TheNiche

You a Ron Paul supporter, eh? That guy really needs to get a better grasp of monetary economics, especially issues with respect to real vs. nominal inflation, how consumer baskets are calculated and change over time, and the mechanisms by which different currencies have floating relative values. He's not the only one, I'm sure, just the only one honest enough to expose his ignorance by making it a key policy issue. Developers aren't going to build something if they can't make money, and consumers aren't going to live somewhere that they can't (or don't want to) afford. That's really where the bottom line is. They do care about particulars such as housing price appreciation and construction costs, but the overall inflation numbers that you're citing are all but ignored by developers.

People on this forum do seem to go ga-ga over crappy midrises, I agree. That has a lot to do with a paradigm shift in architecture, one that seems to integrate urban planning, so that a single building can no longer have aspirational qualities about it unless it is sited in the context of a neighborhood with particular characteristics that cannot often be achieved except through public investment in streetscapes, parks, transit, sometimes public parking garages, etc. Individual greatness < Collective greatness, per the new paradigm. The ends of this line of thought are supposedly that a mixed-use urban environment will further quality of life and have positive environmental effects, but the reality is that the "live, work, play" cliche is conjoined not with "and" but with "or".

Russian Bear? One of the supermarket/cafes? Or are you aware of something that I'm not? I'm all ears for any recommendations, especially as Russian Bear is so far from where I work or live these days.

Take one perfectly good mall, subtract a roof and the air conditioning, then add parking spaces on what were formerly pedestrian corridors and plazas, and whaddaya got?

Oh, please. Dallas arrived decades ago. Victory Park and New Year's Eve 2007 are inconsequential.

Ah, no worries! The ball pit comment should've tipped me off.

Williams Tower, the Menil, a whole lot of buildings in UH, Rice, and St. Thomas' campuses, quite a few in the TMC, quite a few in Greenway, quite a few more in Uptown, and so on and so forth... Beyond business districts and universities, there are plenty of hidden gems...although a fair number are actually pretty well concealed or tucked out of the way so that you'd never know that they were there. I don't even know where to start on that list. But for instance, while exploring bits of Galveston a few weeks ago, I was driving through Fish Village, a neighborhood of mostly inexpensive 1960's cottages and some ranch-style homes, but embedded in this otherwise unremarkable neighborhood was this:

What general part of Houston was it? I'd get a kick out of this myself, if only because our geology isn't very conducive to the formation of caves. I'd have thought that you'd have to go out to Washington or Colorado counties, at the very easternmost limit, to find one worthy of mention.

One that is mentally ill.

It's effectively inaccessible and has very little value anyways for recreational use, yet it is behind the seawall. Seems like the ideal place to put new development. Far better here than West End.

Oh, for god's sake... Horse genitals.

I'll try once more. Complication is inefficiency, the consequences either of incompetence or worse, intentional wastefulness. It is not desirable in business, science, or as an art form. That "there is not an ounce of complication" to so many buildings throughout Houston is remarkable. It is what makes us superior, in fact, to such places as encourage it. As you stated in post #15, you believe that downtown has very little class or taste. And in post #62, you indicated that the lack of complication is in your opinion a key factor. I appreciate the lack of complication, and furthermore do not appreciate the one example of what you consider to be desireable. Therefore, by your standards, I must have no class or taste. You've made clear what your standards of taste and class are. I do not conform to them. But I don't live by your standards. That's not my problem.

And I'm telling you what should be, not what will be. But sometimes people get raped at gunpoint...it sucks but life goes on. Killing you doesn't figure into that, btw, but the phrase was (at the time) intended to make you think about the ethics of taking something precious from one person by force to give to another. Accidental non sequitur.

You asked: Unfortunately, since I'd already said earlier that I would favor a basic preventative healthcare program, I read through about half of that sentence and caught the word "tuberculosis" at the end, and figured that you were asking me to pay for the treatment of my neighbor's TB. If you're asking whether I'd be willing to include quarantine as part of the preventative healthcare program, I would. But I won't pay for that person's treatment. EDIT: In retrospect, my conditional death threat is really really funny.

