August, 2013 archive
News, Ripped from the Ticker 0
Bad taste warning, as usual.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
This day’s news brings a surfeit of politeness.
You Can’t Make This Stuff Up 0
Electronic vehicle unlock clicker goes very wrong.
There are certain things I prefer not to run with buttons even as I tend to wind up every day on LQ.
Unlocking my vehicle’s doors and operating the windows are two of them. I fear, though, that the next time I buy a vehicle, it will come with an extra superfluous layer of buttons and screens, just because it can.
And, no, I don’t want GPS built into my vehicle.
I’m old.
I know how to read a map.
It’s really not all that difficult. And, actually, it’s kind of fun. You see stuff that doesn’t fit on that screen.
The Rich Are Different from You and Me 0
And aim to keep it that way.
Light Bloggery 0
Family business.
Texas Roads Scholars 0
You’ve heard of MscAdamized roads.
Meet Perryfied roads:
The oversized vehicles and overweight loads used by energy companies has had a devastating impact on many roads, but the state has not appropriated enough money to fix them.
The Texas Department of Transportation began converting more than 80 miles of paved roads to gravel on Monday, according to the Texas Tribune. The speed limit on the new gravel roads will be reduced to 30 mph.
Interregnum Pending? 0
My local rag has had enough of the Regent.
I doubt he will, but it is notable that one of the two most important papers in the state (the other being the Richmond Trash-Disgrace) is fed up.
The Letters to the Editor should be interesting the next few days.
Twits on Twitter, I Saw It on the Internet It Must Be True Dept. 3
At SFGate, Paul Viviano, long-time foreign correspondent, cautions against taking twits as revealed–or revealing–truth.
For the older generation of Middle East correspondents, including me – I covered Egypt periodically for 30 years, half of them at The Chronicle – there was something glaringly amiss with this picture. Cairo isn’t Egypt, not by a long shot, and secular-minded young people with social networking accounts aren’t more than a tiny segment of the national population.
Facebook penetration in North America surpassed 50 percent of the total population in 2011. In Egypt, it stood at 5.6 percent.
Read the rest, and, the next time twits light up the sky, reach for several grains of salt.
Everybody Must Get Fracked 4
I have ridden the train through west Texas several times. Every time I remembered the story of an Englishman trapped on the train with a Texan who kept boasting about the glories of his state, finally winding up with, “Why, you could fit all of lil’ ole England in one tiny corner of Texas!”
As the Englishman looked out the window at the barren, windswept landscape of mesquite and red dirt, he said, “I say, old chap, do the place a world of good, eh, what?”
You ain’t lived until you’ve seen Del Rio.
Via Raw Story.
Facebook Frolics 0
Another guy gets zucked.
Droning On 0
Coming soon to a sky near you, including more than meets the eye.
