From me to you

2010-10-27T10:13:00.001-05:00

This is an older post but it merits a repost. Proposition 3 on the fall 2010 Houston ballot is asking for authorization to keep red light cameras in Houston. Do we really want to vote yes and allow Red Light Cameras to remain in Houston?
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Link to the original story: Dallas, Texas Cameras Bank on Short Yellow Times

This one really annoys me!! Turns out that Dallas, and incidentally, Houston are shortening their traffic signal yellow lights in an effort to maximize profits. Yet, these short yellows are dangerous and cause accidents??!!!

I may be naive but I did think that the purpose of traffic signal lights, and tickets for the failure to abide them, were instituted by the public to allow for safe travel and not for the purpose of collecting revenue at the cost of creating dangerous conditions?

We really, really need to get rid of the people in government positions who abuse the public trust.

"A local news investigation has found that the city of Dallas, Texas depends upon short yellow timing to maximize red light camera profit. Of the ten cameras that issue the greatest number of tickets in the city, seven are located at intersections where the yellow duration is shorter than the bare minimum recommended by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), KDFW-TV found."

Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown metropolitan area has a total area of 10,062 square miles

2010-10-17T21:56:00.001-05:00

Interesting tidbit about the growth of the Houston area. No wonder the city seems bigger every time I return after a few months out of town... The Wiki page has a quite large and interesting collection of facts about the city.

Greater Houston - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

According to the United States Census Bureau, the Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown metropolitan area has a total area of 10,062 square miles (26,060 km²), 8,929 sq mi (23,130 km2). is land area, while 1,133 sq mi (2,930 km2). is water area.; slightly smaller than Massachusetts and slightly larger than New Jersey!!.

The Combined Statistical Area encompasses 12,475 sq mi (32,310 km²). of area. 10,830 sq mi (28,000 km²). is land while 1,645 sq mi (4,260 km²). is water. This is actually a larger area than that of nine (9) of the US States!!!

Land and Water Area of States, 2000 - http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108355.html

Houston is among the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States. The area grew 25.2 percent between the 1990 and 2000 censuses—adding more than 950,000 people—while the nation's population increased 13.2 percent over the same period. (City is still growing at a fast pace.)

Houston is home to the Texas Medical Center—the largest medical center in the world.

2010-10-17T17:37:00.002-05:00

Ars technica claims that Amazon will publish shorter content to Kindle. Maybe good news for Writers.

Paying for (short) content: Amazon to publish "Kindle Singles"

"Paying for (short) content: Amazon to publish "Kindle Singles"

Amazon is rolling out a separate section of its Kindle store meant for shorter content—meatier than long-form journalism, but shorter than a typical book. Called "Kindle Singles," the content will be distributed like other Kindle books but will likely fall between 10,000 and 30,000 words, or the equivalent of a few chapters from a novel.

The company believes that some of the best ideas don't need to be stretched to more than 50,000 words in order to get in front of readers, nor do they need to be chopped down to the length of a magazine article."

ScribeFire!!!

2010-10-17T17:31:00.001-05:00

Scribefire: Fire up your blogging
I LOVE ScribeFire. They just added an extension for Chrome..

ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser, Google Chrome Web browser, and Apple Safari Web browser that allows you to easily post to all of your blogs.

I use this all the time. A great tool I miss when not available.

2010-10-17T16:49:00.000-05:00
Painting Elephants Get Online Gallery: "For the past several years, Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, Russian-born conceptual artists based in New York, have been teaching domesticated elephants and their mahouts (elephants' lifelong trainers) how to paint."

Interesting site where the art created by Elephants!! is displayed and actually sold. The money is used to support elephants and other at risk species.

2010-10-17T14:42:00.000-05:00
YouTube - Elephant painting

Youtube video of an amazing elephant painting a portrait of himself!! Great video!! You just have to see it!!

2008-05-21T10:44:00.000-05:00
Our Climate Numbers Are a Big Old Mess - WSJ.com: "These records have been revised a number of times, and I examined the two major revisions of these three records. They are the surface record from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the satellite-sensed temperatures originally published by University of Alabama's John Christy, and the weather-balloon records originally published by James Angell of the U.S. Commerce Department."

Interesting look at Greenland and global warming......

2008-05-01T21:11:00.001-05:00
Birthrates Help Keep Filipinos in Poverty - washingtonpost.com: "'I knew it existed, but I didn't know how it works,' said Espinoza, who lives with her husband and children in a squatter's hut in a vast, stinking garbage dump by Manila Bay."

