Quiet Declarations

In my job, I have the opportunity to pursue a wide variety of interests, so you would think by now I would have at least somewhat nailed down what my career interests are.  In fact, I still have no idea, but at least I think I’ve identified the problem: what I most enjoy is being very good at many things.  Actually, it’s more accurate to say that what I really most enjoy is knowing that others know I am very good at many things.

The problem is I’ve discovered that I have diminishing marginal utility of said enjoyment.  Once people figure out I’m really good at something they start piling on more of it, so I want to go try something different and give myself another opportunity to reap the emotional benefits of impressing people if I succeed.  In addition, versatility improves the likelihood that I’ll be allowed to cherry-pick a variety of different projects I enjoy.  After all, I’d rather keep my coworkers guessing about what my comparative advantage actually is, so I don’t become “the data guy” or “the email guy” or some other niche role.

But I would be more useful to the world if I just really enjoyed one specific thing (provided that I am also good at it), so is my insatiable quest for versatility some sort of Ricardian paradox?  And if so, is vanity at said paradox’s root?

One not-so-insignificant metric.

A couple of years ago I decided to rank the DC coffee shops, since I’d been to pretty much all of them.  It turns out there was something of a demand for this, because it’s held up as one of my more well-trafficked posts (it’s the #1 Google result for “DC coffee shop reviews”).  However, the coffeehouse offerings in DC have changed considerably since then, and so I feel like I owe the internet gods an updated version.  I also feel like I should make the ranking a little less arbitrary this time — but how?

Here are a few changes I’ve considered:

-Using categories and weights in the rating, e.g. coffee quality, ambiance, accessibility.  Sociability?  Crowdedness?  This will invariably be at least somewhat subjective, but no way around that.  For example, I will almost certainly (a) include some measure of internet friendliness and (b) rate coffee shops more highly for being net-friendly even though some people think this is a negative, because it’s my rating and I heart laptop access.  I’m torn about whether food service is a pro or a con — thoughts?

-Some minimum threshold to get on the list.  I’m toying with at least three criteria: (1) it can’t be a multi-city chain (disqualifying Starbucks, Caribou, Au Bon Pain, and Cosi, off the top of my head), (2) it has to be making at least a minimal effort to attract customers who hang out for a while (sorry, kiosks), and (3) it has to exert more effort in coffee preparation than the local gas station (100% machine preparation + styrofoam cup = FAIL).  Should I hold to a higher standard — a Starbucks-quality threshold, for example?

-In addition to my authoritarian personal rating (editor’s prerogative, of course) having some sort of feature where visitors can rank order the coffeehouses on their own, perhaps even being able to do queries.  Note that this depends heavily on whether I find rating technology I like.

I’ve already begun to revisit the surviving coffeehouses from my first tour, after which I’m headed to the shops I failed to visit last time and the new kids on the block.  Big Bear Cafe, Boccato Gelato and Espresso, Columbia Heights Coffee, Grape and Bean, Jacob’s Coffee and Tea, Java House, Java Shack, Mocha Hut, Modern Times, Peregrine Espresso, Sidamo Coffee and Tea, SOVA Espresso and Wine, Saxby’s, and St. Elmo’s are all on my to-do list.

I feel like there should be some sort of criteria to distinguish businesses that care about coffee from restaurants that happen to serve coffee, but what would the line of demarcation be?  I’ve already pretty much decided to exclude bakeries even if they also advertise themselves as coffee houses, as I have no comparative advantage here and I don’t want to tank a bakery for not being something it never claimed to be.  Yelp gives high rankings to places such as Firehook, Cakelove, Leopold’s Kafe, and Best Buns, to name a few.  Using a no-bakeries criteria, does Buzz fail to make the cut?

What other criteria, rules, or suggestions would you like to see?  And what coffee shops am I missing?

Finally, no I’m not overthinking this.  The best hobbies are the ones you can entertain yourself with for the longest period of time, and I intend to have some fun with this one!

