On Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:25:44 -0600, The Chief Instigator wrote:

"Mark K. Bilbo" <gmail@com.mkbilbo> writes:

On Sun, 26 Nov 2006 11:17:44 -0600, The Chief Instigator wrote:

"Mark K. Bilbo" <gmail@com.mkbilbo> writes:

On Fri, 24 Nov 2006 09:43:33 -0600, The Chief Instigator wrote:

"Mark K. Bilbo" <gmail@com.mkbilbo> writes:

On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 20:33:41 -0600, The Chief Instigator wrote:

"Mark K. Bilbo" <gmail@com.mkbilbo> writes:

On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 17:19:37 -0600, The Chief Instigator wrote:

"Mark K. Bilbo" <gmail@com.mkbilbo> writes:

On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 09:35:37 -0800, Mark Fox wrote:

[...]

My reply was posted to the newsgroup, moron.  It was not sent
to you, moron.  It was addressing the words quoted at the top
of the reply.  If you are too stupid to understand this then
perhaps you should get yourself a basic tutorial in internet
technology.

I love it when people who don't understand Usenet lecture people
who do...

...and on top of that, he's an Earthlink abuser right here in
Houston, too.  (Maybe he was in that 13-car crash on the
Southwest Freeway earlier today.)

See? The pollution in Houston *is getting really, really bad. It's
eating brain cells!

Of course, those of us who have been here as long as I have (since
1965) have evolved a little immunity...;-)

I was wondering about those gill looking things but I was too polite
to say anything...

No problem...after you've spent enough time around here, you don't
even notice them.  (At least where we live is about 22 meters above
MSL...think of the unlucky ones down in Brazoria and Matagorda.)

I rather like being *from Houston but I don't think I could live there
(I guess "live there again" but we moved when I was all of one year
old, I don't remember a thing). All its life that city has been quirky
as hell. But, damn, the air has gotten bad.

It's not what it was when I was a newcomer, for sure.  It could be
worse, though - in the 1960s, you only needed a nose to know when the
wind was coming in from the southeast.  (When I was at UH, you also
got the benefit of being right across Calhoun from Blue Ribbon Meats.)

Even when I was a kid going to visit relatives, I'd get a sore throat
before we got past the airport (or where it would be... I forget when
it was built).

Yeesh...

IAH opened about a week after I turned fourteen (1969), and was being
built as far back as 1966, IIRC...

Okay then it was there. Definitely I remember exactly where I was when
we landed on the moon (glued to a tiny black and white TV in the living
room <g>). That was definitely after we'd moved back to Texas (not
Houston but close enough to drive instead of fly for family get
togethers).

I got to see it in black and white on a color TV...it's still amazing
that we went only four more times after that, and haven't been back to
Sol IIIa in going on 35 years.

I try not to think about it. It pisses me off. This country has become so
hell bent on pissing away its future, it's depressing.

I figure the alien archaeologists will someday be having long debates
similar to those that go on now about the Chinese abandoning exploration
of the planet. They just walked away.

Oh and speaking of smells...

For the first year and change, we were in town in a rental house close
to a lovely creosote plant. Mmmm....

One of the regular occurrences of my childhood summers was the annual
trip to my father's side of the family in northeast Georgia - and in
those pre-Interstate days, either coming or going we'd have to pass
through Bogalusa, and we could smell the paper mill for miles downwind. 
That's one reason I'm still thankful that I-59 and I-12 are complete,
these days...

Interstates don't necessarily prevent such lovely experiences. Try getting
through Amarillo sometime...

-- 
Mark K. Bilbo
------------------------------------------------------------
"...otherwise, we're looking at the potential of this kind 
of world:.... a world in which oil reserves are controlled 
by radicals in order to extract blackmail from the West..." 
-George Bush

Wait... oil reserves?