Frontier counties

The 2000 census found more "frontier counties" - that is, counties with six or fewer people per square mile - in Kansas now than in 1890.

Dallas Morning News, May 8, 2007

Black gold

"Even with high oil prices, Saudi Arabia's annual per capita income, at $14,000, is only about half that of oil-free Israel."

Edward Luttwak (Prospect, May, 2007)

Talk is cheap

Sending data on the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable cost $10 a word -- in 1866.

Wired, February, 2007

Harper's Index

83: Annual budget of Miami's police department, expressed as a percentage of the production cost of the film Miami Vice.

Harper's Magazine (as reported in Fort Worth Star-Telegram, January 7, 2007)

Merry TubaChristmas

Dallas celebrated its twenty-ninth annual Tuba Christmas at noon Friday in Thanksgiving Square. And we were there!

One hundred eighty seven tubas and euphoniums participated, with hundreds and hundreds more spectators crowding the small park in downtown Dallas. The weather was glorious, with a clear blue sky, bright sun peeking around and between the skyscrapers, and temperatures just chilly enough to make the hot cocoa welcome.

John, with borrowed tuba, was in the front row with his friend Chris. John missed the last two Tuba Christmases while traveling to Northwestern University in Chicago and family Christmas celebrations in Wisconsin.