No, no, no, we’ve got to state this more accurately. Texas is evidence of an environment in which intelligence doesn’t correlate with reproductive success.
Evolution has no purpose, its merely a mechanism. The weather neither fails nor succeeds because it snowed.
Good lord, man, it’s a joke! Calm down, already.
Lawls. 
Since we’re gettin’ all serious an’ everthang, evolution isn’t a mechanism. It’s a process that is driven by various mechanisms, like natural selection for example.
“Everthang”? Now, don’t you start in messing’ with good, honest Peckerwood-American dialect, you hear? I’m telling you, best be sure.
Touché, sir.
Neither of those things really trace their core roots to Texas, do they? I’d think Chicago is more a nursery of neo-capitalism.
Is Texas that bad? I’ve been to Texas a dozen or more times and met nothing but the finest sorts of people. It has lovely, cosmopolitan cities like Austin and San Antonio, and even DFW has its merits. It’s multicultural, a hotbed of technological innovation, and has good batbeque.
Are there nuts in Texas? Well, sure, but there’s twenty-four million people in Texas. That’s three quarters of the population of Canada, and we just recently had a travelling show in our second-most-populous province where moderators went around and got people to tell them how much they hated immigrants. At the same time, the leader of one of Quebec’s major political parties proposed taking basic civil rights away from people who don’t speak French. People in Toronto are actually talking about - I am not making this up - segregating the school system and having black kids and white kids go to different schools. There’s “intelligent design” nutballs here too.
You can find crazies anywhere. Texas gets noticed because, well, it has a lot of people.
BBQ?
Besides, “crazy” is our state bird out here in CA. You want crazy, you come here. Texas got nuthin’.
Its not so much the crazy, that’s pretty much SOP human, its the grotesque exaggeration. Sure, everywhere you go, money talks, but in Texas it shouts you down. “Conservative” in Texas means just to the left of Otto von Bismarck.
For an oldy but icky, here’s a site (Washington Monthly, sane left center, no shields required) with excerpts from the 2000 Republican Party platform. Bring back the gold standard, abolish the minimum wage, income tax. There was a time when this sort of thing was lampooned as little old ladies in tennis shoes, but these people aren’t kidding. Texas Republicans aren’t real big on irony and nuance.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2003_10/002380.php
Truth be told, the more recent editions are considerably saner. This is good. I credit Molly Ivins. Anne Richards. Jim Hightower. My cousin Clay. Still, it gives an insight.
I do admit that Austin is good.
Stop it, stop it! I don’t want my money backed by a valuable commodity; I want it backed by assurances from the people who print it. Also, if we abolish the minimum wage, I don’t want to hear you complain when small business bankruptcies decline. I like things the way they are, with Wal-Mart being the only game in town and everybody there making minimum wage from the pharmacist on down. My company is small, but we pay people who empty trash and clean the bathrooms way more than minimum wage. Plus, we give them job titles that demand respect, like programmer and vice-president. And one more thing, buster: you can have my income tax when you pry it from my cold dead accounting, consulting, and legal staffs. I like employing those people; that way, I don’t have to employee the riff-raff struggling to rise out of poverty. You young people and your fancy ideas, why I outta… get off my lawn!
jus’ writing in to say, all of the major cities in the state have very cool neighborhoods and communities. I’m from Southeast Austin, and South Austin is full of Bubbas. It is hardly a mecca of liberal fruitcakiness. Sixth Street isn’t representative of the entire city.
In fact, I know people haven’t been in Texas very much if they think Austin is some bizarre aberration. Austin is quintessentially Texas. There’s awesome natural beauty, friendly people, diversity, and a quirkiness about the place. Go visit Montrose in Houston, for example.
Man, and I thought when they were BBQing *cows *they were cooking the wrong animal.
Best not be telling him about armadillo nuts fried in horny toad oil.
Wasn’t there a bridge in San Antonio that was used by a huge colony of bats? IIRC, people would drive for miles and miles to watch the bats fly out at dusk; it was sort of Texas’ answer to Carlsbad Caverns. So maybe they do have Batbeque available in certain places. Just another reason to avoid the entire state.
It’s the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin. Also, they swarm the UT Tower in the summer. No problem here; they devour mosquitoes.
Well, 23 years for me, and I do consider Austin a bizarre aberration (in a nice way). But then I was stuck in one the most godforsaken corners way out in the western part of the state. I’m afraid there was not much natural beauty.
What the hell do you know? You’re locations says you’re from… oh, Austin.
Never mind!
Yeah, San Angelo does tend to get on one’s nerves quickly.