This is an older post but it merits a repost.  Proposition 3 on the fall 2010 Houston ballot is asking for authorization to keep red light cameras in Houston. Do we really want to vote yes and allow Red Light Cameras to remain in Houston?
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Link to the original story:  Dallas, Texas Cameras Bank on Short Yellow Times

This one really annoys me!! Turns out that Dallas, and incidentally, Houston are shortening their traffic signal yellow lights in an effort to maximize profits. Yet, these short yellows are dangerous and cause accidents??!!!

I may be naive but I did think that the purpose of traffic signal lights, and tickets for the failure to abide them, were instituted by the public to allow for safe travel and not for the purpose of collecting revenue at the cost of creating dangerous conditions?

We really, really need to get rid of the people in government positions who abuse the public trust.

"A local news investigation has found that the city of Dallas, Texas depends upon short yellow timing to maximize red light camera profit. Of the ten cameras that issue the greatest number of tickets in the city, seven are located at intersections where the yellow duration is shorter than the bare minimum recommended by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), KDFW-TV found."

Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown metropolitan area has a total area of 10,062 square miles

Interesting tidbit about the growth of the Houston area.  No wonder the city seems bigger every time I return after a few months out of town... The Wiki page has a quite large and interesting collection of facts about the city.

Greater Houston - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

According to the United States Census Bureau, the Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown metropolitan area has a total area of 10,062 square miles (26,060 km²), 8,929 sq mi (23,130 km2). is land area, while 1,133 sq mi (2,930 km2). is water area.; slightly smaller than Massachusetts and slightly larger than New Jersey!!.

The Combined Statistical Area encompasses 12,475 sq mi (32,310 km²). of area. 10,830 sq mi (28,000 km²). is land while 1,645 sq mi (4,260 km²). is water. This is actually a larger area than that of nine (9) of the US States!!!

Land and Water Area of States, 2000 - http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108355.html

Houston is among the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States. The area grew 25.2 percent between the 1990 and 2000 censuses—adding more than 950,000 people—while the nation's population increased 13.2 percent over the same period. (City is still growing at a fast pace.)

Houston is home to the Texas Medical Center—the largest medical center in the world.

Ars technica claims that Amazon will publish shorter content to Kindle.  Maybe good news for Writers.

Paying for (short) content: Amazon to publish "Kindle Singles"

"Paying for (short) content: Amazon to publish "Kindle Singles"

Amazon is rolling out a separate section of its Kindle store meant for shorter content—meatier than long-form journalism, but shorter than a typical book. Called "Kindle Singles," the content will be distributed like other Kindle books but will likely fall between 10,000 and 30,000 words, or the equivalent of a few chapters from a novel.

The company believes that some of the best ideas don't need to be stretched to more than 50,000 words in order to get in front of readers, nor do they need to be chopped down to the length of a magazine article."

ScribeFire!!!

Scribefire: Fire up your blogging

I LOVE ScribeFire. They just added an extension for Chrome..

ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser, Google Chrome Web browser, and Apple Safari Web browser that allows you to easily post to all of your blogs.

I use this all the time.  A great tool I miss when not available.

Painting Elephants Get Online Gallery: "For the past several years, Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, Russian-born conceptual artists based in New York, have been teaching domesticated elephants and their mahouts (elephants' lifelong trainers) how to paint."


Interesting site where the art created by Elephants!! is displayed and actually sold. The money is used to support elephants and other at risk species.