Since Kirby has been bouncing around from school to school over the past year or so, we are hopeful that we've finally found a place that will meet his needs such that he can stay for a long time. So far, he seems to like it. Yesterday he even started riding the bus! Here's him arriving home this afternoon:
The museum also had a train room, where Kirby spent time building and playing with various layouts. These two pictures were taken with my cell phone, hence the blurriness:
Friday evening, we went to a friend's house and celebrated Kirby's birthday with a small party, cake and ice cream.
Afterwards, we drove up to Mount Evans. The highest paved road in North America leads to the 14,264-foot peak, where a small visitors center and observatory are located. From the top of the peak, you can quite literally look down on the world:
Given its proximity to Denver as well as the relatively easy access afforded by the paved road, Mt. Evans is a rather popular tourist attraction. Kirby and I took the rocky trek up the pathway from the visitors center to the peak rather slowly, and even then I sometimes felt like I was going to pass out due to the thin air:
Kirby seemed to do just fine in the high altitude. He has now officially been atop a fourteener!
David goes up into the mountains rather frequently, but the only time he ever seems to encounter mountain goats is when I'm with him. These guys were grazing below the summit of Mt. Evans:
The peak of Mt. Evans overlooks Summit Lake, which at 12,830 feet is the highest park in the Denver Mountain Park System. Here's my brother David, posing in front of the lake and the alpine tundra backdrop:
Saturday night we went into town and dined at the Cherry Cricket, whose burgers (featured on a recent episode of the Travel Channel's Man vs. Food) really are as good as advertised. Kirby also spent some time playing in the pool at Dave's new apartment complex.
It was a dark, smooth beetle, about 1 1/2 inches long, sporting a rather fearsome pair of pinchers:
I had never noticed this particular insect around the house before, so I spent some time trying to identify it. It wasn't an easy task, considering the fact that there are somewhere on the order of 350,000 known species of beetles, but I finally determined that this intimidating-looking bug is a hardwood stump borer (Mallodon dasystomus), a member of the longhorn beetle family. It is so named because its larvae reside within the trunks of hardwood trees such as oaks. The adults feed on ants and other tiny insects, which is what the pinchers are for. If they are handled improperly, of course, they can deliver a painful bite to humans as well.As lawmakers across the country search for effective solutions to the persistent problem of binge drinking by young people, a prominent member of the presidential commission that recommended raising the drinking age to combat dangerous alcohol consumption has now called it “the single most regrettable decision” of his career. The law was signed by President Ronald Reagan 25 years ago this week.Dr. Morris Chafetz, who founded the National Institute for Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, said he reluctantly supported the recommendation but that “legal age 21 has not worked.” He is well known for taking on bold scientific claims and so-called experts, and rarely shies away from challenging the accepted norm. Chafetz says the law has resulted in “collateral, off-road damage” that includes thousands of injuries and fatalities that occur off the roadways.
“Legal Age 21 has not worked,” said Chafetz on the 25th anniversary of its enactment. “To be sure, drunk driving fatalities are lower now than they were in 1982. But they are lower in all age groups. And they have declined just as much in Canada, where the age is 18 or 19, as they have in the United States.”
While I'm sure that the implementation of the minimum legal age has had some effect, the decline in drunk driving fatalities can probably also be attributed to other factors, such as increased public awareness of the problem and more safety features in vehicles. In any case, drunk driving fatalities really should not be the only metric of the success of the minimum drinking age.
Recent research points to the growing number of binge drinkers among college age people, while other populations have seen declines. Unfortunately, the new data do not make clear what policies have contributed to those reductions. While there is no evidence of correlation, let alone solutions, those who oppose any re-examination of the Legal 21 law suggest that what is required is simply more enforcement. Dr. Chafetz adamantly disagreed.
