AtticaFlinch

I trust that you speak from experience. The big question where it comes to the piney woods isn't so much one of where I can find public lands. It's where there would be public lands with a sufficiently large clearing that I can get a view of the sky. Any specific suggestions? Do you think someone like a game warden would be a good resource?

The ranger station is near New Waverly. They can give you precise locations to go to. Otherwise, you'd probably prefer just to drive to a wide stretch in the road and hike into the first break in the trees you can find. Just make sure you have a compass, preferably a GPS and a map that clearly designates National Forest property boundaries. Nothing can spoil a hike more than stumbling upon some farmer's pot crop or some biker's mobile meth lab.

This is unnecessary.

The moderators asked me about the one-liners you keep posting in this thread. Here is my response to them:

I think he's trying to channel Chris Rock. But he's not doing it to be funny or to make a point, he's just doing it for attention.

There's nothing wrong with deleting or hiding posts that contribute nothing to the discussion. This would appear to be one of those posts. It's little more than "Me too!"

I disagree with your conclusion as to my motivations, but you are right in that I'm not doing it to be funny. If I was, I'd have used a better format than modified Yo Mama jokes. More than anything else, I was curious how long I could get away with making unfounded disparaging remarks against a religion that few people profess faith in (at least in this country and on this board). Four times, it turns out. I'll refrain from doing it going forward.

If you can't stay on topic and be civil and intelligent, then you will find your posts edited for content. And before you go screaming like a little baby about "ZOMG! CENSORSHIP!!!!111!!Elebenty" get over yourself. It's not censorship. Thinking it is just illustrates how ignorant you are of true censorship issues.

To borrow a word from George W Bush, you've misunderestimated me. It's your website. I know I don't own anything written here. Don't jump the gun, Mother Superior.

Perhaps. Or one could say western society is much more culturally tolerant than most so we go out of our way to welcome others. If we didn't tolerate others, you might as well call us the United States of Arabia.

Or France. Either way, it doesn't belie my assertion that the world will be a lot better off when the Middle East has been drained of all useful, exploitable materials and that the people of the area can return to their caves and other bass-ackwards ways.

Almost forgot...

Yo Mohammad so backwards, I tol' him Ramadan was aroun' tha corner an' he went lookin'.

These people seem to fit your polling criteria though.

Damn. You've blown the lid off my ruse. You win this round, samagon.

To your response to me, I agree that if we had clean renewable energy, the amount of energy consumed would matter a heck of a lot less than it does today (it would matter in so far as how quickly that source could be renewed), but the charts that were referenced, and the article referenced that was under discussion were specifically related to oil based fuel usage. that is neither clean, nor renewable, and is the reason we are doing deep water drilling, and it is the point of this thread.

Nah, the article and the graph just used oil measurements to make the data more accessible. It's discussing the total amount of energy used.

Anyway, I hate being a duck squeezer.

I'm not sure what that is, but it does sound rather unpleasant.

In between Coldspring and Cut and Shoot, there are some old FM roads that can take you pretty deep into Sam Houston National Forest. Believe it or not, it's far enough away from all the city's ambient light to get a pretty great view of the stars.

That's way overboard. In the actual MIddle East, where I've spent quite a bit of time, we all used the same bathrooms, segregated only by sex.

It's kinda strange how you're expected to conform to their lifestyle while in their country, but they don't expect to conform to our mores when they're over here. It's a double-standard, pure and simple.

In my office this morning, we were discussing another client's office, perhaps even where jgriff works for all I know. Apparently they've been importing tons of Saudis which has completely altered their office and lowered the employee morale. There's a double standard which permeates maliciously throughout the building, and beyond just the bathroom segregation, board rooms have been turned into prayer rooms and the women in this particular company are treated like absolute garbage. There's no expectation on the part of the American employers that the Saudi workers should adhere to that old axiom of "When in Rome..." Instead, they expect the American employees to bend over backwards to appease the Saudis.

Now I realize this is more an issue of Saudi cultural intractability than just Islam, but considering Saudi Arabia is ground zero for Wahhabi fundamentalism, many of the worst qualities attributed to fanatic Muslims begin there.

