This NY Times article does a nice job of explaining the special place of Tex-Mex food within Texan culture. But I have one question. How does one write an article about Tex-Mex in Houston and not mention Ninfa’s on Navigation? Alison Cook comments along the same lines.
As deer hunting season approaches, check out what regulations you have to follow simply to bag a deer in Texas these days:
When state game wardens hit the woods and fields in the wake of Texas’ Nov. 3 opening of the general deer season, those 500 or so officers can pretty much predict the violations they’re most likely to encounter.
“Tagging is the No. 1 (deer hunting-related) violation we see,” said Maj. David Sinclair of TPWD’s law enforcement division. [. . .]
In most cases, a hunter taking a deer in Texas must, immediately upon taking possession of the animal, attach to it the appropriate tag from the hunter’s license. [. . .]
Deciding which tag to use isn’t all that daunting. Five detachable tags valid for tagging whitetails are attached to the perimeter of a Texas hunting license. . . . Three of those whitetail tags are valid for tagging a buck or an antlerless deer, and two are valid only for tagging an antlerless deer.
It’s a simple thing to detach the correct tag ó a buck tag for a buck whitetail and antlerless tag for a doe.
But then some people drop the ball.
To legally tag a deer, the hunter must fill out, in ink, the requested information on the back of the tag ó the name of the ranch or lease on which the deer was taken and the county in which that hunting area is located.
Also, the month and date the deer was taken has to be cut out of the tag. Cut out. Not marked with a pen. Cut out. [. . .]
But the most common deer-related violation was failure to complete the white-tailed deer log on the back of the hunting license.
The deer log was created this decade when the state seemed to be moving away from requiring tags be attached to deer. The log, printed on the back of the license, was seen as a way to keep track of how many deer, buck and doe, a hunter had taken, where they were taken and when.
The move to do away with deer tags has lost momentum. But the deer log remains. And it’s surprising how many deer hunters don’t know about the log requirement, forget to complete it or ignore it.
This past year, TPWD game wardens issued more than 500 citations for failing to complete the deer log.
As with the other tagging-related violations, hunters charged with not completing the deer log face a Class C misdemeanor. Conviction brings a fine of as much as $500.
Sheesh! Let’s hope the regulators don’t start piling on similar rules for hunting these.
The Chronicle’s Tara Dooley is breathless in this Sunday Chronicle article on the ever-expanding financial empire of Joel Osteen, pastor of Houston megachurch, Lakewood Church (previous posts here):
Osteen and Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, will release the pastor’s second book, Become a Better You on Monday. It debuts with at least 2.5 million copies, the largest first run in Free Press’s more than 60-year history.
With an initial printing of 136,000, Osteen’s first book, Your Best Life Now, attracted an audience just waking up to Osteen and his growing Houston church. The book, which came out in 2004, eventually sold about 5 million copies in the United States and was translated into 25 languages.
Become a Better You meets a public that has grown accustomed to Osteen’s face. Taking his place with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as one of the 10 Most Fascinating People of 2006 ó according to Barbara Walters ó Osteen’s national profile has made him an A-list Christian celebrity.
“I’m starting to realize it,” Osteen said in an interview. “It wasn’t until about a year or so ago that I thought, ‘This is something unusual and God has given us a lot of favor.’ Sometimes you think it’s just people flattering you, but I think it’s starting to hit home.”
But on Sunday night’s segment of 60 Minutes, Michael S. Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, raised substantial questions regarding the theological substance — or lack thereof — of Osteen’s basic message:
In the Wal-Mart era of religion and spirituality, every particular creed and any denominational distinctives get watered down. We donít hear (at least explicitly) about our being ìlittle gods,î ìpart and parcel of God,î or the blood of Christ as a talisman for healing and prosperity. The strange teachings of his fatherís generation, still regularly heard on TBN, are not explored in any depth. In fact, nothing is explored in any depth. Osteen still uses the telltale lingo of the health-and-wealth evangelists: ìDeclare it,î ìspeak it,î ìclaim it,î and so forth, but there are no dramatic, made-for-TV healing lines. The pastor of Lakewood Church . . . does not come across as a flashy evangelist with jets and yachts, but as a charming next-door-neighbor who always has something nice to say.
