Leopold's

It was so nice out on Friday after such a long winter, Georgetown was bustling, rejoicing in the warmth. Sam and I walked down to M street just to get out of the house really and opted to head down Cady's alley to Leopold's for a drink and to just be outside. The cafe is in a courtward between several three story buildings making it mostly shaded and cool with a couple of angles bringing in the sun. The tables have colorful umbrellas. There was a 45 minute wait for a table, but we went shopping in the area for a bit so it was not painful.

The Leopold's menu feels like an Austrian or Bavarian cafe. We both had a cocktail consisting of blueberry vodka, shredded cucumbers and lime that was refreshing. And we shared some crostinis that were excellent.

Georgetown Piers

Since the weather held out on Sunday, seemed only fair to give the local quayside a fair shake after going an hour out of our way the day before. Walking down 31st st to the river in Georgetown leads you again to a Potomac waterfront complex, this one a set of three restaurants fronted by a boardwalk: Sequoia, Nick's Riverside, and Tony and Joe's. People can moor their boats along this pier and people did so which helps with the music since none of the bars were playing any. There were tons of tables between the three venues and I would guess that every one of them was filled. We opted to just sit on the boardwalk and people watch and there were plenty of options in that area. Lots of dogs decked out for a walk too. Our poor dogs rarely get to go out but the reality is they would be too tired to walk home after going more than three blocks away, so oh well.

Cantina Marina

The cap to the beautiful day in DC was to check out some of the quayside. After the Hirschorn, we walked due south down near SEU to the marina on Maine where the Presidential Yacht is moored (no I did not know such a thing existed either) to Cantina Marina. This is a Mexican themed outdoor bar/restaurant on a dock on the Potomac. Big crowd, a bit hard to get a table, and lively atmosphere. The second floor is a bit easier to sit and a bit quieter. We ordered some nachos which I thought were just ok. They have frozen margeritas out of machine which are pretty much standard fare so I won't rate them. The weather was perfect for lounging outside on the water watching the sun set. Probably a good place to go in a group. Only a couple of blocks west from the Waterfront-SEU metro stop.

Stoudt's Tasting @ Pizzeria Paradiso

So Monday was another tasting at Pizza Paradiso, this time with Stoudt's brewery. We got the table by the fire place this time instead of the communal table whic we liked. Holly and Vic, though running late, joined us towards the end.

The appetizer was amazing, bite sized salt and pepper biscuits with a bowl of fresh cream and a bowl of honey for dippong. Perfectly paired with an English Bitter. The greek salad was a bit boring and I really did not like the Pilsner it was paired with but then I don't really like Pilsners anyway. The Lemon Scallop Soup was good, the scallops very tender. My only criticism would be that it was too lemony... perhaps a bit more subtlety would have been preferred. The paired IPA was pretty good.

The Pizzas were both highlights for me, but the first one especially. This was their weekly special for this week, mustard with arugula, green beans and asparagus. The bitterness in the pizza paired excellently with a relatively sweet (and very strond) double IPA that was excellent.

The dessert was amazing! and the Belgiun it was paired with was potent and excellent.

Hirschorn Sculpture Garden

It was such a beautiful day on Saturday we took a bus down to the mall after Sam was done studying for her real estate test. We got there at about five so the National Gallery of Art garden was closed so we headed south to the Hirschorn Sculpture garden. This garden is recessed into the earth giving it a peaceful feel, removed from the setup of a huge Immigration Reform demonstration set for the Mall on Sunday.

A couple of Rodin pieces reminded me of the Rodin museum in Paris. Sam and I both liked one called Eros, Inside Eros and my absolute favorite was one called Sphere No 6 by Arnaldo Pomodoro that reminds me of the Death Star.

National Cathedral

I last remember going to the cathedral on a high school weekend trip to Washington SC when I was at St Peter's Prep and had a vague recollection it was pretty cool. So this would have been my first visit to a great cathedral (I don't recall visiting St Johns in NYC). On our way back from Bethesda down Wisconsin, we decided to drop in. We parked in the underground lot which is $6 on weekends and went in through the side entrance. We got there just before noon on a saturday so there was a small mass set to start on the high alter.