Good comparison of two countries, Thailand and the Philippines, and the effect of birth rates on the living standard of the local people.

According to the article, the Thais made low cost birth control aids available, the Filipinos did not. 'In 1970, the population of each country was about 36 million people and growing at about 3 percent a year. But with an aggressive family planning program that provides the poor with free contraceptives, Thailand has since reduced its population growth rate to 0.9 percent. In the Philippines, the rate has declined sluggishly to about 2.1 percent.

There are now about 26 million more people in the Philippines than in Thailand.

"It's a no-brainer," said Ernesto M. Pernia, professor of economics at the University of the Philippines.

The Philippines now produces 16 million metric tons of rice a year -- and needs to import 2 million tons more to meet local demand.

"If the Philippines had pursued what Thailand has done, the Philippines would be only consuming 13 metric tons of rice per annum," Pernia said. "We could be a net exporter of 3 million metric tons."

Besides increased food security, the Philippines could have lifted 3.6 million more people out of poverty if it had followed Thailand's population growth trajectory, according to Pernia's analysis.

"Even when there is widespread corruption, insurgent violence and other powerful reasons for poverty, the evidence from across Asia is that good population policy by itself contributes to significant poverty reduction," he said.'

Why the difference? "Birth and poverty rates here are among the highest in Asia. And the Philippines, where four out of five of the country's 91 million people are Roman Catholic, also stands out in Asia for its government's rejection of modern contraception as part of family planning."

This is the same future vision that the Pope and his cohorts have for the US. He was just here parading around the US, espousing his views on immigration and birth control. It is very obvious that these policies have nothing to do with god and everything to do with the collections and coffers of the catholic church. Catholic Americans have done the correct thing and are no longer breeding beyond the capacity of the land to support them. They have also rejected these outmoded primitive beliefs that this church tries to shove down their throats.

As a result, this church has embarked on a journey to force Americans to accept a huge influx of catholics from other countries, an excess I might add, mainly due to these same outmoded church birth policies. This church breaks our laws, uses our resources, and ignores the will of the American people to chose their own path.

If this criminal, the pope, was not affiliated with a powerful foreign governmemt, the church, he would be arrested and the church charged under the Rico statutes.

It is time we stopped honoring these crooks and started to treat them like the criminals that they really are.

2008-05-01T17:14:00.001-05:00
Goldfish Rights: Switzerland Joins the Marching Morons of PETA @ AMERICAN DIGEST: "From guinea-pigs to budgerigars, any animal classified as a 'social species' will be a victim of abuse if it does not cohabit, or at least have contact, with others of its own kind."

The new regulation stipulates that aquariums for pet fish should not be transparent on all sides and that owners must make sure that the natural cycle of day and night is maintained in terms of light. Goldfish are considered social animals, or Gruppentiere in German. - New Swiss law protects rights of 'social' animals - Times Online

When I see the above type of legal activity, it reminds me of the Peta fools that demanded that the Amdro, used to control Fire Ants, ad be removed from TV because, "Fire Ants have a right to life too"!!

Real obvious that these people have never been bitten nor have they seen the devastation that these "harmless" little guys can cause to a piece of land with their 2-3 foot high mounds every 3 feet or so..

2008-04-27T15:41:00.001-05:00
Experts hack power grid in no time - Network World

Here is an interesting article. Seems a power company hired "hackers" to see if they could break into the power grid! The scary part is that they succeeded and way ahead of their own schedule. And it was sooo easy!!

Way to go. And they published how they did it!!

Ira Winkler, a penetration-testing consultant, says he and a team of other experts took a day to set up attack tools they needed then launched their attack, which paired social engineering with corrupting browsers on a power company's desktops. By the end of a full day of the attack, they had taken over several machines, giving the team the ability to hack into the control network overseeing power production and distribution...

2008-04-27T00:29:00.004-05:00
Hot Sauce Blog: "Welcome to the Hot Sauce Blog. The HSB is a one stop location for reviews, news, recipes & anything else related to hot sauce and spicy foods."

Great site devoted to reviews Hot Sauces, BBQ Sauces, Chili, Hot Wing Sauces, Salsa recipes and other related items. If you like hot or spicy or just flavorful, this is your place!

2008-04-19T22:51:00.001-05:00
Current Chaos Manor mail: "SL (Second Life) — impressions ---------------------------------------------

The following is a note that was posted on Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor site... I love that site. Jerry, a great science fiction writer and scientist, has written this column for many years and was a key component of Byte magazine. His column was one of the main reasons that I subscribed to Byte until it folded. He has continued to post on his personal site.

