Springtime in SpringPark

From Flowers

More photos after the jump.

When Does Daylight Saving Time Begin?

Remember the old days when the supermarket checkout lanes were full of tabloid newspapers with attention-grabbing headlines like "Hillary Clinton Gives Birth to Space Alien Baby"? Anything to get you to put that newspaper into your shopping cart. Well, those days of the news media using sensational headlines to attract eyeballs aren't gone -- if anything, they've expanded from the supermarket to basic cable television to the local news.

Now, on the Internet, there's a new twist in the old headlines game. The new goal is to ensure your story shows up high in Google's search results. As The New York Times explains, search engine optimization (SEO) is the new game. Headlines with puns and double entendres are out. Headlines chock full of trending Google and Twitter search terms are in. Anything to increase the number of clicks that lead to your website. If the story you deliver is relevant to the searcher, that's a plus, but it's not a requirement. Huffington Post is a master of the game, so much so that AOL just paid $315 million to buy Huffington Post to get those clicks.

By the way, Daylight Saving Time (abbreviated DST, EDT, CDT, MDT, PDT; also called Daylight Savings Time with an "s"; or Summer Time in Great Britain, Sommerzeit in Germany, zomertijd in the Netherlands and l'heure d'été in France) begins (or starts) in the United States at 2:00 a.m., March 13, 2011. And it has nothing to do with Mardi Gras, which this year falls on March 8, 2011. ;-)

Richardson City Council Races Heat Up

Kinda. Sorta. We don't have any new officially-filed candidates, but the agitators are beginning to stir. In a move eagerly anticipated by many (and by many, I mean me), the Richardson Citizens Alliance launched a website this week.

After the jump, what we can learn about the Alliance from their own words.

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.