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More From the Museum of Nature & Science’s Groundbreaking

Glenn brought us some details yesterday from the groundbreaking. Ryan Jones from our web team was there, too, and offers more reportage after the jump:

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Perot Jr. Says New Museum Has Room to Expand

Does Ross Perot Jr. know something we don’t? Speaking at today’s groundbreaking for the new Museum of Nature & Science at Dallas’ struggling Victory Park, which he helped develop, Perot said, “Mr. Mayor! Where is the mayor?!” before pointing to City Councilmember Dwaine Caraway, sitting in the audience down front. Mayor Pro Tem Caraway (pictured at far left with Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Pauline Medrano and Perot) is not quite the mayor yet, but he’ll be well-positioned if Tom Leppert ever steps down to run for the Senate. Leppert, who’s in China, nonetheless made a video appearance at today’s bash for the museum, a $185 million project that got a jump-start when Ross Jr. and his siblings donated $50 million in honor of their parents, Margot and Ross Perot Sr. The 14-story edifice on 4.7 acres can’t hurt the Victory project, which has been attempting lately to attract a better tenant/demographic mix. And, Ross Jr. said, “What people don’t understand is there’s enough room here for the museum to double in size.”

Eolas Technologies Sues North Texas Companies For Infringement

Thanks to the Plano Star-Courier, I am now aware of last week’s news that Eolas Technologies sued a bunch of companies in federal court in Tyler for patent infringement. Among the companies being sued are Plano-based Perot Systems, Frito-Lay, and JCPenney. Texas Instruments is also among the defendants.

The suit centers on “technology that enables Web browsers to act as platforms for fully interactive embedded applications.” Looking around online for a simple explanation of what that means, I found a sketch in this article. The Star-Courier article, which is much too reliant on Eolas’ own press release, mentions that the company won a judgment of more than $500 million against Microsoft in an earlier patent case, but fails to mention that after appeals the case was settled, presumably for a smaller amount.

But there seems to be a vocal faction on the Web, among those who actually understand this technology, that claims Eolas didn’t really invent anything and is just a patent troll. I don’t know who’s right here. But I have been told that the Eastern District of Texas, which has a disconcertingly simple website itself, is the place to be for patent trolls.

A Red Balloon Over the Nasher

In the current episode of the “print product,” there appear two stories about an experiment we ran to determine whether the forthcoming Museum Tower might possibly interfere with the Nasher Sculpture Center’s wonderful installation Tending, (Blue). You can read Willard Spiegelman’s sober, insightful account of our caper here. Me, I just write jokes. Anyway, I’d forgotten till now that I’d taken this picture. In the final scene of my story, when the DSO’s PR director, Stacie Adams, catches me standing in their backyard, here’s what I was doing:

Ross Perot Jr. on the Dell-Perot Systems Deal

In an interview tonight with KRLD’s David Johnson, Perot Systems chairman Ross Perot Jr. calls today’s announced merger of  Perot Systems and Dell Inc. an “historic marriage” between two Texas business titans–his father Ross Sr. and Michael Dell.

Fred Baron Is Still Part of the John Edwards Story

An alert FBvian points us to a New York Times story that ran over the weekend about John Edwards and his love child. In it, Fred Baron’s role in the attempted cover-up becomes a little more clear. As in, apparently at one point, Edwards asked Baron if he knew a doctor who would falsify a DNA report. Before his death, Baron had said that he’d provided assistance to Edwards’ lover without Edwards’ knowledge. A federal grand jury is still investigating whether campaign laws were violated in an attempt to conceal the whole sordid business.

JCPenney Most Innovative Company in North Texas

JCPenney apparently has the most innovative business technology in North Texas, as it’s the highest ranking  local company on this year’s Information Week 500. The Plano-based retailer finishes No. 6 and was the category winner for Supply Chain and industry winner for Retail at the star-studded awards gala last night:

JCPenney`s Door to Floor technology was cited by InformationWeek as one of the
“20 Great Ideas.” The technology enables store management to know what
merchandise will be delivered up to 48 hours in advance, allowing for optimal
planning and preparation for getting merchandise off the truck and onto the
sales floor.