The Cathedral is grand and awe inspiring in the way the great European ones are, yet it felt quite new, as it should having only been built this century and really just completed in the last 20 years. What I found really distinctive was the artwork. The windows felt very contemporary and American. Contemporary because of the colors used, the abstractness of some of the scenes, and the sometimes purposeful abstraction of the figures. You see this in some of the European churches that were damaged during WWII and whose windows have been modernized, but these are often juxtaposed against the remaining original windows, where as here, all the windows seem to blend together better. It felt American because of the presence of colonial figures in many of the scenes. The other great work of art is the creation inspired sculpture over the main entrance of which I have seen nothing like it in any European church or cathedral. There is an exhibit up on the history of the church which I walked through which gave great background on the construction and the art work.

Bethesda Farm Womens Co-op Market

Saturday morning bright and early, after picking up my signed copy of Michael Lewis' The Big Short from Politics and Prose, we continued our drive up Wisconsin to Bethesda and parked in their municipal lot near the Metro which is free on weekends. The downtown was bustling (this was about 10am). There are a lot of restaurants we will need to return to with special props to Redwood which completely opens its street facing wall for the beautiful spring weather we were enjoying.

We walked up Miller to Wisconsin where the Farm Women's Co-op Market was. There were several stalls outside of cool antique travel posters Sam and I have a thing for, some African statues and masks of pretty good quality, and natural jewelry stones inciting our regular regret we did not bring back any from when we were in Thailand.

The market building itself is small with about 15 stalls mostly related to food and plants. The quality inside was excellent. There was a great french baker where we bought an almond croissant that rivaled the quality of those I got in Paris. There were also acouple of prepared food vendors that looked excellent. Definitely a place we would return too.

Little Shop of Horrors @ Fords

The theme for Monday's trip to Ford's Theatre can be summarized as hectic. We took a bus to the metro to get over to Metro Center then walked all the way to the Verizon center to eat dinner at Chopt. Both of us had Salad wraps so we could eat and walk. They were pretty good and would go there again. We got back to the theatre just in time to be seated.

The theatre was very intimate and small, looking like it only seated a couple of hundred people. We had a slightly obstructed view as there were some traditional looking white columns supporting the balcony level near us but our view of center stage was unobstructed. In the future, I will look at balcony seats here as they seem to give an excellent view of the stage.

The show itself I saw for the first time at Jersey City State College when I was a kid and I had seen the movie too, so the story line was pretty familiar. I thought it was pretty well done. The vocals of all the characters were excellent, and I would say the crazy dentist gets special props.

The Big Short

The original plan for Thursday was to get home early and attend an earlier lecture so we could stake a claim to a chair for what I was sure to be a very popular talk at 7. Well it did not work out and we got to Politics and Prose just as Michael Lewis was set to talk about his new book, The Big Short. The format was a conversation between Lewis and Washington Post staff writer Joel Achenbach.

Lewis' book sounds fascinating and I look forward to buying it and reading it (the line the night of was pretty crazy as you can see from my shot of my place in the crowd). Felix Salmon, who I read daily, posted a favorable review himself which will go into more detail than I will. Essentially it is a tale from the perspectives of a couple of the people who profited from the financial crisis by identifying it early and realizing what a clusterfuck it was.

Ozio

Happy Birthday to Wubba! Our own festivities were in the spirit of the theme in only the loosest sense that we had some drinks. After debating plans for a week we settled on meeting up with friends at Ozio, just south of Dupont Circle for Dinner and drinks.

This restaurant/club has free salsa lessons on Wednesdays so that was the backdrop of our evening. The music was along the same lines and would have provided good atmosphere if the place was not so empty. This is a fairly large venue, and even though it is intimately divided into sections across multiple levels, it still felt pretty empty.

They advertise themselves as Mediterranean but the menu was a pretty straightforward bar menu with a couple of Mediterranean accent plates half heartedly thrown in. We had a tapas platter of chicken fingers, teriyaki shrimp over a bed of feta, olives and peppers which I guess made it Mediterranean. The chicken fingers were admittedly good, but the shrimp was awful. I had a chicken sandwich which I suppose was unadventureous but I just could not put any faith in this salsa themed night club doing specialty dishes well so I chickened out. Hard to mess that up.

We watched some Salsa, Cha Cha, and Merengue dancing which was festive. I headed home after to watch the Magic beat the Spurs which for whatever reason felt more in the spirit of the day than the previous three hours.

