Friday, December 18, 2009

The Noise Machine (12/18/09)

A coward dies a 1000 deaths, a brave man only one. At the end of the day, both are dead.


Death sentences are dropping Nationwide. - To me, a good thing. I've said often that, while I support the idea of the death penalty, I believe that it should be reserved for the worst of the worst. In Texas, more so than other states, I often feel that the statute is over-applied.


The Beatification of Parker in print form? Buy a paper to find out! *cue dramatic music*


More fallout from the HFD grafitti incident. - This time with 50% more lawyers!


Friday newspaper: 75¢, Cup of coffee: $0.59 - $5.25 (depending) Opening the paper to find this passing as a Metro column? Worthless.


Steffy is right here the Oil & Gas industry is increasingly moving toward Natural gas. Has been for quite some time as gas wells, still cheap and relatively easy to drill, become more prevelent. One thing not discussed, that should be, is the royalty boom that could come from this. Mineral royalties, especially for carbon fuels, have the ability to generate great personal wealth for farmers, ranchers, land-owners, etc.


Before you make up your mind on exclusion zones for sexually oriented businesses (SOB's) please read this blog post by Keep Houston Houston. Now there's an analysis that didn't make it into the pages of Chronblog. (Who, as is their custom, kept to the superficial or only focused on one side of the debate {usually the side their elected friends were supporting oddly enough*}) *That they even linked to this post here,on their opinion page, is a sign of improvement.


The great Al Hoang takedown, Part the second. (Wanna know a little bit about campaign finance codes? Here's a good place to start.)


The View from the American Media: Barack Obama: Climate Crusader.

The View from the European Media: Barack Obama: All hat no cattle.

Same speech, two totally different reactions. Proving the truism that there are three sides to every story: Yours, Mine, the truth.


That's a lot of frequent flier miles. Nice report from Matt Stiles and Andrew Kreighbaum of the Texas Tribune, with the additional bonus of detail discussing the difficulties of finding information within disclosure forms. (Think Needle/Haystack in many cases)


Heavy equipment theft and a costly government solution. - Texas Tribune's Reeve Hamilton provides the details. (Not that increased training and enforcement is a bad idea (they're a very good idea actually) but if they're the ONLY idea then they're going to be grossly limited, temporary in nature and, at the end of the day, ineffective. Have we learned nothing from the endless "war on drugs"?)


Again from the Tribune: Another example of the single-solution folly. (A better idea would be to fix schools, to stop trying to fit all students into the same hole (college) and instead let them follow their own paths (trades, fast-food management, skilled labor, etc.) Haven't we devalued manual labor enough already?


Finally, That's funny: I don't feel 15th happiest.

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