Vive L'Europe - Just Not Yet

Over the past 35 years, the US economy has created 57 million jobs. Europe has created just 4 million.

-- BusinessWeek, June 5, 2006

Wisconsin Polka Groupies in Texas

This Memorial Day weekend marks the 40th annual National Polka Festival in Ennis, Texas, a town about 40 miles south of Dallas.

NanoJapan

Sixteen undergraduate engineering students from across the United States gather today at Rice University in Houston in preparation for departure tomorrow to Japan, where they will participate in a ten week research program in nanotechnology.

Wow, you dance on Broadway! How fabulous!

The Eisemann Center's season of musicals came to a close tonight with the final performance of A Chorus Line. It was probably the best production of any of the eight musicals put on in the two seasons we've attended. Besides the singing and dancing you go to musicals for, this storyline has characters to care about. Perhaps because the setting is the theater itself, it's easier to believe the actors on stage are not actors, but talking about their own lives. And being a dancer, trying to get a job on Broadway, must be one of the toughest tryouts there is.

Yes, A Chorus Line ran forever on Broadway, it's due for a revival there later this year, it's been around the country over and over again in touring productions, and it was made into a movie over twenty years ago, but it's still worth seeing, either again or for the first time. It's still fresh.

Be on the lookout for news of next season's lineup of musicals at the Eisemann Center in Richardson. It's not Broadway, but it's not bad. It's a shame not to take advantage of this local resource.

Language is never about language

"About 158 nations have included a specific measure in their constitutions promulgating one or more national languages, according to a survey by Eduardo Faingold, a professor at the University of Tulsa."

-- The Dallas Morning News, May 21, 2006