Questionable Decision: A strange adjunct to the LC immigration resolution

DirecTV subscribers in League City Texas can see a bizarre case of art echoing life on their very own TV sets right now.  Bear with me for a moment while I set the stage for context.

The debate over the League City immigrant resolution rages on, both within City Council meetings and in the press, largely in Galveston County Daily News, where the comment count is now among the highest I've ever seen.

Front of the proposed resolution.  I re-published the original text in this July 2014 post. 

The resolution's reference to Islam has long since eclipsed the original debate about whether or not to receive Latin American immigrant children in League City.  Some League City Muslims are still actively opposing the reference, but the people who support it have also been vocal.

Based on the current reporting, it doesn't seem like either side exhibits a clear majority at this point.

Screengrab courtesy Galveston County Daily News.  

It's immediately apparent from reading the GCDN comment stack that many of the resolution supporters have taken their positions out of what they perceive (rightly or wrongly) as an abundance of caution.  That stance appears to arise because many people simply don't feel like they have a reliable lens through which to discern what Islam means on a local scale.  This perspective was quoted in a GCDN piece as having been stated in a Council meeting:  “During (the public comments two weeks ago) of the individuals who spoke, representing the Muslim community, never once did I hear an allegiance to this country, to our flag, to our Constitution, to anything about the American way of life,” Russell Fielder said during the public comment portion of council to a round of applause from many on the council.  In a similar vein, one commenter on GCDN noted, "It is long past time that normal, moderate Muslims speak out against radical Islam."

What both of those communications suggest is that residents simply lack a coherent framework for parsing any of this.  What they expect or hope to see doesn't exactly match the reality that has manifested.  Thirteen years after 9/11, this is apparently where we still are socially, for reasons that I'm not sure anyone really understands.

Case in point where such confusion and discrepancy is concerned - the oddness of what's currently offered in juxtaposition on your DirecTV service: two versions of the same classic American movie, but one of these things is no longer like the other.

I'll get to the explanation in a minute.

Screengrabbed from this site.   

Executive Decision has always been one of my all-time favorite movies.  It was made 18 years ago, "back in the day" when suspense films were still built primarily on plot and character development rather than on mindless ADHD-inspired computer graphics.

The film also showcased Kurt Russell's unparalleled work ethic as an actor.

Image screengrabbed from this site.  

Not only was the film a gutsy depiction of a very difficult subject (that being "radical Islamist terror groups"), it was also noteworthy for having featured a 747 aircraft that actually was bombed by such a group, that being the following:

In 1982, a bomb was detonated on PAN AM Flight 830, resulting in the death of one minor child and the injury of 16 other people.  Despite the resulting damage, the plane was able to make a successful emergency landing in Honolulu.  The aircraft was apparently re-painted for the movie with the fictitious airliner name "Oceanic".  Either that or they just used it for interior shots.

Screengrabbed from Wikipedia.

Executive Decision was a stunning portent of 9/11 five years before it unfolded, and as far as I'm concerned, it's a creative work of national significance.  But prior to being released on Blu Ray, Executive Decision was "edited", or, some would say "censored", for reasons that are not clear.  Furthermore, I can't find a single source on the internet which describes the full extent of what was done to eviscerate the film.  Most references such as this one and user Iceboy's Amazon review primarily cite digital alterations to the imagery, including removal of certain religious references and deleted scenes.  But I believe that the most significant changes actually involved extensive dialog dubbing throughout the movie, dubbing which changes utterly the character of the film and manifests most strongly with this scene.

A suspicious glare indicating a sea change of attitude 1 hour and 24 minutes into the movie:  When the leader of the terrorist group finally reveals his plan to utilize the jet to strike a deadly blow against countless innocent American citizens, his second-in-command revolts, stating, "This has nothing to do with Islam.  This is not [the Deity's] will.  You are blinded by your hatred and I will have nothing to do with your plan."

But the same lines in the censored version are spoken very differently, indeed.

Screengrabbed from my TV set.   

The bizarre part is that, if you so desire, you can currently watch both the censored and the uncensored versions at the same time.  If this situation is of interest to you, it's an opportunity for you to compare and see for yourself what's been done to the film.

The Encore HD version is the Blu Ray version available for instant access.  The Encore Suspense ("ENCSUS") version is the original uncut version.  I recorded both versions within 24 hours of each other this past weekend.

Photo from my DirecTV list with intervening screen space eliminated for clarity.  