There were more stalls with doors, because the attire worn by males has to be removed before using the toilet. The toilet paper is used to dry the hands after using water to clean the body. It's not wrong, disgusting, or anything other than different. In the Gulf region, there's a sprayer in each stall for cleaning. In Egypt, there was a piece of tubing that sprayed water directly upwards. In the Far East, most toilets are a hole in the floor, and you squat to use them. The folks in that part of the world think we are insane to put our backsides on a surface where someone else's backside has been. In Peru, there's a trash can for used toilet paper, because their sewers are not up to handling paper.

Yo Mohammad so dirty, he turn the local swimmin' pool into tha dead sea.

Perfect! A central wal-mart not in my neighborhood is exactly what I've been hoping for....j/k. Well, sort of

But seriously, it does seem like a pretty good place for one, and it's not like it's smack dab in the middle of the Heights. I also don't see how this would kill the mom-and-pops when Target hasn't

Well, most likely, if it's going on a lot sized for an HEB similar to the one on Buffalo Speedway, this lot will only be able to contain one of Walmart's high-end grocery concept stores. I doubt it'll bring in all the riff-raff associated with normal Walmarts.

No.

Yes, it's gross. That said, the pork chops I bought at Walmart on the way home from work tonight were delicious. (The chorizo pizza will have to wait till the weekend. I don't want to subject my coworkers to the next day madness.)

Not sure what article you are reading, Niche....

The Cnn article posted above has the following

"That said, the metro area's suburbs are booming as well, according to Leppert. Indeed Rockwall County, northeast of Dallas, is one of the 10 fastest growing counties in the nation."

Doing a Cntrl F to search for Williamson in that article yields nada.

Perhaps the article had an error and has since fixed it.

I read the same thing he did. They must have edited it recently.

No one? I find that hard to believe.

You're an epistemological nihilist. You don't believe anything. I've personally polled everyone in the world about this, including all the newborn babies, the mentally retarded and the certifiably insane, and they all said they didn't care.

Nope.

It's just like Dallas' north suburbs but with more hills. The same type of people live in both.

Hey, you'd probably want your daughter to cover herself and be escorted around too, if she were in a position to get hit on by middle eastern guys. They are notoriously aggressive; like it or not, advertising the goods is asking for it.

No, I'd want her to have a CHL, a dead aim and no reservations with killing a man. I wouldn't want her quality of life to suffer because some sexually repressed dudes can't contain their wieners. If the state didn't mandate internet blocks for certain types of sites, then they could just rub one out after they turn off the "safe search" filter on Google.

This in a nutshell is the difference between Islamic and Western culture. The whole reason behind the burqa and the headscarf is that men can't be trusted to behave if they see a woman's face or hair, let alone anything else. That plus a strong tradition of virtual if not actual ownership of dependent females.

Yo Mohammad so loose, he wear a mattress like a backpack.

I really don't know, but I do think that Obama dropped the ball big time with this whole situation. I read an article on autoblog that showed 73% of the respondents to a poll of Americans believe that reducing the dependence on oil is important http://green.autoblo...dency-on-fossi/ . I think the president had an opportunity during his oval office people chat to be a strong president and rather than putting everything at the feet of BP and the previous administration, take some responsibility for the regulatory group that didn't do what they were supposed to, and to push that this happened because we, as a country, need oil, and that if we don't want crises like this to happen again in the future, we need to all focus on new and emerging technologies to replace oil, so that our country can become a leader in these emerging energy sources.

Reducing our dependence on petroleum and other fossil fuels has nothing to do with how much energy we consume. Those are two separate issues. If all our energy needs were met with wind turbines, hydroelectric dams and solar panels, no one would give two craps about how much power we use. The problem isn't how much power we use, but how much environmentally unsustainable power we use.

That comment would most likely land someone in trouble in even the most moderen or westernized muslim countries like Turkey and UAE. Here in America we can draw or have yo muhammod jokes because that is our right. In every faith there are some type of rules or laws that people come up with that might seem strange to others, but those laws are not forced on the rest of the world. It is also not meet with such harsh punishment such as death to its followers and definetly not to people of a diffrent religion(at least not in the 21st century anyway).

Yeah well, there's the big difference. We're not in the Middle East, nor is Mark Zuckerberg, nor is Salmon Rushdie, nor was Theo Van Gogh. If I was in the Middle East, I'd respect the rules of the country I was in. I'd totally throw battery acid in a woman's face if she spurned my advances, and I'm certain I'd join the firing squad to kill a woman that was raped. (Because it was totally her fault, yo. She shouldn't have revealed so much of her eyeballs.)

