OTBR: Desolate Flats of Bessemer Bend

Latitude: N 42° 50.058
Longitude: W 106° 38.922

A child on a road trip with his family asks, "Where are we?" and the father answers, "Let's check the map. We're off the blue roads [the Interstate Highways marked in blue on the road atlas]. We're off the red roads [the US and state highways]. We're off the black roads [the county highways]. I think we're off the map altogether." It was always my dream to be off the map altogether.

After the jump, a few of the random places (and I mean random literally) that I visited vicariously last month that are "off the blue roads".

Repeat Tweets: Obamacare For the Win

Repeat tweets from June, 2012:

• 2012 06 02 - Headline: "Detroit turns a freeway into a river." Imagine the Trinity Tollway after a spring flood. http://t.co/x94JjsL9
  
• 2012 06 04 - Listen in on Bill McCalpin's phone call to Chris Cutrone: http://t.co/fh46NmpC
  
• 2012 06 05 - 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami: Action, mystery, fantasy. Murders, cults, love and two moons. Indelible characters. Best novel in years. A+
  
• 2012 06 07 - The Book of Nothing, by John Barrow: Zero, vacuums, quantum theory. Science and history of science. Last half might lose non-physicists. B-
  
• 2012 06 07 - Wonder how world leaders could have been so stupid as to blunder into WWI or the Great Depression? Wonder no more. http://t.co/fcUdp052
  
• 2012 06 07 - "Rethinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking." Every city council member should read this book. http://t.co/fw4vJ7Yk
  

After the jump, more repeat tweets.

A "Tammy" for Richardson

The City of Richardson proudly announced that "Richardson’s newly re-designed website has earned the top award from the Texas Association of Municipal Information Officers (TAMIO) for website design in a community with a population less than 100,000."

Kudos to the City of Richardson. After the jump, a few minor caveats.

School Funding: A Race to the Bottom

Kris Oliver, member of the Richardson school board, attended the Summer Leadership Institute, a training conference for the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB). He kept his Twitter followers informed with bits of trivia.

Facts from my @tasbnews finance training. Texas rank in education spending per pupil? 42

Source: Kris Oliver.

If you knew that, then you probably won't be surprised by this next bit of trivia, either.

Texas rank in percent of adult residents with a high school diploma? Dead last.

Source: Kris Oliver.

Surely, you think, the Texas legislature realizes that the correlation between school funding and academic results just might be a bit of a cause-and-effect relationship, too.

After the jump, will it be this year?

One Of These Is Not Like The Others

Today's diversion involves a simple quiz on your knowledge of grade school civics. Well, actually, it's a quiz on your critical thinking skills^* disguised as a civics quiz. There are no right and wrong answers, only good and bad reasoning.

After the jump, a few simple questions.