Good morning, Houston. If you're hoping that the United States will one day be free of its dependence on foreign natural gas — and we're sure at least one of you is — this isn't your lucky day: According to a report from the Energy Forum at Rice University's Baker Institute, there's no end in sight to our use of imported gas. Natural gas accounted for 22 percent of total primary energy use in......

Henry Dittman and Joan (justjoan) are the hosts of the Internet-based travelogue called The Smart Show sponsored by Holiday Inn Express. By now you're probably familiar with the H.I.E. ads that purports to convey savant-like intellect on its patrons. "I'm not a vascular surgeon, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night," says a broke writer after requesting a scalpel from the O.R. nurse. Despite having a title sponsor, The Smart Show does......

Good morning, Houston. Have you ever wondered why our freeways have multiple names — for example, I-45 south of downtown is also called the Gulf Freeway, the section through downtown is the Pierce Elevated and the part north of downtown is the North Freeway? Yeah, we have, too — and it seems we're not alone: The Chronicle's Tex-Arcana column tackled that question this weekend. The answer? In Houston, at least, the names tell where......

Good morning, Houston. If you've walked — or driven — downtown or in Midtown lately, chances are you've noticed the fancy new "countdown signals," which flash the number of seconds pedestrians have to cross an intersection before traffic lights change. They'll soon be installed at more than 300 intersections in neighborhoods with high amounts of pedestrian traffic, including the Medical Center; though they cost $1.3 million to put up, officials say the efficient LED......

Good morning, Houston. How many of you knew what Monday was? Anyone? Anyone? That's right: It was the 220th anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution. To mark the anniversary, the nation had a little holiday, Constitution Day — but how many people actually knew about it? Not many, apparently: Though federal law says students at public high schools should be taught about Constitution Day, a recent survey of students found that......

Good morning, Houston. We just don't understand the entertainment juggernaut (or is it "juggernette?") that is Hannah Montana: Tickets to her Nov. 11 Toyota Center show sold out in five minutes Saturday, and now they're going for as much as $1,275 on eBay — granted, that's for a set of four tickets, but still, wow. The markup through eBay and ticket brokers has left some parents shelling out big bucks to give their kids......

Protest over national vs. regional chains, the never-ending debate over the place of cars and bicycles in our metropolises, professional sports scandals, remembering a solemn day, and being issued a search warrant - it all happened across our sites this week! Another banner week at Chicagoist started off with daily reports from food writer Lisa Shames on her attempt to eat only locally grown and raised foodstuffs all week as part of a farmers market......

Good morning, Houston. As you might have noticed, we passed the night sans Humberto — but our friends in the Beaumont area weren't so lucky. The sudden hurricane made landfall early this morning and battered Beaumont with winds up to 62 mph and Orange with gusts of up to 85 mph, the Chron's Eric Berger reports. From across Southeast Texas came reports of knee-deep water, downed power lines and damaged buildings, including an apartment......

Good morning, Houston. The Chron's Eric Gerber points out something interesting: a Washington Post story that says people hold onto utterly untrue myths even when they're faced with factual information that disproves them. An example: A University of Michigan psychologist showed people a CDC flyer stating that myths about the flu vaccine aren't true — such as the story that the side effects of the vaccine are worse than the flu itself — and......

Thursday night saw the Texans fall in their final preseason warm up against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 31-24. The defense was harried, but the much-maligned Mario Williams turned in a good performance, with 3 unassisted tackles and a sack. (Which, for you stat-heads, was one more sack than either Vince Young or Reggie Bush recorded last week. So there.) The first-string only saw limited playing time as head coach Gary Kubiak made evaluations leading up......

Lucy, the hottest old lady in the whole entire world, is getting written up everywhere: Forbes, Time, The Washington Post and of course The Chron. The 3.2 million year old hominid from Ethiopia is about to go on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science on Friday with much fanfare and attention. The fossil is so very old and rare that paleoanthropologists are concerned about the damage that international travel, display and a potential......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. The BarCamp Houston Files Here's a roundup of links, blog posts and photos from BarCamp Houston 2. Dwight Silverman experimented by covering BarCamp ad nauseum through Twitter. If you couldn't be there Dwight's Twitter Litter could keep you up to date virtually minute by minute. Jim Thompson, Katherine Druckman, Robert Nagle, A Wandering Eyre and sean.blog were there too and posted their experiences. There are also......

Good morning, Houston. If you'd like a little more Kinky in your life, you may be in luck. Erstwhile gubernatorial candidate and the bane of Chris Bell's existence Kinky Friedman said he might make another run for the office in 2010. This time, though, he's thinking about losing the independent label and running as a Democrat. Consultant Kelly Fero said, "They're going to be looking for real serious, legitimate candidates. Kinky should throw his......

Have you ever wondered how a bat sleeps? How much food a bat can eat in one hour? Or how a bat contributes to the ecosystem? Yeah, niether have we. But now we're curious. This Friday night, beginning at dusk, learn the answers to these questions as you board the Bayou Breeze Pontoon Boat and observe the emergence of approximately 250,000 bats from Waugh Street Bridge. And you thought Austin was the only city with......

HISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra announced Thursday that the district needs an $805 million bond issue this November to repair and replace aging schools — but the HISD trustees are expected to vote next Thursday on whether to put the issue on the ballot. Think that isn't much time to learn the details of a pretty big amount of money? You're not the only one: "I'm concerned about the timeline," school board member Greg Meyers told......

