AtticaFlinch

Hell, I bet if you asked most Americans, they wouldn't know the United States is in North America. I'm pretty confident several of my colleagues are among them.

I corrected my post (below in bold):

Because you're supposed to be in church, not tying one on. It's intended to eliminate the temptation.

Considering I was the object of the "ridicule", or as I actually saw it, the joke, and I didn't get offended by it, I think you'd be best served not getting your knickers in a knot. I appreciate your concern for my delicate ego, but really, I'm quite alright. People make jokes on the ol' interwebs, and not all of them start out "Knock knock" and end with "Orange you glad I didn't say banana".

Looks like they'll need a few less hippies at Eeyore's birthday this year.

Well, sorry to have offended you, but you wanted a conversation about crime and how urbanists can do something about it, and that's what you got. Just because we didn't all nod our heads in agreement with you doesn't mean you should end your participation in the discourse. If so, you just become the people you're criticizing. Sure, if you're decorating your house, but it serves little practical purpose. If you want to beautify your house, your neighborhood or your city, more power to you. In fact, I agree that it's a good goal. But, it's a good, worthwhile goal in and of itself, and it's something architects can actually affect. I really don't think it does, and I've yet to see any compelling evidence to the contrary. I think you presuppose the importance of architects and "urbanists" on the community at large. The human psyche is far more complex than you're giving it credit for and the justifications for criminality are far more basic than you've grasped. I don't dispute a criminal can use his built environment as a tool to aid him in his criminal activities, I dispute that a built environment will alter that criminal mindset. People commit criminal acts for a number of reasons, but I doubt the way a building is designed has anything to do with those reasons. Then put this around all those anxiety-filled neighborhoods: Or, maybe you can petition the 6 o'clock news to change the focus of their coverage. No amount of warm and fuzzy measures will make people feel any safer. All efforts to that end will just further isolate the inhabitants of Anxietyville which will further increase their anxiety and fear of outsiders which will further increase their desires for more warm fuzzy measures which will further increase their anxiety and fear of outsiders....

I'm pretty much in love with Houston. Then again, I don't need other people to think it's cool in order to enjoy it myself. It's incredibly low-density, but still it has crime. So... maybe crime isn't an urban discourse topic afterall?

And then the government bought and paid for by the rich will treat you to a bitter taste of the same alternative law they treated Joe Stack with. Then maybe you could afford a private aircraft and flying lessons. Won't that teach you a lesson about how crappy and unfair our government is?

Life was so horrible to this guy he could afford his own plane? What crap luck. He's just a suicidal hypocrite who has no idea what real suffering is. His generation is so full of self-important megalomaniacs.

It may take awhile for me to process that and assess this particular act of terrorism. Two terrorist acts in central Texas within the past few months.... We've had quite an interesting history of terrorism extremism in this state: JFK, David Koresh, Charles Whitman, the Ft Hood massacre, this. Thanks for another one of your loony imports, California. Edit: BTW, don't google image search "Joe Stack" at work. Just trust me. Better yet, don't search that anywhere. *shudders*

Your conspiracy theory lacks conspiracy.

He was going to destroy Frodo's house! He's a tightly coiled ball of pure evil.

Claim it's an extension of the GRB. Or loosely interpret the Pan-American Games bit to mean any games played across the Americas. Then we could get a public funded Jai Alai stadium too.

I wouldn't read into the disease metaphor too deeply. I used it to illustrate a point. I didn't intend for it to be the point. I'm pretty sure I've used the term "window dressing" several times in this thread to describe what you propose, and that's the point. Unless you address the underlying issues that promote a culture of criminality, no amount of feel-good demolitions or police walking a beat will do anything to eliminate or reduce crime. It may reduce the visibility of crime, but it won't reduce the actuality of crime.

Since we're guessing here, I'm guessing "Uptown" could only have been suggested by a panel consisting of Hitler, Pol Pot, Darth Vader, Satan, the developer from the Goonies and Ricky Martin.

They?

