Things I Learned In Grade School

As I grow older (and wiser), there are more and more things that I learned in my Catholic grade school that I'm now finding out are not universally shared beliefs as I had once assumed.

After the jump, what I once believed was common sense.

Twitter Tracks: Super Bowl, Snow and More

Twitter tracks from February, 2011:

• 2011 02 01 - Someone should have told the Packers there was no need to bring the frozen tundra with them to the Super Bowl. #NotFair
• 2011 02 01 - Uh oh. Tunisia, Egypt, now Jordan. Another domino teeters. Headline: "Jordan's king fires Cabinet amid protests"
• 2011 02 01 - No guarantee that a new gov't in Egypt will be friendly to US, but polls suggest Obama's presidency has improved odds. http://goo.gl/M9C99
• 2011 02 01 - Mayor Gary Slagel will not seek re-election. At the same time, hell freezes over in north Texas. Coincidence??? You decide.
• 2011 02 01 - Satellite Shows Winter Megastorm Painting US White. Proves Global Warming A Hoax. Look Closely, See Jesus In Clouds. http://goo.gl/Q4scC
• 2011 02 01 - Green Bay Packers complain that north Texas weather is "too cold." Too cold for the Packers? That's cold. http://goo.gl/jgvkm
• 2011 02 01 - Please don't leave us, Mayor Slagel. We don't like how city services have deteriorated since you stepped down. http://goo.gl/KMHqY
• 2011 02 01 - OK, it's fun to exaggerate the D/FW storm, but, really, this is normal winter weather for much of the US. You can get out in this. Really.

After the jump, more Twitter tracks.

Third Time's the Charm at US 75 and Bush Tollway

Google

According to a story in The Dallas Morning News (behind pay wall), Plano is pitching a $34 million dollar transportation project to reconfigure the ramps at US 75 and the Bush Tollway. This would be the third attempt to get it right.

After the jump, failures one and two.

Don't Look Now At Rick Perry's Tweets

If you're a member of the press, he just might have blocked you from seeing his tweets. Reporters are eagerly checking if they are on Tricky Rick's enemies list. Regular people (and by regular people I mean me) are wondering if this doesn't inhibit communications between the governor and the people of Texas. Well, yes, it does. But it's much more than that.

It's actually a brilliant political move on Rick Perry's part. Not only does he stick a finger in the eye of the press, thereby winning hearts on the right, but he gets a ton of free publicity for his Twitter PR stream. I'm sure he won't mind if people reading this check it out. Like Sarah Palin, Rick Perry is shoving aside the press and communicating directly with the public. Brilliant. And by brilliant, I of course mean petty, vindictive, divisive and endearing to his (2012 national) base.

Fossil Watch Moving, Galatyn Overpass Isn't

Fossil Watch announced plans to move its corporate offices to the former Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas campus at US 75 and Spring Valley. Fossil will be vacating offices on both sides of US 75 in Richardson near Galatyn Drive.

So much for Fossil benefiting from last year's bond item to complete the Galatyn overpass west of US 75. That overpass has been in the long-range plans since at least 1993 (see a history of the project here), but listening to the opposition to the 2010 bond election, you would have thought that it was invented as a personal treat from Mayor Gary Slagel to Fossil chairman Tom Kartsotis after Fossil bought land west of US 75 in 2005.

Maybe now we'll hear that the Spring Valley underpass near Fossil's new location, completed almost a decade ago in 2002, was actually a prospective treat to Fossil by the Richardson City Council, knowing that in 2011 Fossil would end up moving down to that part of town. Conspiracy theorists, it's your turn.