Mayoral Campaign: It's On

Richardson's city council elections are still five months away. In past elections, that meant that no candidates were doing anything at this stage, in public anyway. That's all changed this year, with voters having approved a city charter amendment calling for direct election of the mayor. That change led to a prediction that elections would get longer and more expensive. Money was going to become more important at the city level, just like it has swamped state and federal elections. That prediction is coming true.

Amir Omar was the first candidate to jump into the race. If anyone thought Omar's early move would cause some other likely candidates to rethink their own plan to run, he was wrong. Laura Maczka has now jumped into the race as well. Whether any other candidates enter the race remains to be seen, but it's not expected that any other council members will run for mayor, including incumbent mayor Bob Townsend.

After the jump, my early thoughts on the race.

Review: Free Will

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From Free Will, by Sam Harris:

One fact now seems indisputable: Some moments before you are aware of what you will do next -- a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please -- your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this 'decision' and believe that you are in the process of making it."

After the jump, my review.

Separate Mayoral Campaign Forum

Now that Richardson voters have decided to directly elect their mayor, an election campaign is upon us. I know it's over five months until the election, but that's not keeping the players from jockeying for position. Amir Omar is the only declared candidate so far, but other candidates are likely.

It's not just the candidates who are getting active. After the jump, an unfortunate move by the Dallas County North Republican Club and Richardson Republican Women.

Review: Hard-Boiled Wonderland

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From Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, by Haruki Murakami:

I was standing on a three-meter-square concrete platform jutting out over bottomless nothingness. No railing, no enclosure. Wish she'd told me about this, I huffed, just a tad upset. An aluminum ladder was propped against the side of the platform, offering a way down. I strapped the flashlight diagonally across my chest, and began my descent, one slippery rung at a time. The lower I got, the louder and more distinct the sound of water became. What was going on here? A closet in an office building with a river chasm at the bottom? And smack in the middle of Tokyo?"

After the jump, my review.

Late Autumn in the Steger Garden (2012)

From Flowers

More photos after the jump.

S2L77: Taman Negara

Taman Negara, Malaysia
February 4-8, 1977

At dusk, thousands upon thousands of swallows line the wires outside the hotel in Jerantut.
We saw a few Samba Deer at the Tahan Hide in Taman Negara.
I took a three hour walk up to the top of Bukit Teresek. Four or five hornbills were the only wildlife.
The Swiss tourists have left, leaving only a dozen or so people.
I spent today sleeping late, reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and writing letters.
We came back down river in a drizzling rain, walked two miles to the train station in the rain.

Source: Personal travel notes.

From 1977 02 02 Malaysia

From Kuala Lumpur, we headed east. At the fattest point of the Malay peninsula, we switched buses at Temerloh and headed north to Jerantut, our jumping off spot for our trip into the Malaysian rain forest. Our means of travel was a long, wide, motorized canoe (I call it a canoe because that's what its shape resembled, but it was bigger than any canoe I was used to). We traveled upriver for an hour or more to Taman Negara, a national park in the heart of the Malaysian forest.

Our stay in Taman Negara was more R&R than "Heart of Darkness." My biggest discovery was a can of A&W Root Beer (or maybe it was Dad's Old Fashioned) in the guest dormitory's refrigerator -- the first I had seen since leaving the US two years earlier. Deer, hornbills, even tigers (which I didn't see), I was prepared to see all of these in the Malaysian jungle. I wasn't prepared to find A&W Root Beer. Sweet.

More photos after the jump.

Thanksgiving Day (2012)

From 2012 00 Miscellaneous

"Don't let the turkeys get you down."
-- Sandra Boynton

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Dysfunctional by Design

Watching Richardson city government in action can be frustrating. Sometimes I find myself asking the same question the great baseball manager Casey Stengel asked when hired to manage the hapless New York Mets in their first year of play, "Can't anybody here play this game?"

But then I catch myself. Just how is the game supposed to be played? I end up thinking that maybe the appearance of dysfunction in city government may, in fact, be just how it's designed to operate.

After the jump, am I expecting too much?

A Tale of (Parking in) Two Cities

What's the difference between 20th century suburban sprawl and 21st century urban renewal? In a word, parking. The last time we looked in on parking in Richardson, the city council was deliberating whether to allow a Burger King restaurant to whittle away Richardson's strict landscape buffering requirements in order to build a bigger parking lot. That's right, the business owner wants even more parking than what Richardson requires, which is already a lot. That's a sign that Richardson is still stuck in 20th century suburban sprawl.

After the jump, a city with a 21st century attitude towards parking

Review: Leonardo's Lost Princess

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From Leonardo's Lost Princess: One Man's Quest to Authenticate an Unknown Portrait by Leonardo Da Vinci, by Peter Silverman and Catherine Whitney:

One would have to be a fool not to be wary of a Leonardo attribution. There's bound to be controversy. The last time a serious claim was made, it took nearly a century to sort it out."

After the jump, my review.