Houston's hometown hero (and shoulda,woulda, coulda been Texan) Vince Young popped up on the NFL wire for being caught in an altercation during yesterday's training camp practice. The build up to the showdown occurred at Baptist Sports Park in Nashville, TN when S Donnie Nickey knocked down WR Joel Filani after the wideout ran the wrong route. Trainers were forced to assist Filani, and on the subsequent play Nickey threw WR Courtney Roby to......

After a five-alarm fire that was started by a window air conditioner ravaged a Channelview apartment building last Friday, 100+ tenants are searching for shelter. Although about 20 of the 80 units were untouched by the fire, the entire complex is without running water and electricity, leaving many people wondering what to do and where to go. A temporary shelter was set up after the fire, but was closed on Sunday because it was no......

"How often does the train go by?" "So often you won't even notice." West U residents would likely add "unless wheat spills from the train, gets soaked by inches of rain and then stinks up your backyard" to the above exchange between Jake and Elwood in The Blues Brothers. A Union Pacific train spilled the wheat during an incident three weeks ago, but the clean up was halted due to the record setting amount of......

One more reason to avoid the Marq*E Entertainment Center: You might get stuck in a bathroom and be forced to climb into a ceiling to escape. Couldn't happen, you say? Tell that to 16-year-old Shelby Moore. Moore and some friends went to the Marq*E on Wednesday to see a movie. On the way to the theater, Moore stopped at a restroom; when he tried to leave, he discovered that the door was jammed. His friends......

If you haven't yet seen Whitney Casey's (of Great Day Houston and CNN fame) new weekly Chronicle column "Relationships with Whit," then, by most accounts, you're pretty lucky. We usually leave hating on the Chron to other local blogs, but we couldn't help but notice some of the snitty reactions to Casey's column. From James Campbell's About:Chron blog: So the Chronicle has hired Whitney Casey to do a column on relationships? This is a woman......

Misty Ann Weaver, the woman charged with three counts of felony murder and one case of arson in connection with the March 28 office building fire she confessed to setting, pleaded not guilty yesterday. Weaver, 33, told investigators in April that she set the fire in the office of her boss, plastic surgeon Dr. Robert Capriotti, to cover up the fact that she hadn't finished paperwork related to an accreditation audit for the doctor. After......

Twenty-five railroad crossings in the Houston area have been targeted by federal authorities for "active" signage - flashing lights and crossing arms - including the one where four teens died in an accident that involved a train and a stolen SUV last month. That site, where four other accidents have occurred since 1979, has only pavement markings and crossbucks. Family members of the teens who were killed vowed to go on a crusade to improve......

Just when you thought it was safe to confine your red-light running to the suburbs: the Sugar Land City Council voted to put up red light cameras at intersections in their town as soon as September. Copycats. Sugar Land police chief Steve Griffith said that there would probably be cameras at 59 and Highway 6, one of the city's busiest intersections, as well as three or four other heavily traveled intersections. He said that as......

Ah, it's almost July 4, and that means one thing, year after year: People are buying fireworks like crazy, and officials are working like crazy to keep them from setting the fireworks off inside the city limits. And it's kind of a tough battle, the Chronicle reports: Getting people to save their fireworks until they get out of town can be a hard sell, "especially with weather like this," fireworks stand owner Tommy Hua said.......

From the tallest skyscraper in the City of Brotherly Love to Canadian tourism copywriting brilliance, here's what you should know from our -ist cities: This week, Phillyist took a gleeful listen to the White Stripes' exciting new release, watched in awe as their new tallest skyscraper was finally completed, found a cheaper way to get to Gothamist, invented a tasty new dessert, and brought back their Craigslist Round-Up feature with a bang. Bostonist watches......

Jim Nornton, the all-time Houston Oilers franchise leader in interceptions, passed away June 12 in Garland, Texas. He was 68. Nornton, was an original member of the franchise after being drafted from Idaho in 1960. In his rookie season in 1960 as a backup saftey, the Oilers won the AFL title game 38-28 over the Chargers. In his second year, Nornton earned the starting job at safety and he helped the Oilers back to......

Good morning, Houston. We thought that ding someone put in the door of our 1983 Diatribe in the Starbucks parking lot the other day was bad, but then we heard about the $150,000 Aston Martin damaged last week when a car went out of control and slammed into a southwest Houston car dealership. It happened when a pickup truck hit Leonard Ross' car while he was on the Southwest Freeway feeder road near Fountain......

The final report from HPD crime lab independent investigator Michael Bromwich recommends new, taxpayer-funded DNA tests for prisoners in more than 400 cases in which incomplete or below-standard work was originally performed by the lab. That recommendation is based on a review of 135 of the cases which found "major problems" with 43 of them, including those of four death row inmates. But that doesn't mean there aren't other cases that have resulted in wrongful......

More on Garrett William Mallot, the man who shot a fellow passenger to death aboard a Metro bus back in March: A grand jury decided Friday not to indict Mallot for the shooting because jurors determined it was done in self defense. Details were in short supply when the shooting took place — all that was reported was that Mallot was walking along the center aisle when he brushed up against the victim, Otis James......

The local blog roundup may be a day late, but we can't be a dollar short if we're going to eat at Truluck's. Food in Houston reviewed the popular eatery this week and was not terribly impressed, although their wallets were. Truluck's offers swank without the risk, according to this post. Check out the full entry for a run-down of how Truluck's offers quality food and a fine-dining atmosphere while avoiding that snobby feel. No......