Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Restaurant Ratings - The Good and the Bad

I've long urged the City of Richardson to improve the usability of the work done by its Health Department in inspecting restaurants. They can get back in the kitchen. The public usually can't.

Things I'd like to see:
  • The health department rating displayed in each restaurant's front window. To its credit, the city has worked with Yelp to display a city health department rating for each restaurant along with other info such as address, map, and contact info. Kudos for this, but I'd like to see the rating when I walk in the door.
  • Inspection ratings incorporated in all promotional material the city provides for restaurants (e.g., its "Dine Smart, Dine Local" advertising)
  • A better presentation of the health inspection ratings on the city's own website
Recently, the city made some efforts on the third item. I took a look.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Battle of the Sexes (2017)

IMDB
Battle of the Sexes (2017): Feminist icon for more than a tennis match. My admiration grows seeing the back story. #EqualPay #Equality A-











Monday, October 2, 2017

Repeat Tweets: San Francisco Hits 104°

Repeat tweets from September, 2017:

  • Sep 1 2017: "San Francisco hits 104°, breaking the city's all-time heat record, NWS says."
    Just throwing this out there, but maybe we ought to again consider the possibility that burning fossil fuels is changing the climate.
  • Sep 1 2017: RT @WalkableDFW: "car dependence makes our regional economy incredibly fragile."
    So does corn, the power grid, and our supply chains for just about everything. We are one disaster away from, well, disaster.
  • Sep 1 2017: RT @WalkableDFW: "which is why localized food and power production is mission critical."
    Choices. Localized food brings its own costs. 200 years of reducing cost thru comparative advantage and the globe is in precarious balance.
  • Sep 1 2017: Infinite Jest: 20-yr-old classic that takes 20 years to read. Great book...for literature majors. I'm too hard; there are hidden gems. C-

After the jump, more repeat tweets.

Friday, September 29, 2017

POTD: An Angel in Hell

From 2017 01 29 Caribbean Cruise
Today's photo-of-the-day is from the Devils Hangout Gift Shop in Hell, Cayman Islands. The name comes from cooled lava flows visible from the parking lot of the gift shop that must have reminded some early tourism promoter of burnt-out hellfire. That's an angel posing in front of the gift shop. Awww.

Bonus photo after the jump.

Thursday, September 28, 2017

A Hologram for the King (2016)

IMDB
Hologram for the King (2016): US IT salesman has midlife crisis in Saudi Arabia. Starts exotic, ends preposterous. No reason to care. C+

One of those rare movies based on a book (reviewed here) that matches it in quality — in this case, mediocre.