editor

You are correct, this is not Metro; it's Harris County Transit. I saw "Transit" and assumed Metro. I've changed the thread title.

In terms of terrorist targets, I think these would be very hard to hit, and without much collateral damage. Now, if SoCal ever gets dependent on this kind of energy, then I can see them being a viable target, but I think that's decades off.

First time I've heard of solar chimneys:

The numbers are intimidating, but Davey said that the benefits of making power without using water or creating pollution should attract investors to fund the estimated $750 million construction cost of the first tower.

Davey downplayed the size and scope of the chimney, which would be nearly as tall as the recently opened Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is the tallest manmade structure ever built, at more than 2,700 feet.

http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2010/12/10/20101210arizona-solar-chimney-project.html

It's nice that the New York Times did a big piece on him. A good recognition of his work and the stature of the Houston arts community.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/arts/design/12marzio.html?_r=1

Mr. Marzio became the director of the Houston museum in 1982, after serving as the director and chief executive of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington. He proved to be a dynamic force, equally adept at raising money, attracting important donations and identifying new artistic territory for the museum to explore in its exhibitions and acquisitions.

Pasadena Bus Ridership Nearly Quadruples

On Pace to Become Largest Route in Harris County Transit System

Harris County Transit recorded 2,558 passenger boardings the month of October on its tenth month of service to Pasadena and LaPorte residents. While October is normally a peak month in transit, November figures were only slightly lower with 2,482 boardings.

These numbers reflect enormous growth from the 661 passenger boardings recorded in January, the first month of service.

San Jacinto College students are making up the bulk of the increase. With the start of school in September students have shown consistent ridership nearing 1,000 per month.

These early Pasadana/LaPorte numbers compare quite favorably to those of the Baytown route in its infancy. The first year of the Baytown route, which started in August of 2008 passenger boardings grew to a high of 2,135 in June of 2009. Today, Baytown is averaging 4,000 passenger boardings per month.

"While it's hard to make apples to apples comparisons between cities like Pasadena/LaPorte and the City of Baytown; total route miles in each community is about 35 miles. But Pasadena is a larger city and for that reason alone could be on pace to produce the largest number of bus riders in our system," said Ken Fickes, Director of Harris County Transit.

While the service began with a federal Hurricane Recovery grant, it's continuation in 2011 depended on matching grants from the City's of Pasadena, LaPorte, Pasadena Second Century Development Corporation and San Jacinto College.

The Pasadena/LaPorte route service will turn a year old January 4, 2011.

Whether you like it or not, it is an icon.

Even on this, an architecture forum, it is an icon. It is the forum's owner's icon!

Good point. I didn't even realize that. I made it into my icon, therefore it's iconic!

What am I missing....?

Check out the stars.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088258/

Check out the This is Spinal Tap page at IMDB.com. Do you see what I see?

Oh look -- Google is my friend: http://www.texasembassy.com/

The biggest steak is only 16 ounces. That's not even trying for a Texan!

I was going through some old pictures I took in London a couple of years ago and ran across these.

There's a restaurant near Trafalgar Square called The Texas Embassy. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to go in, but I thought I'd share the exterior pics with some actual Texans.

Why did they mention "known convicted felon"? Are there felons with secret convictions?

Strictly speaking, yes. Criminal records can be suppressed, expunged, or otherwise hidden by the judicial system for various reasons.

I lived in the Dakota Lofts for two years. You can get used to the train surprisingly quickly.

It's an interesting idea, and a good way to turn several lower-value plots into a single high-value plot.

The biggest political challenge would be air rights, though recent developments like Houston Pavilions show that's not impossible to overcome.

You're going to have naysayers complaining about the risk of glass or whatever the facade is made out of falling on people below, especially in hurricanes.

I think the biggest physical challenge, though, is elevators. Depending on how steeply the buildings bend, you're going to lose precious space to sky lobbies and utilities.

I think you did the right thing by making these only 600 feet or so. If you'd gone the 1,000+ route you'd have people crawling out of the woodwork to call you a loon.

So they hired him in the wake of outrage from community groups about demoting Linda Lorelle and Khambrel Marshall. One wonders if the plan all a long was to bring in a ringer like this and then cut him after controversy died down?

In another era I might buy that theory. But the fact is that planning that far ahead simply isn't done anymore. TV managers only see the next three or four months, nothing more.

I'm guessing big Editor will have something to say on the subject before too long........

I'm trying not to get coal in my stocking this year.

London has them everywhere and it never bothered me. It actually made me feel happy knowing that if I were mugged, they'd have a nice clear picture of the assailant.

That's good if it makes you feel good, but statistics show that they're not going to catch the perp, no matter how many cameras are watching him mug you.

Why should we pay a ton of $$ for extra police to randomly patrol streets when we can have an entire area monitored by less staff... and dispatch officers to crimes in progress?

Police don't randomly patrol. There are very sophisticated computer programs that combined with community input create effective patrol patterns. I've seen them used in a couple of cities and they work well, until funding for the beat cops gets cut. Beat cops don't just wander aimlessly around the neighborhood like big blue Roombas.

I'd rather see more cops on the street than in their cars, or watching security monitors. Cops walking a neighborhood get to know the people who live there, what things should look like and shouldn't, and can detect very early on when something is amiss. Anyone who's ever walked more than a couple of blocks in their life knows that you see a lot more of what's going on around you when you walk compared with when you're in a car. Anyone who walks around their house or their block on a regular basis can tell when something is amiss. The additional visibility of a uniformed officer also acts as a deterrent to petty criminals.