Dino

This is a bit late in posting as we went to this modern italian during the RAMW restaurant promotion a couple of weeks ago after a Politics and Prose discussion. The RAMW special was a three course menu with drink. Given the prices, the deal was really just the drink which I was not a fan of so the special really just got us in the door.

In any case, we were impressed and would definately return. I had a Bosc pear with goat cheese and arugala to start. This was actually probably my highlight as the saltiness of the goat cheese combined perfectly with the sweetness of the pears and the arugula with a light vinagrette added a flavor punch. As an entree I had pasta with some wild boar that was pretty good. Sam had a baked ziti that was very rich. For dessert we shared a pistachio crumble cake that was pretty good if a bit on the dry side.

Importantly, we found out that Dino has Free corkage on monday through wednesday, meaning they do not charge a cork fee when you bring your own bottle. Limit of one bottle per table.

National Gallery of Art - Part I

I say Part I because the collection here is massive so I was only able to take in a small part. I imagine a couple of sequels. This was just the West Building, which houses the collection through the 19th century with the contemporary collection next door. Truly monumental building seeded from a gift from Andrew Mellon.

The entry rotunda had a very colrful collection of potted flowers providing a nice contrast with the stately marble throughout. The building has massive ceilings hinting at how impressive the art you are about to view really is. I would say it worked. I skimmed the 13th - 15th century italianate religious panels and only slowed down when I hit the early renaissance. It is interesting to try to step back and see how the craft of painting evolved over the course of the next 200 years as very solid tempura colors were replaced by oil glazes allowing for suble variation in light. How subjects changed from solely religious to a mix of portraits sponsored by the wealthy and artisticly inspired peasant scenes. And how perspective evolved from placing distance higher in the portrait to representing distance through exact use of off canvas vanishing points.

There was one Da Vinci which was hard to judge by itself, several Rafaels which I did like, especially the relatively well known St George and the Dragon. A large collection of El Grecos, which I was pretty familiar with from seeing his work in Toledo and Madrid at a time when I was not very interested in visiting museums while abroad. I think I liked the post Renaissance Dutch painters the best, with the exception of Rembrandt. There was a large collection of Rembrandts but I don't really get the appeal. Of the other Dutch painters I liked Rubens, Vermeer and Cuyp. I think I enjoyed the peasant scenes and some of the very architecturally detailed city scapes (some good ones of Venice in this category) overall.

I got through most of the West wing of the main floor, starting in the northwest and wrapping around back to the Rotunda. Next time I will need to finish the Dutch and Flemish 17th century in the west wing then head to the East wing

National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden

Since my aquarium visit was quite short, I continued on to the mall, crossed a dreary St Patricks Day parade, and went through the National Gallery of Art sculpture garden. This was pretty cool. There is an Ice Skating rink here where rentals go for $9 and a large cafe.

Some large sculpture pieces abound. I liked the silver metalic life sized tree, the big rought iron spider like creature, and the Roy Lichtenstein inverted house. There was also a full scale replica of the art nouveau subway entrances my mom and I saw in Paris.

Curried Quinoa Salad

This is another one of my lunch salads, a little drier and spicier that the Asian salad:



Salad

1 tbs oil
1 cup quinoa
2 c water
3 cloves garlic minced
1 tbs Curry powder
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp coriander
1 c roasted walnuts (spread walnuts on tray and bake in 350 preheated oven for about 7-8 minutes until fragrant)
1 c cranberries or golden raisins plumped (top dried with water to cover and let sit for 30 minutes then drain)
1 Bell pepper diced
1 scallion or 1 bunch green onions diced

Dressing
1/8 c peanut oil
2 tbs grated lemon rind
1/8 c rice or cider vinegar


Instructions
in sauce pan over medium heat, cook quinoa grains with spices for 3 minutes. Make room in center of pan, add oil and garlic and let cook for about 30 seconds until fragrance is released, then mix together with quinoa grain. Add water, cover, bring to a boil, lower heat and let simmer for 12 minutes. Let cool (I will throw the pan in the freezer for 15 minutes)

Add all salad ingrediants to a bowl and mix well. Mix dressing ingrediants in a small bowl and drizzle over salad and mix well.

