Humans seem to be adaptable creatures, usually to our great advantage. As a species we have tackled extremes of geography and weather, and dealt with feast and famine. I was considering this recently while visiting a friend's house, where their bathroom mirror had a large mark that was directly across the image of one's face while using the mirror.

The mark has been there for several of the years I've been visiting, and each time I attempt to shave or brush my teeth with several large grey splotches across my visage I wonder how they put up with the mirror. On our longer stays, after a day or two I find myself moving in various awkward poses to get to the "clear" section of the mirror, and eventually stop noticing the damage.

Replacing the mirror would be a fairly trivial and inexpensive task. It's a generic and readily available design, but after a few days our adaptability has us physically contorting ourselves rather than fixing the root problem. Certainly this occurs in other aspects of our lives, from dysfunctional relationships to substandard products and services that we adapt to and tolerate. While these may not be as obvious as a large mark that appears on your face each morning, they may be more detrimental to your life, and just as easy to fix.

Several news outlets in the U.S. have recently highlighted information from the latest census, which indicates that "minority" births have outstripped "majority" births in the U.S. for the first time.

There's an obvious and amusing semantic nuance here, since the former minority is now in the majority. Everything from government assistance programs to voting districts consider "minority" status as a factor, and one quickly wonders how we'll designate former and current minorities and majorities, and whether programs should be retargeted based on something other than numeric data. While I'll avoid the political implications, I can only assume the semantic gyrations will be interesting!