The resulting existential questions are as follows:

Why was the movie altered in the first place?  The original version was arguably quite responsible to Islam by forming an explicit distinction between Islam and that which has "nothing to do with Islam" but is instead driven by "[blind] hatred".  This is much the same distinction that the GCDN commenter was seeking in referring to "normal, moderate Muslims" as opposed to "radical Islam".  What benefit to understanding is derived by obscuring this essential distinction in this film or in any other context?  Clearly, we need more of that distinction, not less.

Why are Americans provided primarily with the censored version?  I can understand Warner Brothers / Warner Home Video wanting to change the tone of the movie in certain restricted distributional regions where such actions might be expected, but they only made one Blu Ray, that being the censored version.  In general terms, most Americans are probably going to default to the Blu Ray as their obvious choice (audio and video quality are both superior to the DVD). Given the age of the film, most present-day watchers may not even know that an original version of the movie exists.  In more specific terms, why am I sitting on my flat American butt in my house built on American soil accessing an American content provider streaming an American-made classic movie which has effectively been censored?!  What the hell is up with that?!

The whole thing doesn't sit well with me, and it is an example of what is working against those people who are honestly trying to put Islam into an appropriate social perspective.  "Censorship" is one of the dirtiest words we have in America, provoking immediate defensiveness and hostility in those who sense that they have encountered it.  What's been done to Executive Decision is just going to raise even more suspicions and questions and confusion about perspectives and allegiances where Islam is concerned, both locally and elsewhere.

At least the "editors" had the guts to admit what they had done.

Screengrabbed and annotated from this site.  

An update on the Nugent concert controversy

Every once in a while I reproduce on this blog comments that I submit to Galveston County Daily News, for the benefit of those who don't have a subscription (it's a paywalled newspaper, although a while back, a reader pointed out to me that non-subscribers can sometimes access comments even if the news articles themselves are blocked).  That's what I'm going to do below, but first let me orient you on the topic.

TJ Aulds did a good job of writing a summary of where we are with respect to the upcoming Ted Nugent concert in League City, which is scheduled for April 12.  If you haven't been following this controversy, basically what's happened so far is that the City of League City contributed about $20,000 of our taxpayer bucks to help bring Nugent to League City in order to give a concert that will raise funds for a social services organization to build a home for a disabled military veteran.

On February 21, 2014, I published an editorial in which I systematically described why I personally believe that Nugent's recent "sub-human mongrel" comment was racist, and why I think that's important within the context of League City's involvement with him.

Here is an excerpt from that deconstruction.  

In that same editorial, I also advocated for a peaceful public protest during the concert.  But what has transpired in terms of a planned protest is not at all what I envisioned on February 21, which prompted me to re-address this situation today.  For your consideration, here are the comments that I submitted to GCDN.

* * *

This [TJ's article] is a well-written piece - I'm especially glad that the City of Longview's decision [to cancel a scheduled Nugent concert at their own financial peril] was described here. I wish that the City of League City had the courage to take a similar stand. When a guy like Nugent makes racist comments such as "sub-human mongrel" and then a city like LC declines to impose any consequences in response, it reinforces and validates his belief that he's justified in saying things like that. Longview let him know that he crossed the line, whereas League City has done its part to further embolden him, to the tune of twenty thousand bucks and a blind eye turned.

And the citizens of League City share in the responsibility for this situation. I believe that Cobarruvias was the first local blogger to alert to the fact that a protest is planned for the League City concert, which is fast approaching. Neither of us know much about the group which is planning the protest, but from an examination of internet content, the group does not appear to represent a mainstream social position. For crying out loud, at what point in our history did protesting racism and sexism become a "non-mainstream" pursuit?! In my day, "mainstream" college and high school kids would have rallied around a thing like this, social justice being the purview of youth. But maybe these days they're too distracted by Angry Birds and watching Netflix at artificially-depressed streaming speeds to notice what's going on around them.

Just to add insult to injury, it's a terrible lesson we're collectively teaching those same apathetic young people with this event - follow the money irrespective of any other factor. No doubt part of the reason why there's so little local protest is that people are figuring, "Oh, well, a veteran is getting a house out of this, so it's a wash." Sure, but that same goal could be achieved *without* prostituting ourselves to the kind of ideology that Nugent actively promotes. The City of Longview figured out that its citizens could achieve their social goals without his ideology, even if they had to pay to get rid of him. Pity we can't do the same.

Five Corners flaws

I'm still waiting for some kind of explanation of what's happening right now at Five Corners.  Meanwhile, I thought I'd piggyback on my first Five Corners post to draw additional specific attention to one of my long-term least favorite subjects, which is the lack of pedestrian access in our area, and the fact that Five Corners is not safely navigable for anyone traveling by foot or bicycle.  And this has serious ramifications for many local families.  Case in point.