National Aquarium

On a drizzily sunday afternono, I ventured out to the National Aquarium. Not the more well known in the DC area (that would be Baltimore), DC's is in the basement of the Treasury building. Pretty non descript entrance when you think about the grandeur of the museums in the area. I mean the building is monumental but that is only because it is the Treasury bulding. Anyway not knowing what to expect, I went through the metal detector and into the basement, paid the $9 admission and got my map. Basically the layout is a single circle of exhibits which claims to take about 45 minutes to see. And after pretty much reading every single placard, that is how long it took. In other words this is a small aquarium. It is roughly divided in two, fresh water on one side and salt on the other, and is arranged according to the habitats of the federal marine parks. In addition there was a special exhibit about Amazon river basin conservation.

Overall, the tanks were a bit boring. There were some sharks but none more than a couple of feet. There big new draw was a giant octopus, currently a baby, but was either hiding or not visible in its tank. Not really any large tanks that give you a sense of a marine environment, just a series of small ones with a handful of species in each. I guess if you have school age children and want to mix it up from going to all the other smithsonian destinations, then this works but definately not if you are only in town for a short time.

G40 - The Summit

Took me a while to post about this but we went to the G40 exhibit last friday over in Crystal City, Arlington, VA. It is housed in an office building taking over 5 floors. You start at the top and work your way down, each floor representing a different artist location, California, NY area, Metro DC, and Global. The lobby level is a lounge area with some live models, cool DJ and bar.

The style is sort of urban surreal described on the site as:

The mission of G40: The Summit is to bring the leaders of the New Brow genre
together in Crystal City, VA in an effort to explore, discuss and grow this
movement. G-40: The Summit will be a culmination of ideas and processes, brought
together and highlighted by region and style, creating, for the first time, a
full cross examination of this genre.

We really liked the California level complete with angry cartoon pandas. The range of artists is pretty amazing so hard to summarize but highly recommend. Prices are reasonable too.

Smithsonian Museum of American Art

Saturday Afternoon, weather warming, trip to the museum. I had originally set off to go to the National Museum of Art so I took I grabbed an Oasis shake from Wisey's and jumped on the Circulator over to 9th St. After walking down 9th though I was passing the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and National Portrait Gallery so decided on a whim to go there instead. Not really sure why as the idea of a Portrait Gallery had never really intrigued me. My tastes in Art typically run from late 19th early 20th century onwards with peaks and valley's along the way. I especially like Surrealism, Cubism, Futurism, Folk Art, Popart, and various printmaking. I actually thought the two museums were just adjacent to each other but infact they share the same building with each floor being roughly split between the two but not directly overlapping forcing the viewer to really experience both. And overall, I am quite happy I did.

I started out a bit disoriented, roaming through the Portrait Gallery American Origins exhibit which was... eh. I wandered out into the interior courtyard to get out and found myself in an amazing enclosed space, full of life. Bistro, musicians, and a Girl Scout fundraiser. I went back in to see the American Experience exhibit which had some cool Lee Friedlanders photos from his series The American Monument. This was a series of over 1000 photos of scultures and monuments in public spaces around the country which were often humorous or sad as he contrasted the monument itself, a memory of something significant, with it's modern surroundings where the monument often seems lost, fogotten, or just out of place.

I continued into the folk art space where there was a pretty wide variety of pieces ranging from the quirky and weird to cool. A couple pieces jumped out for one reason or another but I was not really overwhelmed. I headed upstairs to see the Struggle for Justice, a set of portraits of key figures in the Civil Rights movement. The one that captivated me was the last before I moved on which was a photo MLK.

I was about to skim through the Outwin Boochevar Portrait Competition 2009, but found myself absolutely riveted by the exhibit:

The competition invites artists working in the figurative arts to submit
portraits of people close to them. Submissions were accepted in all visual arts
media, including film, video and digital animation. This exhibition will be
composed of the 49 finalists’ works

I found these pieces powerful in a way that the portraits of famous personalities whose names and accomplishments I am familiar with (or should be familiar with) did not. Some of the techniques were very innovative, including one where the artist took over a thousand pictures of the subject, ripped them all into pieces and then reestablished them into a somewhat surreal (some collage pieces reversing the direction of floor panels or window panes) rendering of the original image.

Next was From FDR to Obama: Presidents on Time which was short but cool, name pretty much speaks for itself but I think seeing these images is interesting in retrospective. We see a snapshot of the prevailing wisdom of a moment, which is often out of step with hindsight. After that I headed towards the Modern art exhibits but was again underwhelmed. I think after spending hours in recent months wandering the expansive collections in Paris and London, the handful of rooms here were not enough to pull me in. Wow that sounds snooty, but facts are facts.

