8.05.2013

Random Monday Morning Thoughts


  • A faithful reader gave me a book a while back, Empire of the Summer Moon, which I finally started reading over the weekend. It's about the Comanches in Texas in the 1800s and it is beyond fantastic. (And there's a Wise County reference in the first chapter.)
  • For some reason I saw an aerial shot of Oklahoma City this weekend and had no idea how fantastic the new (?)  Devon tower is. 
  • Lake Bridgeport is now officially 19 feet low. Since the lake level was changed 1972, I'm not sure it's been that low. (And I think the Tarrant County Regional Water Board isn't letting water out of the lake at this point -- we've just got evaporation going on.)
  • NFL Hall of Fame notes: (1) The Induction Ceremony had an attendance of 1,105. There will more people at a regular Paradise high school football game, right?, (2) I hate Bill Parcells, but it's impossible to deny how good he was at coaching in the NFL, and (3) Great line from Larry Allen about his wife: "On our first date, she cooked for me. She cooked me two chickens, french fries, baked me a cake and gave me a 40 ounce. I knew then, that was my wife." 
  • Testosterone update: I'm feeling better but nothing dramatic. But it's still early.
  • Standard blog news: Five people were killed in two wrong way driver incidents in North Texas over the weekend. 
  • Rick Perry sported some new glasses over the weekend at a conservative bloggers convention. Sorry, that librarian look he's going for won't make him smarter. 
  • The Texas Tribune has an online database of campaign finance reports and contributors in Texas. Pretty cool. But it appears to be a few months behind. 
  • Kudos to the Messenger for getting the Chico "sex trafficking" story.  The Star-Telegram had it last Wednesday but there was no reference to the girl being from Chico. But how did my faithful readers not make the connection and tip me off? 
  • An 83 year old woman was driving the wrong way in Parker County a couple of weeks back and critically injured a guy. He sued her and the case went to trial last week which resulted in a $5.2 million verdict. Question: Why was that case tried? She wasn't working for anyone at the time so she probably just had a standard liability policy. How does the insurance company not tender policy limits? And if they did, why wasn't it taken?
  • Mark Cuban used 3,000 words on his blog to explain why he isn't screwing up the Mavericks. Now he's actually using tactics of a snake oil salesman. 
  • Maybe the newspaper business isn't in bad shape after all: The Boston Globe will be sold for $70 million. Oh, wait. The seller bought it twenty years ago for $1.1 billion.