It's Finally Summer!

I can tell it's summer again, because it's 83 degrees inside my house. It never seems to be the perfect temperature - always too hot or too cold. I probably need to move to a more temperate locale.

Fat dog is here again, since she's been banished from the new carpet house due to he own poor behavior. She's been good so far, and the kitties have tolerated her. Except for one incident at 3 am on Monday.

I recently enjoyed "Is Google Making us Stupid?" in the Atlantic Monthly. Nicholas Carr apparently forgot that we've always been stupid. It's just more interactive now. Of course, that led me to the more interesting article American Murder Mystery, which makes the shocking point that inner city crime is not actually caused by density. It reminds me of all the epidemiologists who talk about crime as if it were an infectious disease . . .

And then there was this: "Fuel Prices Shift Math for Life in Far Suburbs" in the New York Times. It's full of comments about how suburban schools are always better than urban ones - another myth that I'm sure will be disproved soon. C'mon, it's all about the parents, anyway.

That said, I'm hoping that those exurbanites don't move into my neighborhood. Exurbanites live in the exurbs for a reason, and the last thing I want is for them to turn my urban neighborhood (which is the only place you can live an urban lifestyle) into a recreation of the suburbs. They could tear up the sidewalks to increase the size of front lawns, push out buses because the stops encourage loitering and take away on-street parking space, or zone out corner businesses because they interfere with the "residential feel" and lack parking lots.

Hopefully the houses are too small around here to be appealing. Plus, I'm walking down the street a lot, and perhaps I look hoodlum enough to scare them off. At any rate, for the moment I hear mostly birds chirping outside my open windows. I don't want it to become the noise of leafblowers and SUV engines filling my house.