That's exactly the point! I'd never thought about it before. Thank you for saying that. It's all business, no pretension, no ceremony, not the least bit of regard for tradition. It is forward-looking, it was built to be something else. That was the intent! Everything about the BOA Center except is most basic shape is an utter disappointment. By your standards, I have no taste. I do not hold myself to your standards. If, in your eyes, that makes me a horrible, ugly person, or something, that's OK. I don't care what you think of me.

Not unless you intend to rob me.

If you don't like the way a charity is managed, don't give to that charity. Instead, reward those that are most effective and that have the mission statement most in line with your own values. Crunchtastic said that private companies are responsible for starting the war. They didn't, that was my point. The Bush administration made the case and congress authorized it. There have been lots of problems administering the war since, and oversight of the private firms is certainly among them...but that has no bearing on my point...it is a red herring. Privatization is not always better, I agree with you on that. Another red herring. Read the first sentence of post #225.

Yep, and that is precisely why I conceded a minimal preventative plan. Gotta seperate the wheat from the chaff. First, let me state a general opposition to the DEA (which I think needs to be replaced by the IRS), some bull____ programs within the EPA, NASA in almost every way, and certain parts of DoD funding. And I think that education funding at the federal level needs to be vastly increased because there are clearly some problems among voters when it comes to policy analysis, and that'll come back to bite all of us in our collective ass. As I've said before, funding has to be considered on a project-by-project basis. There are programs that make sense, to the benefit of just about everybody, but there are also many that don't. I don't understand how two HAIFers now have been so short-sighted as to believe that because I favor minimal federal involvement in healthcare, I must seem to fall pretty much into the extremist Ron Paul camp. You can tell me to, but the decision is mine to make. If it benefits me or my neighbor, why can't I kill you?

OK, then. PM me. I wanna know how this works.

If you eliminate insurance profit, no one will issue insurance policies. If the single payer is government, that is socialized medicine. If you believe I'm mistaken and want to draw a distinction, I'm all ears. No. I don't. The free market is responsible for war? I thought that that was a gov't. function? Ditto water policy. Ditto ag subsidies. As for food additives, I have two questions for you: 1) which ones are you talking about, and 2) do they taste good? If they taste like crap and harm you, then someone's about to go out of business, at which point you'll have no justification for complaint. If they taste good and harm you, then you need to stop ingesting them if they're so bad and let hedonists like myself be hedonists. If only you'd let me by way of your vote, I'd promise you that you wouldn't have to pay for my eventual health care once the heart conditions develop. Ummm...yeah, how's that?

I accept taxation as a necessity, but don't want any of my tax dollars to be wasted. Police and fire services aren't waste, generally, although specific programs within those departments sometimes are. I prefer to evaluate all programs on a case-by-case basis. If we can cut war funding (provided minimal adverse consequences) and farm subsidies and funding to social support programs, including healthcare, I'm a very happy voter. They need not be replaced with an alternative form of waste.

Buyers almost never ask if rennovations were done to code or with a permit, and electrical work is often not very visible to home inspectors. If you do it right, you shouldn't have any problems.

Really? That's something I'd vehemently vote against. It'd be one thing if they were talking about a very minimal preventative healthcare package...that I like because it saves everyone money in the long term and could really reduce the spread of contagious diseases. But total socialized medicine creates a whole mess of problems. With stuff like that, I'm a firm believer of the idea that if you really want it, you and like-minded people should give to charitable causes that are committed to bringing it about. Charities are probably better at administering it than government anyways...would you disagree with that? You have no business telling me that I should fund my neighbor's healthcare. That is my discretion. Anything else is theft.

I don't really care what brand of baptist he is, and moreover, I can't know what he is because he's a politician, so I'm afraid I can't answer that...but it wouldn't have registered with me if I'd heard it. "Change" is being overused by everyone. Huckabee and Obama are only the worst offenders. Nobody is deluded. It's just a word that focus groups have revealed has a resoundingly strong effect on what seems from my vantage point to be our constantly-drunken electorate. Funny, I'd give my left pinky at this point for a viable candidate that didn't give a sh**t about me.

Paul is, I think, perhaps the only candidate that is actually speaking his mind. He's nucking futs...but at least he's honest about it.