Try with UGH. That's a good place to start. Yes it is. Just because you're free to believe whatever you want to believe doesn't mean your beliefs are correct. A solid case in point is your disbelief that Midtown is between Downtown and the TMC. (Or that the Galleria isn't geographically in the Galleria.) I suppose you've never heard the common association of the cardinal direction north with the relative direction up. It's true, look it up. Maybe you're from one of a number of scattered American Indian groups who viewed east as up, I don't know. If so, I can understand your confusion. If not, you're clearly being either argumentative or obtuse. I can never tell with you. Ugh.As far as the West Side thing goes... the whole point is the area already has a name. It's called the Galleria. If you want to call it West Side, you'll look just as goofy as those calling it Uptown, or maybe even goofier because you're taking your cues from Manhattan based show tunes. Town Centre is either too British or too French. Either way, the term has bad body odor and rotten teeth.

At thirty bucks a pop for printer cartridges, that defeats the cheap requirement, but I still like it. If my wife wouldn't literally vomit at seeing something like that on the wall I'd be all about it.

I sorta hope she does. I think an unfettered presidential race, with gloves off, will provide the American public with a spectacle so glorious in its inanity we'll never be the same again. Every house will be filled with laughter. The Right Wingnuts will be exposed for the teabagging dipsticks they are. Public discourse will return to some semblance of normality. American life will once again reach a stasis point. And if she runs with a third party, you can pretty much guarantee a Palin bid will strip away enough votes from the "serious" Republican votes that Obama will win a second term. If she runs as a Republican and wins the primary, she'll turn off enough moderate voters to the same result. I similarly support Medina for Texas governor.

I know a lot about earth. If we can get an expert in wind and one in heart, then we can form a know-it-all Captain Planet.

Count me among those with loose screws. The Galleria is at least geographically accurate. Calling it Uptown is retarded. Uptown is a term that originated in Manhattan, as is Midtown and Downtown. There, Uptown is north, Downtown is south and Midtown is... well... in the middle. Our Midtown is accurate in that the neighborhood is sandwiched between Downtown and the TMC. Downtown is geographically inaccurate but the term has been in use for ages. Uptown is not north. It's west. The term is meaningless. Uptown grates on my ears the same way EaDo does. It's a fake, gimmicky and contrived corporate-sponsored name that means absolutely nothing. Besides, the area has been called the Galleria since the Galleria was the only thing out there.

Palin Slams Fox's "Family Guy" I don't know about you guys, and regardless of what you thought of the jokes in the show, but I find it a bit terrifying Fox's newest political pundit (and presidential hopeful) is too angry to form a coherent response for anything. If she aspires to the highest office in the land, she needs to be a bit more level-headed. Also, Facebook?.. Is that where we have reasoned discourse these days? Whatever happened to Myspace?

I've never heard of WAve either. I've heard it called douchebag ground zero before though. I was the one who said it, but I also heard myself say it. It seems like WAve is a magnet for puka shells, flip-flops and sideways hats.

No prescription prevails to remedy this polysyllabic belligerence. O, woe! Forsooth, I surmise some individual person procured a thesaurus lagniappe on the day commemorating the holy St Valentine. But anyhow, I still don't see in how everything you and WAZ wrote there's anything done beyond treating crime as a symptom rather than an illness. To effectively combat disease you need to address the underlying issues. The same is true with crime. Rearranging the urban landscape and building every new building to be open like the Athenian Acropolis still doesn't solve the mentality of criminality. Again, I think that is window dressing. Hell, the biggest thing affecting crime stats is the legality and availability of abortions for unwanted children (according to University of Chicago economist Stephen Levitt). And that's a policy issue - no amount of building design or police station placement variations will affect that at all... unless your urban plan is to install a ton of anti-propagandist signs to counteract the fundamentalist rightwing policy swing in this country.

The sign on the beltway was definitely a woman. In the early 80s my family lived in Greenridge North and we drove past it all the time. That sign used to drive my preadolescent mind crazy.