Willie Sutton robbed banks because that's where the money is.  Street Smart Driving School set up shop near Clear Creek High School because that's where the driving students (and their moneys) are.  

Screengrabbed from Googlemaps.   

If you examine that map grab, you'll immediately see that the distance across the Creek campus itself (that pile of development to the northeast, wedged between Marina Bay Drive and FM 518) is not much different than the distance from the southwest corner of the campus to the driving school.  It should be a very easy and quick walk from one to the other.

However, given the ill-conceived configuration of this area, the only way to get from the high school to the driving school is through Five Corners.

And Five Corners is simply not safe for pedestrians.  There are umpteen lanes of intense traffic and virtually no pedestrian improvements.  You can see white crosswalks painted on the road itself, but they largely don't connect to sidewalks or other non-motor vehicle conveyances.

Screengrabbed from Googlemaps.  

I'm not one of those overprotective parents who wants to pamper my child with chauffeur service and 24/7 climate control.  I raised her free range, and she describes herself as having "grown up playing in the streets".  She's not the kind of helicoptered kid who can't handle normal challenges presented by her surrounding environment.

We are not one of these families.  Screengrabbed from TIME magazine's seminal article on helicopter parenting.  

But I can't allow her to traverse either Five Corners or FM 270 on foot - without supportive infrastructure, it's simply too dangerous.

So what happens instead??  Sixteen times thus far, either my husband or I have had to leave work in the late afternoon on weekdays, drive several miles to the high school, pick her up, and drive her the whopping 3,500 feet (as the crow flies) from the high school to the driving school.  Sixteen times, and we're not nearly done with it because she hasn't even started the behind-the-wheel portion of the training course.

Now, mentally integrate that impact over time and space.  If you check the driving school's class schedule, you'll see that they have new classes starting every other week.  Each one of those classes is typically so chock full of students that most of them must queue up for class by waiting outdoors on a series of benches that the school has set up to handle the volume.  An enormous number of local students use this resource, but none of them can drive there under their own power because, duh, they're all in driving school.  I see a few of those students walking from the high school, but most do not because of the safety issues I've described.  Most get driven by family members.

Integrate mentally and what you come up with over time is thousands of impacted families, tens of thousands of hours of lost productivity due to the driving burden, and who knows how much extra money spent on gasoline and per-mile automotive depreciation.  

And that's just from that one isolated Point A to Point B transaction.  The amount of money squandered locally on the sum total of all student-schlepping simply boggles the imagination.  And a lot of that is done because parents correctly deduce that their kids can't walk safely around here for lack of infrastructure.

And then all of a sudden, lo and behold, we've got THIRTY-ONE THOUSAND CARS PER DAY traversing the area in question.

AADT stands for "average annual daily traffic" and this table is screengrabbed from this report.  However, this is probably way out of date because it's ten years old and League City's population has almost doubled (!) in the past ten years.  Today's AADT number is probably much higher than 31,000.  

So what seems to happen in public policy is that the decision-makers say, "Ah, we will eliminate sidewalks, curbs, shoulders, and other safety features from our new roadway project and this will save the taxpayers money."  But then what happens in response is that we have all this extra driving and we have to start spending major money to handle the extra driving that develops because there's no other safe option but to drive.  Right now they're apparently in the middle of spending another $5.5 million trying to fix the mess that is Five Corners, but what would it have cost them to have included sidewalks in the first place?

I'm not even remotely suggesting that sidewalks would be the total answer to all of this, but hopefully I've been able to make the point that they would be an integral component of any sensible solution.  Meanwhile, I'll just keep doing my part to help congest Five Corners multiple times per day because I don't have a viable alternative.

This is what it looks like when Clear Creek High students walk north on sidewalk-less and shoulder-less Egret Bay Blvd.  Tell me that this is even remotely safe or sensible.  Who designed this jack-ass right of way, and according to what hare-brained justification?!

Your municipal tax dollars at work, and an idea

Tens of thousands of your municipal tax dollars are being paid to help bring a man to League City who has referred to a mixed-race person as a "mongrel".  

Screengrabbed from a New York Times article titled "Candidate for Texas Governor Stands By Outspoken Musician". Usually a headwaters of liberal expression, the NYT was surprisingly, almost inexplicably, reserved in this piece.  "Outspoken"?  Are you kidding me?!  This man used a derogatory term to refer to a person's race.  In my books, that is not "outspokenness" - that is racism.  

To do a reality check on what we are dealing with here, let's evaluate that term "mongrel", shall we?

From Merriam Webster online.  

A quick etymological review confirms that "mongrel" has never been applied as an objective descriptor at any point during its use in the English language.  It's a pejorative term intended to convey a declaration of genetic inferiority deriving from breed mixture as opposed to breed purity, which is considered superior.  In Nugent's application, it has every appearance of being a declaration of genetic inferiority deriving from racial mixture.  Once again, that is racist as I define racist.