“Enforcement is frustratingly difficult and usually forces the behavior deeper underground, into places where life and health are put at ever greater risk,” said Chafetz. “The 600,000 assaults reported annually, the date rapes, the property damage, the emergency room calls do not in general occur in places visible to the public. They are the inevitable result of what happens when laws do not reflect social or cultural reality.”
We know how well the "more enforcement" solution has worked for us in combating illegal drug use. I'd wager than, in spite of its increased cost, increased enforcement would achieve similarly negligible effects in combating underage drinking. Like Chavetz says, the problem is being driven into places where it's harder to enforce.
I still don't understand why we, as a nation, cannot have a discussion about alternatives to the currrent law. For example, what about a "graduated" approach to drinking? Many states already take such an approach to driving, through graduated drivers licenses. Here in Texas, for the first six months after passing their drivers' tests teenage drivers are restricted from driving with more than one other teenager in the car, using a cell phone, or being on the road between midnight and 5 a.m. There is also a teenage driver education program, Teens in the Driver Seat, that I happen to be very familiar with because Lori is the Houston Area Coordinator for the program at the Texas Transportation Institute. The results of this approach have clearly been quite successful, because Texas leads the nation in reducing teenage driver fatalities.
The Arena Football League has shut down, this time indefinitely.
The league, which previously called off play for the 2009 season but had said it planned to return in 2010, sent a terse, one-paragraph statement to its teams late Tuesday announcing it had suspended operations.The statement said the AFL's board had been "unable to reach any consensus on restructuring the league over the past eight months."The 22-year-old indoor league had lost its commissioner and two teams since the end of last season. It reached a new agreement with its players this year, but that wasn't sufficient to persuade enough AFL owners that the league could return to profitability.The AFL's board said "there are no other viable options available to the league right now."The league is likely to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
The Georgia Force, owned by Falcons owner Arthur Blank, has issued a statement confirming the cessation of AFL operations."We are disappointed at this outcome for AFL fans, but there was no other viable choice," Force president Dick Sullivan said. "Despite significant efforts on the part of many AFL and team representatives, the League was unable to create a new business model that we and others could support. Those of us who worked at the Georgia Force will miss the fun action of this unique football game."
The hallway was still a mess, as teachers were collecting their personal belongings and putting out trash from their classrooms:
Thirty years ago, the front hallway was carpeted, and in the afternoons you would have found me drawing on the carpet with chalk as I waited for my mom to come pick me up. The cleaning crew probably didn't enjoy having to vacuum my artwork, but I sure had a great time creating it. Friday afternoon, the no-longer-carpeted hallway was just as desolate as every place else in the school:
Kirby's cubbyhole was where he kept his lunchbox, his naptime blankets, some toys, changes of clothes, artwork he had made, and other items. We took everything home with us that afternoon, leaving it depressingly vacant:
The reason the HDL was such a great place for so many children over its forty-plus years of existence, myself and Kirby included, was due to its talented and dedicated staff. Among them were Carol, Jeanette and Kari, who povided such wonderful care for Kirby and his classmates:
Chris Holzer was Kirby's teacher this past spring. Lori and I are appreciative of the all the work the HDL staff has done for Kirby - he truly loved that school and the developmental progress he made while he was there was enormous - and we hope that they find new employment soon, as they will be an asset to any school that hires them:
It is indeed unfortunate that such a well-regarded and long-lived institution can be closed at the self-serving and short-sighted whim of a handful of university administrators, but such is life in the academic world. The HDL may be no more, but its service to the children of Houston and the memories it left its students, families and staff alike will last forever.
Fritillaries are fairly common in Houston, and they're quite striking, even as larvae. Here, a couple of brightly-colored, spiny fritillary caterpillars crawl along a passionflower vine:
The spines are not poisonous nor painful to the touch, but the caterpillars themselves are poisonous to birds and other predators. Neither the caterpillars nor the adults grow to be as large as other local butterflies such as the monarch, but they are nevertheless appealing to look at, even when their wings are folded:
Here's one, in its full orange glory, resting on my butterfly net right before Kirby and I sent it outside and on its way into the world.
