Ryszard Stroynowski sat bathed in the pale glow of his laptop screen. At 2 in the morning of Independence Day, as the final, fugitive firecracker reports of the night crackled across a sleeping Dallas, the 65-year-old physicist was wide awake. As he watched the live broadcast in his pajamas, his…
Bad things began to happen to Terrence Hill around this time last year. His troubles began when he went to move into a new apartment but was instead given a totally different unit, one with broken air conditioning. His bad week, he says, escalated from there. By 7:30 a.m. on…
University of Texas prof Chip Groat’s ties to the natural gas industry raised a few eyebrows last month after a report he served as lead researcher on gave the hydraulic fracturing process a clean bill of health. “New Study Shows No Evidence of Groundwater Contamination from Hydraulic Fracturing,” the accompanying…
It’s the middle of a summer morning at Eban Village Apartments, and a half-dozen or so teenagers are gathered in the old leasing office of the nondescript complex two blocks south of Fair Park. A couple of them tool around on a bicycle stand, a couple more idle in a…
There have been 111 documented human cases of the West Nile Virus in the city of Dallas this year, a full quarter of cases nationwide. The county declared a state of emergency a couple of days ago and, this morning, Mayor Mike Rawlings followed suit this morning. That puts the…
Last June, Angela Hunt and Scott Griggs went to the Trinity River Overlook and gazed down at the empty floodplain below. Wouldn’t it be nice, they thought, if there was a network of trails down there that came up and over the levee and connected with all of Dallas’ other…
Last month, Texas’ prison population was right at 154,000, the lowest its been in five years. Lower crime rates, an aging population, and alternative treatments have all contributed to the decline. But as the Star-Telegram noted yesterday, the drop hasn’t been enough to spare Texas the dubious distinction of locking…
Amidst a cluster of Ethiopian businesses near Greenville Avenue and 635 sits Desta, “one of a few restaurants in Dallas with the patience” to make their own injera, the classic Ethiopian spongy bread, as our food critic wrote last year. It’s a process that takes a lot of work, so…
When zebra mussels found their way to Lake Ray Roberts last month, or, more precisely, when wildlife officials found that they had found their way there, Dallas let out a collective “Oh, crap.” The invasive bivalves were easy to ignore when they were the plague of the Great Lakes and…
I was already asleep last night when — or maybe until — all the storms rolled in last night. Justin Terveen wasn’t, which is how he was able to snap the pic above. A couple of dozen pics, actually, all merged together. He titled it Chaos…
Two years ago, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched Completion by Design, a $35 million program aimed at dramatically increasing the graduation rates of community college students. The money was parceled out to nine target states, Texas among them. The Texas group was spearheaded by the Lone Star College…
It’s an easy thing for a state to rationalize. Every year, the percentage of Texas residents who are technically obese inches up slightly. It’s just by a percentage point or so, so maybe it’s a rounding error or a gravitational anomaly that affects every Texans’ scale. Besides, who doesn’t overindulge…
Texas Commissioner of Agriculture Todd Staples sent a tweet to his followers Tuesday morning asking whether we’re “worried about the direction of our country.” Well, sure we’re worried about partisan gridlock in Congress, the widening chasm of income inequality and drought conditions that cover most of Texas and more of…
Karen Handel is back, and she’s bringing 304 pages with her. Susan G. Komen For The Cure’s ex-vice president of public policy, who resigned in February after an enormous flap over Komen’s attempt to pull its funding from Planned Parenthood, is writing a tell-all, to be published in September by…
Best case scenario: The world’s largest retailer builds a spaceship that allows humanity to flee a trash-choked planet and spend several centuries growing ever fatter and lazier on an interstellar cruise, unwitting captives to a self-aware computer, until an oddly adorable trash-compacting robot unshackles us from our digital overlord and…
Media outlets in Chicago are reporting this morning that Brianna Gardner, a 22-year-old from Dallas, was fatally shot in the head in an upscale Chicago hotel. Gardner’s body was discovered in her seventh-floor room by the Whitehall Hotel housekeeping staff. One guest told the Chicago Tribune they heard a gunshot…
Reading the descriptions of the three lakes included in 2003’s master plan for the Trinity River Corridor is a bit like browsing through a travel brochure. The lakes will help with flood control, create wetlands to restore a more natural habitat, provide ample opportunities for canoeing, be adorned with a…
Charles Paternostro was 14 when, in the mid-’50s, his father purchased an acre of land on a five-story cliff overlooking Lake Texoma and built a modest, three-bedroom home. The family lived in Dallas full-time but spent their weekends at the reservoir, boating and swimming and fishing. After his parents died,…
It didn’t take Mayor Mike Rawlings long to make up his mind. Just after meeting with state health officials and reading all those helpful Facebook comments yesterday, Rawlings declared he’s all in for aerial mosquito spraying. “Since public safety is my No. 1 job, I think it’s paramount to step…
Remember last time Mayor Mike Rawlings went to Facebook to ask for feedback on a controversial topic of citywide import? And how he ignored the overwhelming majority of comments and pledged his full support for the Trinity Parkway? Well, he’s put out another call for feedback on Twitter and Facebook:…
Highland Park’s city council has decided to ban fake plastic grass from the town’s front yards, a scourge which according to one city official has overtaken at least three (3) properties. The Morning News reports that council members voted on the new ordinance on Monday. Artificial turf will still be…
Gino Romano, alias Jonathan Lee Riches, alias Johnny Suenami, sued the Kardashian sisters, Kris Jenner, Lamar Odom and Mark Cuban in federal court. Why? Because they’re trying to kill him. Because he has a sex tape involving the Kardashians and Cuban. Because he witnessed it all from an air duct…
