OTBR: Prairie Dog in Boulder

Latitude: N 40° 02.328
Longitude: W 105° 14.298

A child on a road trip with his family asks, "Where are we?" and the father answers, "Let's check the map. We're off the blue roads [the Interstate Highways marked in blue on the road atlas]. We're off the red roads [the US and state highways]. We're off the black roads [the county highways]. I think we're off the map altogether." It was always my dream to be off the map altogether.

After the jump, a few of the random places (and I mean random literally) that I visited vicariously (not actually) last month that are "off the blue roads".

Single Member Districts are not the Way to Diversity

Single member districts are not the way to diversity. Maybe elsewhere, with different geography and demographics, but not in the Richardson ISD, anyway. Carol Toler of the Lake Highlands Advocate has been asking RISD trustees (current and former) about RISD adopting single member districts. Toler first raised the issue in an interview with new RISD board president Justin Bono. Bono responded reasonably in my opinion:

I don’t know that single member districts would accomplish what proponents want or make a board more effective, just given how our district is laid out. Our board would welcome a more diverse pool of candidates and colleagues, and we’re focused on getting more diversity on strategic planning committees, diversity of backgrounds and geography as well, so that there is a greater pool of potential board candidates. Ultimately, it has to be the right time for any candidate to step into board service.

Source: Lake Highlands Advocate.

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).