Subdude

By naming the George Observatory you have technically named a satellite facility of the Houston Museum of Natural Science but who's counting? And I agree, its great.

Others: The Big Red Button behind Wortham, Sculpturworx on Summer St to see the big President heads. I concede that these are not quite as geeky as HMNS or the Space Center.

Edit: I forgot, the button is now green.

What is the red/green button?

The red logo looks the same as in the old postcard of downtown Foley's. Perhaps the photo was taken during a logo transition period.

I saw them working on some type of plumbing for the building this weekend. They had the entire right lane of Louisiana closed off near the building.

I'm surprised there's any plumbing in there left to work on, unless it is the drainage pipes for the underground parking garage.

Learning to love the roundabout!

Why American drivers should learn to love the roundabout.

By Tom VanderbiltPosted Monday, July 20, 2009, at 6:54 AM ET

Here is a narrative that has been playing out over the last several years in any number of American towns: Traffic engineers notice that a particular intersection has a crash problem or is moving traffic inefficiently. After a period of study, the engineers propose a roundabout. The engineers, armed with drawings and PowerPoint slides, visit a community meeting. They try to explain the benefits of their proposed design in clear language, though they may occasionally drop phrases like entry path overlap or inscribed circle diameter. Townspeople raise concerns. Roundabouts are not safe, they say. They are confusing. They are bad for pedestrians. They will hurt local businesses. They are more expensive than traditional solutions. The local newspaper reports this, adding some man-in-the-street comments from "area drivers," who profess not to like roundabouts, even making dark references to "circles of death." Then, the roundabout is built, the safety record improves, traffic congestion doesn't seem any worse than before, and the complaints begin to fade faster than white thermoplastic lane markings in the heat of summer.

According to best estimates, the United States is now home to about 2,000 "modern roundabouts"—more on that phrase in a moment—most of which were built in the last decade. As engineer Ken Sides noted in the ITE Journal, however, in 2008 Australia built its 8,000th roundabout; by Sides' calculation, the United States would need to build roughly 148,519 more roundabouts to match the Australian rate per capita. Interestingly, Australia—a country whose traffic landscape is rather similar to ours—has, since 1980, cut its traffic-fatality rate to nearly half the U.S. figure. The rise of roundabouts has no doubt played some part.

Why are Americans so suspicious of roundabouts? The simplest answer is that we have grown used to (and feel comfortable with) binary, on-off traffic control. We suspect such signals are more efficient than the "fuzzy logic" that seems to govern roundabouts. Roundabouts require drivers to make their own decisions and assess others' actions, rather than relying on third-party signals.

And here is the link..

A contrary take on Cronkite, from Forbes.

Thankfully, That's Not The Way It Was

Andy Kessler, 07.20.09, 04:28 PM EDT

Walter Cronkite represented complacency and mediocrity.

I've always had a problem with Walter Cronkite. He had this mind-meld grip on the brain of everyone, including me, who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, with his subliminal promotion of mediocrity and complacency that kept an entire generation in the doldrums. And no, I'm not talking about his views on the Vietnam War and LBJ's line "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America." That was just noise.

Look, the guy could read the news okay. It's not rocket science. "Uncle Walter" had the anchor seat on the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981, back when people actually watched the news on television. How quaint. Seven o'clock, right after the local news. Like clockwork, finish dinner, put on Cronkite. And he was good--heck, he was the master. He taught himself to speak slowly, with a half regal, half Midwestern accent, so he could penetrate American minds, and infect them with his mystical powers of persuasion.

Am I talking about liberal media bias? No. C'mon, stay with me here. Every night, right after the news stories and vignettes on acid rain and student protests and Dan Rather in the jungles of Vietnam and crumbling cities and heroin epidemics and exposés on Watergate and fraud and corruption and burning slums, Walter Cronkite would turn to the camera, and with almost undisguised smugness, tell me, right to my face, "... And that's the way it is."

Liberal schmiberal. That was a cover. He was the voice of the establishment, The Man trying to keep us down.

Link to the article

More bikes and boats than cars.

He didn't use a prompter the way TV anchors do today. That was mostly after his time. Paper prompters were rare at the network level because the talent was expected to know what they were talking about. The first computerized prompter wasn't out until 1982. Places I worked as late as 1998 still used paper prompters.

In the time when Cronkite was active, news anchors weren't just anchors. They were among the best journalists in the world. Technically, they were "managing editors" and took pride in their craft. They knew what they were talking about and understood things in ways that regular people didn't. It wasn't until the 1980's that news anchors were replaced by the meat puppets that many stations have today, the result of a need for higher ratings spurred by the fact that stations are no longer answerable to the public, but only to Wall Street investment houses. The last real "anchor" was Tom Brokaw, who very proudly wore the "managing editor" badge.

I may be mistaken, but somewhere in J-School I think I remember it being said that he was the first "anchor" -- that the word was coined to describe how the newscast centered around him.

