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I read the other day that the second season of Sleeper Cell (American Terror) premieres tomorrow night on Showtime. I can’t quite justify subscribing to cable for one month ($40) just to watch it, but I was tempted for just a bit. Guess I’ll have to wait a few more months to get it on DVD. Argh.

Metro still hasn’t updated its web site with regard to the implementation of the Q card. Oddly, it seems the only place that this was made public was in a single article in the Houston Chronicle from Nov 10, 2006. Incidentally, its debut is expected in Feb 2006:

Feb. 4 is the starting date for the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s new fares and a new way of paying them with “smart cards.”

Chavez expected to win big today. When I moved back to Texas, I wasn’t expecting much in the way of international coverage in the Houston Chronicle after becoming a regular reader of the New York Times. This article (by John Otis from the Chronicle’s South America Bureau) really impressed me, however, and I have been meaning to bookmark it for a while.

Two centrist parties, Democratic Action and COPEI, dominated Venezuela for 40 years, trading off the presidency, divvying up government contracts and preventing newcomers from rising to power. Instead of development, Venezuela’s “petrobonanza” – the country provides 11 percent of the oil imported by America – fueled government graft. And by the mid-1990s, the country had registered a huge economic decline.
[snip]

[Executive Director Americas Division for Human Rights Watch] Vivanco called it a “revealing double standard” that the Bush administration has focused almost exclusively on Chavez’s shortcomings while, he said, democratic institutions in Colombia and Peru, whose leaders are U.S. allies, are also at risk.

Vivanco and others also say the United States lost credibility on democracy issues in Venezuela when some Bush administration officials initially cheered a 2002 military rebellion that ousted Chavez for two days.