Screengrabbed from Google (emphasis mine).    

Because of the nature of some of the people who will be reading this post and my expectation that they won't be familiar with constructs such as etymology, I find it necessary to include every applicable reference for clarity.  Here is the definition of pejorative, screengrabbed from Google.  To denigrate someone is to "treat or represent as lacking in value".  When you associate that act of denigration with a person's racial make-up, you're basically saying that they lack value by virtue of the racial make-up to which you are referring.  Which, again, in my books is racism.

Am I making my point about my opinion on this one??

So this is what your tax dollars are doing for you and for League City - bringing the likes of this man into our midst under the guise of "promotion".

And as the public objection to Nugent's "outspokenness" continues to build, with Governor Perry issuing a long-overdue censure yesterday, I can predict the kind of statement that League City's City Council might issue in its own defense.  So let me preempt that particular PR strategy:  

"Oh, well, we did that deal with the hotel occupancy tax back in December.  Nugent didn't call Obama a mongrel until January.  We were unaware that Nugent is this extreme."

Uh, Council. guess what??  You are a tangible part of what is helping to create this monster.  You knew he was "outspoken" in very questionable ways before you shoved a bucket of our money at him and his fronting organization.  When you do things like that with a person of this type, you further validate him in his own eyes.  And the more he gets validated, the more "outspoken" he becomes.  Hello!!  Rather than being able to claim an innocence defense, you are one of the government entities who is helping to further embolden this guy, duh.    

Political denigration is bad manners, but it's fair game.  Ideological denigration is fair game.  But denigration that invokes a person's race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability status, or any other involuntary and unchangeable facet of their being is off limits.

Highly unflattering and propagandizing - but nevertheless publicly acceptable - Obama meme from an unknown source.   

So what should be done in response to this Nugent situation as it affects us here in League City?

I suggest a peaceful public protest be organized for April 12, 2014, which is the date of his concert in League City.  A nonviolent demonstration involving a bunch of mixed-race people holding signs that read "I am not a mongrel".  Equally importantly, the loved ones of those people participating by holding signs that read "I am not the friend of a mongrel" or "I am not the co-worker of a mongrel" or "I am not the cousin of a mongrel".  In my case, I would need to hold a sign reading "I am not the mother of a mongrel".  

And what could Nugent's response to such a public gathering possibly be??  Could he step out in front a protest like that and say "Oh, when I called Obama a mongrel, I didn't mean to suggest that every mixed-race person is a mongrel"?  Sorry - that just would not ring true.  It simply wouldn't be convincing.  That would not be much different from someone saying, "When I called so-and-so an N-word, I didn't mean to suggest that every black person is an N-word."  Yeah, right.  

Think about it.

Collage from Google image search for the term "mixed-race people".  Each and every one of them is a beautiful and unique person in their own right, with not a single mongrel among them.  The little Cheerios girl in particular is my personal hero.  She's awesome.  

More of the wrong kind of Clear Lake lore

About 30 minutes ago, I tweeted about seeing a news broadcasting truck at CCISD's Clear Path Alternative school, not knowing what it was.  Almost certainly, it was in conjunction with this sordid story about the recent murder of a Clear Lake teenager who had reportedly attended the school.  The story must be going (inter)national because there's a 404 error and I can't even link to Clear Path's website at this point (URL perhaps overloaded).

More sick (but thankfully rare) stuff to be sensationalized and flogged in the popular media.  Wonderful news on yet another dreary abnormally cold day.  Sigh.

Southwest Inn fire

The statistics were against me on this one: two months after getting traffic-gridlocked in the Space Cleaners fire in Clear Lake, I was traveling with a couple of business associates in Sharpstown just as the Southwest Inn fire was building. 

At this point shortly after noon today, the thing was just starting to escalate wildly and the Southwest Freeway was still moving close to posted speeds.  That mobility was short-lived. 

We went to a business lunch on Hillcroft assuming that the whole thing would be under control by the time we were finished.  But it got worse - a lot worse.  The Southwest Freeway was made impassable by the wall of intense smoke.  I've never seen anything like this in my entire life. 

Anyway, a tragic day in Houston's history with four firefighters reported as perishing and others injured in this horrible event.  I join with the rest of greater Houston in wishing condolences to the families affected by this tragedy.   

Hell on wheels, holiday-style

It's the Memorial Day weekend, so you can literally bet your life that you're going to see some hair-raising dangerous stunts unfolding on the Gulf Freeway as many folks make a mad dash for Galveston.  Here is one such example that I had the great gift of experiencing as I was driving home from a business meeting inside The Loop late this afternoon.

