The Whole World is Watching. Not Any More.

Reminder to self: in 2015, ask Richardson City Council candidates if they pledge to video record all city council meetings. What's that you say? Council meetings are already recorded? That's what I thought. Then, I learned about the three meetings the current city council held (with one more scheduled for September 3) to review and discuss council goals for 2013-2015. No video recording for any of them.

After the jump, why we even have to ask for something everyone thinks we already have.

Repeat Tweets: More than you want to know of Dominican culture

Repeat tweets from August, 2013:

• 1 Aug 2013: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz: Brief not wondrous. Maybe more than you want to know of Dominican culture. Still... B-
  
• 1 Aug 2013: RT @SenTedCruz: "Anti-Assad priest kidnapped by al Qaida jihadis in #Syria. Prayers for Father Paolo." Prayers for the 100,000 killed.
  
• 3 Aug 2013: Overheard: "FREE 'No Spanish Village Walmart' yard signs. Use butcher paper to cover them and make a school/Girl Scouts/lemonade sign."
  
• 3 Aug 2013: MT @SenTedCruz: "al Qaida still a threat. The more reason to find out what happened at #Benghazi." Why not shut down CIA like IRS? #wacko
  
• 4 Aug 2013: Detropia (2012): Scenes from the hollowing out of a great American city, Detroit. No politics, no preaching, no prescriptions, no hope. C+
  
• 4 Aug 2013: RT @TomPauken: "Republican candidate yesterday claimed to be a Reaganite." Pauken moves from '60s to '80s. No longer fighting Vietnam War.
  
• 4 Aug 2013: MT @SenTedCruz: "Obama told us al Qaida was on the run. Today many US embassies are closed in face of new terror threats." He sounds giddy.
  

After the jump, more repeat tweets.

"I'm Out"

Source: Breaking Bad.

It's a completely different context, sure, but like Breaking Bad's Walter White, "I'm out." My exit is not as dramatic, but still, there are similarities, except for the crystal meth part and the lying and killing and megalomania, but except for those, it's exactly like Walter White. I'm not going into it. Like I said, "I'm out."

Friday Night Heat Lamps

From 2013 08 30 Berkner vs South Garland

The car thermometer read 104° on the way to the game at 7:00 p.m. It read 95° on the way home at 10:30 p.m. Regardless, the calendar said it was the first Friday night of the new school year and that means high school football, aka Friday Night Lights, or maybe in this case, Friday Night Heat Lamps.

Unfortunately for Berkner High School fans, the Rams let a close 7-7 game at halftime get away from them in the second half, losing to the South Garland Colonels 35-7.

After the jump, more photos.

S2L77: Herat, Afghanistan

From 1977 03 23 Afghanistan

Herat, the major city in western Afghanistan, is far from Kabul in the east and Pakistan's back door, where most of the action is. Herat is close to Iran's back door, but the action for Iran is to the west, on the Persian Gulf and on the border with Iraq. That isolation means Herat has been spared the worst of the destruction from the now decades-old wars in Afghanistan.

Update: September 13, 2013: Lest anyone think that Herat is safe in any absolute sense, today's headline proves otherwise: "Taliban insurgents in Herat explode truck bomb outside the U.S. consulate, a former five star hotel, killing three local security force members."

After the jump, Herat in 1977.

Honoring MLK by Restricting the Right to Vote

Jared Patterson is running in the 2014 GOP primary to replace Angie Chen Button as representative in Texas House District 112. He posted this on Facebook the morning of August 28, 2013, the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech:

Fifty years ago, a Christian conservative stood before the nation to proclaim his Dream. May we honor the content AND context of Dr. Martin Luther King's speech.

Source: Jared Patterson, Facebook.

Just ten hours earlier, the same Jared Patterson posted this on Facebook:

Voter ID laws have to be among the most common sense pieces of legislation during my lifetime.

Source: Jared Patterson, Facebook.

Somehow, I don't see the sentiment expressed here as being compatible with honoring either the content or context of MLK's speech.

After the jump, how far have we come in 50 years?

Richardson's Racial Dot Map

Source: U of VA Cooper Center.

The map is a visualization of US Census data. The boundaries of the crop above are generally the boundaries of Richardson. It consists of one dot per person, color coded by the individual's race and ethnicity. Blue is white. Green is black. Red is Asian. Orange is Hispanic.

After the jump, some random observations.

Being Elmo (2011)

IMDB

Being Elmo (2011): Documentary of a puppeteer. Behind the scenes on Sesame Street. Too sweet. Maybe should have picked Oscar the Grouch. C+

Tax Expenditures in Richardson

Tax expenditures: spending by another name.

A tax expenditure program is government spending through the tax code. Tax expenditures alter the horizontal and vertical equity of the basic tax system by allowing exemptions, deductions, or credits to select groups or specific activities. For example, two people who earn exactly the same income can have different effective tax rates if one of the tax payers qualifies for certain tax expenditure programs by owning a home, having children, and receiving employer health care and pension insurance.

Source: Wikipedia.

It's understandable why Congress has grown so attached to tax expenditures. It's a way to spend without blame. In fact, Congress is more likely to take credit for reducing taxes.

That's Washington. How about Richardson?

S2L77: Across Afghanistan

Afghanistan
March 26-27, 1977
Empty land. A few mud villages, including sleepy Ghazni.
Kandahar was unremarkable.
We stopped for camel rides at some nomad's tent.
The bus ran out of gas.

Source: Personal travel notes.

From 1977 03 23 Afghanistan

More after the jump.