Staggering -- "The First Of Many" -- March 4, 2017

Somehow it looks like I completely missed this one. From Fuelfix:

• a new petrochemical plant near Corpus Christi coming on line this year
• Occidental's OxyChem subsidiary and Mexico-based Mexichem
• $1.5 billion ehtylene plant in Ingleside
• 1.2 billion lbs of ethylene / year --> vinyl chloride monomers -->  polyvinyl chloride (for PVC piping)
• ethylene cracker -- ethane from natural gas to make ethylene, primary building block for most plastics
• 150 permanent workers
• this project: the smallest and first of several Texas Gulf Coast ethylene crackers being completed this year
• others under construction in the Houston area: XOM, Chevron Phillips Chemical, and Dow Chemical

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The Botany Page

Note: the trees in the photograph below are redbud trees (see first comment from a reader). Most likely they are Oklahoma redbud trees. I will let Arianna know.

Original Post

We have these really beautiful tree - bushes here in north Texas. I think they are trees but they tend to be a bit short and very broad. I keep telling myself to google to find out what they are.

On the way to water polo today, I mentioned them to Arianna as we drove by some of those beautiful flowering trees. Without missing a beat, she said they were crepe myrtle, and that depending on "how" they grow, they can be considered either trees or bushes.

Moments later we passed some other flowering trees which she said were either flowering dogwood or magnolias. I suggested that I associated magnolias more with the southeastern US, and she agree, either South Carolina or Georgia.

But crepe myrtle? I had never heard of them before. Where Arianna picks up all this information, I will never know.

She then went on to tell me her project at the moment pertained to the atmosphere, and she named the various levels of the atmosphere, from the troposphere to the ionosphere.

Oklahoma (?) Redbud Tree

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For The Archives

A couple of weeks before the end of 2016, there was betting among the Chicago police force whether homicides would end above 800 for the year (2016) for Chicago. The betting was that the number would come close but would not hit 800. I ran the numbers, threw in the fact that the last couple of days in 2016 were Friday/Saturday and suggested the number would come in just over 800, at 801 or so.

Today, a reader tells me that with some victims now being taken off life support, the number has hit 801 for Chicago for 2016. Apparently some folks are upset with the way records were kept -- if upset, I assume some folks lost a bet or two.

And so it goes.