4 ms·

Thanks for pointing this out. Many people think we're a "yeehaw" state, but we have more wind farms than California to the tune of 2x more [1] thanks to oil mon

by pxlpshr 13y ago

Thanks for pointing this out. Many people think we're a "yeehaw" state, but we have more wind farms than California to the tune of 2x more [1] thanks to oil money. I guess you can say cowboys like their texas tea, lower taxes, and greener pastures. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_farm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_farm

mjn 13y ago
Some of it is just having a lot more wind, which sure helps when it comes to wind power. Texas's 50m wind-resources are somewhere around 20x California's [1], mostly because the usable generation area in Texas is across a huge area, while in California it's limited to some areas of the Sierra Nevada [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_generation_potential_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_generation_potential_in_th... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Wind_Potential.gif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Wind_Potential.gif
KevinEldon 13y ago
I think Texas is a great state. I live in Georgia. I travel to Texas a lot. I've visited Houston, Dallas, and Austin. Houston is a decent city once you get to know it and if you can embrace the cowboy-style. Dallas is fine; although I never really got the feel for it. Austin is awesome. I could visit Austin any time; if I wasn't happy here in Georgia I could easily live in Austin.
- mjn 13y ago
  Houston is a decent city once you get to know it and if you can embrace the cowboy-style. Now I'm wondering what I missed in Houston. I lived there for years, and graduated from high school there. But what do cowboys have to do with it? My experience of it was that it was just a modern American city like anywhere else, with a heavy focus on sprawling suburbs. I didn't feel there was a lot of uniquely "Texan" culture or anything. Life had little to do with cowboys; it revolved around living in suburban houses that cover literally hundreds of square miles (most of the city), and doing things like studying to get into good colleges and trying to get a decent job. Nobody I knew even spoke with a Texan accent, which was something more associated with West Texas or the Panhandle, places like San Angelo or Lubbock. Now if you had said flying cockroaches, africanized ants, hurricane evacuations, and 6 months of the year where you can't reasonably go outside because it's >90 F and humid as hell, then yes, it's great if you can embrace that part of the lifestyle. ;-) I do like visiting nowadays, but only in December.
  - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    Houston has great museums, food and people from every culture, and.... I forgot the third one.
    - mjn 13y ago
      I wouldn't say it has great museums, having moved from Chicago to Houston as a kid. I found most of the museums... not as good in comparison. But Chicago has particularly good museums, so this might be unfair. It does, however, have very good art museums specifically. And even more specifically, it has good art museums that are well-endowed enough to be cheap to visit. The Museum of Fine Arts Houston has one of the lowest entry fees of major metropolitan art museums, and the Menil Collection is completely free. Definitely a high-culture perk of the city. Also, if you are willing to drive ~20-50 miles to visit something (and you had better be, if you are in Houston) there is NASA's Johnson Space Center, where you can see lots of rockets and rocket facilities; and Brazos Bend, where you can see lots of alligators.
      - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
        I wasn't impressed with Chicago's Field Museum compared to HMNS, but I've only been there once, and IIRC there was renovation going on, so maybe I missed the good stuff. I'll give it another try next time I go to Chicago. Glad to hear someone is enjoying the MFA and Menil. The Menil was mostly the result of the Schlumbergers IIRC. I lived in Clear Lake when I was young, and I was fortunate enough to get to hang out at JSC, and get really good access to the place. My Little League coach was an Astronaut. I can barely stand to go there anymore. It kills me. Alligators? Yeah, and mosquitoes. I've seen enough of both.
        mjn 13y ago
