Brain Farts

Texas Gov. Rick Perry aired a radio ad in California trying to lure California businesses to Texas. California Gov. Jerry Brown dismissed Perry's radio appeal as "barely a brain fart."

Coincidentally, Texas state Representative Stefani Carter filed a bill in the Texas legislature to make Texas a little more like, you guessed it, California.

After the jump, Carter's own brain fart.

Repeat Tweets: Sports and Weather

Repeat tweets from January, 2013:

• 1 Jan 2013: Headline: "Bard men fall to Caltech again in basketball." Go Beavers! http://www.dailyfreeman.com
  
• 2 Jan 2013: Final. Berkner 100, Sunset 36. It's a great time to be a Ram. #txhsbb
  
• 4 Jan 2013: Headline: "Senator John Cornyn's Outrageous Op-Ed On The Debt Ceiling." Cornyn's a deadbeat. http://www.slate.com
  
• 6 Jan 2013: I'm glad I'm not only one who thought Sunday's Redskins game was less playoff football, and more medical malpractice. http://www.slate.com
  
• 7 Jan 2013: Headline: "Seahawks' Russell Wilson last rookie QB left in playoffs." He's from the University of Wisconsin. :-)
  
• 8 Jan 2013: Headline: "Australia Is So Hot, They Had to Add a New Color to the Weather Map." Not to worry. Weather is not climate. http://www.theatlanticwire.com
  
• 8 Jan 2013: Headline: "US roasts to hottest year on record by landslide." Great. Global warming wasn't bad enough? Landslides, too? http://news.yahoo.com
  

After the jump, more repeat tweets.

Charter Amendment Upheld By Court

ORDERED, ADJUDGED and DECREED that judgment be rendered in favor of the Contestee, Mayor Steve Mitchell. ... This is a final, appealable Judgment disposing of all claims against parties.

Source: Honorable Gene Knize.

Whoa... "Mayor" Steve Mitchell? Isn't the current mayor Bob Townsend? Isn't the new mayor going to be Amir Omar or Laura Maczka? Wasn't the former mayor Gary Slagel? It turns out that "Mayor" Steve Mitchell is not a typo here. Steve Mitchell was mayor of Richardson from 2007-2009. A little bit of history that has been bouncing around our legal system for what seems like forever needs to be disposed of before we can devote all of our attention to the upcoming council election.

After the jump, an important court ruling on an old legal case.

Early Spring in the Steger Garden (2013)

From Flowers

Bye Bye Birdie at BHS

Bye Bye Birdie at Berkner High School: A+ all around -- orchestra, lead singers, chorus, choreography, comic acting (Shriners hilarious). Best sound ever.

Little Shop of Horrors at RHS

Little Shop of Horrors at Richardson High School: Intimate setting of black box theater works well. The macabre has never been this much fun. Feed me!

S2L77: Kathmandu Durbar Square

From 1977 02 21 Nepal

Durbar Square is a generic name for a plaza outside an old royal palace in Nepal. There are three in Kathmandu. These photos are of Kathmandu Durbar Square. Palaces, temples, courtyards, all with elaborately carved and decorated architecture make up this UNESCO World Heritage site. Because much of the architecture is wood, few buildings or carvings more than a few centuries old have survived, but the site has been in continuous use since at least the third century.

More photos after the jump.

Unconventional Wisdom About Austerity

Recently, I challenged the conventional wisdom that when families and businesses are tightening their belts because times are tough, that government should, too. (See "Enough with the Belt-Tightening Already" and "Spendthrift Sam and Judicious Janet.")

To argue the point I used words, mostly paraphrasing an argument made more compellingly by Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman. After the jump, another tack: a picture that's worth a thousand words.

Main Street/Central Expressway Study

Source: City of Richardson.

The time for study is over. Now it's time for recommendations and implementation. The result of the Main Street/Central Expressway Study was presented to the Richardson City Council Monday night. It's full of nice pictures of street layouts and glass and steel office buildings all bordered by row after row of trees. Beyond that? It looks to this observer like the presentation could have been created by an advanced team of college students from a university in, say, Oregon or Massachusetts who were assigned a theoretical exercise in urban planning and given Google Maps and a drawing app. I see SimCity, not Richardson.

After the jump, a look at just the ideas for the heart of Richardson.

Review: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Amazon

From Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain:

Look! Look! Check out the Jumbotron! And there on the screen loom the eight operational Bravos literally bigger than life, plus Albert, who's smiling like a proud new papa. Small pockets of applause spark off here and there. The Bravos assume postures of masculine nonchalance. Mainly they're trying not to stare at themselves on the screen, but so pumped with the moment is Sykes that he starts mouthing off and flashing gangsta signs. To a man Bravo tells him to shut the fuck up, but after a moment the screen cuts to a flags-waving, bombs-bursting cartoon graphic against a background of starry outer space, and from within these inky depths enormous white letters suddenly zoom to the fore AMERICA'S TEAM PROUDLY HONORS AMERICAN HEROES."

After the jump, my review.