h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We're going to have to agree to disagree on this. My British upbringing yearns for those long summer evenings when you can be sitting outside a pub at 9.30pm and twilight is just starting to soften the day I know we can't have that in Texas, being so much further south, but anything that cuts into what do have gets my thumbs down*.

It also despises early evening/late afternoon darkness. In the mornings though, I couldn't give a tinker's cuss either way, and moving from London to Texas has meant getting used to the hottest part of the day being later in the afternoon rather than earlier, so whatever time midday comes along, I hardly notice.

*Wouldn't it be good if one of the community artists turned upside down, the way they've flipped some of the smileys like and , so we could have a thumbs down one too.

(good idea )


When I'm talking about "midday", I'm speaking astronomically. Noon should be when the Sun is at it's apex. What your concerned with is just business hours and I don't care if we change those.

A big issue is with how we use time zones in the US. While we nominally have 4 main time zones for the Continental US, we only practically use 2. Eastern time dominates over Central time so we already get up and go to bed one hour later, cutting into your evenings. Our "Nine to Five" is 8-4 to sync up with EST. There has been a bit of talk about dropping not only DST but also two of our time zones, Central and Mountain since for practical reasons most of us in those regions function more according to Eastern and Pacific respectively.

So, the reason you really like DST is it IS more like standard time if we observed our LOCAL standard time.

I've just found the perfect mix for iced tea. Celestial Seasonings has a new flavor, Country Peach Passion. For one pitcher of iced tea, I use two family size Luzianne iced tea bags (decaffeinated due to caffeine sensitivity) and two single serving size C.S. Country Peach Passion. I'd been using their Mandarin Orange Spice, but this is much tastier. It's so nice and pleasant. I don't sweeten my tea and this flavor doesn't need sweetening anyway.

And what's also nice is that it will keep in the fridge for 4 days without turning cloudy and blecchhh like Lipton or Tetley.

I make one pitcher on Monday mornings and it's just enough for 4 32oz. glasses with ice for each of my work days.

I saw this image on the Houston subreddit.


http://www.shorpy.com/node/97?size=_original#caption


If I'm correct on the direction of the view, this is what 1900 Franklin looks like today.


http://goo.gl/maps/khdPH

In the background is Minute Maid Park (formerly Enron Field. http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/4f170b3f69beddab55000004-480/enron-field.jpg )

Reverse view showing address.
http://goo.gl/maps/rDLQx



That old house is just gorgeous. But imagine how hot it was in Houston back in 1943. Or in 1843 when that house was likely built. Imagine what one might have seen sitting on a rocking chair on those large galleries. (I recently read a book about the 1900 Galveston storm and it referred to these outside, upstairs porches as galleries. I like that. I'd much rather sit on the gallery than in a gallery.)

Oh, and I also have the urge insert the phrase "banana wagon" in a conversation today.

There are still quite a few old houses like that in Austin too, and I also wonder about how unbearable it must have been in the summer months. Not just in those, but in any kind of house. I know that some houses got around it by having porches or galleries, like those, with netting or screens around them for sleeping in when it was hottest, and Max Patkin, about whom I wrote a little entry , said that more people used to go out to open-air activities, like minor league baseball, in the evening before a/c was widespread, to get out of the stifling heat of the house during the summer.

The Native Americans, of course, didn't have to bother with all that malarkey.

As far as I can make out, that turret (I can't think of a better word for it) on the right is entirely decorative, unless you can get into it by stairs leading up into the one corner of it (how do you have a corner in something that's round? ) that seems be over a part of the actual house rather than above the gallery.

By the way, I can't recall now in which conversation we were talking about the Austin pinata store that was demolished without warning, but that sort of thing isn't limited to the US. This http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=51.532231,-0.191354&spn=0.003007,0.008256&t=m&z=18&layer=c&cbll=51.532212,-0.191495&panoid=6YP19_kJQe7LpFp83hnvmw&cbp=12,190.8,,0,-12.4 is what this http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-32233610 used to look like.

There are precious few of those old tiled pubs bearing the names of breweries long since disappeared in amalgamations and consolidations and takeovers. There's one less now

I hope someone is strung up by the nuts, then made to rebuild the thing *exactly* as it was. Of course, that won't happen.

That's a real shame. What a quaint pub.



As for that turret? Steeple? AH! It's a cupola!

That was a trend in that era (maybe mid to late 19th century). Here's another house that was torn down more recently, not far from the one above.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r108/marmer01/paulhouse.jpg

It was known as the "Witches Hat House" for obvious reasons.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r108/marmer01/paulhouse.jpg

Here's a good article about it (sadly without further images).


http://articles.latimes.com/2000/apr/04/news/mn-15701

Hmm. I haven't actually looked up the definition of what makes a cupola, but I always think of it not being pointed, but rather domed, or even crown-like, such as the one on top of The Salisbury in Harringay, which you can just barely see in this image http://www.papaarchitects.co.uk/img/projects/mixed/salisburyPub/TheSalisburyPub_01.jpg

Okay, so now I've looked it up (cupola - a dome-like structure, from the Italian meaning little cup), more questions arise. When does a cupola become a dome? When does a hill become a mountain? When does a sea become an ocean? When does a contretemps become a brouhaha? When does a brouhaha become a schemozzle?

