Repeat Tweets: Vote First. Hearings Later

Repeat tweets from August, 2017:

• Aug 1 2017: RT @ericawerner: "Cornyn on the floor acknowledging any path forward on health care will have to be bipartisan."
  That's our Texas Senator acknowledging what should have been obvious, what was the right thing to do, all along. What a waste.
• Aug 1 2017: RT @TopherSpiro: "NEWS: Bipartisan hearings to draft stabilization legislation. Testimony from patients, Governors, and experts."
  Vote first. Hearings later. Not the way I remember "How a Bill Becomes a Law" but better late than never.
• Aug 2 2017: The Girl on the Train (2016): Psychological mystery borrows heavily from Rear Window and Gaslight. Well-crafted if maybe too predictable. B-
• Aug 3 2017: RT @costareports: "Secret Service vacates Trump Tower command post in lease dispute with president's company."
  Because of course.
• Aug 4 2017: Trump heads govt (Secret Service). Trump owns Trump Tower. But great negotiator can't get a lease done between 2?
• Aug 4 2017: "Russell Barlow, Jr Commits to TCU Hoops."
  It's a great time to be a Ram. @BerknerBB #txhshoops

After the jump, more repeat tweets.

Review: Infinite Jest

Amazon

From Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace:

A woman at U. Cal-Irvine had earned tenure with an essay arguing that the reason-versus-no-reason debate about what was unentertaining in Himself's work illuminated the central conundra of millennial après-garde film, most of which, in the teleputer age of home-only entertainment, involved the question why so much aesthetically ambitious film was so boring and why so much shitty reductive commercial entertainment was so much fun. The essay was turgid to the point of being unreadable, besides using reference as a verb and pluralizing conundrum as conundra."

I finished "Infinite Jest." The novel that sold a million copies since publication twenty years ago; the novel that's on almost every list of best novels of the twentieth century; the thousand-page novel that I bet hardly anyone ever actually finishes reading; the novel whose sentences go on even longer than this sentence of mine; you know, that novel. I finished it. I finished it. I deserve some recognition for that. Or punishment. I don't know which.

POTD: Ball Court of Coba

From 2017 01 29 Caribbean Cruise

Today's photo-of-the-day is from the ancient Mayan city of Coba on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. It shows the ball court. The object of the game was to maneuver a ball, without using your hands, through the stone hoop attached to the side wall of the court. The rules of the game are in dispute (kind of like American football) but that doesn't stop archaeologists from deducing that the losers of the game (or sometimes the winners) were ritually sacrificed (kind of like American politics).

Sand Storm (2016)

IMDB

Sand Storm (2016): Girl meets boy. Dad objects and arranges a different marriage. Then dad brings home a second wife. Age-old story. B+

POTD: Abandoned City of Coba

From 2017 01 29 Caribbean Cruise

Today's photo-of-the-day is from the ancient Mayan city of Coba on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. It was a huge city but the jungle has mostly reclaimed it.

Bonus photos after the jump.

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From 2017 01 29 Caribbean Cruise

From 2017 01 29 Caribbean Cruise

Lo and Behold (2016)

IMDB

Lo and Behold (2016): History & future of the Internet. Some topics are promising (AI), some scary (solar flares), some badly misjudged. C+

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016)

IMDB

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016): War in Iraq. Pro football in Dallas. A study of PTSD. Flat acting. Clichéd characters. Watchable. C+

As is usually the case, the movie is not as good as the book, which was reviewed here in 2013.

Magnet Schools vs Neighborhood Schools

Five years ago, I blogged about magnet schools — their purpose and their effect. I think it holds up well, in that I had questions about the purpose and effect of magnet schools in Richardson that I couldn't answer then and I still can't answer today. I don't believe there has been adequate public discussion. It's time.

POTD: D'Amico

From 2017 01 29 Caribbean Cruise

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Galveston Bay, the entrance to the busy Houston Ship Channel, ranked first in the United States in foreign waterborne tonnage; first in U.S. imports; and first in U.S. export tonnage.

Local, State, Nation: Same Story

Recently, I posted a graph showing Richardson ISD schools' academic ranking plotted against the percentage of students they have on the free and reduced lunch program. As I expected it showed a correlation — as socio-economic status drops, so too does academic ranking.

From SchoolDigger.com

Today I want to look at state and national data.