Faith statutes are generally dumb. Faith statutes that arbitrarily enforce death penalties for inane, innocuous acts are dumb and dangerous.

Grow up.

Yo Mohammad so fat, when he cut he bleed bacon grease.

Infidel!

Yo Mohammad so stupid, he think Taco Bell be a Mexican phone company.

I've got a personal challenge for you all.

Take a Kroger-brand rising-crust pepperoni pizza, top it with a link of cooked Andy Garcia-brand chorizo and three slices of cooked and crumbled bacon, and top that with sea salt and cayenne pepper. Cook it. Drizzle with Sriracha sauce. Also fill any air pockets you find in the crust with Sriracha sauce. Also dip slices in the mix of chorizo and bacon fat with each successive bite until all the grease is consumed.

Drown it with a 40oz King Cobra malt beverage. Chase that with two shots of Kentucky Deluxe (20% blended whiskey, 80% neutral grain spirits).

In the spirit of HAIF-iness, I call it 'The Ugly Brown Split-Level Duplex (with Multiple Code Violations)'.

There is no reward, only the personal satisfaction. It's the sort of thing that makes white people feel better about themselves...a symbol of the embrace of overindulgent quasi-ethnic poverty.

Aspects of this are intriguing. Other parts, like the grease dip and the King Cobra, are a bit repulsive.

I think next time you attempt this, or anyone attempts this, the entire process should be documented online. And Editor should sponsor some kind of prize for it - like a HAIF branded stress ball or a free ride in an ambulance.

I'm running by the store on the way home from the office tonight. I think I may attempt some version of this. The chorizo, bacon and pepperoni toppings sound pretty tasty together. I may use Valentina salsa instead of Sriracha though. And if I top half of it with pickles, my pregnant wife may want a slice or two. Thanks for the dinner idea, Niche!

Islam needs a Reformation like the Catholic Church went through in the 16th century.

Muslim countries need publicly funded schools that teach things like science and logic and sex education.

And how to take a joke, because really... a Facebook group makes them want to kill? If that's the way they react to seeing Mohammad, I'd hate to see the way they react to a Yo Mama joke.

Is anyone interested in starting an internet meme with Yo Mohammad jokes? (ie. Yo Mohammad so fat, when he sit aroun' tha house, he sit aroun' the house!)

You probably don't want to know. Just be happy to have the separate bathroom, otherwise you'd have a whole new set of things to question. Strange noises...that's all I'm going to say for now.

Anybody else bothered by the fact Muslims in jgriff's office are given a "separate but equal" restroom? What's next, Muslim-only water fountains and Muslim-only restaurants?

We do it because its cheap and necessary. Out west we have hydro galore. When I lived in Calgary I paid a whole $40 per month to heat my apt to a cozy 70F when the outside ambient was -40F. Try living in -40F for a while and see how you like it. On Vancouver Island I had less of a heating issue because its temperate rainforest there and we rarely saw frigid temps on the coast. We don't do AC up there.

And lets not forget, during the winter the sun sets at 3:30pm so lots of need to run lights at that time of the year. So its dark when you leave work, its -40F outside, snow on the ground, how likely are you to pack up the family in the minivan (assuming you have a heated garage, or a garage at all, and not merely a block heater plugged into your -40F unheated car) to make a run to a local restaurant? Not likely I guarantee. You're more likely to stay at home, play on the computer, cook dinner, watch TV, etc.

Oh I get it. And I'm not complaining either. I understand the need for energy usage, and that need won't diminish in the future either. My point was simply that people who like to complain about American usage of energy are being hypocritical if they also allow Canadians a pass - which is exactly what so many people do. It's stupid cold in Finland, but they don't use as much energy as Canada. But Canada's needs, though similar to Finland especially in terms of weather, are different enough to warrant different energy use. America is the same way. Our needs are much different than the countries of France, Germany and the UK. In other words, America isn't a demon because of our high per capita energy needs.