That’s some outstanding work to ensure that your mom can get you dressed in style.

Wick Debates an Engineer on Think

I haven’t yet had time to watch all of Wick’s appearance on Think, whereon he debates Geoffrey C. Orsak, dean of SMU’s Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering about whether engineers are evil or good (slight overstatement). So let’s open the comments for those who are inclined to watch the video and tell us what we ought to think of it. (See what I did there?)

Why Did EPA Allow Speed Limit Increase?

A FrontBurnervian raised the question to me about the Tollway going to 70 mph, and, frankly, I had forgotten that in 2000 the EPA had forced the NTTA to lower the speed limit by 5 miles to 60 mph. As best as I can tell from this report, the guys on the Tollway Authority seemed to have worked really hard to find other ways to meet emissions requirements, and the new electronic technology with the tollway entrances helped. (Reading the report, however, reminded me of the almost inhuman patience required to work with or for the government in any of its forms.)

Morning News Launches IPhone App, Ctd.

A. H. Belo-involved people are having a lot of fun with this one:

Go to search for Dallas Morning News (either on your iphone or in iTunes) and look for their app.

Oops. Not there. What does come up is “Dallas Football Live” and two sites called “Dallas Local News,” followed by five generic sites. The News is available on “Dallas Local News” and so is D Magazine — without our permission (hello, lawyers). So then I searched under Dallas, and “Dallas News” came up sixth. So to find the Morning News I need to search under Dallas News. Another one:

If you go search for Austin American Statesman, you’ll get the Statesman’s app, which is produced by… the Statesman. The WSJ is by Dow Jones and Co., the NYT is by NYT Co., etc.

When you find Dallas, it’s by Imaginuity New Media. Click through and you see your news app is coming from the folks who brought you “Rocky Artue” which is a game that follows Rocky as he learns that, “the U.S. government had abducted his father and hidden him away in the bottom of a mine to keep him from sharing too much knowledge about the Roswell crash and his work.”  Which, of course, is what we’d all expect from Texas’ Leading Newspaper. <Insert clap to the forehead here>

Morning News Launches IPhone App

They may be a year behind Pegasus News, but at least they are up. We …er…we are waiting for the market to, um,  mature.

Let’s Try a Fun Experiment With QR Code!

I was just reading about how QR codes are big in Japan and will soon be everywhere in the good ol’ U.S. of A. Basically, this stuff is the CueCat — only it works. So I got to wondering how many people in Dallas are down with this technology. And that led to this experiment. Below is a QR code I’ve generated. It contains a secret message. First person to read the code and put the message in the comments section gets a gold star for the day. Let’s do this!

Why Can’t the City of Dallas Use Gmail?, Ctd.

A small-business-owning FBvian says we’re on to something:

Keep pushing about the city of Dallas switching to gmail. It’s a great idea that could save the city a lot of money and improve their email reliability and search ability. My company (albeit much smaller than the City of Dallas) switched to Google’s enterprise edition about a year ago — one of the smartest business decisions I’ve made. At full price, Google charges just $50 per employee, and they handle everything to do with email, as well as provide a number of word-processing and other functions in the “cloud.” With 13,000 employees, the City could strike a deal.

Even if the city of Dallas never used the apps and only used the email services, they would be able to completely get themselves out of the business of managing, storing and maintaining (and repairing) their email for just $650,000 a year. Ultimately, they could rid themselves of their email servers all together (and the manpower required to keep them running) and get virtually unlimited storage space — and powerful search functions to aid with informational requests.

Why Can’t the City of Dallas Use Gmail?