I headed up to the third floor and was taken by the architectural transistion. As you go up in the building from the traditional to the contemporary, the space that the art is held in changes dramatically. The first two levels are in a monumental museum style with plenty of marble and over the top finishes. Nothing garish, but their is crown molding and columns everywhere you look. Entering the third floor, I noticed much cleaner lines, simpler molding, more muted colors. And then heading into the Contemporary art space, the ceiling recedes into a beautiful airy space that feels more like being in a outdoor open space than a museum. I really enjoyed how this all played together with the art itself. As to that, I enjoyed some pieces, nothing really memorable other than a floor to ceiling neon map of the US with television in each state playing some mass media content representing that state (Oklahoma! in Oklahoma, Potato packaging in Idaho).

I quickly headed through the 20th Century Americans exhibit, again underwhelmed, perhaps because I was ready to go. Made a final stop in the Luce foundation wing which was an illustrative exhibit about art storage and preservation I found cool as it reminded me of a Sesame Street piece on manufacturing of something.

This was about three hours in and I was beat so headed home. Fun day all around.

Sweet Asian Rice Salad

Just thought I should post the recipe for this salad as I have been making it a lot lately and it is amazing. I make a big batch and keep it in the fridge to make lunch portions from as the week passes.

Salad:
1 c rice (I used a mixed brown and white long grain variety)
1 c cranberries plumped (can substitute raisins or some other sweet fruit like mandarin oranges)
1 bunch vegetable (I have used raw spinach or blanched baby brocolli but any will do)
1 c roasted walnuts (or pecans or cashews, etc, you get the idea)
1 bell pepper diced (red/yellow/orange is good for color)
1 raw scallion diced (green onions would probably work well too)
2 c sprouts (any kind will do. I use brocolli sprouts but have used bean in the past)
Fresh Herbs (optional - I did not have any so did not add any and the framework still works. I would probably use either basil or cilantro)

Dressing:
1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce (or less to taste)
1/4 cup oil mixture (I combine peanut and grapeseed but it is personal preference)
3 cloves garlic crushed
Juice of 1/2 lemon

Instructions:
Cook Rice
soak cranberries while rice is cooking
Refrigerate Rice when done to cool (about 1 hr)
Drain cranberries
Combine salad ingredients
Combine dressing ingredients, mix well
Pour dressing over salad and mix well

The main dimensions are the savory/saltiness of the soy sauce and the sweetness of the cranberries or other fruit so taste can be adjusted accordingly. The texture is crunchy and can be more so with more nuts or sprouts.

First Friday

So last night was friday and the first friday of March so we headed over to Dupont circle for their gallery openings which we had read about in various sources. Quick bus ride from our corner to Dupont down Q St. We first went to Foundry which is on 18th just south of Connecticut. They are one of the more popular destinations as they have a free wine and food spread. Their exhibit was of Kurdish artists. My overall impression was just ok. Some nice smaller pieces that were not hung up I liked better that what was up on the walls. No red wine so the spread did not hold us there for more than about 15 minutes.

So we ventured next to Hillyer Art Space which is in an alley behind the Phillips Collection on Hillyer Court. They also had wine (no red) and a pretty cool musician playing an electric violin and hence a pretty crowded young scene. Again, the art though I thought was kind of lacking. Not many pieces on display and not really my style.

We next headed up to R turning back towards Dupont where there is a series of galleries right next to each other. The first was Fondo del Sol which had an exhibit on Iberian Art, emphasis on the word which was attempting to link Basque artists to Georgian art (apparently Georgians also refer to themselves as Iberian though I am not sure if there is an ethnic link). These artists are from opposite ends of Europe so the gallery was juxtaposing them to see if the viewers could see parallels. I did not. But I liked what was there. There was a piece completely enclosed in an old steamer trunk that when opened had a hodgepodge of miscellany inside (the docent told us they have to keep it closed otherwise the local cat will climb in and sleep inside). There was a also a cool four panel piece of what looked to be an up close skyline of a city with each panel representing that segment of the city in a different season. Nice but nothing special.

