In late 2010, the social gaming company Zynga was on a buying spree. Riding high on the success of FarmVille, the San Francisco-based startup was snatching up smaller rivals across the country, including Dallas’ Bonfire Studios some three months after the firm released the not-at-all derivative We Farm. But there’s…
A couple of weeks ago, delegates from the Irving-based Boy Scouts of America voted to lift their ban on openly gay Scouts, though openly gay adult staff members are still barred. When that vote happened, demons flooded the earth, Sodom and Gomorrah were re-animated, and we all plummeted into a…
The workers bearing the disproportionate brunt of the recession are young, underemployed or unemployed and struggling to gain a foothold at a critical stage in life. In Texas, the overall unemployment rate is 6.8 percent. The number of unemployed, aged 16 to 24, is more than double that, a report…
There are some differences between the crisis Steve Abraira has been facing in recent weeks as Boston’s fire chief and the one he faced eight years ago in Dallas. Here, he was popular with the rank-and-file, a familiar presence at even minor blazes, but he was politically maladroit. There, his…
Not long ago, there was some discussion of whether Anson Chi, at that point the otherwise undistinguished author of a remarkably terrible novel (Yellow on the Outside Shame on the Inside: Asian Culture Revealed) really merited his own Wikipedia page. But then, in June 2012, he tried to blow up…
@princessology @ms_meepsheep THERE ARE NO BRAKES ON THE GROPE TRAIN #gropecrew5ever— Mærty Townsend (@kingtytan) May 31, 2013 This weekend, thousands of anime aficionados, a large percentage of them in remarkably elaborate costume, descended on the Hilton Anatole for A-Kon 24. It was, as always, a lighthearted celebration of geekdom –…
Forgive me if I see not just some irony but a couple red flags in the new right-wing support for a federal shield law for reporters. Oh, now that it’s a way to defend Fox News and get back at Obama, well, sure, we need a shield law. Count me…
The trustees of 92-year-old Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church in South Dallas realized they’d made a mistake almost as soon as they’d hired Calvin Wayne Thomas to tend their flock. His first sin was a minor one, coming during an early meeting to discuss church business that Thomas presided over…
It may have been just a random prank: two dozen paintballs fired behind the Sonic in a McKinney strip center in the middle of Saturday night. The same could be said of the man whose car was hit while he drove away. But the Council on American-Islamic Relations has another…
Anthony Duane Horne, 25, an HIV-positive man, was charged with aggravated assault for spitting on two Dallas police officers, The Dallas Morning News and Dallas Voice reported yesterday. According to police, when a Dallas County Hospital employee tried to put a spit mask on Horne, who was being booked for…
Cathie Adams, the president of the Texas Eagle Forum who briefly chaired the state’s Republican Party, made her thesis clear early in a recent presentation to the Far North Dallas Tea Party with a quote from author Paul Sperry. America is fighting a perfect enemy, one protected by religious freedoms…
It’s not easy being gay in El Salvador, which, in addition to being the second most violent place on earth, is not particularly hospitable to LGBT citizens. A 2010 report presented to the United Nations by several human rights groups described a number of grisly murders. In one case, the…
Barrett Brown’s had a rough few months, each one a little worse than the last. In September, he was raided, arrested and ultimately charged with threatening an FBI agent on YouTube and Twitter. In December the feds threw some more charges at him, this time for sharing a link related…
Every year, the American College of Sports Medicine ranks the 50 largest U.S. cities by fitness levels, and every year we are disappointed, if not particularly surprised, to learn that Dallas ranks near the bottom. There are a number of reasons why ACSM deems Dallas is unfit. We do poorly…
After this month’s city elections, we repeated a quote that District 14 candidate Bobby Abtahi gave to the Morning News alluding to Philip Kingston, his opponent in next month’s runoff, as “someone who sues their neighbors.” Kingston wasn’t pleased. He called shortly after to offer a barbed response, calling Abtahi…
Tesla’s bid to sell cars directly to Texas consumers, thus bypassing the state’s deep-pocketed car dealers, came up short this legislative session. But that’s not stopping the electric car company from edging its way into the Texas automotive market. Tesla announced Thursday that it’s tripling the number of Tesla Supercharger…
Landowners along the nearly 500-mile southern section of the Keystone XL pipeline say contractors have been excavating long-buried lengths of pipe to repair apparent defects. They’ve documented stakes jutting from turned-up dirt near the pipeline right-of-way through East Texas that read, “anomaly,” “dent” and “weld.” They’ve seen sections of excavated…
There are any number of ways to get out of an unhappy marriage. Divorce is the obvious option, but there are others. If your wife happens to be, say, Malaysian, you can frame her for a crime and get her deported. Hiring a hit man is also an option, although…
The news broke, as tends to happen in these cases, on Twitter. Omfg that just shows you Irving teachers don’t pay any attention to not review that they changed a girl’s name to UGLY HOE— Haleigh ❁ (@sleepyhaleigh) May 29, 2013 And sure enough, thumb through Irving High School’s brand-new…
A gas station surveillance camera captured a Trinity Railway Express train slamming into a pickup in Irving on Thursday and killing the 79-year-old driver. The crash happened just after 1 p.m. at the intersection of Rock Island Road and Irby Lane. “Early accounts are that driver was trying to beat…
Christine Sexton’s family made several calls to the River Oaks Jail on February 6. They’d paid a bondsman to bail her out as soon as she was transferred to the Tarrant County jail on a forgery charge she’d been picked up for four days earlier. They say a River Oaks…
Jimmy and Sandy Martin live in a 4,000-square-foot McMansion off Inwood Road in Bluffview. Architecturally, it’s completely unremarkable. The home they recently built in Central Texas, on the other hand, is much more interesting: It’s a 75,000-pound treehouse. The structure, perched on an isolated clump of trees on their ranch…