Today on the Metro I saw an advertisement for The Safeway 17th Annual National Capital Barbecue Battle.  Yes, they’re closing down Pennsylvania Avenue between 9th and 14th next weekend to showcase barbecue in this bastion of southern culture.

The Barbecue Battle was voted one of North America’s TOP 100 Events by the American Tourism Industry Association and a top BBQ Event by the Travel Channel and Discovery.com.

Here in the Shadow of the Nation’s Capitol, tens of thousands of people witness barbecue teams and restaurants from around the country compete to win over $40,000 in cash and prizes and the title of National Pork BBQ Champion, as well as a chance to represent the Mid-Atlantic United States in the Barbecue World Championship, Memphis in May.

A few thoughts:

1.  The advertisement I saw included the subtitle “The National Pork Championship” with the word “pork” in a different font style and registered.  WTF?  Is there strong disagreement about what pork actually means?  I definitely don’t see any neutrality dispute warnings on pork’s Wikipedia page.

2.  Related: I will dispute the blasphemous advertising suggestion that pork is the only kind of barbecue!  I say we punish the heretics by making them eat DC barbecue.

3.  According to the grocery store’s website, there are no stores bearing the name Safeway in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, or Texas.  Seems like well-placed corporate sponsorship to me.

4. I’m also not so sure it adds credibility to say that your culinary event was rated highly by the Discovery Channel.

5. Finally, I am not at all surprised that they managed to secure the URL “bbqdc.com” for the festival.   Eating barbecue in DC is like eating McDonald’s in Germany: you’d better want it baaaaaad.

Yesterday George Will succinctly explains the very obvious, predictable consequences of the “public option” in health care.  The skinny: the public option will so obviously lead to a single-payer system according to basic economics that the Obama team must have realized it and decided to push the plan anyway.

Arguments for the public option are too feeble to seem ingenuous. The president says competition from a government plan is necessary to keep private insurers “honest.” Presumably, being “honest” means not colluding to set prices, and evidently he thinks that, absent competition from government, there will not be a competitive market for insurance.

Read the column.  No, really, go read it.

And now, the chastising.  Dumb public — at least the representative 72% of you who just told the Times you support a public option — thinking about how individuals might actually act after a well-intentioned law is passed is an important part of evaluating a policy!

If the current health care debate interests you, then you’ll probably enjoy this too, by the way.

Here’s a good story about one little attempt to control pork barrel spending by placing a one-year moratorium on “monuments to me”:

A plan by House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) to ban “monuments to me” in this year’s appropriations bills has been sharply criticized behind closed doors by a senior Democrat who wants to direct $1 million to an employment center in her district bearing her name.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) confronted Obey in the Democratic whip meeting Thursday, complaining about his refusal to fund her earmark request for the Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center in the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education appropriations bill, according to another Democratic Member and aides.

This hadn’t occurred to me before, but it seems like a no-brainer — as a cost control measure and as a good ethics rule — to prohibit any project receiving federal funds from bearing the name of any person who is a sitting member of Congress during its passage.

Another proposed rule I’ve always liked is requiring all bills to be read aloud in Congress before they are passed.  This would have any, perhaps all, of the following effects: making laws simpler and/or more efficiently constructed, improving the number of people who actually read (or hear) the bill before it becomes law, and slowing down the passage of new laws.  I can support all of these outcomes.  Wouldn’t most people?

I’ve never understood why proposals such as these haven’t gained traction among the general public.  I completely understand why they aren’t popular in Congress: they are likely to be opposed by lobbyists, sycophants, and the members themselves.  But why isn’t there a grassroots movement for these relatively simple, compelling, and easy-to-understand changes?

The latest installment is here.

Everyone in Arlington has already received this video from at least six people, but perhaps not everyone on the planet has seen it, so here you go:

Yes, I live in Arlington.  I do not own brown sandals, although I totally have the same reaction to riding the Green Line.

Here they are (via Tyler).