About two years ago the mayor of Chicago bragged about having 3,000 police cameras installed around the city, and plans to double that number within two years.

Shortly after that, Chicago went through a crime wave. So far this year there have been over 400 murders in that city. Cameras won't bring those people back to life.

Would crime have been worse if the cameras weren't there? No one can really say.

Would crime have been reduced if the millions spent on the new OEMC was spent on beat cops? No one can really say.

I like the idea of fighting crime with technology, but I'm not yet convinced that it works in this form.

When NBC News asked Chicago for examples of how the cameras had prevented crime, the best thing the city offered a videotape of a police camera watching a burglar crawling into a person's window who was arrested a short time later.

It should be noted that there have been cases of camera operators being disciplined for looking in people's windows watching things they shouldn't. As long as there are people running the cameras, they will (through malice, carelessness, poor training, or pure voyeurism) be used for purposes they were not intended, nor authorized. So who watches the watchers?

Some of the advanced cameras are equipped with microphones that can triangulate the location of a gunshot and swing the camera in that direction. In theory it should be possible for the camera to lock on to and track the shooter. I don't know that this has ever actually happened, though. I would think that if it had, the city would have splashed the video all over the news for everyone to see as an example of the success of the 6,000 camera program.

London is hardly an example of security cameras being used for good things. No one is sure how many cameras there are there, but there are estimates that it's in the hundreds of thousands. Yet 80% of London's street crimes are unsolved. Here's a BBC article indicating that it takes 1,000 cameras to solve one crime.

And just for fun -- a look at the camera network surrounding George Orwell's home: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23391081-george-orwell-big-brother-is-watching-your-house.do

I'm not convinced that this wave of municipal security camera buying is fueled by anything more than mild paranoia and very good CCTV salesmen.

Singapore Airlines had an increase of 73.67%. They deplaned 3611 pax and enplaned 3692 pax. Of the 3611 that got off at IAH, 2126 got on at SIN while 1485 got on at DME. Of the 3692 that left IAH, 1474 got off at DME while 2218 continued their journey to SIN. Load factors were 62% to IAH and 63% from IAH.

This is the part that I find interesting. Even with a stop in Tokyo, going from IAH to SIN is brutal. I can't imagine being in coach for the entire flight!

Wouldn't it make more sense to allow for anonymous editing? I mean, we're already registered here at HAIF. Not even Wikipedia makes their users register, and there's a lot more traffic there. Basically, the list wouldn't be so out of date if it could be easily edited.

That would be ideal. However, the wiki is different software than HAIF. The two password systems don't talk to each other. The makers of the HAIF software have been promising a wiki function for years, but have failed to deliver.

The other reason is that I don't have the time to patrol the wiki portion very often, so that leaves it open to abuse. Requiring registration makes that a little harder.

But I've made the registration process on the wiki portion as simple and painless as I could to encourage everyone to use it.

I don't know if cartoons fall into the "drawing" realm of this enterprise, but in Brussels, there are a bunch of cartoon museums. Cartoons are serious stuff there.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7305657.html

The 214-room hotel is hosting an open house at 16730 Creek Bend Drive in Lake Pointe Town Center on Dec. 9 and Dec. 10 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m and on Dec. 11 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

http://www.ultimatefortbend.com/stories/221127-sugar-land-ballpark-architect-releases-more-images

The City of Sugar Land released new architects' drawings of its planned minor-league ballpark Tuesday night.

The stadium project, near the corner of State Highway 6 and US Highway 90A, got the city's official approval last month.

Photo credit: Kese Smith.

Hi there. My friend's wife is from Kingston. Near there somewhere.

Don't bother being friendly. He's a spammer from India hired by the company in Canada. The only reason he posted is to get the link in his signature (now deleted) seen by Google. He's not interested in discussing real estate with us.

Wow, so it seems about 2/3 of the time one shot is enough per building and the other 1/3 it takes two shots to get it right?

If I'm just canvassing a neighborhood, I try to get 2-3 good photos of each building. If I'm on assignment, I'll take several hundred of a single building. Sometimes you get lucky, and the light is just the way you like it and you can get a lot of work done in a little time. It's really up to the building. Some are boring and only warrant 2-3 shots. Some are interesting and require more.

Or do you sometimes leave a city without a good photo of a building.

Sometimes. But I always try anyway. If I don't try, I've wasted money on the trip. And there have been dozens of instances when I've refused to shoot a building because of light or position or weather and my assistant says "do it anyway" and I'm able to turn it into a really great photo in the computer.

Also, what if it was an overcast day, doesn't matter? It doesn't look like shadowns from other buildings mind you much.

Always try. Even if there's bad weather. If nothing else, it's good practice. Unless I have my computer with me and can sit in a hotel and "develop" a batch of photos from the day before, I'll always go out, even if it's nasty. In fact, some of my favorite photos were taken during snowstorms.

As for shadows, Long Beach buildings really aren't all that tall. That, combined with the southern latitude and the fact that I was shooting in May, and shadows really weren't a problem.

I used to have a program that would load building models into the computer, then you could place them anywhere on earth, set the date, and then with a slider you change the time of day and watch the shadow of the building move across a Google map. It was a great tool for getting the perfect shot when stalking a particular building. Unfortunately, it only runs on PPC machines, and I don't want my MacBook Pro cluttered up with Rosetta, so I abandoned it. Instead, now I just sit at Starbucks watching the shadows move and making educated guesses.