Rocket Ship Fails to Achieve Liftoff

Source: City of Richardson.

This week marked the fiftieth anniversary of the orbital flight of John Glenn. Fittingly, the City of Richardson unveiled "Rocket Gateway," the sculpture design concept selected for the redeveloped Heights Park Recreation Center and Aquatics Center (the latter is what we used to call a swimming pool, but in a nod to John Glenn, maybe we ought to call this one a splashdown target zone). A lot of attention was paid to reusing the old playground equipment, especially the rocket ship climbing structure removed when the playground was redeveloped a few years ago.

After the jump, a high-brow art critic's opinion (of course, by high-brow art critic, I mean low-brow and me).

Where Is Everybody?

Yesterday, I praised the improved transparency and usability of government databases. Today, I use an excellent example, courtesy of Washington and New York. It's US Census data and a user interface provided by The New York Times.

After the jump, does your Richardson neighborhood feel less crowded than it did ten years ago?

Transparency and Usability

There are more government databases becoming available to the public. This improved transparency is good. The usability of that data is improving as well. This is also good.

After the jump, an example from Richardson, and a wish for more.

The Recovery

Jeffrey Frankel, Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard University, suggests that, listening to the political discourse in this election year, whether Republican, Democratic, or middle-ground observers, a listener would be led to believe that economic statistics show no discernible improvement in the economy over the last three years. He offers three graphs that dispute that. He says you can argue about the causes behind the positive trend, but you can't argue with the data itself. He suggests the reason for the misunderstanding is that data now show "the US economy to have been in far worse shape in January 2009 than was reported at the time."





After the jump, the other two graphs.

Repeat Tweets: Caucuses, Bowls, and Other Games

Repeat tweets from January, 2012:

• 2012 01 04 - Local Tea Party blogger headline: "Bitter-Sweet Ohio Caucuses." I'd add geographically-challenged, too.
  
• 2012 01 05 - The NFL's loss is Wisconsin's gain. (To be safe, better take out an injury insurance policy.) https://t.co/5QCPasMh
  
• 2012 01 06 - Headline: "Payrolls up 200,000 in December -- 50k above expectations. Unemployment down to 8.5 percent." GOP blames Obama.
  
• 2012 01 07 - Wisconsin's JJ Watt picks off TCU's Andy Dalton, returns it for TD. A tiny measure of revenge for 2011 Rose Bowl loss. https://t.co/9ph8J7rz
  
• 2012 01 09 - My tweak to the BCS format: four team playoff of highest-ranked conference champions. https://t.co/nVWSONyx
  
• 2012 01 10 - Headline: "Engibous replacing Ullman as Penney's chairman." What's a retired semiconductor exec know about retail? http://t.co/RkLLBS1S
  
• 2012 01 12 - Burka has finally gone off the deep end. This is conspiracy thinking gone mad. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck territory. https://t.co/JnayWLy5
  
• 2012 01 12 - Film Socialisme (2010): Weirdest movie you'll ever see. Pretentious crap. Still, liked the llama in gas station. D- https://t.co/XnxHXigt
  
• 2012 01 13 - Craig James, candidate for US Senate from Texas: "I don’t trust anyone who has been a politician." There's a paradox in there somewhere.
  
• 2012 01 13 - High school basketball: Berkner 64, Richardson 50. It's a great time to be a Ram.
  

After the jump, more repeat tweets.