Although remarkably gifted at the social psychology of television, Joel Osteen is hardly unique. In fact, his explicit drumbeat of prosperity (word-faith) teaching is communicated in the terms and the ambiance that might be difficult to distinguish from most megachurches. Joel Osteen is the next generation of the health-and-wealth gospel. This time, itís mainstream. [. . .]
This is what we might call the false gospel of ìGod-Loves-You-Anyway.î . . . God is our buddy. He just wants us to be happy, and the Bible gives us the roadmap.
I have no reason to doubt the sincere motivation to reach non-Christians with a relevant message. My concern, however, is that the way this message comes out actually trivializes the faith at its best and contradicts it at its worst. In a way, it sounds like atheism: Imagine there is no heaven above us or hell below us, no necessary expectation that Christ ìwill come again with glory to judge the living and the deadî and establish perfect peace in the world. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find anything in this message that would be offensive to a Unitarian, Buddhist, or cultural Christians who are used to a diet of gospel-as-American-Dream. Disneyís Jiminy Cricket expresses this sentiment: ìIf you wish upon a star, all your dreams will come true.î
To be clear, Iím not saying that it is atheism, but that it sounds oddly like it in this sense: that it is so bound to a this-worldly focus that we really do not hear anything about God himselfóhis character and works in creation, redemption, or the resurrection of the body and the age to come. . . . Despite the cut-aways of an enthralled audience with Bibles opened, I have yet to hear a single biblical passage actually preached. Is it possible to have evangelism without the evangel? Christian outreach without a Christian message? [. . .]
. . . ìHow can I be right with God?î is no longer a question when my happiness rather than Godís holiness is the main issue. My concern is that Joel Osteen is simply the latest in a long line of self-help evangelists who appeal to the native American obsession with pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Salvation is not a matter of divine rescue from the judgment that is coming on the world, but a matter of self-improvement in order to have your best life now.
Horton’s collection of essays on Joel Osteen’s ministry is here and Tim Challies provides this critical review of Osteen’s new book.
Anyone who has spent any time in rural Texas understands the havoc that the burgeoning feral hog population (previous posts here) has caused in almost every area of Texas. Chronicle outdoors columnist Shannon Tompkins has been studying the problem for quite some time and, in this article from this past weekend, he puts the hog problem in perspective:
Texas is awash in a rising tide of feral hogs. And Texans appear as impotent as King Canute in stopping that tide from climbing up the beach. [. . .]
Texas has about half as many feral hogs as it does white-tailed deer ó perhaps 2 million hogs and about 4 million deer. [But] almost all the growth in the hog population has occurred over the past 20 years. Once limited to a few thousand pigs in small pockets of East and South Texas, feral hogs infest all but a half-dozen or so of Texas’ 254 counties.
This is an incredible rate of expansion. And with it has come millions of dollars of damage to agriculture, land, water and native wildlife.
What’s behind the expansion?
We Texans did this to ourselves. People hauled live-trapped feral hogs all over the state and released them, thinking they would create good hunting opportunities.
Those infections spread.
Also, changing land-use practices ó everything from what grows on land, who owns it, average size of tracts, who has access to that land and what they do there ó gave feral hogs the conditions they needed to become established and thrive.
Will feral hogs become more populous in Texas than whitetails?
Could happen. Texas’ deer population is stable, and deer live on just about every acre that can support them; the herd isn’t going to grow.
But the feral hog population continues mushrooming as the animals pioneer into new corners and herds expand to fill the newly infested habitat.
Feral hogs can outcompete and outreproduce deer.
Hogs are omnivores. Deer are browsers. Deer depend on a small suite of plants for food. Hogs can live on almost anything, and in places that will not support deer.
A doe deer doesn’t breed until she’s a year old, then produces one fawn most years and twins in really good years. On average, half those fawns survive to their first birthday.