Talk about a proverbial Kodak moment, eh?  Framed by the League City Parkway exit sign to boot.  Gulf Freeway southbound, about 4 p.m. this afternoon. 

I mentioned in previous posts that I often drive with a DSLR in my lap, so that I can simply raise the camera and do a point-and-shoot without taking my eyes off the road. 

Do you recall that I published a post recently titled "Where to buy a mattress in Houston"?  Well, this right here, folks, is how not to bring one home. 

Many people grossly underestimate the wind forces associated with highway speeds.  No planar object is ever going to remain tied to your roof-rack unless you've secured it very, very well, because the lift forces are absolutely enormous in scenarios such as this.  Here, the mattress is acting as a double-bed-sized sail that is on the verge of separating from the automobile and assuming its own airborne trajectory.  Which of course could easily become a fatal proposition if it caused a crash involving other cars in the freeway lanes behind it. 

And yes, as a matter of fact, I think I will leave your license plate visible in this photo, thank you very much.  Next time, spend the fifty bucks it takes to get the danged thing delivered, OK?   

I was exiting League City Parkway, so I pulled in front of this vehicle and took this pic with the camera pointed toward my rear view mirror.  Look at that view and invoke your common sense: imagine the air pushing against this thing at 60 or 70 mph.  It has zero chance of staying on that car without extremely strong restraints and without being prevented from "catching wind" like this. 

The driver wisely exited League City Parkway behind me (he's in the center of these three lanes), presumably in order to better secure this thing.  This pic taken into my rear view mirror is blurry, but you can see that, at the reduced traffic speed of the feeder, the mattress has settled back down onto the roof of that car.

Have a great weekend, and remember - don't do anything stupid like what's shown above.  And don't drink and drive.

I had another business meeting yesterday in Galveston, and I snapped this pic just before the Highway 6 / Hitchcock exit.  This tally will certainly rise by the end of this holiday weekend, flying mattresses or no mattresses. 

Annual POA meeting, Part 3: Traffic issues

An interesting story on the front page of this morning's Houston Chronicle provides a great lead-in for this next topic which was covered during Centerpointe POA's annual public meeting on March 26, 2013, because we are up against this same issue of dangerous driving (as is every subdivision in greater Houston).

According to the internet, this nonprofit group represents a slew of subdivisions and businesses in the Copperfield area.  Screengrab of text from Houston Chronicle. 

I find it a amazing that so many people are so passionate about traffic violations and yet at the same time, a significant majority of people are so passionately opposed to the idea of automated traffic enforcement.  I'm not sure if we're dealing with different sub-populations or what, but B doesn't always seem to follow A. Part of me wanted to stand up in that POA meeting and ask, "How many of y'all voted against red light cameras, now?  Can we have a show of hands?  And yet here we are having a detailed discussion on how to improve traffic compliance?!" 

But I didn't do that because I didn't want to distract from the specific solve-able issues that people were raising. 

Anyway, as the story was reported by Chron, the president of that nonprofit watchdog got into some kind of suburban road rage incident with one alleged sign runner.  This led to vehicle damage and an arrest.

If we wanted to make a meaningful dent in the number of stop sign runners within Centerpointe, I estimate that it would require at least six people working full time - either that, or a computerized camera system that issues tickets automatically - duh!! 

The fact is, people run stop signs here more often than not.  Recall this random dash cam video segment that I first embedded in a post back in March of 2011: 

That was just two sequential vehicles chosen at random - and they both barely slowed down for their respective stop signs.  This is entirely typical of what happens here. 

As of right now, Centerpointe doesn't have a formal group that performs a similar function as the Copperfield Coalition. 

We do have one vocal dash-cammer in the form of yours truly, and a couple of other residents began voicing specific concerns to League City's Assistant Chief of Police in the POA meeting.

A few of those issues I'm not going to comment on yet, because we need to advance the progress of those issues before I have a more complete story to convey.

However, one resident's complaint is worth talking about in terms of the work-arounds and countermeasures that are and are not feasible. 

Reportedly, there's a teenaged driver wreaking havoc with dangerous driving on his or her particular street segment, where many small children play outdoors.  None of the opposition mustered by the impacted residents has abated this behavior to date.  What fell out of the resulting discussion with LCPD is the following:

• It's not lawful for citizens to put their own cones or other traffic impediment devices in the public right-of-way for the purposes of traffic control. 
• It's not lawful for citizens to park their vehicles in such a way as to intentionally restrict traffic on a public street.  However, if there is a perceived situational need for residents to be parking their cars directly opposite each other on the street... as long as it's not done for traffic control purposes, that's another matter, because it is legal to park on our public streets.  Both sides thereof. 

