Sometimes you surf and find something that is a dud. Other times you find an interesting time-waster. This site I have been checking out this afternoon, Houston Architecture Info, has an unassuming and perhaps even ugly launching page. But click and ye shall find. Let us say you “Browse the Guide.” You can search buildings by size, type or city, which is pretty limited to Houston and surrounding cities though there are plenty of links worldwide. Beaumont, the city in which I reside and is about 80 miles east of Houston, is not listed.
Granted, Beaumont doesn’t have the grandest skyline. Edison Plaza, formerly known as the Entergy Building, probably catches one’s eye the most driving by on Interstate 10. At 17 stories, there are a few surrounding buildings that are taller, but the architecture does make you look no matter whether you think it is ugly. I don’t but I have looked at it from various angles and been in it quite a few times although mainly to eat at the former Le Peep. I’ve not yet been to the new Green Light Kitchen which opens in its place. It’s a “healthier choice” supposedly. That might or might not mean a “tasty choice.” You can check out their menu and decide for yourself.
Back to Houston, the architecture site provides a decent array of information on Houston skyscrapers, be it in Downtown Houston or Uptown Houston. If Houston isn’t your bag then you can find links to many cities in a number of countries other than the United States. Let’s say you want to explore the buildings of Prague, then click away.
The photos on the HAI site will blow one away if anything on the sites do. But I find buildings interesting and on the site and its links one can find the good and bad.
We had a hell of a rain on Friday. The thunder started booming about 4 a.m. and didn’t seem to stop until nearly 8 a.m. Normally, I can sleep and sleep well through thunder and a heavy rain, but this stuff just kept on rolling. The rain did likewise, falling and falling some more. Some areas in Jefferson County were hit with 4 inches to 6 inches from only several hours of rain. Consequently, some of the same old underpasses went under water.
The city of Beaumont has spent millions to install better conduits for flood water to flow off into the Neches River. The river, which is the Beaumont-Mid Jefferson County-Northern Orange County portion of the Sabine-Neches Waterway, is located on the eastern side of Beaumont. Still the area floods when we get a lot of water in a short period of time. And people still drive their cars into the flooded underpasses. I think I saw a figure of like 36 cars had to be pulled from underwater. Fortunately, no one was killed. Such is the price you pay when you live in an area that is at most about 20 feet above sea level. But, I guess the river can always use some refreshing.
I see different figures but the Port of Beaumont — on the Neches end of the waterway — usually runs from about the 4th largest port in the country to the 7th. I used to like to go down to the port and take a look at the big ships in port. Now they have a more restricted are around the port due to maritime security, a.k.a. MARSEC.
“The Coast Guard employs a three-tiered system of Maritime Security (MARSEC) Levels designed to easily communicate to the Coast Guard and our maritime industry partners pre-planned scalable responses for credible threats,” says the Coasties.
A liquid natural gas tanker is assisted by tugs on the Sabine-Neches Waterway on the Upper Texas Coast.
President Obama signed a bill last month that is meant to boost water projects across the country. Southeast Texas is to get the largest bucks from that legislation, the Sabine-Neches Navigation District said last week. The district said there are 71,000 vessel transits — meaning in and out each year — in the entire Sabine-Neches complex. Those group of ports are located in Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange and Sabine Pass. And since the modern petroleum industry began “right cheer,” as our Cajun Texans say, I suppose it is only logical that most of the cargo sailing around the area’s ports consist of crude oil and it’s byproducts.
“We produce about 13% of the nation’s gasoline daily,” said Clayton Henderson, assistant general manager of the Sabine-Neches Navigation District
Oh, and I forgot to mention there are big ol’ liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals at either side of where the Sabine-Neches and its bay, Sabine Lake, empties into the Gulf of Mexico.
If the remainder of the Keystone Pipeline gets allowed and built, it will end up right cheer in Jefferson County. And for something kind of completely different, some of the stockpiles of chemical weapons being taken from Syria for destruction — where do they go? Want to take a guess? Those nasty “weapons of mass destruction” are being sent to Port Arthur.
Now one may ask, why did he start with heavy thunder and rain, and end up with tons of petroleum products and weapons of mass destruction?
To look at it one way there is certainly a lot of stuff to go boom were the wrong people to get hold of all those dangerous product made and transported to and from our area. We would probably need a lot of foam if something caught fire, but we have plenty of water or so it seems.
It seems as if someone needs to use the existing channel to transport to us a big ol’ “paradigm shifter.” Get that sucker rigged up like snappy, and working. Then, we should ask our Native-American friends who live about an hour away to the north on the Alabama-Coushatta Reservation if they might be so nice to come down here somewhere and do some rain dancing. Because even with all the rain we already receive if things get rough we might need even more liquid gold.
Weather getting you down? “Pig’s arse,” an Australian medical study reveals.
Well, the story about these finding doesn’t use such an Aussie expression to disagree. But stories about health and science seem to pop up every day. Such subjects can also easily confound readers. There seems no shortage of the modern news media publishing the “Researchers say … ” type of medical story. You are no doubt familiar with the type of article. Usually some medical journal, the likes of Prostate Quarterly, announces to the media some study was published in said journal that is the definitive word on some bodily function or condition.