A sow feral hog can breed for the first time when she’s 8 months old or so, and throw litters of four to eight piglets twice a year, and almost all survive.
Do the math.
It appears impossible to eradicate feral hogs once they have become established at the level we have them in Texas.
Yes, extreme methods ó intense trapping, aerial gunning ó can clear an area of feral hogs. But it’s expensive, time-consuming and only a temporary solution. If intense control is not maintained ó constant trapping, brutally efficient gunning over a large area ó new hogs migrate to fill the vacuum.
Look; Texas has the most liberal hog-killing regulations in the nation. Feral hogs can be killed by any method other than poisoning. They can be shot from the air or ground. They can be trapped. They can be run down by packs of hounds. Day and night. No limits.
No one has a dependable estimate of how many feral hogs are killed in Texas each year. But it has to be in the neighborhood of a quarter-million or more. Heck, the state’s two commercial processing plants that butcher feral hogs for the retail market are annually handling an estimated 100,000 wild swine. Maybe twice that many are taken by recreational hunters and trappers.
Still, the pig population climbs.
Feral hogs are the four-legged equivalent of fire ants, tallow trees, salt cedar, water hyacinth and all the other non-native, invasive species that are damaging Texas’ biota. Their only positive qualities are that they provide hunting opportunity, and they are great on the table.
I kill feral hogs whenever I can, even though I understand that assassinating one every now and again from a deer stand or even trapping a dozen or two a year from the deer lease has the same impact as trying to dip out the ocean using a coffee cup.
It’s not particularly satisfying work. But I like to think the deer and the quail, squirrel and turkey and every other native creature in the woods appreciates the effort.
Feral hogs have even been seen roaming in parts of Houston’s Memorial Park near Buffalo Bayou. And markets are developing for feral hog meat. But the population continues to grow steadily. Any ideas?
One of my many beautiful and talented nieces passes along this delightful story carrying on my family’s legacy in medicine. Enjoy.
I’m not an advocate of using cell phones indiscrimately while driving. In fact, I try to avoid it as much as possible. But every few months or so, some media outlet passes along another superficial story (see also here) on the latest study or tragic story that supposedly suggests that use of cell phones while driving leads to accidents and, thus, should be outlawed.
Dr. Kenneth Cooper of Dallas may have oversold the benefits of aerobic exercise, but will the same be true for his new real estate venture?:
Dr. Cooper is developing a $2 billion residential wellness community here called Cooper Life at Craig Ranch that is going up on the first 51 of an eventual 151 acres on the Texas plains, north of Dallas.
Taking the concept of spa real estate into the medical realm, Dr. Cooperís community promises home buyers a life that sounds equal parts Norman Rockwell and Olympic village: a small town where doctors will make house calls and where every resident has a bevy of experts close at hand for keeping in tiptop shape.
It appears to be the first of its kind. . . .
Included in the monthly residential fee ($1,041 for an individual to $2,181 for a family of six) will be an annual physical and a six-month follow-up, which Dr. Cooper calls key to his utopian vision of a place where everyone can live in peak health. The fee also includes home doctor visits, a fitness center membership, concierge services and exterior home maintenance, lectures and social activities.
While a diverse mix of ages and fitness levels are welcome, Dr. Cooper admits that many prospective residents may well be baby boomers with cushy bank accounts. ìTheyíve got the money,î Dr. Cooper said, ìnow they want to live long enough to enjoy it.î
I get exhausted just thinking about the thought of living there. ;^)
Will Veber over at Road Tips reports on his trip (with pictures) to one of the last bastions of pure Americana — the Iowa State Fair.
Sir Michael Gambon is one of the finest character actors of our day. In the brief video below (h/t to my son, Cody), he brilliantly explains his theory on acting. Enjoy.
Inasmuch as I have four college age children, I have become somewhat of a used car buying expert. But if you are in the market for a new car, check out the five-minute video below of car guy Rob Gruhl giving some practical and clever advice on how to find, finance and negotiate buying a new car.