Category Archives: Texana

Shana tova ve metuka

Posted on September 28, 2011 | Comments Off on Shana tova ve metuka

 

A sweet New Year (5772) to all!

And Snoopy has a cool video proving even Yeshiva boys in Jerusalem can do the most athletic version of modern dance.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Israel, Scribbles, Texana

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It’s wetter than normal in Texas

Posted on September 27, 2011 | Comments Off on It’s wetter than normal in Texas

Yep. As you see here in this graphic posted by Weather Bell meteorologist Joe Bastardi, in response to Obamalot’s verbal whacking of Gov. Perry for daring to criticizing AGW while dry brush here burns up homes and lives.

I can forgive Obamalot this once. He certainly doesn’t know that drought is our normal condition, Bastardi’s nice graphic here notwithstanding. On the other hand it’s nice to see we’ve been getting so much rain. Heh.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, Science/Engineering, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Texan first to fly?

Posted on September 21, 2011 | Comments Off on Texan first to fly?

Or only the first to crash? Jacob Friedrich Brodbeck may have made the first flight in a heavier-than-air craft, on Sept. 20, 1865–almost forty years before the Wright brothers–in a field in the Hill Country about three miles east of Luckenbach.

Tethered gas balloons had been used for military recon in the Civil War, but Brodbeck’s spring-wound engine was something new, supposedly (accounts vary) propelling him for 100 feet, just twelve feet above the ground, until the spring unwound and, oops, the crash ensued. Or not, depending who you believe.

The photo (owned by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library at the Alamo) suggests Brodbeck’s bird might have been a biplane, of a sort.

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Posted in Library, Science/Engineering, Texana

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The Texas Mezuzah law

Posted on September 20, 2011 | Comments Off on The Texas Mezuzah law

Gov. Rick Perry is getting the credit in Israel for a new Texas law prohibiting property owner association restrictions of religious displays that don’t otherwise violate the law.

But all that Perry did was perform a governor’s option by signing the bill into law in June. Houston state rep Garnet Coleman actually wrote the bill and got his colleagues to pass it—spurred by a Houston couple’s complaint that a condominium association had prevented them from attaching a Mezuzah (jocularly known as the Jewish lightning rod) to their unit’s front doorpost.

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Posted in Israel, Scribbles, Texana

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Killing community (and initiative)

Posted on September 19, 2011 | Comments Off on Killing community (and initiative)

Time was when a sense of community was valued. But that was before Big Nanny and her highly-paid micro-managers took over. Now, community increasingly is overridden by government inspection and fees.

The Bastrop fires were the latest example. Volunteer firefighters from all over Texas, following a long-established tradition, rushed to help, only to be turned away by government for an alleged lack of training. Similar to the volunteers, rushing to help after Hurricane Katrina’s flooding of New Orleans, who the feds rounded up and sent to Atlanta for—get this—diversity training.

Bastrop fits with the current trend for bureaucrats to outlaw kiddy lemonade stands and threaten to regulate (if not eliminate) independent bake sales for church and school fundraisers. Gotta keep us serfs in our place. It’s our job to pay the “fair” taxes that keep the ‘crats rolling in dough— individual initiative could threaten their livelihoods.

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Posted in Texana, Weather/Climate

Texas: Fourteenth most free of the states

Posted on September 17, 2011 | Comments Off on Texas: Fourteenth most free of the states

William Ruger, a political science professor at Texas State University down the road in San Marcos, is the co-author of a new study by the Mercatus Center of George Mason University in Virginia which explains why so many Americans are moving to places like New Hampshire, South Dakota, Indiana, Idaho and Missouri.

They are the top five states in  “Freedom in the 50 States, An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom.” They’re drawing new residents from places like New York, New Jersey, California, Hawaii and Massachusetts—the bottom five in the index because their laws and regulations impose the most restrictions on economic, social and personal freedom.

Texas came in fourteenth, after the top five and the next eight: Nevada, Colorado, Oregon, Virginia, North Dakota, Florida, Oklahoma (!) and Iowa. Not something Gov. Rick Perry is likely to be crowing about as he seeks the Republican nomination for the presidential monarchy, but it helps explain why so many Californicators have been moving here in recent years.

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Posted in Scribbles, Texana

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More Texas drought ahead

Posted on September 15, 2011 | Comments Off on More Texas drought ahead

Drought is normal in Texas, but this certainly is overdoing it. Especially with the fires—though it should be said they are more a matter of modern population density than anything else. Some people are comparing it all to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

More accurately, if less commonly known, it’s an analog of the terrible Texas drought of the 1950s—long before the greenhouse effect/global warming/climate change was a money-making gleam in Al Gore’s cynical eye. Which means it will continue for a while, at least through this winter.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather/Climate

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