        On the science museum, part of my view, I think, is that HMNS is trying to do what two different Chicago museums are covering: the Field Museum (classic archaeology / natural science) and the Museum of Science and Industry (modern science, and technology of the industrial revolution to present). The Chicago Field Museum is a classic "natural science" museum: a very large, multistory lobby greets you, with a monumental dinosaur reconstruction. The building is also impressive, from some century-ago world's fair. The rest of the exhibits, on the other hand, range from good to being quite obviously 100 years old with no love given in the preceding century (sometimes this is nice and quaint, sometimes annoying). It feels more impressive to me than HMNS, but HMNS might have better exhibits. The latter certainly has a nice gem collection. But if you want something more sciencey, the Museum of Science and Industry is really nice. There's an entire simulation of a coal mine you can go down into, exhibits on the history of trains, on urban history, and on the history of agriculture, and even a captured German U-505 submarine. It was definitely my favorite museum as a kid, and I didn't find much like it in Houston.
wozniacki 13y ago
Californian cities are making it awfully difficult to resist the appeal of places like Austin. The dysfunction in government and the general unfriendliness to the upwardly mobile is appalling. California neither benefits from the good Puritan economic sense seen in New England states nor the thrift of good-governance states like Montana. Yes, Montana ! : For six years it has been one of the only states in America with a budget surplus: this year it is a record $433 million, proportionally equivalent to a federal surplus of $858 billion. Thus we’ve been able to cut taxes, invest in education and infrastructure and keep essential services intact. We recently got our first bond rating upgrade in 26 years. And we’re not simply riding the Western energy boom. The recession has driven unemployment to 7.5 percent, and while we’ve had a great run with oil, coal and gas, royalties from these commodities account for only 9 percent of our budget surplus. How do we accomplish what most states and the federal government cannot? I like to say we run government like a ranch. In ranching — my old job — you either pinch pennies or go belly-up. We do the same in government. Perhaps Washington can try it. For one thing, we challenge every expense. If it isn’t absolutely necessary, we eliminate it. When the recession came we found $80 million in savings, which helped us avert a budget crisis. Little things added up: we renegotiated state contracts, cut our energy consumption by 20 percent, auctioned off state vehicles and canceled building projects and computer upgrades. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/opinion/cutting-costs-the-montana-way.html?pagewanted=print http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/opinion/cutting-costs-the-... California is not just a weird cesspool of the quixotic and the inept. It is quixotic and inept for solely the sake of being so. (If you didn't notice, someone already down-voted your entry. I expect the same of mine.)
- at-fates-hands 13y ago
  >>>For six years it has been one of the only states in America with a budget surplus. Another state with a hefty surplus? Why Texas of course. It went from budget shortfall to a surplus in a few years: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/us/texas-budget-surplus-proves-as-contentious-as-a-previous-shortfall.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/us/texas-budget-surplus-pr... "A boom in revenues from sales taxes as well as taxes from oil and natural gas production have given Texas a budget surplus that the state comptroller has estimated at $8.8 billion." And of course California is bleeding companies and jobs. No wonder its on the verge of bankruptcy: http://www.kcra.com/news/Two-dozen-companies-commit-to-leaving-California/-/11797728/18533954/-/item/0/-/n079fx/-/index.html http://www.kcra.com/news/Two-dozen-companies-commit-to-leavi... "I tracked for 2011, that 254 companies of all sizes and shapes and kinds left the state for primarily other states,” said Vranich, the president of Spectrum Location Services in Irvine."
sliverstorm 13y ago
Yeah, growing up I had the impression that California was this place where everybody was more interested in renewable energy and saving the environment than most other places. The reality is California doesn't really make an especially strong showing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_States#State_trends http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_States...

