Category Archives: inthenews

20740 Gulf Freeway

So, we were down in Clear Lake salvaging some sinks, toilets, mirrors, handycap rails, et al to use in the new bar (next to the Continental).  Pete knows the guy that owns this place.  It was the old giant Fiesta that went up at I-45 & NASA 1 a little over a decade ago.   It was subdivided into smaller shops, and we went into a large area that I think was at one time the Burlington Coats place, or perhaps it hasn’t been used at all.  It was an amazing space, but it’s not being used.

As I recall, and it looks worse now, the access to this piece of property is a royal pain in the rear, and the more people that go there, the worse it is.  We drove to the other side of the property from where we were working (which took very long because of road humps) and there were a lot of second-rate stores there, run-down mall type stores.

If you had ever been to the Fiesta when it was open, it was the grandest Fiesta of them all, sporting even its own hydroponic garden (behind glass for you to view).  Also (I didn’t know) there is a quite large room upstairs with LOTS of grow lights in it, likely for starting up things that would get placed into the viewable garden.   There was also an insane amount (300 tons) of cooling capacity to deal with the output of the plants and the lights.  And it’s all still there.  It was pretty cool.

We sweated away, doing our labor, but was what really annoying is the radio saying “we’re under a heat advisory, so… er… be advised that it’s hot.”  We’re in Houston in August, where the hell do they think we are?  It hasn’t even got above 100 this whole summer.  And the “heat index” is a bunch of crap.  Yes it feels hotter.  And, yes your ability to evaporatively cool yourself by sweating is diminished in high humidity.  So TURN ON A FAN.

Next they’ll be reporting that the sky is blue and the grass grows more when it rains.

-b

George Will gone wacky?

What’s up with George Will’s attack on Vermont? There are many issues we need to be addressing and many which aren’t getting air time. He’s usually good about finding those topics and talking about them (even if I don’t often agree with him).

This week on Meet the Press, he just attacked Vermont.

“[Its] most conspicuous industry is ice cream, left-wing ice cream” does he ever define Coors as “right-wing Beer” (because of it’s owner’s politics)?

“We should now think of Vermont not as a state, but as a commune” Berating them for being democratically involved.

George, get back to politics and away from trite, belittling mockery of others! No maple syrup or teddy bears for you, George.

-b

Open Letter – sloppy media

Open letter to Associated Press, Martin Reynolds of the Gartner Group, and the Houston Chronicle.


James T. Campbell, Houston Chronicle Reader Representative, readerrep@chron.com
Scott Clark, Assistant Managing Editor, Business, edtgsc@chron.com
Conrad Bibens, Wire Editor – Business, conrad.bibens@chron.com
Martin Reynolds, (VP ?) Gartner Group, martin.reynolds@gartner.com
in lieu of an ombudsman contact on the AP web site…
Managing Editors, Associated Press, apme@ap.org
Edward Jones, President, Associated Press Managing Editors, edjones@freelancestar.com
Stuart Wilk, Vice President, Associated Press Managing Editors, swilk@dallasnews.com
General Contact Address, Associated Press, info@ap.org

There seems to be an unbalanced bias between two articles that ran in the Houston Chronicle’s business section this week and both of which came via the Associated Press.

They were both very small, wire articles and could have been shoved in to fill the gap of a few column inches. One was on Apple Computer, the other on Microsoft – certainly could be viewed as balancing the coverage. But they show signs of subtle bias and laziness in our media; small signs in small articles that reflect upon the whole. They reflect the media as a mouthpiece of the corporations. One has a partial quote that seems to be placed for maximum emotional effect. (Is there a need to keep the readers of a three inch column entertained in the last paragraph?)

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to silence dissent is morally treasonable

Teddy Roosevelt may have been his own breed of war monger in his day, but he appreciated what was important in this country, and stated it plainly.

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.”

— Theodore Roosevelt, The Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918

In March, Tom Daschle, Senate minority leader, said that President Bush had failed “so miserably at diplomacy that we’re now forced to war.”

Congressional Republicans promptly suggested that the comment bordered on the unpatriotic.

Teddy made the comment during WWI, and would have entirely disagreed with the reaction.

Daschle paraphrased Roosevelt thusly: “It’s unpatriotic to hold one’s voice in a democracy under any circumstances, right or wrong, regardless of one’s view of the president, whether he’s right or wrong.”

A sentiment as solid today as it was 85 years ago.

-b