wernicke

BLAH BLAH BLAH

When I identify people as being truely incompetent, I usually just stop talking to them. For instance, I didn't tell the 30-something-year-old woman-children I met last night that the content of their conversations were driving me to self-medicate against them with alcohol...and I didn't tell their significant others that I thought of them as some peculiar kind of pedophile. Inciting a barfight by speaking my mind would probably not have been nearly as fun as argumentation on HAIF. I just left as soon as I could, removing myself from the situation.

On HAIF, it is a little different, especially if someone is challenging you, because even if you really don't consider them a very worthy opponent, there may be some fraction of otherwise competent people that do. And so a public challenge merits a public response. It is text, after all, and it'll be there for a very long time (unless I pissed off a moderator).

Could a moderator please split the last few posts off into a thread devoted entirely to "The Niche", so this thread can discuss the 25-story development at Memorial and Studemont???

Wow... pages of discussion on the Chinese government. No comments on the Olympics 2008!

Phelps tore it up. Go USA.

EDIT: The mod split this topic off after I had clicked, before I had posted.

I think it's a lot of people's fear that China will rapidly catch up and surpass us. They have hundreds of thousands of American trained engineers, a lock on African natural resources, and 1.3 billion people (and probably a military that rivals or surpasses ours technologically and probably dwarfs us in terms of troops -I am sure someone will be able to give those stats, but I am too lazy right now to look it up).

Sorry, but, isn't it common knowledge that the US military budget dwarfs all other nations? China's military neither rivals nor surpasses ours in terms of technology, and it approximates ours in terms of troop levels.

World Military Spending Figures.

US military spending accounts for 48 percent, or almost half, of the world

Pretty impressive display. No country is going to be willing to spend $300 million on their opening ceremony again, especially one with a democratic government.

And personally, I don't really care to smell burning cattle carcasses while I'm trying to enjoy the park. I get enough of that from the Becks when I visit Memorial Park. But I guess you can't have a park in Houston without the smell of burning meat everywhere.

Well, it's annoying when you're running at Memorial, trying to be healthy and all, and all you can smell is smoke coming from the Becks Prime near the driving range. It also seems like overkill to build one at Herman Park when there are thousands of burger places in the city already. But apparently, some people need the enticement of hamburgers to draw them to visit a park.

And actually, Houston is an awesome city for people who like variety and/or those who don't eat meat.

Jeez... get over yourself.

Herman Park is 445-acres... most dense activity is centralized near the lake/zoo area, which is where the 1600-sq ft cafe is going. There is plenty of space to do your own thing. The Hermann Park Conservancy is responding to public demand to improve the park experience.

Yeah, like the city doesn't have enough it needs to spend $ on that affects most Houstonians. Dan Duncan, Sarofim, Richard Kinder, et cetera give away a lot of money - I'm sure they appreciate your thoughts on what they need to do with their own $.

Don't be a ****head, man. I was speaking in ideals.

Not sure what your link and numbers correlate to in regards to my point, which is, Texas is an equal opportunity executioner.

It seems rather obvious, to me at least, that when a segment represents 11% of the general population and accounts for 44% of executions that some bias exists in the system.

I do agree that the bias is primarily financial (think OJ), less racial, in terms of capital murder cases.

But everyone is fooling themselves if they think the police and justice system in general is not tilted against blacks (ie. racial profiling by police, treatment of white collar crime vs. drug-related offenses, crack vs. cocaine offenses, people receiving probation vs. jail time for similar crimes, substance abuse program enrollment disparities, etc). Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice site, with statistics.

http://blogs.chron.com/cookstour/archives/...g_to_herma.html

Reef chefs opening a burger cafe in Hermann Park. Great news and a good way to get even more traffic in this very popular park. They will serve beer and wine as well.

Pretty exciting development for Hermann Park. It should help make the park/zoo more of a destination.

But for the record of the 410 people executed since the reinstatment of the death penalty the numbers are:

180 Black

162 White

62 Hispanic

Just for the sake of arguments based on sound logic, you do realize that absolute numbers don't mean a thing...

