N Judah

Oh, OK. I was only wondering since you didn't mention a cite or a source. Anyway, another "inmate processing facility" would surely kill the ambience. I'm intrigued that all of this began once Annise Parker was elected.

Edit (since it does not let me edit that post anymore): Actually if "inmate processing facility" is what they call jails now then yes Annise Parker said that. But I am not sure why they would put another jail right there in downtown by GRB, MMP, Toyota, and a new light rail line. Also does anybody have a link to this master plan?

I'm surprised people can't figure out why being near the confluence of 2 LRT lines, on infrastructure already built to handle stadia, would be considered a good thing. I think the real question is: why Bellaire? Of the several people who have suddenly appeared out of nowhere to denigrate the East End location, none have actually explained why the Galleria would be a good place for a team whose supporters consist mostly of Spanish-speaking tailgaters.

That one sentence at the end of today's Glenn Davis's article, right? I wouldn't say that's based in reality.

I'm pretty sure it has to do with battery life, which I am sure is the primary consideration for all of these devices. The thing is that nVidia claims nobody else can do 1080p in a power efficient manner (see that first link I posted) because on other devices the CPU does some of the decoding. I think having an nVidia GPU on board the Tegra 2 is the difference, since video decoding is something a GPU is good at.

I don't trust these rating agencies anymore. If they're downgrading it it means they have a plan in mind.

I found this place on the front page of the chron.com. It is in a similar location and received a 77/100 ("Very Walkable") walkability score. http://realestate.chron.com/homes/listing/2764-60045344

I think that's accurate. I've seen people thrown out of bars/"clubs" for talking trash, being loud, screaming, being "too drunk" etc. Having said that it usually takes quite a bit to get kicked out of a place.

I think the East End location makes a lot more sense.

I just looked it up and you're right it's based on the A9 system-on-a-chip. It has some proprietary additions Apple made with the semiconductor company they bought. I searched further and discovered that the Tegra 2 is supposedly also based on the Cortex A9 but with an nVidia GPU. The Tegra 2 will be able to do 1080p video (http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3714), v. 720p for the iPad (http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/). So in that sense there is room for improvement (assuming comparable price and battery life, which is quite an assumption to make) and true competition is welcome. However at the end of the day Apple's real advantage is its "ecosystem" and also its trump card. So pretty soon we'll see some Tegra 2 products with crap-tastic GUIs from various PC manufacturers and then in March, or whenever Apple has its next event, they'll launch the iPhone OS 4.0 (which may contain multitasking and enough improvements so that a person seeing the iPad for the first time would *not* be reminded of a "larger iPod") and be back in the news again just in time to ship the actual iPads to people's doors.

I think it depends on what else they're building. If your place is surrounded by other townhomes I don't think you have much to worry about.

Well the good thing is that nearly all of the other big computer makers are working on tablets of their own. However, instead of using Apple's proprietary A4 chip many of these companies will be using nVidia's Tegra 2 chipset. So instead of everybody being limited to the same chips there will be some real competition out there. I will admit I was expecting something more robust but this is much more exciting than another update of the MacBook line. I look forward to being deluged by innovation from all directions.

I bet you can hear that stupid choo choo horn for miles.

Wow, $499...that's pretty good.

If that's the Red Lobster I'm thinking of, it seemed like it was closed more often than it was open because it caught on fire so much.

The government has been printing too much money. I think we need a large population increase to stave off inflation.

This is a good idea. Along what corridor could this be done? Anybody have any suggestions? I don't recall Kirby having bike lanes...are you just referring to the relative absence of potholes along that stretch? I think the best thing to do overall is to not discourage density. So those planning "guidelines" should be followed and businesses also should not have to put parking in front of their businesses. Let them build up to the street and outsource all parking to a parking garage and then the number of in-out driveways (meaning auto right turns) to be paranoid about will be reduced.

My understanding is that to get rid of the property tax she'd have to amend the Texas constitution with the assistance of the legislature. And even if she did, the state budget would still be balanced because as has been noted most of it comes from sales taxes. However, local municipalities (authorized by the constitution to collect sales taxes for their own uses) would then be unable to pay for a lot of things. By "broad based sales tax" she could mean increasing the state sales tax and then divvying up the money to the local municipalities as the state government might deem fit to replace revenue lost from the absence of property taxes. I guess local municipalities would still be able to increase their own area's sales tax but that wouldn't really be "broad based".

I think bills like these will be popular in state legislatures, with varying degrees of taxation/regulation. The advantage of this is if your state taxes/regulates it enough you won't have to deal with any campaigning whatsoever.

Here's what happens when you don't have property tax revenue: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/01/hoschton-georgia-dissolves-police.html

These are great results. I think the City of Houston needs to take a volume-based approach to these little Discovery Green-size parks. Eminent domain the living crap out of anything they can near the city center and future LRT stops. Then put as many as they can until they can no longer be projected to pay for themselves.

Yes, foreign corporations can make contributions with a US subsidiary. That seems almost like a technicality...they might as well lift the subsidiary restriction since they think corporations are like individuals. After all, foreign-born individuals do not lose their freedom of speech when they visit here. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0123/Fighting-Obama-hits-Supreme-Court-over-campaign-finance However, one benefit to keeping the US-subsidiary requirement is that it might be possible to regulate such companies. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/22/AR2010012204811.html?hpid=topnews

The thread about inmates being released to poor neighborhoods reminded me of some articles I have been reading lately on NPR. Part 1: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122725771 Part 2: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122725819

I think if that were true, they'd at least be able to post timetables at the stops.

I'm guessing it's too late to take the offer in Dallas doing legal services?