Adults feed on typical butterfly attractors, such as lantana, but they are especially attracted to passionflower because that's the only thing their larvae eat. Hopefully Lori's passionflower cuttings will take root so that we'll see more of these guys fluttering around our yard in the future.
Proving once again that there are very few problems in the world that a bikini car wash cannot fix, Florida International has announced that its cheerleading program has been brought back from the dead. The university had said that it was cutting the program — plus the marching band — in an attempt to shave $1 million from its operating budget. But the cheerleaders, and the general public, would not take this lying down.
Through fundraising efforts that included bikini car washes, blood drives and most probably a few large individual donations, it appears that our long national nightmare is at an end. According to [...] the Save FIU Cheerleading group Facebook page (via BUSTED COVERAGE), enough money has been raised to reinstate the program. Hooray!Well, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Good for them. Hopefully the persistence of the cheerleaders will inspire FIU's struggling football program to have a successful season this fall.
JetAmerica officially will not get off the ground in August. The airline announced in a press release this afternoon that it is "suspending sales to all markets and that it would immediately begin to notify affected customers and process refunds to all customers who have booked on the public charter flights." A spokesman for the company says JetAmerica would refund more than $900,000 in ticket reservations for flights since Aug. 14, which was JetAmerica's latest project launch date.
The Associated Press picks up the story, saying the "fledgling discount airline that garnered attention with $9 promotional fares, has folded without ever getting off the ground. ... Service was originally supposed to begin July 13 to underserved markets in Toledo, Ohio; South Bend, Ind.; Melbourne, Fla.; and Lansing, Mich. Flights were also scheduled to larger airports in Minneapolis and Newark, N.J."
Apparently, the airline ran into difficulty in securing the landing slots it needed at Newark's heavily-congested Liberty International Airport. No word as to whether the realization that the creation of another airline, even an "ultra-low-fare" one, is not a sound business decision in this depressed economy played a factor in the decision.
One consequence of persistent business loss and depopulation is the emergence of a growing number of unoccupied vacant residential and commercial buildings, many of which will remain vacant indefinitely. Some of the houses can be rehabilitated, and some of the former office and factory buildings can be redesigned as lofts, condominiums, art galleries, and restaurants. But many of these vacant buildings will have to be demolished. Last year, an administrator in Philadelphia’s Department of Licenses and Inspections told me that city housing inspectors were identifying an average of thirty "imminently dangerous" buildings each month, an average of one a day. These structures are not fixer-uppers—they’re about to collapse. Although a wholesale razing of neighborhoods would be foolhardy, some demolition activity will need to be ongoing in older cities in order to remove the most dangerous or most blighted buildings.The author goes on to explain Flint's demolition process, undertaken by a specially-created Land Bank Authority, in detail. It's an interesting concept to remedy a very real problem, but I'm quite frankly glad we don't have to deal with it here in Houston.
Now, shifting national trends and looming maintenance expenses have experts talking about the possibility of removing the Claiborne Expressway from the Pontchartrain Expressway to Elysian Fields Avenue. Traffic would flow on surface streets or along Interstate 610.
Removal of the Claiborne Expressway was proposed by the two-year-old Unified New Orleans Plan and is a key recommendation in the city's draft master plan.
"I-10 is something that lots and lots of people complained about, especially in terms of its damage to Treme," said David Dixon, a principal with Goody Clancy, the firm that is creating the draft of the master plan.
Claiborne Avenue, with its wide neutral ground and routing that takes it close to the Big Easy's Central Business District, was a natural location for a freeway during the interstate building boom of the 1960s. But with the freeway structure now forty years old, is the Claiborne Expressway still necessary? Or can it be torn down and Claiborne Avenue returned to its original state?
