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mollusk

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Everything posted by mollusk

  1. mollusk
    Woo - eeee!!! The R ticket picked up its second vote!!!! Looks like HAIF, like facts, has a liberal bias... (h/t Stephen Colbert)
  2. mollusk
    To put it more kindly, Bell draws about the same amount of interest as rice pudding.
  3. mollusk
    I wouldn't get too locked into the idea that the road runs straight east and west. Remember, the apparent location of the sun changes through the year, so it could actually be coming from different points on an arc. Which is a long way of saying, perhaps some part of 146 might be in play? Galveston Road (Hwy 3) wouldn't be it, because of the adjacent tracks pretty much along its entire length.
  4. mollusk
    Agreed that the only Dallas station location that makes sense among these three is downtown. Personally, I'd also prefer a downtown Houston location, but Northwest Mall makes sense, too - particularly if there's a quick METRO rail hookup to downtown and the Galleria. Northwest Mall would also be a boost to the already superior utility route.
  5. mollusk
    I don't work for any hotel, nor do I pretend to on TV... but I will second everything Purpledevil said about the transformation. I was up close and personal for the entire process. The result is certainly worth the minor nuisance that the interim obstacle course presented to those of us in the immediate neighborhood.
  6. mollusk
    Frostwood has some traffic calming devices - humps (I think) and a couple traffic circles. Sidewalks would be a great addition, but don't hold your breath waiting for the city to do it. A few years ago they had a program to install new sidewalks near schools, but even that was in a very limited area, and for only one side of the street.
  7. mollusk
    I'm not an absolutist on sidewalks (but close). The problem with Frostwood (the neighborhood generally bounded by City Centre/Town & Country, Katy, Gessner, and Memorial) is that once you get off of whichever bucolic one block cul de sac you began with, you're now walking on a collector street with a pretty fair amount of traffic or on someone's well tended lawn adjacent to that street. Non motorized cut throughs at the end of the cul de sacs would be great, but they generally don't exist there - and not all of the cul de sac ends meet up with one another. The result is that there have been pedestrians and bicyclists hit on its main drags, with a couple of daytime fatalities there back during my misspent youth. This design flaw is not unique to Frostwood by any stretch of the imagination.
  8. mollusk
    That's actually an interesting neighborhood to bring up, august. It would be walkable, except for two things: There are zero sidewalks (or close to it), and very, very few streets that aren't cul de sacs with fences at the end of them. This forces the hapless pedestrian or cyclist to use one of the two or three through streets, along with all the auto traffic that is funneled onto those same streets. I grew up just across the beltway from there (long before the tollway was built, and when there weren't nearly as many people there), and even way back then riding my bicycle to Memorial City challenged every ounce of my boyish bravado.
  9. mollusk
    My understanding is that everything on that block (save perhaps some stray utility infrastructure) is going to be gone and/or replaced by some time or another.
  10. mollusk
    I've heard people whine about how far the parking is from their gym.
  11. mollusk
    Hey - I completely support the idea that people in this country have the right to be amazingly wrong about their politics.
  12. mollusk
    The sidewalk level boards at Esperson were put up Friday evening. I was a bit surprised to see that 801 Travis popped a pane or two. And the broken office windows in Pennzoil are already replaced - I'm guessing that the ones over the lobby won't take much longer; they probably just want to have the area clear of people when they do those.
  13. mollusk
    IMHO the defining factor is whether one must rely on a car to get around. For example, walking any distance in much of the upper Post Oak/West Loop area is only for those who have a bit of a death wish, while downtown is very walkable, buses/trains or no. Most of the Heights, Montrose, and the area near the Village is quite walkable, even with crummy and/or non existent sidewalks, while in much of the burbs you can certainly wander down the middle of the cul de sac streets from now to next week without fear of getting run down, but where are you going to go other than somebody's house?
  14. mollusk
    Well, 50 years ago the DMN ran this ad. Granted, they also ran Molly Ivins's column, but it's still prolly the furthest right of Texas' big city dailies.