Current Chaos Manor mail: "SL (Second Life) — impressions

2008-04-19T15:06:00.001-05:00
Ten Science Fiction Books That Should Be Movies | fuzztime.com

The above site listed the ten science fiction books that blog author thought ought to be made into movies.

His criteria was that they had to be: stories he liked; stories he thought would translate into film (though some might be a stretch). There are a number brilliant science fiction stories that he feels just wouldn’t work in movie format. He says that he admits that he might have stretched that criteria. He tried to pick stories that have not been made into a movie previously and that as far as he knows are not currently in production.

I've read all of these books and have to agree with him on the selections.

1. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
2. Ringworld by Larry Niven
3. Childhood’s End by Arthur C Clarke
4. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
5. The Mote in God’s Eye by Niven & Pournelle
6. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
7. Night’s Dawn Trilogy - Peter F. Hamilton
8. Sundiver by David Brin
9. Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison
10. Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

2008-04-19T06:27:00.001-05:00
Houston, Texas Banks on Short Yellows

Interesting article that describes how Dallas and Houston, and probably many other cities with traffic cameras, have set the yellow traffic lights to last a shorter time interval than is safe for motorists and just so they can collect additional traffic fines!! In other words, they jeopardize you and yours just for the funds of it!! My impression was always that traffic laws and the accompanying fines were for the purpose of protecting the public!! Guess not.

A local news investigation has found that the city of Dallas, Texas depends upon short yellow timing to maximize red light camera profit. Of the ten cameras that issue the greatest number of tickets in the city, seven are located at intersections where the yellow duration is shorter than the bare minimum recommended by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), KDFW-TV found.

The city's second highest revenue producing camera, for example, is located at the intersection of Greenville Avenue and Mockingbird Lane. It issued 9407 tickets worth $705,525 between January 1 and August 31, 2007. At the intersections on Greenville Avenue leadding up to the camera intersection, however, yellows are at least 3.5 or 4.0 seconds in duration, but the ticket producing intersection's yellow stands at just 3.15 seconds. The yellow is .35 seconds shorter than TxDOT's recommended bare minimum.

"For 30 miles per hour, if your yellow time was less than three and a half, you would not be giving that driver enough time to react and brake and stop prior to getting to the intersection," TxDOT Dallas District office transportation engineer supervisor Chris Blain told KDFW.

A small change in signal timing can have a great effect on the number of tickets issued. About four out of every five red light camera citations are issued before even a second has elapsed after the light changed to red, according to a report by the California State Auditor. This suggests that most citations are issued to those surprised by a quick-changing signal light. Confidential documents obtained in a 2001 court trial proved that the city of San Diego, California and its red light camera vendor, now ACS, only installed red light cameras at intersections with high volumes and "Amber (yellow) phase less than 4 seconds."

Dallas likewise installed the cameras at locations with existing short yellow times. A total of twenty-one camera intersections in Dallas have yellow times below TxDOT's bare minimum recommended amount. The Texas Transportation Institute study also found that shorter yellows generate a 110 percent jump in the number of tickets, but at the cost of safety. Increasing the yellow one second above the recommended minimum cut crashes by 40 percent.

Since the Dallas intersection ticketing program launched last December, it has issued $13.5 million worth of automated citations from sixty camera locations. Beginning in September, however, Texas cities must split camera ticket profit with the state. To make up for lost revenue, Dallas plans to install forty more cameras. View KDFW's signal timing chart, a 44k PDF file.

2008-04-08T18:56:00.003-05:00
Avatar Heroes

Congress has a hearing on Second Life and Rob Riggle puts the mammaries in marine mammals with his avatar.

2008-04-08T18:01:00.003-05:00

ManyBooks.net - Free eBooks for your PDA, iPod, or eBook Reader: "Free eBooks for your PDA, iPod, or eBook reader.

Browse through the most popular titles, recommendations, or recent reviews from our visitors. Perhaps you'll find something interesting in the special collections. There are 20,208 eBooks available here and they're all free!"

JUST LIKE CHRISTMAS!!! I happened onto this site by accident while gooling for an author. There are over twenty thousand titles here for download including versions for PDA and blcakberry!! ALL FREE!! Many are reviewed and or recommended. A lot of categories, certainly something there that you will like, I downloaded ten almost immedialtely and will make plently of tstops there in the futures. A Good Read recommendation from me!!!