State of Texas Demographics

White 82.7% (Includes Hispanic/Latin at 35% and White non-Hispanic at 48%)

Black 11.9%

www.mapmyride.com has some nice ITL routes.

Dave.

Thanks Dave (and Zippy and Tiko). That is a pretty useful site.

Texas speaks.

World Court and Bush should take notice.

There is no way Bush is losing sleep on this one.

But why do you love Houston? Is it just because you have family here? If so, why is your family here?

Does memebag actually care or is he/she just trolling?

Yea... pretty tricky situation politically, with legal experts predicting retaliation against US citizens who commit crimes in other countries.

I will say that while I believe the justice system cannot inherently be trusted to carry out the death penalty in a equitable way across primarily the socio-economic spectrum -- but, also the racial spectrum -- and thus is morally bankrupt as a form of crime deterrance, after reading about the Medellin gang crime, all six of these guys deserved to die.

That was a long sentence.

Outrageous quote from other Medellin story:

But on his Web site, posted by a Canadian anti-death penalty group, he claims: "I'm where I am because I made an adolescent choice. That's it!

"My life is in black and white like old western movies," he wrote. "But unlike the movies, the good guys don't always finish first."

A little off-topic, but does anyone know of any good places to do road cycling inside the loop?

I am training for a triathlon, but I live in Midtown and there really aren't any good places to ride near me. I have mostly just been doing spin classes at 24 Hour as my cycling workouts.

It is barely raining at my apartment in Midtown, and we are in the orange/red bands on the satelite.

Either way, UT-Houston is closed so I am taking the day off. I wonder how many dollars in lost productivity this "disaster" has caused today... granted that later today it could get worse and flood a little around town.

Hmmm.... to go to work or not to go to work, that is the question.

A nice Architecture Review from the New York Times.

Expect to be overwhelmed. Designed by the Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the stadium lives up to its aspiration as a global landmark. Its elliptical latticework shell, which has earned it the nickname Bird

I was downtown on jury duty last week and ventured to The Shops. It is not as bad as everyone says. I enjoyed lunch one day at Topz Burgers (they claim they are better for you because of their lower fat content and aero fries ... and it was tasty ... hamburger, fries and a coke for $5.83 couldn't be beat).

They also have free Wifi but I couldn't get it to work, so ... that is a minus in my book!

What about "The Shops"?

It seems everyone has acknowledged it as a nice foodcourt.

I think the City and a few of our billionaires should toss down some cash to make this building standout.

Although, since no actual performances will occur in the building, that may be a stretch.

We need more live music options in Houston.

Just came across this picture of the South End store from 1926 - the headline: "Houston Boasts the Largest Retail Grocery Establishment in the World"

alas

Pretty awesome find sevfiv. Gotta love all those Model T's... the car that put America on wheels, as they say.

Here's an interesting article on Micheal Phelps if you've got a little time:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/sports/p...amp;_r=1&hp

Good grief, there shouldn't even need to be consideration for the others.

If they are only gonna fund 2 more, I think UH and Texas Tech should get the extra funding...

Can anyone explain the purpose of the florescent white lighting on top of the building? I interpret it to say that UTHSC can waste money on lighting that serves NO function, but only pollutes the tangent neighborhoods and increases cost to everyone's sick-care insurance.

UTHSC and MD Anderson are separate entities... but, ya, the fluorescent box on top looks ugly and stupid. At least they could have used colored lighting like the Memorial Hermann professional building.

Did you guys catch this article about a proposal to create one or two more "tier one" universities in Texas?

Lawmakers on Wednesday took one step closer to anointing a third public flagship by inviting leaders of Texas' seven "emerging" research institutions to pitch a case for why they should become the state's next tier one research university, and how much it would cost the state.

"We think we can do it, but we have to be really strategic," said Renu Khator, chancellor of the University of Houston System. "It's all about vision. Nobody invests in whining."

Didn't we have a $10 billion budgetary surplus last year? Seems like they could establish a fund to create 2 or 3 more tier one universities...

The seven under consideration:

University of Houston, Texas Tech University, University of North Texas, UT-Dallas, UT-Arlington, UT-El Paso, UT-San Antonio