Fred Hill Is My Hero

Fred Hill

Former state representative Fred Hill (R-Richardson) is my hero for one glorious act of rebellion in May, 2007. During the closing hours of the legislative session, Hill attempted to offer a motion to remove Tom Craddick (R-Midland) as Speaker. The Speaker refused to recognize Hill to allow him to make his motion. Another representative also attempted to make the motion to vacate the chair. He, too, was not recognized. A third representative attempted to have a vote of the House to overrule these parliamentary decisions. He, too, was not recognized. Speaker Craddick argued that, under House rules, legislators cannot make a motion to remove him from office unless he lets them do it. And if he doesn't, there is no appeal. That position prompted the House parliamentarian to quit but a replacement upheld Craddick's position. Hill lost his battle that chaotic night in 2007, but he won a warm spot in my heart for his stand against autocratic rule.

After the jump, what Fred Hill has been up to lately.

TX House District 32 Race Gets Crowded

Today was the last day to file for a place on the ballot in March primaries in Texas. The Dallas Morning News has already decided that there are "No serious challengers for Texas' U.S. House delegation." That may be true, but the several challengers to incumbent Pete Sessions (R) for his District 32 seat would probably object. After the jump, the candidates...

OTBR: The Driveway into Warrawee Therapies

Latitude: 38.373100° S
Longitude: 145.113098° E

A child on a road trip with his family asks, "Where are we?" and the father answers, "Let's check the map. We're off the blue roads [the Interstate Highways marked in blue on the road atlas]. We're off the red roads [the US and state highways]. We're off the black roads [the county highways]. I think we're off the map altogether." It was always my dream to be off the map altogether.

After the jump, a few of the random places (and I mean random literally) that I visited vicariously last month that are "off the blue roads".

Open records requests "soaring" in Richardson. Really?

Ian McCann, in a story in The Dallas Morning News, tells readers that open records requests in Richardson are "soaring." Really? He tells us that the number of requests went up from 257 in 2008 to more than 300 in 2009. That is, instead of, on average, one request being made per weekday (M-F) in 2008, Richardson is now receiving, on average, another request on Saturday, too. I guess the definition of "soaring" is open to interpretation. After the jump, how Richardson compares.

Still Crazy After All These Years

New Year's Eve

"And we talked about some old times
And we drank ourselves some beers
Still crazy afler all these years
Oh, still crazy after all these years"

-- Paul Simon

Happy New Year, everyone. Wishing all a happy and prosperous 2010.

The Ultimate Solution to Gridlock is Car-Free

The road crisis in north Texas has been building for years. The latest to weigh in on the looming disaster is Bill Baumbach in "The Collin County Observer":

"If nothing is done, our citizens will live in continual traffic gridlock, and our air quality will worsen. Our continued growth will stall if we do not have the necessary transportation infrastructure to sustain that growth. We simply will not be able to attract major corporations, if their employees can not get to work."

The alternatives aren't between gridlock and pouring more and more concrete. Read "LIVING CAR-FREE IN BIG D" for some better alternatives to both:

"A Sometimes Semi-Serious Slant and other Ruminations on Urban Design, Architecture, Sustainability, Ecolonomics, and the Way of the World or How I Learned to Stop Driving and Love the Walk... in my adopted home of Dallas, Texas."

It's time for some fresh thinking. It's not the Seventies anymore. Or the Nineties. Or, for that matter, the Noughts. The Noughties? The Aughts? The Noughty-Aughts? The Zeroes? The Big Zero? OK, just what are we going to call the '00s?

Twitter Reviews of 2009

My Twitter takes on the books, movies, and theatre I enjoyed in 2009. The list is short because I didn't join Twitter until August.

(There. Just 131 characters. After the jump, the reviews.)

White Christmas 2009

Christmas Day, 2009

From Flowers

A Christmas Eve snowfall graced Richardson, Texas, with its first white Christmas in ... I don't know how long. The National Weather Service claims it's the first since 1926. Could be. Merry Christmas, y'all.

To see more photos, look here.
Family portraits can be seen here.

32nd Annual Dallas Tuba Christmas

Jeff King, guest conductor of Tuba Christmas

From 2009 12 Tuba Christmas

"Neither snow nor rain not heat nor gloom of night stays these musicians from the swift completion of their appointed songs."

With apologies to the postal service, this motto just seems to go with the 32nd Annual Dallas Tuba Christmas concert. Normally held outdoors at Thanksgiving Square in downtown Dallas at noon on Christmas Eve, this year's concert was moved indoors because of inclement weather. Windy, rainy and cold outside, it was warm, dry and cozy inside the underground Dallas pedestrian tunnels where 150 musicians with tubas and euphoniums and related instruments gathered to play Christmas carols to a friendly audience in the holiday spirit. If you think 150 tubas can make a joyful noise outdoors, just wait until you hear them indoors in a small room. Joy to the world!

More photos can be seen here.

Avatar

You've seen this movie before. Evil mining company wants gold ore beneath peaceful Indian village and uses the cavalry to massacre the Indians to get it. You haven't seen this movie before. The Indians are blue. The horses have wings. The cavalry fly helicopter gunships. Avatar, equal parts Star Wars, Little Big Man, Tarzan, Apocalypse Now, breaks no new ground in subject matter, plot, and character development, ... you know, the things that make a story great. Where it does break new ground is in CGI techniques. Through the use of "performance capture" cameras, the movie gives extraterrestrial humanoids the most realistic facial expressions any movie has achieved.

Are we there yet? Can we use technology to create any illusion we want on the big screen? Probably not. When less-advanced technology was used in movies like "The Polar Express" the human characters looked creepy and zombie-like. Avatar technology is undoubtedly better, but it's no coincidence that Avatar is still science fantasy and not a historical epic. Blue aliens are not human, so failings of the CGI techniques are more easily overlooked. Only when this technique is used to bring a real historical figure to the screen, one that the audience is intimately familiar with, and does it in a completely convincing manner, will we have arrived at the future of movie making. When the movie version of the life of, say, Barack Obama is made using "performance capture" and CGI instead of starring Will Smith will we know that we have arrived. Until then, see Avatar. It's the closest thing yet.