Tag Archives: Austin

Those dead birds

Posted on January 8, 2007 | Comments Off on Those dead birds

My guess is the 63 dead birds found in downtown Austin today–shutting down business for hours and getting top billing on CNN for fears of  what? terrorism?–were poisoned by some office worker or building manager fed up with the flocks of grackles that have taken over down there. Loud, dirty, etc. Here in the People’s Republic, resolving things like that requires many public meetings, protest demos, law suits, etc. So–my guess–someone took the quickie way out and laid out some posion pellets on the window ledges and succeeded in killing a bunch of pigeons and sparrows as well as their grackle target. Whatever, the local daily is on the case.

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Posted in Scribbles

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Jimmy Carter is evil

Posted on December 22, 2006 | Comments Off on Jimmy Carter is evil

There you have it. Cut to the chase. No more pussyfooting when it comes to Mr. Peanut, whose latest book is, as one former supporter turned critic has called it, "a poisoned holiday gift for Jews and Christians, and a danger to Jews throughout the world." It made me nauseated the other day when I saw a photo in the daily of people lined up around the block at an Austin book store to get an autographed copy of Carter’s bizarre new screed "Palestine: Peace or Apartheid," in which he just flat lies his pants off. The 82-year-old crank was inside the store in person, smiling his demonic smile, including at one poor woman who reportedly gushed that she’d named her new born "Carter" in Jimmy’s honor. Austin is full of the "antiwar" Left, which can be counted on to demonstrate against Israel. Many of them are aging, whacked-out hippies with brains so fried by cocaine and malathion-sprayed Mexican marijuana that they can be pardoned for thinking they’re still living in the sixties and Iraq is Vietnam all over again. If you lived here you wouldn’t get worked up over them. This is, after all, a town full of professional demonstrators. But Carter. Yipes. Bookworm has a good post on him and his awful book, which includes the most succinct analysis of the Muslim-Israel conflict I’ve ever seen, by David Horowitz, which includes this little analogy which will be near and dear to some Texans:

"It is a lie that Palestinians ‘had their own land, first of all, occupied.’ This is like saying that Texans had their own land occupied by Hispanics, ignoring the fact that Hispanics were there first."

UPDATE  Israeli historian Michael B. Oren ("Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East") says Carter has a religion problem with Israel: "His book bewails the fact that Israel is not the reincarnation of ancient Judea but a modern, largely temporal democracy."

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Posted in Israel, The War

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Cub Scout privileges

Posted on October 12, 2006 | Comments Off on Cub Scout privileges

I just finished sewing the den number under the flag on the right sleeve of Mr. B.’s cub scout uniform shirt.  It’s not any more crooked than the others Mom did. She rationalizes that he won’t be standing still long enough for anyone to notice. That surprises me, since she was a girl scout, but maybe they didn’t stand in formation for flag ceremonies as much as the cubs did. I think we’ll have to have the dry cleaners take them all off and start over again, but that can wait for the conclusion of today’s adventure. All new cub scouts in the Austin area are exclusively invited to a practice of the Texas Longhorns football team, which defeated Oklahoma last Saturday 28-10. If it doesn’t rain, at 4 p.m. we’ll be in the stands at Darrell K. Royal-Memorial Stadium, which is more or less downtown now that the city has outgrown its longtime boundaries. No entrance fee, except a boy in a new cub scout uniform accompanied by a parent. They’ll probably be able to tell if the uniform is new by how crooked the patches have been sewn on. If it rains, the practice will move indoors and the cubs will have to do something else. So my fingers are crossed that it doesn’t rain– even though meteorologists give it a 30 percent chance of doing so after 1 p.m., rising to 40 percent after dark.

UPDATE Shortly after 11 a.m., UT Athletic Department bowed to the weather forecast and moved the practice indoors. But instead of canceling the cub scout invite, they put it off until next Thursday.  