2008-04-08T13:13:00.002-05:00

Where the Brains Are: "The physical proximity of talented, highly educated people has a powerful effect on innovation and economic growth—in fact, the Nobel Prize–winning economist Robert Lucas declared the multiplier effects that stem from talent clustering to be the primary determinant of growth. That’s all the more true in a postindustrial economy dependent on creativity, intellectual property, and high-tech innovation."

2008-04-08T12:39:00.001-05:00

George Orwell: 6 Questions/6 Rules: "What am I trying to say?"

Rules of writing by George Orwell

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:
What am I trying to say?
What words will express it?
What image or idiom will make it clearer?
Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

Could I put it more shortly?
Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

One can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

* From Orwell's essay“Politics and the English Language”

Poodwaddle World Clock

2008-04-07T11:55:00.000-05:00
Poodwaddle World Clock

Very comprehensive world clock with dozens of specific clocks in a tabular format.

Too many to describe but well worth a look!

Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group News » Recent Data On Surface Snowmelt In Antarctica

2008-04-07T08:47:00.000-05:00
Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group News » Recent Data On Surface Snowmelt In Antarctica

Interesting Climate Science Blog with a great deal of information and excellent side links.

2008-04-06T08:25:00.002-05:00
Openlifegrid.com A Global Community 3D Metaverse built on Open Source Technology: "A Global Community 3D Metaverse built with opensource technology from the opensimulator project."

A Global Community 3D Metaverse built with open source technology from the open simulator project.

Similar to Second Life but not as developed. I run this on my system locally to do SL development without logging onto Second Life!! Gives me humongous number of prims to play with and as much space as I want. Only real drawback to me is the lack of a MAC version.

2008-04-05T21:38:00.001-05:00
The Kansas City BBQ Store - Home Page

Lots of barbecue sauces and rubs from around the country. I found a couple of my favorites listed for sale here. Seems to be a great place to shop.

Also has a great selection of barbecue accessories and lots of equipment.

Getting to be that time of year again so you might as well get ready for the Summer grilling and smoking season!!

2008-04-05T14:53:00.000-05:00
Say hi to hybrids : 2008DenverAutoShow : Boulder Daily Camera

"Environmental technology takes many forms when it comes to automobiles. It can range from seats made out of 100 percent recycled material, to new hybrids that can work with gas and diesel engines, to plug-in hybrids that promise the potential for 40 miles or more of electric driving."

2008-04-05T14:18:00.000-05:00
Lake Ontario Waterkeeper

Energy expert Richard Gilbert believes Hamilton has an opportunity to turn the looming oil shortage into a job creation strategy that could transform the city.

The author of a report suggesting that Hamilton could regain the reputation it once enjoyed as "The Electric City" of Canada, Gilbert thinks the city is well-positioned to be a leader in energy conservation.

The likelihood of a fourfold increase in gasoline and natural gas prices by 2020, he maintains, doesn't need to be as ominous as it appears if the city embraces an imaginative vision to prepare for it.

In what he calls "Hamilton's grand project for the 21st century," Gilbert envisions a city that would boost public transit with light-rail, streetcar or trolley-bus lines, promote energy conservation by retrofitting old buildings, require new ones to be energy efficient, and encourage more solar panels, wind turbines and district heating systems, among other things.
Read the reast of the article. Interesting.

2008-04-05T12:50:00.000-05:00
California DUI Lawyer Center Blog: False-positive breath-alcohol test after a ketogenic diet

Interesting. With the push for low calorie diets and the idea that this action will prolong life, you may want to watch out for the cops if you try this diet out! Seems that the diet can lead to a DWI offense or a failed work required physical..

False-positive breath-alcohol test after a ketogenic diet
California drunk driving criminal defense attorney article

False-positive breath-alcohol test after a ketogenic diet

A 59-year-old man undergoing weight loss with very low calorie diets (VLCD) attempted to drive a car, which was fitted with an alcohol ignition interlock device, but the vehicle failed to start. Because the man was a teetotaler, he was surprised and upset by this result.

VLCD treatment leads to ketonemia with high concentrations of acetone, acetoacetate and b-hydroxybutyrate in the blood. The interlock device determines alcohol (ethanol) in breath by electrochemical oxidation, but acetone does not undergo oxidation with this detector. However, under certain circumstances acetone is reduced in the body to isopropanol by hepatic alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH). The ignition interlock device responds to other alcohols (e.g. methanol, n-propanol and isopropanol), which therefore explains the false-positive result. This ‘side effect’ of ketogenic diets needs further discussion by authorities when people engaged in safety-sensitive work (e.g. bus drivers and airline pilots) submit to random breath-alcohol
tests.