Last month, we got into a discussion here about whether the city of Dallas could essentially use Gmail. The question came up because the city decided it would start deleting e-mails that were older than 90 days, and that raised concerns about maintaining open records. Well, an FBvian who remembers that discussion points us to this LA Times story about the city possibly going with Google. It would be a 5-year deal worth $7.25 million. Google would store all their e-mail. Washington, D.C., already does. So I ask again: is it time for Dallas to get onboard with “cloud computing”?

Dallas Dogged in Wall Street Journal by “Water Hog” Label

I’m reading this story about how North Texas needs more water. About how we’ve got about 6 million residents right now, but come 2060, we’ll have more than 13 million. About how we’re looking around to dam up some rivers to accommodate all those new residents (and their lawns). About how the people on those rivers don’t particularly cotton to our scheming. And I’m thinking: gee, this sounds familiar.

Here’s looking at you, Rod Davis.

Wick Thinks Twitter Will Be Dead in Two Years. Does Oprah Agree?

I’m so confused. The D staffers continue to build our personal brands in the new social medium (follow me! @EricCeleste), even though Wick says every tweet costs him 2 cents in wasted salary. That’s because social media sites like Twitter are huge, and getting bigger, right? You can’t write about the new-media world without experiencing it, right? But now that Oprah has stopped tweeting … I dunno. Maybe Wick’s right. I’ll ask my tweeps what they think.

T. Boone Pickens Says $10 Billion Wind Farm Delayed, Not Canceled

Like everyone else, T. Boone Pickens is just doing some precautionary hat holding. But the giant wind farm project in the Texas Panhandle, called Pampa, is still on the books, despite reports in the Dallas Morning News and Associated Press. Just look for it to happen more like 2013. Weird thing is, that’s when I plan to unveil my wind farm. Mine has an infinitely cooler name: PROJECT CYCLONE. Yes, in all caps.

Chantix, Zyban Get Suicide Warnings From the FDA

Sadly, it took Carter Albrecht’s death to help make it happen.

European officials first alerted the F.D.A. in 2007 to problems associated with Chantix. In September of that year, Carter Albrecht, a keyboard player from the pop-music group Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians, was killed by a neighbor who complained that Mr. Albrecht was banging on his door, ranting. Mr. Albrecht’s girlfriend blamed Chantix, which she said had made him hostile.

The widely publicized event led to a cascade of similar reports and close scrutiny by F.D.A. safety officials, who have now received 98 reports of completed suicides and 188 reports of attempted suicides among those taking Chantix.

They found similar numbers with Zyban (which, I know from experience, seriously screws with your mind).

Southwest Foodservice Expo: Report From Day One

Yesterday, the Southwest Foodservice Expo opened for a three-day run at the Dallas Convention Center. I spent most of the day wandering the halls with InsideCorner’s Evan Grant. We bumped into this dude. He begged me to put him on the cover of D Magazine. Why? “Because I’m only 25 and already a marketing director,” said Robert E. Drenner, the marketing director of a company that sells giant mixers. Here you go Robert, this is as close as you’re going to get. Details and pictures, including one of Herschel Walker, from yesterday over on SideDish. Comments are complimentary.

American Airlines Center Trying to Keep Up With the Joneses

Courtesy of Mark Cuban’s Twitter feed comes news of the American Airlines Center getting an A/V makeover this summer, resulting in the first and only HD video scoreboards in the NBA or NHL. Rather than clumsily reword it, here are the relevant deets:

During the Summer months of 2009, American Airlines Center is tripling the size of its scoreboards with new video boards capable of showing the live action in stunning high-definition. A total of six video scoreboards will be installed offering a mammoth 5,616 square feet of digital HD 1080 sights. Four 18’ X 30’ video scoreboards will be installed in the arena’s center display and two 24’ X 72’ video walls will be located in the North and South ends of the arena.

The AAC is also getting a fancy new speaker system. And contrary to what the headline says, this upgrade is happening because of the 2010 All-Star Weekend festivities. As far as you know.