Do you get the picture on that second point?  It's extremely difficult for motorists to proceed with excessive speed between two opposing cars, because our subdivision streets are not that wide.  It's usually necessary to slow down in order to pass between two opposing vehicles safely. 

The LCPD representative encouraged contacting the police where dangerous driving is perceived to occur.  That's what the police are there for.  Your tax dollars at work. 

Anyway, I'll have more later on the other traffic issues that were raised.

How often do you see this happen within Centerpointe - a 25 mph motorist?
Very rarely, in my observation. 

Peripheral development update

There's a troubling situation brewing down the road near our neighbors Victory Lakes, because League City allegedly approved a nearby construction project the nature of which it refuses to reveal to the public. 

Microsoft clip art, cat and mouse concept modified by yours truly. 

The rate at which League City is p*ssing people off appears to be accelerating.  GCDN reports that it has already filed a FOIA/TORA/TPIA request to obtain further information about this project. 

This is absurd.  At the very least, it reflects an abysmal public relations failure on the part of League City.  Even if there is a valid reason why they agreed to withhold the nature of that development, they need to declare their justification in the type of generalized terms which acknowledge that they are answerable to the public.  I don't know what might be considered "a valid reason", but there are a number of business contingency, strategy, and permitting scenarios that come to mind as possibly being in play here. 

But what's even more interesting about this situation is a comment logged in that GCDN article by a user who self-identifies as Texas2539, a resident of Victory Lakes, who stated that the League City Planning Department removed its zoning variance request list from the internet.

 Initially, I replied in the GCDN forum that I also could no longer find that link, but when I subsequently went back to this blog post of mine from two years ago, I actually did find a variance request list link.  I'm not sure if it's the same site that Texas2539 had been accessing, but here's what's curious about it:

There haven't been any entries in almost one year.  Given the velocity at which previous variance requests had been logged through 2011 and early 2012, is it likely that they came to a screeching halt?  Or has this list simply not been updated in the past year or so?

Screengrab from http://www.leaguecity.com/index.aspx?NID=1201 as accessed 20130315 10:55 a.m.

Texas2539's GCDN comments elude to the possibility that the extra-VL mystery development might have incorporated a zoning variance request.  No proof of that, but as homeowners in close proximity, we need to be able to confirm or deny these types of things.  Victory Lakes and Centerpointe are neighboring subdivisions which share a similar predicament: we are both surrounded by prime sale tracts in a north county area where the pace of development is now accelerating. 

Google grab from a previous post, Centerpointe in red polygon, Victory Lakes at lower right, arrows roughly pointing to tracts as yet undeveloped (that was actually a post about wildlife, so the arrows also point to stormwater retention features). 

It's in our own interests to know exactly what's going to happen to those areas, and to know in advance what kind of a "say" we might be able to have in that process, as potentially-impacted landowners.

Anyway, at this point, I guess we'll await further comment from League City, further sleuthing from GCDN, and yes, I will be passing this info on to both our POA and VL's POA. 

Warranty woes

We are now in the month of February, which means that Centerpointe Section 9's first houses are turning three years old. 

Over the last 3 years, I've had a lot of residents ask me, "Um, what the heck is 'Section 9'?"  It's the "new" tract of houses southeast of Centerpointe and the Boxelder Pointe utility easement.  All 75 houses in this section have either a Harvard Pointe or an Arlington Pointe address. 

The Googlemaps aerial (screengrab above) still shows us as being only half done, but we've been totally built-out for more than a year now. 

With age comes decrepitude - some of it premature.  This past weekend, it was difficult to miss all the construction noise on the northeast side of Section 9.  That racket was reportedly occurring because one of our builders was fulfilling a warranty claim on a resident's 3-year-old house, which appears to have significant structural defects.  I'm saying "appears" because the resident reported this to me but I myself have not set eyes on any proof, although I did witness a contractor tearing apart a portion of the exterior structure and replacing it with new materials.  It was a whole heck of a lot of work that occurred over the past few weeks, culminating in this weekend's effort.   

Residential construction in Texas is generally covered by a 10-year warranty for structural issues.  But here's the thing: if there does prove to be a problem with your house, it's only going to get worse with time and, depending on the nature of the issue, it could spin off ancillary problems which might be challenging to deal with in and of themselves as separate repairs.  These residents described above were smart to jump on their issues quickly, while their home is still in its toddlerhood, and get their warranty claim fulfilled now.  (There is a warranty site for our builder Meritage, and I can't seem to find an analogous page for our other builder Brighton, but here is a list of phone numbers for its parent company).