Next was the Studio Gallery where things started getting cooler. There was an exhibit there called Mindful of Murundi by Bud Hensgen which we both really liked. A whole series of sort of cubist sets of jugs painted in beautiful colors. There was also a photo exhibit titled Geometries of Hong Kong which I liked a lot as well. Many of the images I remembered from our honeymoon. The technique was I believe photo transfer.

Last was the Alex Gallery which was the peak of our tour. They has on exhibit some of the works of Vytautas Valius which we both LOVED and even briefly considered buying but were overwhelmed by the prices. Not that they were not worth it as I felt these were really museum quality works. I spoke briefly with the owner who thought I could afford it even going so far as a discount and an interest free payment plan (maybe I was dressed the part?). He showed me a book of his other works which were also fabulous. The pieces on exhibit here were all of similar style, using a similar pallet and geometric patterns with some Christ imagery thrown into several. In the book though he had beautiful wood block as well as a plethora of other styles all excellent in their own way. Most of his pieces on display were medium-large (3'x4' or so) and priced from 12k-18k. Weirdly there was one piece only slightly smaller that was priced at $2800. If I believed in art as an investment (which I do not) I would probably have purchased this one. It was on paper while the rest were on cardboard, and while they were all acrylic, this one was framed with glass while the rest were not. I should also add that the frames were amazing as well (I heard a conversation snippet indicating the frames were done by the artist's son). The owner said when I asked that the price was a mistake and should be a little under 5k (not sure I buy this as prices were all listed on a typed out price sheet). In any case I opted not to purchase as while I liked the less expensive piece, I loved his other works. It just seems to me that you need to love the piece you are buying for yourself whether you are spending $300 or $3000 and not just buying what you have intellectualized to be a bargain based on comparison to the artists other works.

Anyway, that was our last stop for the evening before heading to Tangy Sweet/Red Velvet for a frozen yogurt and cupcake and taking the bus home.

Negotiating with the Devil

Thursday night saw us visit Politics and Prose for a talk with Robert Mnookin about his new book Bargaining with the Devil. Mnookin is a professor at Harvard Law School and his book is about the decision to negotiate with an opponent who is deemed untrustworthy, immoral, or even evil. His book is a series of stories about the application of this question to Politics, Business, and even Family disputes.

I thought his talk was interesting as he touched on the contrasting conclusions reached by Winston Churchill in the decision not to bargain with Hitler and that of Nelson Mandela in his decision to bargain with the apartheid government of South Africa. He also touched on his own experience in a public educational debate soon after 9/11 on the side of NOT negotiating with the Taliban over the turning over of bin Laden rather than issuing an ultimatum. As the question period opened, there were amny thoughtful questions asked about whether one should negotiate in certain situations where it became clear that Mnookin's response was more about what to keep in mind when making the decision of whether to bargain, perhaps even a set of priorities to consider without really illuminating any clear yes or no. And perhaps that is obvious as the "right" answer cannot really be known. His shortened version was basically when asked when should you bargain with the devil: not always, but more than you think. I suppose I could agree to that though I would probably lean towards more often depending on what the alternatives to bargaining are.

I had some questions myself which I did not attempt to ask. In light of the ongoing healthcare debate and Obama's campaign process to hold negotiations on C-Span, I wonder what Mnookin's thoughts are on when it is appropriate to leverage publicity as a tool in negotiation with an untrustworthy adversary. My other question I was reminded of when he spoke of Churchill and the political debate during the campaign about negotiating with foreign dictators. That is are we even drawing the right conclusion from Churchill's decision not to negotiate with Hitler. I mean Hitler's actions instigating a World War eventually concluded with the downfall of his government, the desimation of his country and his own death. In hindsight, his actions had he know the results would be crazy, and those results are now public knowledge. If we are not negotiating with someone is certifiably insane, and I do not really think any of the current round of dictators qualify as such (just maybe in Norht Korea, but I doubt it), then shouldn't we expect our adversary to make different decisions? And none of our current adversaries are in the position of strength that Germany had at the time relative to its adversaries. It seems that using Germany and Hitler as a Historical example simply places a benchmark on an extreme end of a scale. In that case, the adversary made an obviously wrong decision which has now enlightened the world as to its consequences, but the example in and of itself is so extreme that any other scenario is by definition further down the scale of leverage and known quantities as to make negotiation a much better alternative.