TheNiche

You apparently haven't any preconceived notions of what uber-wealthy socialite trophy wives are expected to talk or act like.

Post Oak Blvd. The Boulevard.

Back in college, I developed a theoretical economic model based upon game theory describing the general nature of human mating. And in traditional environments like the college campus that I used as an example, the first means of filtering the wheat from the chaff were almost always perceptions of physical attractiveness. Its hard to get away from that tendency, too, because if your optimal outcome is a function of many factors, of which physical attractiveness is one part and personality is another part, out of n parts where n>2, then even if the personality is ultimately more important, the moment you lay eyes on someone for the first time you have something on the order of a 98%/80% idea of what they look like clothed or naked, respectively, but the conclusions you can draw about their personality based upon their appearance may only have a 30% chance of being accurate. ...these percentages of course vary greatly among individuals, but they serve to illustrate my point, which is that imperfect information can lead an individual to initially screen out less attractive persons (even possibly the statistically normal) that may otherwise be perfect for them on the basis of much greater certainty regarding a trait that is considered of secondary importance. The full general model was of course much more technical and exhaustive than the part of it that I've provided above, but I hope you all get the gist of it. And I'm not meaning to be 'that guy', which cries out about how cruel a world it is or anything. Econ students like to assume that all of society is acting rationally, and my model was no different. These are the actions of a rational person seeking to maximize their net benefit. When an individual is fed through the full model, perfect pairing is a statistical anomaly. I think that it is generally valid, but that's why I refer to it as my general model. However...the world is not full of rational people, but with an approximately normal distribution of partially-rational people, many afflicted with a broad variety and varying degrees of mental illnesses. So! There is a caveat. The optimization of a mate-seeking strategy should account for those irrational actions and abnormalities to the extent that they are predictable. The most rational people within society will adapt the general model into a specific model applicable to their specific needs within an irrational society. And within the specific model, rules and approaches will change.

Haha, yeah, the "aspiring to be green" bit screams to me: "This project couldn't hope to qualify for LEED certification, but we're going to ascribe the word 'green' to it because our clientele is of the sort that doesn't really care about the environment all that much, if at all, but would really respond positively to suggested self delusion."

Yep, that it's an archetypal suburb that we see as ho-hum, but that a California or Northeastern transplant on a modest income (and most soccer players don't make all that much, yet) sees as the greatest thing ever. They could never have afforded this lifestyle back there. They're living like millionaires.

For most households, that Houston physically has suburbs is pretty much irrelevent; what is important than that our suburbs are better than most in terms of quality of life. And to the typical household, that means, 1) financially attainable, 2) good schools, and 3) short commute. And because the majority of our jobs are located in the suburbs, and because there are varied price points in all parts of our suburban landscape, the opportunity to access the 'American Dream' is really much better here than in most large cities. It also factors into site selection for corporate relocation. One anecdote: Oliver Luck (manager of the Dynamo) once gave a speech in which he explained that the initial reaction of the soccer players to Houston was that it was a bit boring compared to California's Bay Area; "...and then they discovered Pearland!"

Culberson's 7th U.S. Congressional District: The dominant between-the-lines theme I picked out of this was, "Screw the inner loopers. I've alienated them pretty thoroughly by my opposition of their pork, and it'll be easier to pick up votes by reinforcing what pork I've done and what I want to do to help Cypress/Katy/Memorial portion of my constituency than it will be to try to perform damage control in areas that started out mildly disliking me and that now despise me."

Use the search function. We've discussed this on a couple of other threads. The prognosis was not so good.

Duplicate thread.

I'm just as amazed that the door hasn't been completely torn apart by the homeless as fuel for a camp fire.

Employment is not population. If they were, then Dallas would almost certainly be #2.

Probably survey stakes and/or utility markers. That's a fair indication that it is at least under contract to a new owner, if it hasn't sold already.

What expectation of privacy should you have when you're in public? It'd be one thing if they wanted to embed a GPS unit in the EZ Tag that fed them the position of your vehicle every second of every day because there would be cases in which you may be on private property and secluded from view, such that the only basis that they'd have for looking at your vehicle's location would be that you provided consent. But in the current form, they can only track you as you move about a public realm, and anybody can do that, with or without your consent.

Yeah, I've got fangs too, and that's something that needs to be corrected once my dental insurance kicks in because it can lead to medical complications in the future. Talk to a dentist, as it may only be that wisdom teeth or molars are causing crowding of all the others, and that extracting a couple would releive some of the pressure from the rest.

If you have to ask, you probably already know the answer.

Egress is easy via Travis, but ingress could be difficult, depending on which direction you're coming from and your level of familiarity with the street layout, so I don't think that it'd be an ideal retail site. The Midtown office market just isn't very strong, and condos aren't very feasible so far from Downtown, so I'd put my money on apartments.

Is there a reason that your smiley is pouting?

Google is your friend.

Actually, I was abnormally tired and fell asleep after making that post. Woke up a few minutes ago with what feels like the onset of strep throat. And according to a really good wikipedia entry on the subject, I'm at particular risk because I've only just recently gotten over the flu. So that's what I ended up doing on Friday night: contracting disease. I'm not sure who's next on my for-pleasure reading list, but it sure as hell isn't Chomsky. And I know nothing about Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, but your mention of unicorns isn't encouraging. The Unbearable Lightness of Being might just make the cut, but first I'm probably going to have to brush up on some urban economics and finance literature for work.

Yep, that's how it so often works. And I still don't get it. But I did get a bottle of Captain Morgan's Private Stock. Good stuff. If you're reading this, Red, thanks for the inadvertant recommendation.

I don't plan on departing any military vehicles any time soon, so its doubtful. And while drunks may have a tendency to wear high heels from time to time, I don't own any, so that's also not much of a risk factor.

Gotta say, I've gotta wonder what's running through your mind, because with respect to R or NC-17 ratings applying to Atlas Shrugged, I'm drawing a total blank. ...maybe it'll make sense to me in the next couple chapters, I don't know.

Yeah, that was my vacation before starting a new job. In the first week of that vacation, I'd read Anthem in one sitting and gone through the first 300 pages of Atlas Shrugged. Since then, I haven't had so much time (or energy). A total of about 1,300 pages in about three months is not an unreasonable pace. ...but yes, I certainly do plan in imbibing some adult beverages. Red is always bragging on Captain Morgan--might be worth a shot.

Finishing off the last of Atlas Shrugged. The third chapter before the last was about a 60-page monologue, and was really thick reading, but now that I'm almost done with that, it should be a breeze.

I went to lunch with some coworkers yesterday and the person who's car we were driving around in had Christmas music playing from the radio. What the hell is figgy pudding? It occured to me then that Christmas is merely an accretion of anachronisms, some dating back millenia, yet seemingly dominated by some romantic conception of Victorian ideals that hold no basis in reality. Nobody really has a good grasp of what Christmas symbolizes anymore, and any one thing that someone might try to pin down is corrupted by a whole mess of extraneous things--yet most everyone indulges in it. Bah, humbug! ...or maybe I just need to increase my scotch intake.