That resident's structural situation is not the only warranty claim I've been told about thus far in Section 9.  Furthermore, I've also heard multiple stories about "quirks" arising, issues with houses that may or may not eventually prove to be defects per se, but which are aggravations for homeowners.  Some of the houses are demonstrating remarkably consistent quirks from one house to the next, which is not unexpected, given that there were a limited number of trades teams swarming the section during construction.

Here's what I suggest: if anything appears quirky in your house, communicate it to me and/or to our POA.  Knowledge is power, there's strength in numbers, and insert additional cliche's here.  Some of us are having to solve these types of problems and if you are also facing the same problem, we could potentially help you to avoid re-inventing part of the warranty wheel if we were to pool our information and experiences. 

Happy Birthday, Section 9.

Nothing but wood and wide open spaces:  Section 9 a bit more than three years ago. 

Local fright-seeing

My job has taken me all over Houston these past couple of days, and I thought I'd take you on a little fright-seeing, I mean sight-seeing, tour of some of the stuff I have encountered.

Sometimes I use a dash cam to record what I see as I'm traveling around, and I've made a number of historical posts based on that very revealing little tool.  But a dash cam is characterized by a very inconvenient limitation: the technology at my price point is still very crude.  The resolution is not sufficient for capturing vital details. 

And sometimes I need absolute proof of details, such as license plate numbers.  I used to also keep a pad of paper and pencil on the center console of my vehicle.  When I would see something really atrocious, I would grope for the pencil and scribble down the license plate number without taking my eyes off the road, and also any other details such as name of the company if the roadway incident involved a commercial vehicle. 

But even this additional measure hasn't proven to be sufficient for my purposes.  Case in point.  One day a few years ago, I saw a big rig driving very dangerously in Pasadena - so dangerously that it blew my mind.  I wrote down as many details as I could, and then I pulled into a parking lot and called the company whose name was painted on the truck cab.  As I was describing what I had witnessed, the company representative on the phone became increasingly frightened.  I finished my story by saying, "I'm just relating these things to you so that you can discipline your driver."  The panicked person at the other end then replied, "But you don't understand:  we don't have any assets anywhere in the state of Texas.  What you saw was someone who had counterfeited a truck to make it look like one of ours, and God only knows what illegal cargo they hauled through Pasadena today."

There's some merit to all that rhetoric that comes out of Homeland Security, eh? (See also local resources here).  Ordinary citizens really are in the best position to spot what's wrong out there in our daily world.  I'm not talking about paranoia - I'm talking about being in a situation where you know there's something wrong, such as the incident described above. 

Given that it was their corporate identity that was infringed upon, I left that company to pursue this truck-spoofing issue with the authorities, but at that point I resolved to do a better job of capturing the details of what I see as I'm out there on the road.  Much of the time, I now travel with my DSLR right in my lap.   I can't take my eyes off the road, but I can raise the camera up much the same as I would lift up a can of soda, and I can just start taking pictures blindly when I see something interesting or dangerous.  If I simply take many, many pictures, one or two are bound to come out clearly. 

So let's focus on a phenomenon that I encountered yesterday afternoon.  This next series of photos shows one example of a disturbing trend I've noticed lately on the freeways: Truck drivers intentionally frightening motorists for sport. 

The usual disclaimers apply:  As with everything else I write on this blog, what I'm presenting here are my opinions as to what transpired in this event.  I saw things happening that involved me, and I interpreted those events within the context that made maximum sense to me.  I intentionally took pictures to document what I observed, but I'm not a police officer and no crime has been proven to have been committed here.  Other people might look at these same events and photos and reach different conclusions. 

The driver of this truck drew the focus of my attention because he literally and intentionally forced me out of my lane with his hyper-aggressive driving (in my opinion).  This is not the first time I have seen this occur.  What they do is "gun" their engines and run up behind you as if they were going to ram you.  At the last second, they slam on their brakes to avoid a collision, but even then, they often tailgate at absurdly close range. 

This is what I observed this trucker initially doing to me (I could not take pics of that part because he was behind me).  He forced me to take evasive action.  But after I had vacated this lane, I followed him, because I knew without question that he would proceed to inflict the same dangerous game upon another chosen motorist.

IH-45 SB inside Houston's Loop 610, 20130130 2:30 PM.

Where he had a bit of straightaway at his disposal, he was driving like a bat out of hell, so there was some lag time for me to catch up with him and his next chosen victim. 

Sure enough, he got onto the back of yet another unsuspecting target, in this case, a little passenger vehicle painted bright colors to represent a commercial company.  Do you see how severely he is tailgating that vehicle right in front of him?  In some moments, I saw that there was barely a car length between them, with both traveling at 65 mph.

