Articles for December 19th, 2012
Skip the boring lede on this Edmonton Sun story:
This affluent community of 260,000 people, often picked as one of t
he best places to live in America, is also one of the most popular homes to corporate America.
Driving along its flat and featureless terrain (“Plano” is Spanish for flat) among its twisting overpasses, you’ll see the corporate headquarters of companies like Dell and Hewlett-Packard, Dr. Pepper-Snapple and Pizza Hut, CA Technologies and Ericsson. The city is thus responsible for producing a wide variety of some of the most popular consumer products in America.
Laptops.
Smart phones.
Pizza.
And jump right to the meat:
This suburb in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex could very well be home to the top pick in the 2013 NHL draft, giving Plano two first-round picks in the last three years.
That’s potentially two more than, say, Montreal has produced in that time.
Defenceman Seth Jones, the son of former NBA power forward Popeye Jones and Red Line scouting report’s projected No. 1 next summer, spent time growing up here when his dad was playing for the Mavericks. Stefan Noesen, the Plymouth Whalers forward who was picked 21st overall in the 2011 draft by the Ottawa Senators, is a Plano native and played here until he moved north at 14.
Everyone went nuts when they saw Josh Brent on the Cowboys sideline in the game against the Steelers. CBS Sports columnist order viagra online
blank”>Gregg Doyel wasn’t one of them. Yesterday he wrote:
Look, few people in this world — Jerry Brown’s parents, but maybe nobody else — lost as much as Josh Brent lost on Dec. 8. He lost his best friend. He killed his best friend. He lost his dream career. He lost his freedom, most likely, after the courts are through with him. He lost his reputation. He lost damn near everything that night, and now we’re going to complain because he’s standing on the sideline a week later with his friends and teammates?
He has a point. The reason people got upset, I think, is because they want to see someone who has done bad things suffer. They certainly don’t want to see him standing on a field at an NFL game, which sounds like a lot of fun. But for Josh Brent, standing on that sideline couldn’t be much fun. Every player he saw surely reminded him of the best friend he killed. And every play he saw surely reminded him of the career he has lost. If the players and Brown’s family want him there, then there’s nothing wrong with Josh Brent watching a football game. Just keep the cameras off him till he’s sentenced, and we can all go about our business.
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After the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, Mike Huckabee and many other “Christians” said the massacre was due – partly, at least – to the fact that “sale viagra
-from-our-schools” target=”_blank”>we’ve systematically removed God from our schools.” That didn’t sit well with Kimberly Burkett. She took to the Educate For Texas blog and unleashed:
If you visited a neighborhood elementary school like Sandy Hook, or any public school for that matter, you would see that God’s presence and the teachings of Jesus Christ are well represented by the works of the people in those buildings. Now perhaps His presence isn’t seen in the way you want — there aren’t readings from the Bible (or any other religious texts for that matter) and the Ten Commandments aren’t posted in classrooms (nor are the Pillars of Islam, actually), but His presence and teachings are instead practiced, demonstrated, and felt. You see, Mr. Huckabee, if you visited the schools you quickly denounce for removing your symbols of God, you’d find that His work actually takes places there every day.
Burkett’s husband is a principal in Grand Prairie ISD, so she presumably has some good info on this one. She concludes:
Mr. Huckabee, why are you and other sanctimonious detractors more concerned that educators don’t lead children in prayer instead of sharing concern for the many challenges that schools and impoverished children face daily? Why are you saddened that children aren’t taught Biblical parables instead of uplifted by the miracles that occur in schools every day? If you don’t see God in the efforts and works of schools and educators, I’m afraid you’re not really looking.
You see, Mr. Huckabee, schools don’t need to preach the Gospel or read the Bible every day to bring God into the classroom. He never left.
Mic: dropped. The post has nearly 400 comments.
Dexter Josh Freeman II proposed to Tracey Akacomplished Eboigbe on Nov. 3. Source: Klyde Warren Park’s Facebook page
That’s according to KWP’s Facebook page. No word on how many rejections there have been, though the park claims “a 100 percent success rate.”
I guess the location is better than the alternative: a romantic engagement on Woodall Rodgers.
ent/uploads/2012/12/drunksanta.jpg” alt=”" width=”635″ height=”350″ /> Photo: Leah Gregg
We’ve seen a bunch of news organizations, locally and nationally, putting together their annual Christmas playlists recently. They were great! Bing Crosby, Wham!, more stuff you’ve likely wanted to off yourselves to while counting down the hours til you can leave Aunt Sally’s.
So Peter, Zac, Mosley, and I put our sad, Christmas-hating heads together and came up with a new playlist, one that will hopefully make you want to punch through a gingerbread house. Or at least make you drink enough so “A Britney Spears Christmas” doesn’t make you burn down Aunt Sally’s split-level ranch.
The whole Spotify playlist is embedded over on FrontRow. Hint: Black Flag, Tom Waits, the Flaming Lips, and Dipset.
uploads/2012/12/SantaDash.jpg” alt=”" width=”262″ height=”298″ /> Running buddy.
