The State Board of Education met yesterday to debate which supplemental materials the state should use to update its outdated science textbooks. To make things easier, before the meeting, the board’s choices were narrowed down by allegedly reliable panels of stakeholders. But when it came to a biology panel making…
Back in April 2010, the Dallas Opera finally announced it had found someone to run the show: Keith Cerny, who was tasked with, among other things, finding contributors to the opera’s endowment during the $10-million matching grant challenge that expires on Halloween of this year. He also told Patrick that…
I’ve tried several times this morning to reach Michael Northrup, the attorney repping a coalition of neighborhood associations at yesterday’s City Plan Commission meeting where Madison Partners’ bowling alley concept was voted down 6-5. I’ll keep trying and post his thoughts separately. But I did manage to talk to Bill…
Attorney and Friend of Unfair Park Bill Holston posts semi-regular pieces to FrontBurner under the header Law Man Walking, in which the nature-trekker documents his strolls through the heretofore oft-overlooked slices o’ heaven that remain in and around the city limits. And when Bill’s not penning those, he’s contributing to…
Back in March we tried to get to the bottom of whether or not the city’s now-semi-regular warrant roundups actually work. To summarize: yes and no — yes, because “there’s a 33 percent increase of people paying their fines when we do these,” said Chief Deputy Marshal Paul Hansen; no,…
And here you thought the NFL lockout was over. Not hardly: As Peter King puts it this morning, yesterday’s Sure Thing turned into Sour Grapes rather quickly, with the players refusing to sign off on the owners’ done deal. Jerry Jones, in the SI.com piece, had no comment about the…
Looking through a stack of federal cases this morning I espied something odd, a file titled USA v. … well, let’s just say an address all of four blocks from my Northwest Dallas house, and a house I drive by at least once a day. A foreclosure, perhaps? A tax…
So much for cautious optimism: About an hour ago, the City Plan Commission voted 6-5 not to grant Madison Partners that specific use permit that would have paved the way for the six-lane bowling alley Jonathon Hetzel, Barcadia’s Brooke Humphries and other are hoping to open next to Good Records…
Speaking of old photos …Here’s one more stroll down Amnesia Lane courtesy the Dallas Police Department. A month after posting its old-car collection to Facebook, the department’s done uploaded a photo lineup of its chiefs, dating back to James Carter Arnold, who served as the chief in 1881. (Wonder if…
You probably forgot — I know I did — but late last year we ran this old photo of the downtown farmers market courtesy City Archivist John Slate, who’d told us about ’em last summer and about how the giant stack was being sent to the University of North Texas…
While we await some return phone calls and sift through some rather nutty legal docs, let’s take a closer look at this release the Texas Rangers’ John Blake sent out announcing some highlights from the upcoming homestand that begins tomorrow with games against the Jays. Because there are some interesting…
Still hard to believe, but back in May — or, five long months after the incident occurred — a gentleman by the name of Robert Tucker claimed in court docs that he’d been emotionally distressed and otherwise humiliated and “defamed” when Andy Dick yanked down his skirt and “forced his…
Perhaps you heard that Plano was recently named the 12th longest-living city in the country by the Daily Beast. But what you may not know is that a whole bunch of other listicles ranking places based on their General Pleasantness have spotlighted the ‘burb. The results are mostly positive, occasionally…
And so it begins continues. Actually, it’s been going on for years now. The slow, excruciatingly painful death of the newspaper, that is. I meet twentysomethings, even thirtysomethings every week who listen to the radio, who read blogs, who Tweet and Facebook and Skype and … who shrug and giggle at…
Twice last summer the Dallas Police Department warned it would enforce, on a limited basis, the once-litigated and gosh-how’d-we-ever-survive-without Section 31-33 of the Dallas City Code, which spells out when the under-17’s can run amok on city streets during nighttime hours. Or, more to the point, when they can’t: not…
One night he’s Sandy Koufax; the next Sandy Duncan. For two starts he’s Kate Upton; then last night we get a heaping, hideous dose of Kate Smith. More? No? Get the picture? Good. Because when it comes to Rangers’ starter Derek Holland, you never know if you’re getting beauty or…
On the other side is the Richardson PD bulletin mentioned here this morning, in which police say they’re looking for the “Handsome Guy” bandit who’s hit six area banks, including ones in Dallas, Irving, Plano and Richardson beginning April 19. Says RPD, his most recent stick-em-up was July 14, when…
That’s what CNN’s reporting, anyhow — that Rick Perry, who called for that ”day of prayer and fasting” down in Houston on August 6 and has been the face of the franchise, could wind up on the sidelines during The Response at Reliant Stadium. That’s according to Eric Bearse, spokesman…
Power is subjective. But when you see it — when you sense it’s immense influence — you just know it. Each summer, as I construct my list of the 50 Most Powerful People in Metroplex Sports, the criteria gets a triple-digit tweaking. This year I deemed the allure of power thusly: If they called…
If you had $425,000-ish to drop on a new home, would you buy: a two-bed, two-bath ca. 1794 clapboard house in Providence, Rhode Island; a one-bedroom, two-bath log cabin in Cougar Gulch, Idaho (no doubt the setting of a more rustic Cougar Town spin-off); or this four-bedroom, two-bath midcentury modern…
Only one professional athlete has led a DFW team to a championship this millennium. He ranks alongside legends such as Josh Hamilton, Joe Nieuwendyk and Emmitt Smith as MVPs to lead their teams to titles in recent years. And he’s the only one I know of — even in the…
Chris Cantalini is generally a pretty unassuming presence. But he’s a little jumpier today, a little restless, and for good reason. He’s got a lot on his mind. Thirty-three years old, Cantalini just upgraded from renting a place near White Rock Lake to paying the mortgage on one in Plano,…
