Opportunist

I do some gardening and home maintenance, as most who own a home with any land do.  I've reduced the amount of lawn on my acre in favor of landscaping.  It looks nicer and cuts down time on mowing.  When I first started with it I worked on the popular conception of planting things I bought at local nurseries and weeding out anything else from the landscaping.  As time has progressed, I've gone in a different direction.

See, life (living things) is an opportunist.  There's no cognizant thought necessary.  Life is just carpe diem.  Look at the various plants growing in cracks in sidewalks and roads.  They're going to get run over.  They're going to get weeded or sprayed.  If there was intelligence there, it wouldn't pick that spot.  And yet, that's what works.  Life seizing opportunities is why there is so much life.  Plenty of those seized moments result in failure (death), but those that make it through spread life even further.

Sometimes that life seizing life is at the expense of other life, too.  Quite often, actually.  Kudzu strangles out other plants all across the South.  Animals eat plants or other animals.  Mammals become dominant over lizards.  It's been going on as long as there's been life on Earth, if not longer on some other planet or moon in the universe.

Interestingly, the most succesful of living things on Earth is the only one to try to put the brakes on its seizing of opportunity.  Humanity is the only living thing ever to have considered the matter, at least on this planet.  Any other life on this planet that was as successful would simply continue to seize its opportunities until there were no more opportunities to be seized and it was so successful as to cause its own end.

But life is merciless.  Life doesn't consider other life or inanimate objects.  Life grabs what it can take for as long as it can take it.  It may look beautiful to our eyes, as does my landscaping that's now a mix of bought plants and wild plants that have joined the fray, but it's not compassionate or in any way loving.  Life's a bitch, then it dies.

Pandora and Personality

I recently bought an iPhone.  To be accurate, I bought iPhones for myself, my wife, and the two kids.  Anyway, the three of them give me grief about how few apps I have on the phone that's really a small computer.  One of the few I have is Pandora.

Pandora is an internet radio of sorts.  You create stations by entering an artist or song, which it plays for you and then cascades from there to other songs and artists who are in the same field of sound and style.  It means you don't pick your own songs but go with whatever the algorithm provides.

My wife doesn't like Pandora much because she doesn't have control over what's being played.  She wants to pick the song she wants to hear.  I like it.  I like the new discoveries that result.  Besides, I'm seldom in the mood for only one song or artist.

It's a difference in personality.  She wants control.  I like going with the flow.  It works pretty well for us in the marriage, too, as long as we're communicating well about these things.  I've seen the same dynamic in vacations, which she likes to schedule.  By working a give and take between us, we end up with a vacation that has some structure to it but isn't limned with requirements of being at x place at y time.

Segregation in Housing

I don't know what to make of this one.  The Baltimore Sun has an article about housing patterins from 1977 to 2005.  Read about it here.

For starters, the study only tracks black and white families.  Um, there's a lot more to the ethnic make-up of the US than that, so I don't know that the initial premise of the study is entirely valid.

And that's reflected in the numbers.  Much is decried that 44% of black families who moved in the time period moved to predominantly black neighborhoods, while 5% moved to predominantly white neighborhoods, 18% moved to multi-ethinic neighborhoods, and 34% to other types of neighborhoods.  Similarly, 57% of whites moved to predominantly white neighborhoods, 2% to predominantly black neighborhoods, 6% to multi-ethnic neighborhoods, and 36% to other types of neighborhoods.

For starters, I don't know what the hell an other type of neighborhood would be.  It seems to me the first three categories cover all the bases.  I suppose it could mean predominantly Hispanic, Asian, or Native American neighborhoods.  But what's the size of a neighborhood?  Parts of Ellicott City have large Korean populations.  Does that make those areas predominantly other types of neighborhoods, or is the whole of Ellicott City what's counted and it's considered predominantly white or multi-ethnic?

A large hit to the questionable usefulness if this study is in the terminology.  "Predominantly" is a key word.  That's because there aren't many neighborhoods, particurly in urban and suburban areas, that are entirely one ethnicity.  Even in rural areas it's getting harder to find, as many Hispanic immigrants are willing to move far and wide for employment.  And why not?  They already left home for a strange land.  While there are some clusters of fellow immigrants to give support in more urban areas, there are more labor job opportunities in rural areas.

So, what does this study provide?  Aside from a somewhat hysterical, and possibly misleading, headline that segregation remains a problem in the US, not much.  Some white people continue to flee further and further away from cities?  No news there.  They mostly cloak it in affordable housing or lower taxes, as our white flighters from Maryland are wont to do, but some are doing it to live with "their own kind" as much as possible, too. 

These numbers really mean next to nothing because of the qualifiers used in the black and white neighborhoods and the lack of definition for the other.

Luxury Vehicle Owners

An easy target, yes, but here we go.

I live in a fairly affluent area, or at least among those who think they are affluent. I'm not among them, but I got here first. Anyway, there are plenty of luxury cars in northwest Baltimore County, so I see lots of them on the road.

Is there something in the owner's manual that says if you buy a luxury brand you should not use turn signals? Do the cars, at all that expense, not come with turn signals? No single vehicle segment is more easily predicted than that a luxury vehicle driver will not use a turn signal.

This is especially so of German luxury vehicles, with Mercedes being more so than BMW. It's a constant presence around here. If you see a Mercedes, you can count on the driver not using turn signals. I suppose the sense of entitlement just says "I don't have to tell anyone my intentions, safety be damned."

The only exception I know is my boss. She has a Mercedes and uses turn signals reliably, those few times I've been driving around somewhere the same time she is. But she's apparently violating some kind of code that only the luxury vehicle owners are privy to.

Just sayin'.