-30-

With succinct finality, Ian McCann tweeted the news that layoffs were in progress at The Dallas Morning News: -30-

He followed up later with "I appreciate the thoughts everybody. Now time to plan the next adventure, almost 12 years after the first one began."

Besides Twitter, the blog DMNcuts seems to be the best place to follow the news from the DMN newsroom. According to a document obtained by that anonymous blogger, the cuts affected 38 people, including reporters, photographers, and editors.

After the jump, my thoughts.

Open Mike, Black Hole

The Richardson City Council's Statement of Goals (pages 9-28 of this handout from the August 29 city council meeting) is full of noble ambitions, but it will be the list of near-term action items that city residents really should pay attention to. Those are the items most likely to show up on the council's meeting agenda sometime in the next two years.

After the jump, a suggestion for one easily achievable near-term action item regarding communication.

OTBR: A Wheat Field in Finland

Latitude 60.170800° N
Longitude 23.149300° E

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".

Richardson Eagles 37, Irving 14

From 2011 Football

In their first home game of the season, the Richardson Eagles Friday night put up a convincing 37-14 win over the Irving Tigers at Eagle-Mustang Stadium.

More photos from this game and all of the 2011 season can be found here.

Berkner Rams 42, North Crowley 6

From 2011 Football

In their first home game of the season, the Berkner Rams rolled Thursday night to a 42-6 win over the North Crowley Panthers at Ram-Wildcat Stadium. It's a great time to be a Ram!

More photos from this game and all of the 2011 season can be found here.

Repeat Tweets: Deficit, Heat, Drought, Quake

Repeat tweets from August, 2011:

• 2011 08 01 - Stock market off 0.5% after debt deal. Business understands economy's problem is *not* deficit, but jobs. And debt deal will cost more jobs.
  
• 2011 08 02 - What's the official name of the new deficit reduction committee? For the record, it's the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.
  
• 2011 08 02 - Democratic stimulus in 2009 arrested economy's freefall. Now we see if GOP austerity in 2011 will lead to growth or double dip recession.
  
• 2011 08 02 - Cotton Belt Rail Corridor simulation on YouTube. Skip to about 7:00 mark for Richardson/Plano alignment options. http://t.co/LsdvtTd
  
• 2011 08 02 - ABC is bringing back "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire." Updated, of course. For one thing, it'll be called "Who Wants To Be A Job Creator."
  
• 2011 08 03 - Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro: Memoir of growing up in a weird orphanage. Might be a better Twilight Zone episode than novel. C-
  
• 2011 08 04 - Headline: "Wall Street stocks drop 3 percent on economic fears." In other news, Boehner and McConnell are high-fiving each other.
  
• 2011 08 04 - Spoiler alert: Don't look at your retirement 401K balance. ... Correction: 301K. ... Make that 201K.
  
• 2011 08 04 - Texans, we're all supposed to pitch in and reduce our overall energy demands. I dunno, sounds like tree-hugging environmentalism to me.
  
• 2011 08 04 - President Obama defends debt ceiling deal as balanced. Equally significant concessions were made by Democrats in both House and Senate.
  

After the jump, more repeat tweets.

Austrian Economics, Meet Medieval Hungary

Serendipity sometimes causes seemingly unrelated matters to cross paths, crashing into one another, bringing new insights into the nature of reality. As I explored the City of Richardson's proposed 2011-2012 budget, a YouTube video was recommended to me. It's a lecture by Walter Block from the Mises Institute Media. Independently, I happen to be reading "The Origins of Political Order" by Francis Fukuyama.

I offer two excerpts. I leave as an exercise for the reader to decipher the tracks of the particles released in this collision of economic philosophy and history.

After the jump, the excerpts.