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Posted in Mr. Boy

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El Nino part 2

Posted on October 10, 2006 | Comments Off on El Nino part 2

Rain is coming down hard at times at the Rancho with already four inches in some spots across the city, and a flash flood warning and a tornado watch until 2 p.m. It’s ponding on the walks in the back yard. Mark Murray, KVUE meteorologist, says in today’s paper that this is "a typical El Nino autumn weather pattern" and the radar shows plenty of yellow and some red, the colors of storm intensity. After more than a year of drought we can sure use the rain. But I am reminded of the rain in the Shenandoah Valley last week, which was steady instead of coming in bursts like our climate gets. I heard the valley’s apple crop was losing out this year to Japan, free trade the old timers could not have imagined.

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Posted in Weather/Climate

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The Game II

Posted on September 7, 2006 | Comments Off on The Game II
Latest I saw has Texas favored by 2 points on the betting line. That’s not much. Just one less than the outcome last year. Surely Vince is worth more than one point? Meanwhile, Austin hotels are filling up and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport is planning for extra flights, chartered and regular carrier, from Columbus, Ohio. Going to be a good game, whoever wins.
 
UPDATE  Reading ESPN’s coverage, I note that tOSU senior QB Troy Smith is praised for his three touchdown passes last week against NIU. Left unsaid is that redshirt freshman (i.e. sophomore) tUT QB Colt McCoy also made three touchdown passes last week against NTS. The ESPN writer has a little fun calling Colt "Opie" for his plainspoken, rural ways, but the Kid from Tuscola is unflappable according to his teammates. Could be he’ll emerge as good as, and even better than Smith. Texas was discounted before the Rose Bowl, too, and while no one I’ve seen is doing exactly that this time, there seems to me a similar need to be more impressed with tOSU as there was with Southern Cal. 

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Posted in Texas Football

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Record scorcher

Posted on September 6, 2006 | Comments Off on Record scorcher

Cool days and nights here lately, thanks to a cold front on Monday and rain all day yesterday (Tuesday). Refreshing, after the dog days just departed. Indeed, August was the hottest ever in Austin and San Antonio, according to the National Weather Service. 

"This is very significant," said Austin meteorologist Bob Rose, "since weather records for Austin-Mabry date all the way back to 1854 and San Antonio records date back [to] 1885."

Temperatures at the National Weather Service’s official site at Camp Mabry in West Austin "beat the previous record warm August in 1999 by 0.2 degrees," Rose said, "while San Antonio temperatures beat the previous record set in 1962 by 0.8 degrees."

Curiously, the record August heat came without any record maximum temperatures. "At Camp Mabry, the average high temperature of 100.7 degrees was the second warmest average daily high temperature on record for August," Rose said. "The average daily low temperature of 76.3 degrees becomes the warmest average low temperature on record for August.

"Note that for San Antonio, not only was August 2006 the warmest August on record, it was also the warmest month ever on record–beating the old record of 88.1 degrees set in July 1980 and July of 1998. Austin-Camp Mabry recorded 24 days with temperatures at or above 100 degrees, Austin-Bergstrom recorded 23 and San Antonio recorded 19."

No wonder I didn’t get much (any) yard work done this summer.

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Posted in Weather/Climate

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The importance of being Ernesto

Posted on August 25, 2006 | Comments Off on The importance of being Ernesto

TSErnesto.jpg

Could this be our drought breaker? Tropical Storm Ernesto, which the Nat’l Weather Service expects in mid-Gulf by Wednesday as a hurricane. After that, Austin meteorologist Bob Rose says, nobody knows: "As of now, there is no clear answer as to where the storm will go…anywhere from Brownsville, Texas to Pensacola, Florida is possible. Should the storm track northwest toward Texas, it appears landfall would be late next week, possibly even next weekend due to the slower forecasted movement."

UPDATE Looks like Ernesto won’t bring Austin anything but could play hell with Mobile, Ala, and environs. Weather.com says: "Current forecasts indicate that Ernesto will be a Gulf of Mexico hurricane by Tuesday and increasing in strength as it heads toward the northern Gulf of Mexico."

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Posted in Weather/Climate

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