POTD: Hanoi Tube Houses

From 2015 03 28 Hanoi

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Hanoi. It shows typical houses in central Hanoi, called tube houses. The explanation is that street frontage is expensive, encouraging homeowners to build deep rather than wide, tall rather than sprawl.

Review: Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh

Amazon

From Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh, by Mo Yan

Eggs were such a rare treat that the old women had to show us how to peel them first. Clumsily we peeled away the shells, only to find feathery little chicks inside. They chirped when we bit into them, and they bled. When we stopped eating, the old women took switches to us and demanded that we keep eating. We did."

Yikes! Reading these short stories, the reader quickly realizes that we're not in Kansas anymore. We're in China at the hands of one of China's most acclaimed authors, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Mo Yan.

After the jump, my review.

POTD: Ethnology

From 2015 03 28 Hanoi

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Hanoi. It shows a treasure I found in the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology.

A Strong Mayor for Richardson

Jim Schutze of the Dallas Observer thinks he knows why the City of Dallas can't get big things done. It's the weak mayor.

By tightly husbanding control of the city in the office of city manager -- a person hired, not elected -- the city fathers here have maintained their own access while effectively shutting off access for the larger electorate. It's not that voters can't ever get anything done, but they can only get little things done, on the scale of new stop signs and storm sewer repairs.

To get big things done, like a grand public vision for the river, we would have to have what Houston has -- a strong mayor system. To accomplish a great dream, a city needs someone at the helm who can steer a course but who also can be kicked off the ship if he steers a course the public doesn't want.

Source: Dallas Observer.

Given that Richardson's council-manager form of government (a.k.a. weak mayor) is similar to that in Dallas (originally, our city charter was based on Dallas's of the time), and given that Richardson voters are about to decide whether to amend our city charter, it's probably worth a moment of our time to think about Schutze's thesis.

Leviathan (2014)

IMDB

Leviathan (2014): Things are not good in Russia. Petty corruption, family dysfunction & of course vodka. Book of Job on the Barents Sea. B+