IH-45 SB near the Wayside exit, obviously.

Here's another shot as we were approaching the South Loop.  Now you can get a clearer peek at the car in front of him that he had targeted (in my opinion).  Do you see how his brake lights are illuminated here?  That's because he was in the process of feigning the ramming of that little commercial vehicle (in my opinion).

Close-up screengrab from the photo above.  Don't simply accept my opinion.  See the lack of separation between these two vehicles.  See these other vehicles in the same field of view with appropriate high-speed separation among them.  See the brake lights illuminated on the truck.  Draw your own conclusions about what was going on here. 

Finally the little commercial vehicle in front of him had had enough, and he gunned his own engine to put space between the two of them, jumping into my lane to evade this trucker, the very same evasive manoeuvre that I myself had been forced to take only minutes before. 

Minutes before I fell back to his flank and took this photo series, that is.  This is just so incredibly wrong.  We should not be forced to take flee like this for no reason other than we just happen to have been a random sport target for some sonofabitch trucker (as I interpret it).   

As I was watching this whole spectacle unfold, I wondered what in the hell could motivate any trucker to risk his life, risk other innocent drivers' lives, and risk his own livelihood for the sake of this dangerous entertainment (as I personally interpret it). 

It wasn't until I got home and examined these photos blindly taken that I began to formulate a theory.  This guy is from Laredo (a fact I did not realize at the time because I was watching the road, not my camera).  Even if someone were to report his dangerous driving to the authorities, by the time word gets out, he's probably long gone from our freeways.  I'm wondering if he's thinking he's simply unaccountable, above the law, when he's having fun at our collective expense way up here in good ol' Houston, Texas. 

But guess what, Jorge?  You, too, live in the Information Age.  The good people of this world may not be able to pin any specific incident such as this on you, but sooner or later, you will get your just deserts. 

And now I will do what I have done at previous times:  I will take this material and forward it to the law enforcement agencies that might have an interest in it.  Occasionally in the past, very interesting developments have occurred after I have done that kind of thing. But I won't go into those details here. 

Sign of the times

So I'm mired in traffic at Five Corners around 7:00 a.m. this morning, and I spy this billboard in my field of view:

FM 518 WB at FM 270.

I'm not a doctor.  I'm not a medical practitioner of any kind.  I don't represent any medical institution.  But I'm sorry - I personally do not agree with either the sign or the sentiment that it conveys.  In my observation and opinion, good health does not begin with primary care - it begins with healthy lifestyle, of which the main components are diet and exercise.

And you may be thinking, "Oh, good grief - it's just a marketing slogan - why do you care?!"

I care because human beings are exquisitely sensitive to environmental cues and messaging.  Exquisitely sensitive.  A year and a half ago, I wrote a post that discusses at length the "broken windows" theory of criminological behavior, which asserts that signalling has a dramatic effect on behavior. 

By analogy, I also postulated that environmental signalling  might be the reason why Walnut Pointe has a higher historical incidence of petty crime than any other street in Centerpointe.  Walnut Pointe is usually littered with un-garaged cars.  This jumble of jalopies signals would-be thieves that the area is ripe for the imposition of additional disorder.  By making itself into a physical path of most resistance (clogging up the street and sidewalks), Walnut Pointe made itself into an existential path of least resistance (for crime).

This is just a theory, of course.  But it's one that has precedence. 

That UTMB billboard above sends a signal that, in my opinion, is dis-empowering.   All the "primary care" in the world is not going to help the person who doesn't take responsibility for their own health by engaging in appropriate self-supportive behaviors.  Healthy diet.  Daily exercise.  No harmful levels of alcohol or recreational drugs.  No smoking.  The billboard doesn't promote those kinds of things, with primary care being the obvious incrementally-empowering adjunct.  Instead, it shows a woman with submissive body language clinging to the telephone instead of reaching for her own internal resourcefulness and self-discipline and then counting the telephone connection to her doctor as just one of a collection of health-promoting tools available to her. 

That segment of FM 518 handles about 30,000 vehicle transits a day.

Or at least it did as of 2004, per this H-GAC reference.  It would not surprise me if it's higher now.

Is it in the public interest to have that kind of message seen by that many people every day?  Absorbed through the corner of the eye like subliminal advertising?  Or absorbed straight-up consciously, as it was with me?

It's just an isolated example of a little thing, yes.  But when you start adding up all of the "little things" that characterize our society, my bet is that there can be some big impacts derive from the antagonistic sum total.  And then from there, who knows what bizarre things might result.  Maybe even a 36% national obesity rate.