What would be the traffic effects of such a decision? It's hard to say. Through traffic could continue to travel along the 610 bypass along the lakeside edge of the city (or along Interstate 12 on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain), and freeway access to the CBD, the Quarter and the Crescent City Connection would be maintained by the western portion of I-10 (Pontchartrain Expressway), which is not being proposed for demolition. The disposition of the traffic that currently uses the Claiborne Expressway to access the CBD from eastern New Orleans is a legitimate concern, but, as the article notes, the traffic nightmares that were feared when other cities tore down their urban freeways, such as the Westside Highway in Manhattan or the Embarcadero in San Francisco, never materialized. Drivers just found other ways to get to their destinations.
Freeway demolition isn't the biggest issue facing post-Katrina New Orleans, however, and he article points out that the dismantling of the Claiborne is not a priority of Nagin's administration. It's also far from certain, given the city's current demographic and economic predicament, that pulling down the elevated freeway will have much affect on the potential revitalization of the Treme. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if this goes anywhere.
Let's see: snide remarks about Dubai's "hideous" architecture? Check. Prominent mention of the "enslaved" (or, in this case, "enchained") construction laborers? Check. Anti-western vitriol from some anonymous Emirati? Check. Description of Emiratis as lazy, spoiled and arrogant? Check. Looks like this author followed the Dubai-bashing template to the letter. You'd think that, after so many months' worth of articles saying the same negative things about Dubai and the UAE, these writers would come up with some new material. But I guess not.“Why did you leave Britain?” I ask him, slung well below sea level in the bucket seat as we cruise the baked streets past the filthy, crumbling apartment blocks where the Bangladeshi slave labourers live or die, 10 or 12 to a room, and then into the hideous bling of downtown Dubai, a vast architectural experiment conducted by, seemingly, Albert Speer and Victoria Beckham. One skyscraper appears to be gilded in gold leaf, another looks like the birthday cake of a spoilt five-year-old brat — and all of them trying desperately to be taller, flashier, more grotesque than the one next door.
“Well, you know,” he says, in a soft Scottish burr, “I think it was the immigration more than anything else.”
“But Andrew, you’re an immigrant now…”
He looks astonished at this, as if the notion had never occurred, then says: “Yes! Ironic, I suppose. But the difference is, I’m a wanted immigrant.”
Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Up to a point. In truth, needed more than wanted. As one local put it: “We are fed up of westerners who come here thinking they deserve an easy meal ticket. You were nothing in the West, so you came here for the houses and cars you could never get back home, you stole through taking out excessive finance that is not justified by you [sic] salaries. Then when you cannot pay you run, this is theft born out of greed and arrogance.
“Anyway despite all of this you still disrespect our cultural and religious values with your behaviour, dress and conduct in our malls and on our beaches and comments about us our race and our religion. You spend all your time critizising [sic] our laws, society and systems. Yet, you could never have the lifestyle you have here back in your system. You people are no longer welcome, please go and pollute somewhere else.”
That was the message posted by a disgruntled Emirati on an expat website recently, and, as a description of the British, South African, Australian and eastern-European workers now living in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), it has a certain truth about it. The Emiratis are a minority within their own country, the UAE, and an even smaller minority within Dubai, the most populous city of the UAE, where they number about 20% of the population.
On the other hand, it seems a bit rich coming from an Emirati, the inhabitant of a country that lucked into oil money about 43 years ago and is now utterly dependent on foreign labour for its current, unsustainable prosperity — the ranks of the skilled and talented working class from Europe, who come here and run their absurd, extravagant and now faltering construction projects, and the traders and the dealers.
The British expats I spoke to believed, without exception, that the Emiratis are utterly useless, corrupt and indolent, and, according to several, some British managers are leaving rather than abide by a new law that requires them to employ a certain percentage of Arabs on every job. They’re simply not up to it, they say. As it is, the locals make up less than one-fifth of the total UAE population, the westerners roughly half that amount. The majority population in Dubai is the criminally low-paid, enchained, abused, dispossessed peasantry from south Asia.