I am very clearly an Internet Hobo, which appears to be the least offensive subtype of Camper.  I don’t buy books, but I do buy coffee and food.  And I agree that bookstore coffee shops (all coffee shops, really) need more electrical outlets.

Neither bookstores nor coffee houses have really figured out how to maximize revenue from the Internet Hobo, and whoever does will be highly profitable indeed.

I type 100 wpm at 100% accuracy, FYI.  Although I do fade a bit over time — in four tries I fluctuated between 89 and 100 wpm.  Never lower than 95% accuracy though!

Ahh, it’s that time of year again — when all my favorite bars get slammed with barely-21 Miller Lite lovers, I have to start actively avoiding sidewalk vomit at night, and the popped collar enjoys its seasonal resurgence outside its normal Georgetown confines.  Welcome back, season of the DC intern.

For some, intern season started two weeks ago.  For my organization, however, intern season kicks off tonight with the opening talk of the Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow Program.  82 talented young people will be descending on DC for a week of exciting lectures, with 50 of them staying here all summer to work at various think tanks.

Are you an intern?  Here are a few tips for your stay in DC.

Are you an intern-hater?  This blog is for you.

Despite my snarky opening, my full-time job is figuring out how to help young people make a difference, so I happen to love intern season: my relative experience level in DC rises from solid to sage at happy hours.  Interns also hate spending money and therefore throw great apartment parties — likely one reason I always save money in the summer!  And although interns can’t always keep up (see tip #2 above), it’s fair to say that some of my aging friends aren’t the ballers they once were, so I always enjoy hanging out with new people who don’t have pre-set appointments with Sex and the City reruns.

Here’s my single most important tip for this year’s interns: perseverance in creating your own opportunities is what separates the men from the boys.  If you attend a happy hour and you just stand in the corner with your fellow interns, you are not out there meeting people.  But although exchanging cards with someone might be enough to get you a job down the road (most interns don’t even do that), I’m talking about more than that.  I posit that meeting prestigious people once is less important than getting to know a handful of DC professionals well.  The people who close down the bar more often than not are the real movers and shakers, because sooner or later they know pretty much everyone.

I’m not saying be “that guy” who’s always passing out business cards, and I’m definitely not saying be “that guy” who always has to be helped into a taxi.  I’m saying be that guy who’s out enough that DC professionals remember your name and think you’re pretty cool to have a beer with.  If you’re intelligent, a good communicator, and a good person, they’ll remember that come job search time, because those are very hard qualities to discern from a resume and cover letter.  Go to happy hours.  Go to events with receptions.  Don’t let $5 in lunch or drink costs be the deterrent that keeps you from a new opportunity.  When you’re invited, show up and hang out and introduce yourself and make friends.  That’s all networking really is.

If you have any questions, let me know.  I do this for a living, after all.

This is the best new semi-regular feature on Slate.  Previous entries here and here.  That is all.

This is precisely my view on judicial empathy:

Empathy is a vital virtue to be exercised in private life — through charity, respect and loving kindness — and in the legislative life of a society where the consequences of any law matter greatly, which is why income taxes are progressive and safety nets are built for the poor and disadvantaged.

But all that stops at the courthouse door. Figuratively and literally, justice wears a blindfold. It cannot be a respecter of persons. Everyone must stand equally before the law, black or white, rich or poor, advantaged or not.

Obama and Sotomayor draw on the “richness of her experiences” and concern for judicial results to favor one American story, one disadvantaged background, over another. The refutation lies in the very oath Sotomayor must take when she ascends to the Supreme Court: “I do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich…. So help me God.”

And, in the same article, this is precisely my view on what conservatives should do about Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation:

Make the case for individual vs. group rights, for justice vs. empathy. Then vote to confirm Sotomayor solely on the grounds — consistently violated by the Democrats, including Sen. Obama — that a president is entitled to deference on his Supreme Court nominees, particularly one who so thoroughly reflects the mainstream views of the winning party. Elections have consequences.

Read the whole thing.

Via Reason’s Ron Bailey

A few months ago I wrote an off-putting memo about people who move to DC and feel compelled to live “in the city.”  Today I revisit my argument more thoughtfully.