I'll get me coat

Here's the cupola I'm most familiar with, and I must say, the views from it are out of this world.


http://www.wired.com/2010/11/cupola-iss-images/

Sorry. I'm watching the evening news. The anchors must have rubbed off on me.

Earlier this year, before getting my Flevobike, I spent WAY TOO MUCH for a European style cruiser. (This one: http://bikereviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/electra-amsterdam-sport-9d-2010-city-bike.jpg ) Since getting my Flevobike, that cruiser has sat idle, taking up space in the garage. Last week, I relegated it to the storage shed, figuring it would just waste away out there rusting. (Then I remembered it's made from aluminium, so just the hardware might rust.) I didn't have much prospect of selling it for a decent price and didn't feel like putting much effort into doing so. Surely I will occasionally prefer a standard style bike, right?

Anyway, yesterday as I was taking one of my regular 1-1.5 mile walks around the ponds here at work, around the same exact paths I take everyday, while quite nice, do get a bit routine; I thought about that bike. Why, instead, shouldn't I bring that bike to work and spend the same 20-30 minutes riding instead of walking? That bike is perfectly fine for a 30 minute ride.

So, I loaded it on the bike rack and brought it to work today. As an added bonus I can ride it to a few places nearby for lunch... which is what I did today. (Indian)



As evidence that I made an excellent decision, I picked up a hitchhiker on my ride back after lunch. I had just hopped up on the sidewalk on site and heard a >FLWATT!< sound as something hit my sleeve. I looked down expecting some large bug or "avian biological debris" but instead there was a bright green anole (lizard: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Carolina_Anole.jpg ) sitting on my sleeve. I stopped and tried to grab him and put him on the ground, but he was on my blind side and quickly eluded me. Oh, well, "enjoy the ride, Mr. Lizzard!" Sure enough, a few hundred yards up the path he appeared on my other arm and crawled down to my hand just in time for me to let him off at a convenient handrail.

How utterly charming

http://www.wacotrib.com/news/police/update-police-sergeant-says-twin-peaks-biker-gang-shooting-the/article_37addf70-e4e5-505a-98b4-ecbef08a2a87.html

My motorcycle club will be riding into central Texas this weekend en masse, wearing our colors. I anticipate a high likelihood of being pulled over and harassed simply for being a biker. It's happened to me before. I was planning on riding through Waco, but I'll be taking an alternate route through Temple instead.

This incident will set the image of motorcycle clubs back 40 years. My motorcycle club is NOT a biker gang. We do not tolerate illegal behavior in our club. We're the largest motorcycle club in Texas and have chapters in surrounding states, Mexico and Germany. But now everyone will see us as a potential threat. This incident occurred mainly between two well known outlaw (1%ers) clubs, the Bandidos and the smaller Cossacks. Two years ago a Bandido chapter president in Abilene was arrested for stabbing two Cossacks. Obviously there were some tensions between those two clubs (and their support clubs). What is really bad about this is how the local police seem to blame the restaurant for hosting bike nights and specifically this event. This was apparently a Confederacy of Clubs meeting. The CoC has monthly meetings where all clubs and independent riders are invited to mostly discuss motorcycle rights issues. I've always been leery of CoC as it seems to be mostly run or at least for the benefit of 1%er clubs. The majority of the bikers at that meeting were NOT gang members. In some of the photos and news footage of the crime scene, I've seen patches of my own club members as well as Viet Nam Veteran riders. I've been to several CoC meetings myself. I won't go to another.

Much of the news coverage, police statements, and comments on-line do not discriminate between outlaws and law abiding bikers. Besides increased attention from police, I also expect businesses to refuse service to us this weekend. I've seen that happen before as well; restaurants running out of food, bars running out of beer when we walk in. I'm sure we'll find similarly sudden shortages this weekend.

UPDATE: 192 bikers were arrested following the shootout and charged with "organized crime". Organized crime is one of those very loosely defined crimes. I don't know the details of who was arrested, but I wouldn't be surprised if they arrested some innocent bikers for just being on the premises of that meeting.

We've been notified to not wear our colors while riding, even and especially on our way to our annual run this weekend and DEFINITELY not through Waco.

This is pretty serious as it's in our by-laws that we're to wear our colors to and from all our club functions. Law enforcement have been ordered to pull over all MC members in colors statewide. This is going to be a weird run.

This probably belongs in the Geezer thread. I used to live in a country that had a Constitution that forbade anyone from being singled out for the clubs they belonged to or the clothes they wore. There was 'Tail Gunner Joe' http://www.biography.com/people/joseph-mccarthy-9390801 , but things did not turn out well for him in the end

I am not a myself, but I am with you

Here in Florida, about a dozen years ago, the local clubs started riding in mass without helmets. There were too many to arrest, and today anyone over the age of 21 has the right to ride bare-headed in the state.

I am not saying whether this is good or not, just relaying a tale.

this is ridiculous.



F S

I was pleased to hear that the few members of my club that were attending this meeting were detained but not arrested. Those that were arrested are being held on $1,000,000 bonds for "engaging in organized crime", basically just for being present. I've still yet to hear anyone, in the media or police distinguish between outlaws and law abiding club members.

The way this is being portrayed, especially how the restaurant was shut down and has been criticized for "being uncooperative" by not denying service to motorcyclists. While I wholeheartedly agree with arresting all the members of the clubs involved in the shooting, they are outlaws after all, they have effectively portrayed all bikers as outlaws and it sure sounds like it is now illegal for bikers to freely assemble.