Actually, I failed to buy the tickets, because they wouldn’t let me buy lottery tickets with a debit card. But later in the day I somehow acquired American currency and bought some lottery tickets at a different gas station. And the drawing was today. Guess what:

I lost, obviously. Six tickets with six numbers each, and I didn’t match a single number that was drawn. To top off all the bad luck I had yesterday, I paid a $6 Stupid Tax. I’m unlucky and dumb. But, um, at least the school children of Texas will do better with the new textbooks they’ll buy with the money I so generously donated.

First, it’s worth pointing out that no one is born a prodigy and no one discovers they’re a prodigy at anything on their first attempt. Or their second attempt. Or their thousandth attempt. Is ten years long enough to discover that you’re not a prodigy? Perhaps. It’s certainly long enough to learn that you’re not the next Mozart (but since in over two hundred years we’ve yet to discover the next Mozart, perhaps this is an unrealistic basis for comparison). Or perhaps you didn’t practice enough because you just expected talent to float from the heavens and land upon your blessed fingers.

I fall into the latter category. I played the piano for a considerable number of years, and seem to have had some underlying talent. However, without getting into any childhood issues, we’ll just say that I had a fairly lax upbringing. I practiced when I wanted, and I watched TV and played Nintendo when I wanted. Guess which one of those I wanted to do least? I was able to be an above average pianist while exerting a minimal amount of effort. Because I wasn’t excellent, however, it was never fun to play.

But one can’t become excellent without hard work. An honest review of my life shows consistently above average outcomes and consistently minimal effort. Perhaps I could have been genuinely excellent at something, but I simply didn’t put in enough work. Or, perhaps I would have been merely above average no matter how hard I tried. If it’s the latter, my laziness has paid off in spades; if it’s the former, my laziness has been my tragic downfall. The truest thing written on those demotivation posters is that, “Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now.” Logically, it’s very hard to get past that.

We must get past that, however, if we’re to achieve excellence. I envy Chua’s children. I doubt their childhood was significantly less happy than mine (and even if it was, so what? why do we fetishize “childhood”? why is it more important to have a carefree first fifteen years than to use that time so that their last 85 years are full of accomplishment and pride?), but they know exactly how good they can be.

Not everyone finishes first every time, not everyone is awesome at everything they try; in fact, very, very few do and are. Success is a function of inate talent multipled by effort. Knowing what I know about piano playing, the amount of time Chua’s children have put in at the bench by itself is enough to enusre that they’re among the top .1% of those who play the piano. They’re better than the vast majority of those who have more talent than they but work less hard.

And so what if, after fifteen years of hard practicing, Chua’s children realize that they don’t like playing the piano, or that they’ve reached their limit and their limit isn’t good enough? I doubt she forced them to take these lessons on the presumption that they would be professional pianists. Rather the experience of having put in enough work to get very good at something, and at least having a grasp of how much hard work is required to achieve true excellence, is an incredible thing to give a child. For those of us who have never tried hard enough to fail, that’s enviable.

Federalist Paupers

Constitution Fanboys

Text analysis

federalistpaupers.com is probably written by a male somewhere between 66-100 years old. The writing style is personal and upset most of the time.

That actually is close to the aggregate age of the regular bloggers here. . .

Back in 2003, I had a summer internship with the Collegiate Network working in Washington DC. In order to get an apartment, I had to have the CN send confirmation of my employment to the apartment manager. When I called the CN, Communications Manager Christine O’Donnell answered the phone and emailed the apartment complex that I was, in fact, employed.

Additionally, I believe that my primary contact at the CN was fired/released/whatever as a result of this lawsuit. If memory serves, O’Donnell actually logged into his email to send the employment confirmation, but I might be wrong about that; at the very least, this seems like the sort of thing that I shouldn’t be able to remember after seven years. I liked the guy, but know nothing else.

In the unlikely event that O’Donnell wins, this will replace stumbling over Amy Klobuchar’s luggage on a French subway as my oddest encounter with a U.S. Senator.

After taking care of the requisite smog check (sigh) I drove over to the DMV to see if I could just wait in line. Upon arriving the line was wrapped around the building. Twice. It was 4 hours long. Sigh.

I drove back to work fearing I would have to wait until September 13th. Upon arriving I told my tale of woe to a coworker who informed me that AAA takes care of 90% of DMV related tasks. Eureka.

I drove to the nearest AAA where they scanned my card and gave me a seat in nice plush chairs in their air-conditioned office. 5 minutes later I was called by name. 5 minutes after that I was out the door with my new tags. All this was done for free with my membership.

I’ve been a AAA member for 4 years now. I have not once used their roadside assistance services. This one trip has convinced me that my $45 a year was worth every penny.

Another block to the east, holding signs and pacing back and forth on the steps just north of the Capitol Reflecting Pool, was Zeouss. He was Greek, as his name, thick accent, and complexion attested. He had a scraggly goatee and scraggly, bushy hair. His pants, shoes and shirt were dark colored and of fair quality, and he had a trash bag on his shoulder, probably left from when it rained. He appeared unwashed, and his hand felt filthy, but the quality of his clothes and the fluidity of his anti-Semitism led one to believe that he was an eccentric academic rather than a bum.

Appetizer:

• Homemade “crackers” (with 1/4 whole wheat flour), with black bean hummus (served with sour cream and smoked oysters)

Main Course

• Grilled asparagus (olive oil and salt – don’t get cutsey and add other crap)
• Rissotto with saffron and chanterelles
• Seared scallops with the beurre nantais from this recipe (without all the froofy spinach and chives – I mean, wtf?)

Desert

• Dobos torte

Granted, the Dobos torte doesn’t intuitively follow, but I’ve never found anyone who complained about receiving a slice. To drink, we had a Texas pinot grigio (the ‘08, not the ‘07), and then a white Rias Baixas, which I wasn’t familiar with before tonight, but enjoyed quite a bit.

I think the last time I geeked out this hard was when I was standing in front of Steven Spielberg at Sam Goody…while buying Close Encounters…

This week I’m visiting my in-laws in one of the L.A. burbs, and I brought with me a rather fun car. Frankly, I’m blown away by how fantastic it is to drive here. So long as there’s no traffic, every time you get on the freeway the left two lanes are like entering a race. The speed limit in the carpool lane is “as fast as the guy in front of you,” and if there’s speed enforcement in the other lanes, it’s pretty sporadic. The drivers, reputation aside, are at least as skilled and attentive as anywhere I’ve driven.  And no matter how fast you go, someone will pass you. I originally thought that there was a de facto speed limit, imposed by the dilapidated state of the roads, of 85, but a rather exhilarating drive to the airport tonight suggests that that’s wrong. The faster you drive, the more bumps you skim over.

I’m not sure that driving this way on a daily basis would be good for my health, my fuel mileage, or my insurance premium, and it might get old after a while (though probably not). Objectively, there’s enough traffic to more than compensate for the occasional bursts of speed (on the way back from the airport, twice I was going so slow that my Garmin asked if I wanted to enter “Pedestrian Mode”).

But as a once-a-year visitor who can pick the hours he drives – wowee this is fun!

Holy Crap.

To say that this was an entirely different experience is putting it mildly, it was like hearing many of these songs for the first time. Over the course of the day, and evening, it became quite clear that most of these songs were never meant to be heard in any other format. They were written, arranged and mixed for mono sound and to hear them the way they were intended is to hear the true genius of the greatest band of all time.

I highly reccomend this box set for any true fan of The Beatles (stereo…blech) I know I will need to buy it as my friend is expecting his copy back today.

And rightly so!