Preaching reduction only, or pointing to our high energy use as a bad thing is myopic, counterproductive and irrelevant. Our energy needs are what they are. Same as Canada. It doesn't make sense to point at Subdude's chart and say, "This is the problem." Because it isn't the problem. The amount of energy we use is not the problem. To reiterate a third time to make sure everyone understands, the amount of energy we use is just fine. If our per capita energy needs increase 10x or even 100x, that will still be fine. The reason for that is Subdude's chart is the answer to the wrong question. The right question is what was asked in the original post on this thread.

However, if you still wish to gripe about Canada's energy usage, park your car and turn down your thermostat, since a sizable portion of their energy and water consumption is used to provide their biggest customer their oil and gas.

I wasn't griping.

However, regardless of their reason they're expending so much energy, they're still doing it. It's hypocritical for people to give them a free pass or justify their waste but to also be overly critical of the US. If Canadians were truly responsible, they could simply make a concious decision not to produce energy for the US anymore. As it is, it seems to me they've made a decision to expend a great deal of energy in order to make more money.

I blame us for giving them credence.

Once we drain that miserable piece of real estate of all its oil and natural gas, we can finally let the people of the Middle East return to living in caves and shooting each other over well water rights. That day can't come soon enough.

Also, in your subtitle to this thread, you've implored us to please be respectful. Frankly, despite Islam's historical significance in helping to bring Europe out of their own religiously restrictive dark ages, I see very little in the religion to respect. So many times you hear from Muslims that Islam is actually not a religion of violence, that's it's a religion of peace, and that these extremists are a fringe minority, but I disagree. Fringe minorities rarely have such a stranglehold on their own political systems. Governments aren't run for long periods of time by the fringe. These theocratic governments exist because the people of those countries want them to exist. They have a mandate to exist, and when they do things like issue fatwas calling for Salmon Rushdie's head or, as now, criminally investigate whether or not they can issue an execution order for Mark Zuckerberg, it's not our fault. It's the fault of the dipshjt's who live in those countries and believe their retarded fairy tale so fervently as to demand their deaths for the crime of not being dumb enough to be duped by their hokey religion.

But, if it is true as the moderate Muslims say, and the extremists are the minority, then those moderates need to start talking a lot louder. Because, who cares how tolerant the religion may be if the people who put a public face on it also have a bomb in their underpants? I know I don't, and since it's too difficult to discern the good ones from the bad ones based on appearance, they're making the whole civilized part of the world retract into a medieval mindset where we've begun to discard our enlightenment values just to feel safer. If any moderate Muslim is reading this, know that the onus is now on you. You don't have a right to not be offended, and you definitely don't have a right to kill someone for offending you. If you truly are not an extremist, then you'll agree with that. If you aren't an extremist, then you need to find a way to fix your own religion. Otherwise, between our Christian nuts over here and the Hindu nuts in India, the Middle East may be blown off the map. That region, full to the brim with sacred sites and shrines, will never know peace. And if Islam's truly a religion of peace, then peace should be the goal.

This topic was reported for turning into a bit of a flame war. We don't want to close the topic, so let's try not to get things too personal.

Thanks.

Is it a war if it appears only one side is on he attack?

I can't think of a single food challenge in Houston. Maybe our restaurant owners are too scared. We do have a reputation for... er... Girthiness. Many of us already treat every meal as a challenge.

Is there a convention in town?

Yeah, the "Vinegar and Water: Not Just for Salad Dressing" convention.

I too come form an area where preservation of homes was so honored that being the President of the Preservation & Restoration Society came with a very high social status. Preservation was not remodeling the kitchen to have granite countertops and slap some paint on it - but to actually restore the buildings to their original state ( i.e. by gas torching the old paint off to the bare wood, finding original light fixtures, stained and leaded glass windows, sinks etc.) These buildings were built in the 1700's & 1800's (and early 1900's) with great care, detail, to last a long time, with great materials, attention to detail and designed by architects (including Frank Lloyd Wright). I understand that bungalows have some historic value (I live in one), but if they are falling apart due to not being maintained properly, too costly to restore (due to previous owners neglect) or does not have any significant architectural merits how is that in relation to historic...? ...more like run down.

Not to mention, a poorly-built woodframe house is a bit tough to get sentimental about. It's not just that Houstonians are a bunch of troglodytes who aren't concerned with their history. Just because it's old doesn't mean it needs to be preserved. An area like the Heights needs to judge these on a case by case basis. Or better yet, let the owner of the house decide.