  15. mollusk
    Hear here, Keith Harrow! I, too, am getting a bit tired of those who insist on punishing the current METRO for the sins of the past. Really, it's un American - "corruption of the blood" was banned in the Constitution even before the Bill of Rights. I love trains as much as I can imagine, but we all need to remember that even the most rail centric places have extensive bus systems. I'm glad that METRO recognizes this, and is taking a ground up review of the bus route system that was largely inadequate even 40 years ago, but has only been given Band-Aids since then. Hear here, Keith Harrow! I, too, am getting a bit tired of those who insist on punishing the current METRO for the sins of the past. Really, it's un American - "corruption of the blood" was banned in the Constitution even before the Bill of Rights. I love trains as much as I can imagine, but we all need to remember that even the most rail centric places have extensive bus systems. I'm glad that METRO recognizes this, and is taking a ground up review of the bus route system that was largely inadequate even 40 years ago, but has only been given Band-Aids since then.
  16. mollusk
    I'm thinking that the company to the left of the service station is some sort of well works or perhaps well service supplier. There is a lot of drill pipe, along with various mechanical looking things. I don't have the expertise to give a guess whether it's oil, water, or something else. Sure would be nice if it had a legible sign out front.
  17. mollusk
    I'm not going to swear to exactly what I was watching one evening 31 years ago, but IIRC I was switching between the three network channels until the power went down.
  18. mollusk
    FWIW, the Eiffel Tower was used as a billboard for almost a decade.
  19. mollusk
    Part of the question is, where will you be in three (or four) years without the additional sheepskin? More to the point, what will make you happy? I went to law school with a couple of students who were in their late 40s - early 50s. It's a job you're not going to get without the degree, and both of them went on to long and satisfying careers. It's also a career with a gazillion different possible paths, and that lends itself well to semi retirement. The only complaints came from me and my cronies - they kept busting the curve because they studied harder than we did. The Director of Domestic Bliss (several years past 50) is working on an advanced degree right now. There is a certain amount of whinging about how much time it's taking from the day, no time for fun, etc., etc., but absolutely no thought of bailing.
  20. mollusk
    I agree that the utility alignment seems to be the better option. Every crossing is going to have to be grade separated; intuitively it seems that they would be easier to build when you're not right up against an active freight main line. Also, they'll have to get their 'lectricity from somewhere; being adjacent to those lines would also seem to have a lower construction cost.
  21. mollusk
    Marmer is correct - the gray car on the road is a '47 - '49 Studebaker. '46 was the pre war design carried over, and the bullet nose made its appearance in '50. I don't know of anything else that had that sort of wrap around back window.
  22. mollusk
    Inquiring minds want to know... Why is it that the common Yiddish expression for apathy ("m.e.h." - normally no periods, but I didn't want it to change) keeps getting changed to gentle bovine lowing (moo)? ≠ It even changes it out (and combines it with the other tag for "moo") up in the topic tags... There's been an option to add to the dictionary on every word processor I've used since back in the day when we squinted at words rendered in giant green pixels. Surely some mod or editor or publisher or web wizard or Grand Poobah can do something!!?!!?!!?!! Or is this simply a forum preference for the bucolic over the ethnic*? > ? *perhaps set out in tiny mouseprint somewhere in the TOS?
  23. mollusk
    You are correct, kylejack, mostly. "Indians not taxed" seem to be excluded from the census, both in Article I and in the 14th Amendment. The Constitution routinely uses the word "person." "Citizen" is used in the context of qualifications for elected Federal office, but interestingly enough, not the judiciary. "Citizen" comes up again in the 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th Amendments, in each case limited to the context of qualifications to vote for Federal office.
  24. mollusk
    The blue fabric that was covering the south (Rusk) side of the building is all gone now. I don't know if it blew down or they took it up, but it was sailing like a curtain in the breeze yesterday at lunch time as the squall line was about to blow through downtown. There was also so much particulate being blown out of there that it looked like smoke.
  25. mollusk
    The actual language in Article I, Section 2, is: "The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct." Translated, this means an actual headcount, and that the Census Bureau doesn't have the authority to use statistical corrections unless directed to do so by Congress.
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