Chain Links (9/14/2011): Pedestrian Safety and Exxon Asininity

I routinely scan the RSS feeds for headlines from several other blogs and local media to see if anything catches my eye. Sometimes, an item will be enough to light the creative spark for a blog post of my own. Other times, I really just want to bring a few things to people's attention and maybe add a few of my own personal comments.

A couple items from blogs and websites I regularly look at caught my eye today and are worth a look. So, I thought I'd start occasionally using a blog post type common on bigger, more established blogs, a rundown of relevant and interesting links. I won't be doing this every day, but sometimes, enough items catch my eye to make me think I should share in this way from time to time. My tentative working title for these posts: Chain Links. Enjoy!

• A very well justified rant (and I use that word without negative connotations here) in the Del Ray Patch this morning about pedestrian safety. The author, a mother of two very young children aged one and three, has some quite reasonable complaints about the lack of respect some motorists show for her and her family crossing the streets at crosswalks. This is my neighborhood. I've observed the same thing myself. That said, at least, the great majority of motorists driving through Del Ray are mindful of those trying to cross the street on foot. Sadly, it only takes a few bad apples...

• Finally, is there really no one in Texas more deserving of a $5.2 BILLION investment than the one of the world's largest oil companies?! Exxon makes enough they should have to pay for the new road to their proposed sprawling corporate campus themselves if they want it so bad. (Over the last six years, Exxon has made at profit of at least $30 billion every year, with the exception of one year, when its profits were a measly pittance of only $19.28 billion). Of course, I wouldn't expect a company that makes its money off of selling gasoline to people to realistically consider any sort of relocation plan that would allow people to minimize automobile use, but it shouldn't get a new expensive highway built for it for free. On the bright side, being outside of Houston's second beltway, I am sure that there will be no need for anyone driving there to have to avoid any pedestrians using those pesky crosswalks that get in drivers' way all the time! If this is Rick Perry's idea of good government, my ranking of him on a scale of 1 to 10 just went from negative 100 to negative 5.2 billion!