We’ve all been going nuts with our year-end lists, but Peter just knocked out his 25 best films of the year. Of the movies I’ve also seen, I’m on board with these picks, especially Take This Waltz, Bernie, and The Deep Blue Sea. Check that out if you’re looking for films to catch up on over your break. Which is coming soon. Just hold on.
For fans of jingle bells and exercise, the annual Jingle Bell Run should prove a pretty good time. The festivities kick off and wind down at the Hilton Anatole, where there will be food, drinks, and live music from the Ray Johnston Band. You can still register in person for either the one mile fun run/walk or the a more competitive 5K, just as long as you bring cash or check. Friendly four-legged friends are welcome to join, too, and proceeds benefit the Dallas Mavericks Foundation and the Trinity Strand Trail. Just down the road, the Meddlesome Moth has plans to tap Rahr’s bourbon barrel aged Winter Warmer this evening, so I’d drop by for that afterward.
Meanwhile, the Dallas Wind Symphony has invited a jolly man in a red suit to join them at their all-ages holiday concert tonight at the Meyerson. They’re celebrating the release of their Christmas album, which of course includes a mix of class and contemporary songs such as “Deck the Halls,” “Silent Night,” and “Christmas Time Is Here.”
For more to do tonight, go here.
Brothers/twins/political two-headed dragon Joaquin and Julian Castro sat down on Charlie Rose Monday night, to talk about gun control, immigration, and the Hispanic vote. It’s only 20 minutes long, The Super Mind Evolution System
2699″ target=”_blank”>so throw it on your headphones.
At the tail-end of the interview, Rose asked San Antonio Mayor Julian about the shifting political landscape of Texas. He gave three reasons:
- demographic changes (65 percent of growth in Texas has been Hispanics, he asserted)
- the economy (driving Dems from California, Nevada, and other states to Texas for work)
- this nugget: “The Republicans have just gone off the rails, and are losing the business community little by little”
He went on to say state Republicans have become more concerned with “ideology than pragmatism.”
” target=”_blank”>Quickish has piled onto the Mike Mooney praise orgy. They, too, think Mike’s story about the bowler is one of the best sports stories written in 2012. One imagines it is only a matter of time before his droppings are no longer malodorous.
tp://frontburner.dmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/george-bush-ford-f150-300×179.jpeg” alt=”" width=”300″ height=”179″ /> George, strikin’ a pose. Source: Barrett-Jackson, “the World’s Greatest Collector Car Auctions”
A pickup former President George W. Bush used on his Crawford ranch will be auctioned off to benefit Fisher House Foundation, a program dedicated to assisting U.S. military families.
Let’s go straight to the announcement:
“President Bush has used this stunning white F-150 at his Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas, since shortly after he left the White House in 2009. With a 5.4-Liter V8 engine commanding 310 horsepower, this impressive truck has a luxurious adobe King Ranch premium leather interior and 11,200lbs towing capacity. President Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush have since used the truck to work around their ranch; entertain friends, family, and dignitaries and to give tours of their Crawford property.”
The most interesting thing to me: he used the truck to “entertain friends.” Donuts, presumably, or maybe some sort of demolition derby. Also, why’d he stop at the 150 model? Seems like a man who’d at least go F250, with all that ranching.
The auction is January 19, in Scottsdale, Ariz. Get more info and tickets (tickets?) here.
Yesterday, news spread that Dallas state Rep. Jason Villalba would file a bill
allowing school officials to carry concealed weapons on school grounds, thus obviously stopping every school shooter in his tracks. First off, that already exists, said the Star-Telegram‘s Bud Kennedy:
Even as lawmakers in Austin race to file bills giving teachers the freedom to carry guns, some already do in one Northwest Texas school and maybe more. Texas law not only allows schools to hire police and plainclothes officers, but also says anyone can carry with officials’ OK.
“We have all the laws we need,” said Mansfield school district Police Chief Mike Leyman, vice president of a statewide association for campus police.
But he also said chiefs aren’t thrilled at the idea.
“If a teacher had a gun and a bad guy has a gun, it’s tough for us to tell who’s the good guy,” he said.
Before Kennedy flipped the script on everyone (as he often does), Republicans statewide jumped on the issue.
(more…)
The Roof. The Roof. The Roof Was on Fire. More specifically, the roof at the Pla
za of the Americas
was on fire last night. Twenty fire trucks and 60 firefighters showed up to put it out.
Tex Is Back. It’s not every day you get to see a great big head be adorned with a Santa Claus hat. And it’s not every day that you get to pepper your article with a poem. But today is a special day: meet Tex-a Claus.
HP Teen Is a Grinch. Kace Cole took a couple of machetes and used them to cut off the heads of lawn ornaments and then hid the machetes on Highland Park High School’s campus. He was caught when the machetes were found and the police waited to see who would return for them.