When I see these type stories I always think of that George Carlin bit — permit me to plagiarize myself and the late Mr. Carlin — “Researchers have found that saliva causes stomach cancer. But only when swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time.”
Findings by scientists seem forever questioning the usefulness or safety of common items like coffee or red meat, or maybe both. I can see my lead now: “
Scientists have discovered that cows which drink more than two cups of coffee daily produce meat that is more likely to keep consumers up late at night.”
Now comes a study published in the journal Arthritis Care and Research which shatters perceptions that the pain noted in numerous old wives tails is caused by something other than the weather. The experiment conducted on some 1,000 patients with low back pain in Sydney during 2011-2012 “compared the weather at the time patients first felt lower back pain with weather conditions one week and one month before the start of pain,” said an article published in Daily Digest News about the study.
No correlation was found between the weather and lower back pain.
Now I have lower back pain pretty much around the clock. The same goes for neck pain, the latter which is likely caused by bone spurs and a blown disc in my cervical spine. Since I have had surgery twice on my C-spine, including fusion, the doctors say they can only operate on it again in case of an emergency threatening life or limbs. So, I take methadone for that pain. But that doesn’t prevent my neck from having spikes in pain. And, I have found these instances of increased pain in times during nearby low pressure weather systems. For instance, I noticed the pain increased considerably during two of the hurricanes I went through.
The doctor who authored the study makes it clear in the news story that more investigation is needed with weather conditions in concert with certain pain caused by problems including osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia.
I might suggest that the researchers also find places outside Sydney for such studies. It seems rather presumptuous, if not foolish, to expect the weather in one part of the world to represent the entire planet. Various conditions control the weather systems of coastal Texas where I live. I would imagine the same could be said for southeastern Australia, although I do remember quite pleasant weather when I visited there some 35 years ago.
I can’t remember weather systems causing pain in Australia but I do remember a bit of a hangover after drinking the local Ouzo and pints of beer one night. Oh, that was Christmas Eve and as I recall, it was a very mild evening.
This morning I got up got shaven got dressed went downtown and sat through jury enpanelment for almost an hour. Myself and maybe more than 150 citizens of my county will get the grand total of $6 for our trouble. Some 40 prospective jurors were selected for the county’s criminal court. They will receive $40 for at least one day of service if they are picked for an actual jury. The same amount goes for any additional day of service.
The selection process this morning proceeded much faster than I had originally imagined after the clerk told us how we were file our of our seats in order that our jury number might be scanned. At the same time we picked up a sheet which we could sign in order to donate our $6, or more, to a statewide victims fund and a countywide foster care fund.
Most likely there are ways that the process might flow even faster. I don’t expect Ms. Birge to tackle changes to hasten and perhaps even save money in jury enpanelment. The district clerk said she had no intent of running for the office after her unexpired term expires in January 2015. I can’t blame her for that. Who needs the headache?
I hope that whomever the people elect to this office will take a look at how this jury selection process can be streamlined. I don’t know what rules govern this process, but it doesn’t hurt to at least attempt constructing a better mousetrap. Our lives are full and busy these days. I’d say that even the least paid of us is worth more than $6 an hour.
Likewise we must feed our jury pool. When we think of voting we most likely consider the higher offices such as our lawmakers our district attorneys the sheriffs the judges. But down ballot races are the so-called meat and potatoes of our local democracy.
I’m done preaching and writing with as little punctuation possible just to see what the latter feels like for writers employing such styles the likes of Cormac McCarthy. In the meantime I will sit and imagine what all that $6 for my service today might buy me.
With things which have transpired in my life since the new year — injury, loss of a brother, illness of another brother, a longtime friend who has been hospitalized for two months after a serious stroke, and not to mention work — I have strayed from writing this blog here and other tasks elsewhere. It isn’t as if I have stopped, rather I have taken days off and just let something that I enjoy to slide.
Now that we’re in the midst of hurricane season I need to make some plans regarding whether to go or to stay should a hurricane come knocking on my door. I must also figure out whether I should pursue freelance opportunities should such a weather story appear.
Likewise, I need to get inside the blog and see what requires some tinkering. I have already tinkered a bit with my links, a.k.a. “blogroll.” The great site that first appeared shortly before I began blogging and was one with a great many more viewers than mine, In The Pink Texas, has suspended operations. The wonderfully clever and entertaining Eileen Smith of Austin has pursued an equally daunting and demanding task: motherhood. Smith and her husband adopted a baby earlier this year. Just recently Eileen wrote that she was shutting what was once one of my favorite mid-afternoon pick-me-ups although I wouldn’be surprised to see her return someday with a bigger and better literary platform.
It is time for me to also thin the herd even more of blogrolls that either no longer produce for one reason or the other, or else to place on hiatus until I discover where the link will fit in my reading pattern. I will likewise add more sites to pass on to those who stop by this inner-web space. I also am more than ever eager to start my book, but I still have no idea what it will be about or in what genre it shall exist.
That sounds like some big ambition, to me at least, especially now, during which time I am about as energetic as a bear during hibernation. But one must start before a task can officially makes its way. That’s the way it goes, I am told, first your money, then your clothes.
