Sun In The Sky, Art In The Park

From 2010 05 Cottonwood

Sunshine. Art. Music. Food. People. Richardson's Cottonwood Art Festival. It doesn't get any better than this in Richardson. Or in most cities on most days, for that matter. For more photos, click here.

Play In May!

From 2010 04 HS Baseball

Congratulations to the baseball teams from Richardson and Berkner High Schools. The two schools were co-champions of District 9-5A. In a one game playoff Saturday afternoon at Richardson High School to determine the top seed for the playoffs, the Richardson Eagles beat the Berkner Rams 6-4 on the strength of three one-run home runs.

Friday night, Lake Highlands clinched the fourth and final playoff spot for District 9-5A. Wish all the RISD schools, as well as DISD's W.T. White High School which finished third in District 9-5A, the best of luck going into the playoffs. They've all achieved their goal to "Play in May!"

Bedside Manners

Honesty is the best policy, right? Not necessarily. If you're a doctor with an atrocious bedside manner, some things are best kept to yourself. On the other hand, if a sensitive and gentle approach doesn't align with the politics of your state legislators, then it's best to lay it all out in the open. Unless *that* isn't politically correct. Clear as mud?

After the jump, the mixed and confusing cases in the news.

The Second Coming

The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Chair Tests For School Board Candidates

The band booster clubs of the Richardson ISD sponsored a forum for RISD school board candidates Tuesday evening in the Richardson High School band hall. Six candidates for three seats participated. I don't intend to endorse or oppose any candidate, but I do want to make some random comments about what was said at the forum. Just like the last forum, I won't be mentioning names.

After the jump, my impression of the forum.

Beaches Along Eastern Seaboard Are Disappearing

According to this Slate story, "The beaches along the Eastern seaboard are about to disappear." Blame natural sinking of shorelines, steady sea-level rise due to global warming, and counter-productive steps taken by humans to protect beaches and beach houses. Worse, no one is listening. According to Slate, "Most coastal states have done little or nothing to regulate shoreline development, often for fear of litigation."

After the jump, what does this have to do with Texas?

Early Voting, April 26 - May 4

Polling places are open for early voting for the May 8 joint election. Richardson voters can vote in the Civic Center. There are two elections on the ballot. First is the $66 million city bond proposal to fund streets, parks, municipal buildings and neighborhood revitalization projects. Second are three places on the Richardson ISD board of trustees.

After the jump, a quick look at the election campaigns.

How Do RISD Schools Rank?

For years, the non-profit organization Children At Risk has sought to "improve the quality of life for children across Texas through strategic research, public policy analysis, education, collaboration and advocacy." As part of their mission, they've collected data on almost all public schools in Texas. Now, The Texas Tribune makes that data available and easily accessible.

"Using the Children At Risk data, The Texas Tribune has built a searchable database to help parents judge schools and help educators and policy makers examine the relative performance of groups of schools and districts. And we've constructed a detailed page for each school, separately laying out the data used to compute the rankings of more than 5,800 campuses."

After the jump, what the data tells us about Richardson ISD schools.

Berkner Run-Rules Richardson 12-1

From 2010 04 HS Baseball

In a big District 9-5A game, the Berkner Rams easily handed the Richardson Eagles only their second loss in district play this year. The Rams won 12-1 in six innings by the ten-run rule. Starting pitcher Stephen Spurlin scattered five hits for the complete game win while Berkner batters pounded out eleven hits. Richardson didn't help their cause any by committing four errors. The play of the game was a 5-6-3 double play by the Rams in the third inning that broke up a Richardson threat while the game was still close. With one game left in the season, Berkner, now 10-3, trails district-leading Richardson, 11-2, by only one game.

Before The Big Bang

Sean Carroll, a physicist at Caltech, has been on a media tour promoting his latest book, "From Eternity to Here." You might have seen him on "The Colbert Report". Or maybe read the New York Times interview.

After the jump, why it's exciting to see a scientist get some media attention.