the bus? Well that was kind of the whole point of moving to a real city from Orlando. I get to read on the bus which is great becausee now I get 11 hours of reading in during the week that is basically on my own time. So when Sam is home we can do stuff together. Plus I get to do my part for the world by not owning a car (we just traded in an SUV for a Prius for Sam to commute in so we are doing better on the car front as well). The contract I have there ends in June though and hopefully I can find comething in the District or at least on the Metro next time around. Anyway, I take any of the 3# buses up Wisconsin to 3900 where there is another Fannie Mae facility, then take a corporate shuttle out to Reston.

Sam is working out in National Harbor, MD which is just south of the District on the Potamac. There is no public transport there (at least nothing practical) so she drives the Prius to work everyday. Suffice to say we are happy to be rid of the SUV which in its last days saw its Driver side door handle stop working, the batteries in the keys for the electronic locks stop working, a tire blow out, and an engine light come on indicating the need for a new thermostat. That was literally all within a couple of days. I am sure the car dealer thought he got a good deal on us for the Prius, but I think the joke is on him because our tradein was cursed.

Ok so I think that sets the stage. I will come back and start laying out the early explorations.