by pxlpshr 13y ago

mjn 13y ago

Some of it is just having a lot more wind, which sure helps when it comes to wind power. Texas's 50m wind-resources are somewhere around 20x California's [1], mostly because the usable generation area in Texas is across a huge area, while in California it's limited to some areas of the Sierra Nevada [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_generation_potential_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_generation_potential_in_th... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Wind_Potential.gif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Wind_Potential.gif

KevinEldon 13y ago

I think Texas is a great state. I live in Georgia. I travel to Texas a lot. I've visited Houston, Dallas, and Austin. Houston is a decent city once you get to know it and if you can embrace the cowboy-style. Dallas is fine; although I never really got the feel for it. Austin is awesome. I could visit Austin any time; if I wasn't happy here in Georgia I could easily live in Austin.

mjn 13y ago
Houston is a decent city once you get to know it and if you can embrace the cowboy-style. Now I'm wondering what I missed in Houston. I lived there for years, and graduated from high school there. But what do cowboys have to do with it? My experience of it was that it was just a modern American city like anywhere else, with a heavy focus on sprawling suburbs. I didn't feel there was a lot of uniquely "Texan" culture or anything. Life had little to do with cowboys; it revolved around living in suburban houses that cover literally hundreds of square miles (most of the city), and doing things like studying to get into good colleges and trying to get a decent job. Nobody I knew even spoke with a Texan accent, which was something more associated with West Texas or the Panhandle, places like San Angelo or Lubbock. Now if you had said flying cockroaches, africanized ants, hurricane evacuations, and 6 months of the year where you can't reasonably go outside because it's >90 F and humid as hell, then yes, it's great if you can embrace that part of the lifestyle. ;-) I do like visiting nowadays, but only in December.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  Houston has great museums, food and people from every culture, and.... I forgot the third one.
  - mjn 13y ago
    I wouldn't say it has great museums, having moved from Chicago to Houston as a kid. I found most of the museums... not as good in comparison. But Chicago has particularly good museums, so this might be unfair. It does, however, have very good art museums specifically. And even more specifically, it has good art museums that are well-endowed enough to be cheap to visit. The Museum of Fine Arts Houston has one of the lowest entry fees of major metropolitan art museums, and the Menil Collection is completely free. Definitely a high-culture perk of the city. Also, if you are willing to drive ~20-50 miles to visit something (and you had better be, if you are in Houston) there is NASA's Johnson Space Center, where you can see lots of rockets and rocket facilities; and Brazos Bend, where you can see lots of alligators.
    - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
      I wasn't impressed with Chicago's Field Museum compared to HMNS, but I've only been there once, and IIRC there was renovation going on, so maybe I missed the good stuff. I'll give it another try next time I go to Chicago. Glad to hear someone is enjoying the MFA and Menil. The Menil was mostly the result of the Schlumbergers IIRC. I lived in Clear Lake when I was young, and I was fortunate enough to get to hang out at JSC, and get really good access to the place. My Little League coach was an Astronaut. I can barely stand to go there anymore. It kills me. Alligators? Yeah, and mosquitoes. I've seen enough of both.
      - mjn 13y ago
        On the science museum, part of my view, I think, is that HMNS is trying to do what two different Chicago museums are covering: the Field Museum (classic archaeology / natural science) and the Museum of Science and Industry (modern science, and technology of the industrial revolution to present). The Chicago Field Museum is a classic "natural science" museum: a very large, multistory lobby greets you, with a monumental dinosaur reconstruction. The building is also impressive, from some century-ago world's fair. The rest of the exhibits, on the other hand, range from good to being quite obviously 100 years old with no love given in the preceding century (sometimes this is nice and quaint, sometimes annoying). It feels more impressive to me than HMNS, but HMNS might have better exhibits. The latter certainly has a nice gem collection. But if you want something more sciencey, the Museum of Science and Industry is really nice. There's an entire simulation of a coal mine you can go down into, exhibits on the history of trains, on urban history, and on the history of agriculture, and even a captured German U-505 submarine. It was definitely my favorite museum as a kid, and I didn't find much like it in Houston.

wozniacki 13y ago

Californian cities are making it awfully difficult to resist the appeal of places like Austin. The dysfunction in government and the general unfriendliness to the upwardly mobile is appalling. California neither benefits from the good Puritan economic sense seen in New England states nor the thrift of good-governance states like Montana. Yes, Montana ! : For six years it has been one of the only states in America with a budget surplus: this year it is a record $433 million, proportionally equivalent to a federal surplus of $858 billion. Thus we’ve been able to cut taxes, invest in education and infrastructure and keep essential services intact. We recently got our first bond rating upgrade in 26 years. And we’re not simply riding the Western energy boom. The recession has driven unemployment to 7.5 percent, and while we’ve had a great run with oil, coal and gas, royalties from these commodities account for only 9 percent of our budget surplus. How do we accomplish what most states and the federal government cannot? I like to say we run government like a ranch. In ranching — my old job — you either pinch pennies or go belly-up. We do the same in government. Perhaps Washington can try it. For one thing, we challenge every expense. If it isn’t absolutely necessary, we eliminate it. When the recession came we found $80 million in savings, which helped us avert a budget crisis. Little things added up: we renegotiated state contracts, cut our energy consumption by 20 percent, auctioned off state vehicles and canceled building projects and computer upgrades. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/opinion/cutting-costs-the-montana-way.html?pagewanted=print http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/opinion/cutting-costs-the-... California is not just a weird cesspool of the quixotic and the inept. It is quixotic and inept for solely the sake of being so. (If you didn't notice, someone already down-voted your entry. I expect the same of mine.)

at-fates-hands 13y ago
>>>For six years it has been one of the only states in America with a budget surplus. Another state with a hefty surplus? Why Texas of course. It went from budget shortfall to a surplus in a few years: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/us/texas-budget-surplus-proves-as-contentious-as-a-previous-shortfall.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/us/texas-budget-surplus-pr... "A boom in revenues from sales taxes as well as taxes from oil and natural gas production have given Texas a budget surplus that the state comptroller has estimated at $8.8 billion." And of course California is bleeding companies and jobs. No wonder its on the verge of bankruptcy: http://www.kcra.com/news/Two-dozen-companies-commit-to-leaving-California/-/11797728/18533954/-/item/0/-/n079fx/-/index.html http://www.kcra.com/news/Two-dozen-companies-commit-to-leavi... "I tracked for 2011, that 254 companies of all sizes and shapes and kinds left the state for primarily other states,” said Vranich, the president of Spectrum Location Services in Irvine."

sliverstorm 13y ago

Yeah, growing up I had the impression that California was this place where everybody was more interested in renewable energy and saving the environment than most other places. The reality is California doesn't really make an especially strong showing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_States#State_trends http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_States...