When choosing where to live in a given metropolitan area, pretty much everyone thinks about the following factors in their cost-benefit analysis: quality of the particular deal (e.g. size, cleanliness, roommate situation), cost to rent/buy, additional costs (e.g. taxes, parking fees), crime/safety in the area, accessibility to public transit, and accessibility to useful stuff.  This is not a comprehensive list of course, but I am highlighting these factors because in virtually every case one can find available housing in Maryland and Northern Virginia that beats out the comparable option in DC weighing these criteria absent other considerations.

Now, as there are other considerations, the analysis is not complete.  I contend that, in addition to the above, the most common factors a prospective DC-area resident will consider include the following:

1. Proximity (or transit time) to work.
2. Affinity for a particular neighborhood/community.
3. Desire to have a more urban vs. suburban feel.
4. The “DC” factor.

#1 is of course on everyone’s list of top considerations, and it alone may tip the scale back to DC depending on work location.  But, as I argued in my previous post, this really only applies to people who live close enough to walk or within a 15-minute commute of their office.  On this argument alone there is no special reason why someone who works on K Street would live in Tinleytown or Eastern Market over Rosslyn, and it goes without saying that people who live in DC and commute to a job in Arlington must have another reason for doing so.

#2 is a very important factor, I think.  I’m sure plenty of people commit themselves to living on Capitol Hill or in Dupont because those areas mean something to them.  And I know plenty of people who have moved to Eastern Market or U Street or Bloomingdale because something about the feel of those neighborhoods appealed to them.  But I’m willing to bet that community feel isn’t the reason people are moving to Petworth, or 9th & Florida NE, or pretty much anywhere more than 6 stops from the city center and a 10+ minute walk from the metro.  And I hate to break it to my Columbia Heights compadres, but right now that area “feels” pretty much like Clarendon.  So there must be another reason; how about…

#3 is the intangible that I suspect most people will use to tip the scales if they haven’t come up with another defensible argument for living in DC by this point in the post.  It’s perfectly legitimate, and completely immeasurable.  Here’s the rub: there’s definitely a bright-line distinction between what feels urban and suburban.  On one extreme, pretty much everyone who doesn’t care about #1 or #2 but cares about #3 should prefer somewhere like Dupont, which is about as urban as this city gets.  On the other hand, absent #2 as a consideration the there’s probably nothing more urban about Van Ness or Eastern Market than Courthouse, much less Takoma or Deanwood (not that I know anyone who would argue with the latter).  So if you’re living on the edge of what would be less urban than the nearest areas of Virginia or Maryland, think carefully about whether your choice of housing isn’t based on…

#4 is the rationale-that-shall-not-be-named.  Much like Manhattan residents who buy 212 area codes to show their friends they’re true New Yorkers, some people don’t care about the tax rates or the community or the proximity and really just need to send their Christmas cards with “Washington, DC” on the return address.  This argument is the uncouth cousin of the others, because most people definitely choose their location for one of the above reasons, but there are always a handful of people for whom the cost-benefit simply doesn’t tip the scales toward DC so they force the scales on these grounds but will never admit it.  And I’m certainly not saying it’s wrong, because this is important to some people.  What I am saying is if all the above reasons point to Virginia or Maryland and this is the one that does it for you, then I think it’s important to be comfortable with the fact that the decision is rooted in pretension.

In conclusion, I want to acknowledge that preferences are most certainly not linear.  For example, I might say that community feel is less important than proximity to work, but not to the extent that I’m going to live in a high-rise surrounded by concrete as opposed to a townhouse on a tree-lined street five minutes farther away.  There are lots of good reasons to live in DC; I definitely consider it every time my circumstances change.  But since few people are okay with coming across as pretentious, I consider it a public service if I can help anyone to better understand the reasons they’re using to decide where to live.

That’s right: a public service.  Some people fight for their country; I blog about DC living considerations.  Happy Memorial Day.