And since you brought it up -- yes, reading from a teleprompter does require talent. Public speaking isn't easy. If it was, business magazines wouldn't be full of ads for $10,000 courses for sales people and middle managers to learn how to do it. If public speaking was easy, churches would be full since people wouldn't get bored by the message being preached. If it was easy, comedy clubs would be overflowing with talent. If it was easy, I wouldn't have have wasted weeks of my time sorting through hundreds of resume tapes to fill on-air positions.

Everyone thinks that public speaking is easy, but that's because they're talking to one person -- themselves -- in their head. Doing the same thing for an audience is a different talent. Doing it for a live audience is a different talent. Doing it for radio and television is yet another talent.

I've called people on this before -- brought people in to TV and radio stations where I worked and given them a screen test because they were shooting off their mouths about how easy it is. In every case, they failed miserably.

I'm not saying the bubbleheads on the air these days are smart. Many aren't. Some are. But reading adequately on television is not easy. It's like saying, "Being a librarian is easy -- all you have to do is throw books on a shelf."

I stand corrected!

At least he didn't label the thread "Walter Cronkite Gave Up the Ghost". I'm not sure where that usage comes from, but it always seems to crop up as a thesaurus entry on MS Word when I'm checking my morbid rhetoric.

It strikes me as a bit of a euphemism: "he 'passed' ". I'm still guessing it is maybe a southern thing.

Back then, talent and journalism weren't mutually exclusive.

No disrespect to Mr Cronkite, but I have never thought that reading from a teleprompter required all that much talent.

This must seem an odd question, but the topic title got me wondering. Is saying "passed" instead of "died" a regional usage? I would always say "died" or perhaps even "passed away".

Back on Cronkite, why was it that a newsreader was so trusted?

Thanks for the thoughts. I've been trying to get in the habit of writing "North Texas" because there's a trademark issue with "Metroplex."

"Metroplex" is trademarked? Who'd have thunk it? Maybe you can try one of those marketing-type names, like "NoTex".

Five Allen Center will overshadow 3 Allen Center

http://www.slideshar...estate-brochure (pg. 9)

http://www.slideshar...re#text-version (text version)

I don't much like the design. Maybe it's the angle, but it seems kind of..chunky.

I would like it better if they kept the baby-puke green color.

An old book I had mentioned the I45-I10-59 ring around downtown as Houston's inner loop. This was while 610 was still under construction. So by that reckoning, Houston will have four ring roads.

All I can say is Wow!

In the 1970's there was a Chinese restaurant, Cathay House I think, around the 6600 block of S. Main near Dryden or Southgate intersection. It a big space and had very high ceilings, maybe 20-30 high, odd for a restaurant. There were windows high on the walls on 2 sides, like a person could look into the restaurant and monitor activities. I always wondered what had been there originally. It seems like it could have been a casino in prior to a restaurant. I have heard that there was a casino out in that area either on Main, or just off it in the 40's or 50's. Does anyone recall Cathay House and/or know what was in that location prior to Cathay House

Do a search for it. I posted a picture of it a while back in another topic. It was at 6638 South Main and later became Ship Ahoy.

Does anyone remember Jamail's Grocery Store? I think it was on Kirby. My brother used to work there in the late 80s/early 90s when he was a student at Lamar.

It was where the car wash is now. I was never actually in that place, but I think it had a very good reputation.

I always liked the winning design, but I have to admit that the runner up might well have aged better and not looked so obviously mid-1980s.

I always liked it that Houston has a lot of streets that change name periodically. Kirby > Allen Parkway > Dallas for instance. That said, Mahatma Gandhi Avenue sounds a bit clunky. Gandhi Street perhaps.

It does look like it is made with glitter paint.

Funny how license plates have migrated from plain white metal plates to mini-advertising for the state. The last version was notable for the number of Texas references it packed it - the cowboy, space shuttle, cactus etc. The new one would be much improved by getting rid of the impressionistic flag and star on the top left.

Nice box. Where is the car that came in it? Badum bum.

I have been drooling over these lately:

http://www.zcars.com.au/images/volvo-c30-rdesign.jpg

http://www.carpages.co.uk/volvo/volvo_images/volvo-c30-28-08-08.jpg

flipper

Yeap, I have a weakness for those boxes.

The C30 is nice looking, but it is odd that it doesn't come in a four door version.

Just saw this... I'm with you. I drive a Mazda Protege and love it. If I were buying a new car I'd get the Mazda 5 (microvan), since it would have room for a friend or two of the two rugrats already occupying the backseat. We were just talking last night about what car we would get if we won a million bucks. We agreed we'd still get the Mazda. Or maybe go wild and get a little Volvo 5-door. We are wild, wild, wild people.

I'm thinking I would consider a Scion xB or xD. Good mileage, good reliability, and as I've pointed out before I prefer trim boxy shapes over the more modern bloated look.

Or a Kia Soul

I would kind of like a Golf but I would worry about the quality.

Nice!!

It looks kind of Bentley-ish in the back end....interesting treatment on the c-pillar

I'm not wild about the blacked-out c-pillar. The rear especially makes me think of the Citroen C6.

New Jaguar XJ:

I'm not seeing Red Lion fitting in. It's not a diner, drive-in or dive, and it's not really that great food either.

One struggles for words..