Parity Violation

Someone out there with a blog saw and read my letter to the editor posted about recently. Alas, he doesn’t use my name, but the writer does quote my letter.

Oh wait, I think this is actually a comment on another post. Oh well. I’m not that famous after all. :)

I suppose at some point I should clip what’s on the Chronicle site because that link will die eventually. You can read the letter which I’ve added to my <a href=http://parityviolation.org/weblog/?p=39″>previous blog post on the matter.

Apple is going to replace the screen of defective iPod Nanos. They say just a small number are affected. But is the correct term iPods Nano? Is it like Attorneys General? I know I heard the term iPod Minis. I guess the descriptor becomes the name, in the case of the iPod Mini or iPod nano. Still, they are all iPods, so maybe that’s where the plural should be. Just a random thought.

Yahoo Weather is a good web site, but somehow they don’t seem to be clued in that there is a hurricane coming. Here is their forecast foras of 10:19PM Wednesday night. Keep in mind, Hurricane watches are in effect for almost the entire gulf coast….

• Tomorrow[Thursday]: Sunny skies. Hot and humid. High 94F. Winds ENE at 10 to 20 mph.
• [Thursday] night: A mostly clear sky. Warm and humid. Low 81F. Winds ENE at 15 to 25 mph.
• Friday: Partly cloudy in the morning then windy with showers and a possible thunderstorm in the afternoon. Humid. High 88F. Winds NE at 25 to 35 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
• Saturday: Periods of heavy rain and windy(Emphasis added.) Highs in the mid 80s and lows in the low 80s.

I got a letter to the editor into the Houston Chronicle today, though not over anything that profound. Their Ultimate Houston Guide for 2005 debuted on Sunday. This year, they have let Chronicle readers’ pick. Big Mistake.

As I noted in the letter, reader polls tend to pick widely available chains as the top pick, because that’s what most people are exposed to. It, rarely, however produces a list that is of much use to anyone. We all know McDonald’s has good french fries. But it has them all over the damn country. Give me something unique to Houston.

Here’s the letter as printed, with a typo corrected:

Marble Slab for ultimate ice cream? Fuddrucker’s for ultimate hamburgers? IHOP for the ultimate 24-hour restaurant? McDonald’s for ultimate french fries? These were among the Chronicle’s readers’ picks in the 2005 Ultimate Houston Guide. Why not just make it a list of “ultimate suburban junk you can find in any city in the country”?

While the Chronicle wisely picks its own list, by and large, it doesn’t overlap with the readers’.

So instead of finding the best hamburger in Houston, I get, instead, a chain that exists all over country.

I don’t want to know the lowest common denominator that gets the most votes. I want to read an Ultimate Houston guide, not one that could be just as useful in Dallas.

Next year, please give Houstonians a useful “ultimate” list.

Here’s an interesting op-ed piece in today’s NY Times, basically arguing that perhaps universities should be buying text books, and that this would be more effective at controlling the cost. Of course the only thing I would say is that some times you want an old text book from a class you took a while back, and if the university owns the text books then you’ll still have to buy it at some point.

I recently made a rather ridiculous “movie” from a sequence of photographs from a friend’s wedding, set to Strauss’ Die Fledermaus overture. I’m not going to link to it any time soon, since it’s so ludicrous, but I may later. Anyway, what I discovered is for these kinds of movies – the “Motion JPEG” compressor in quicktime is great. I can’t really tell the difference between Motion JPEG A and B, but they both look great with an irregularly timed sequence of photos. You can find this in the “Share” quicktime movie option of iMovie, but you have to pick “advanced” and then pick the video compressor.

I haven’t posted anything about the Terri Schiavo matter. It really never should have become a political issuer or a national story. It’s simply a tragic, unfortunate case, and it’s sad how some people have tried to score political points on the issue. Salon’s Right Hook this week sums up the sort of excessive commentary various conservative pundits and politicans have been making.

Also, former Republican Senator John Danforth wrote an opinion piece in yesterday’s NY Times which calls the current Republican party “the political arm of conservative Christians.” It’s worth a read. The National Catholic Reporter offers a thoughtful report on the divisions among Catholics about how what constitutes extraordinary medical treatment.

There are many stories coming out of the tragic destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. The inept federal response has led the New Orleans Times-Picayune to ask for the resignation of every official at FEMA, and that might be a good place to start. I think FEMA needs to come out from Homeland Security. In the 90s, the Clinton administration made FEMA hum like a well oiled machine but that agency seems to have completely fallen apart.

However, as much as I’d like to hammer the Bush administration for their unsurprising incompetence, I’d really like to say how proud I am of the city and the people of Houston, which stepped up without much notice to help thousands of evacuees over the last week, and without as far I can tell much help from the state or feds.

To be sure, the original operation at the Astrodome was ad-hoc, but the whole operation seems to have more smoothly than one might imagine especially considering the chaos in New Orleans. From the initial opening of the dome, to the reliant center, and George R. Brown convention center – the city has opened its arms wide. Over the weekend, there were more volunteers than could be used, though this volunteer-surge changed today once the work week started.

Many of those who were forced to leave New Orleans are likely to stay wherever they moved to. I would not be surprised if Houston has added many new citizens, and I hope we made a good first impression.