Oncor Makes My Head Hurt With Technical Stuff About Electricity

Someone deep inside Oncor this morning sent me a link to the company’s Flickr site, whereon is pictured something called a static VAr compensator (or SVC) recently put into service. Oncor will have the largest concentration of these SVCs once a second array is installed in Plano later this year. So what the heck are they, exactly? Well, it’s a bank of individually switched capacitors in conjunction with a thyristor-controlled air- or iron-core reactor. By means of phase angle modulation switched by the thyristors, the reactor may be variably switched into the circuit, thus providing a continuously variable MVAr injection (or absorption) to the electrical network. Or so says Wikipedia.

My translation: in the summer, we use a lot of electricity. Except when we don’t. That fluctuation causes a big stress to Oncor’s delivery systems. These new widgets keep that stress to a minimum — and keep our air conditioners blowing.

Now can we get back to talking about The Bachelorette?

Science Behind Angels & Demons, Ctd.

Nerd fight!

Just got this missive from Margaret at SMU’s public affairs office. Don’t you think for a minute they’re going to let UTD have the last word on just how ridiculous Angels & Demons‘ take is on antimatter.

I enjoyed your post today on Frontburner about the accuracy of the science in the new Ron Howard movie Angels & Demons. We asked one of our physics professors, Fredrick Olness, to comment on the movie’s science, and here’s what he had to say:

* While it’s true that the particle physics laboratory CERN has created antimatter, it would take more than a billion years (with current technology) to make the quantity of antimatter described in the movie. If you collected all the antimatter that CERN has ever created, it would only power an electric light bulb for a few minutes.

* It’s true that when antimatter and matter meet, they annihilate into pure energy; however, antimatter is not a source of energy. The production of antimatter is very inefficient, so it takes much more energy to create the antimatter than you get back.

* It is also true that we are able to store antimatter, but scientists don’t actually keep antimatter on the lab shelf. Even small quantities of antimatter are difficult to store. Charged antimatter can be stored in a “magnetic bottle,” but the repulsive force of the antimatter charges greatly limits the quantity. Uncharged (neutral) antimatter cannot be contained by a “magnetic bottle.”

Sweet. Feel smart. But here’s a question: Can you mix matter and antimatter cold? Cue it at 38:35.

UT Dallas Scientician Says Science Behind Angels & Demons May Suck

I’m struggling with our new directive to write more straightforward headlines. Is this one clear enough? Is it too simplified? Probably. But that’s okay, because folks like UT Dallas’ Joe Izen (physics prof) are using the movie’s plot (it’s about anti-matter and such) as reason to hold public lectures and counter the bad science in the film. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a story about it featuring Izen (subscription only), who gave a lecture last week attended by about 150 people. These sessions are designed to, among other things, allay fears about black holes swallowing the Earth. Which is absurd. We all know, as proven at 1:43 of this video, that black holes are for time travel. (H/T: Meredith at UTD.)

Dallas Firm Launches iPhone Reverse-Lookup App

If you’re a snooper — and who doesn’t like to snoop? — reverse-lookup technology is a handy tool to have. A Dallas firm called Accudata Technologies has just launched an iPhone app that makes reverse lookup simple. Just enter a mobile and land-based phone number, and it’ll tell you to whom it belongs (full release after the jump). Only downside is the cost: the iPrivus app costs $45.

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Re: TI’s IT Department Needs Troubleshooting

Last week I posted about problems in Texas Instruments’ IT department and linked to the DBJ’s story reporting 12 percent of TI’s workforce—about 3,400 employees—were to be cut in January.  An FBer sends his two cents:

As one of those cut, I was curious if you were aware that number was inaccurate or that at least it only accounts for direct employees?  I know that nearly all, something like 99% of all contractors, were let go on 1/23.  More than half of my IT support group was cut, from 9 to 4.  We were told before we were let go that the total number was to be 30%.  My estimate was that the count as of the 1st week or so of February would have been about 7000 people, not the 3,400 listed above.