POTD: Sampan Races

From 2015 03 24 Hue

Today's photo-of-the-day is from the Huong (Perfume) River in Hué, Vietnam. It shows a sampan race during the Spring Festival. Dozens of boats compete and thousands of spectators crowd the shore or watch from dragon boats in the river.

Explaining Your Water Bill

In today's edition of "Who's Not Listening To Me Now?" I return to something I wrote last month. It seems that my three graphs didn't convince everyone that recent high water bills are due to two things: dry weather and lawn watering.

Some people are still adamantly convinced that something is crooked. Facebook is full of horror stories of high bills that just have to be wrong. Kristin Takeda of The Dallas Morning News seems to publish something on the subject every day or two. WFAA did an investigation into "skyrocketing water bills." And now the Dallas Observer reports on the phenomenon in the city of Dallas, not just once but twice.

Voters Guide: City Charter Amendments 51-60

Sixth in a series:

• City Charter Amendments Nos. 1-10
• City Charter Amendments Nos. 11-20
• City Charter Amendments Nos. 21-30
• City Charter Amendments Nos. 31-40
• City Charter Amendments Nos. 41-50
• City Charter Amendments Nos. 51-60
• City Charter Amendments Nos. 61-70
• City Charter Amendments Nos. 71-83

There are 83 propositions for amending the Richardson City Charter on the November ballot. I'm here with a voter's guide to tell you how to vote. You're welcome.

Dancing in Jaffa (2013)

IMDB

Dancing in Jaffa (2013): Teaching ballroom dancing to kids in Israel. Boys/girls, yuck. Jews/Arabs, oh my! Sad and uplifting at once. A-

POTD: Sampan on the Perfume River

From 2015 03 24 Hue

Today's photo-of-the-day is from the Huong (Perfume) River in Hué, Vietnam. I don't know where this woman is coming from. I don't know where she's going to. I don't know her story. I wish I did. That is all.

Partial Score: At Halftime, It's Berkner 7.

From 2015 00 00 Miscellaneous

The sun set early on the Berkner Rams Friday night in the annual rivalry game against Lake Highlands. The Wildcats led 42-7 at halftime and picked up in the second half right where they left off. They stretched their lead to 56-7 before two Berkner touchdowns in the 4th quarter closed the score to 56-21 and... Oh, what the hell, I left and can't say what the final score was. Stay strong, Rams. Next week is a brand new game.

Update: the final score was Lake Highlands 59, Berkner 28.

RISD, Universities and Free Speech

On September 19, the Richardson ISD sponsored a "College and Career Fair" at the University of Texas - Dallas. About 200 colleges with interest in recruiting RISD students to attend their schools were represented. Good news for Richardson's high school students? You'd think so. But frequent RISD critic Bill Ames had other ideas.

The gist of Ames's criticism is that some of the represented schools have room for improvement in their respect for students' free speech rights. Now I'm with Ames all the way in calling out schools for shortcomings in this regard. Where Ames goes off the rails is in holding up Jerry Falwell's Liberty University as an "excellent example" in campus free speech because they invited Bernie Sanders to speak and students didn't demonstrate, petition or picket him. That's commendable, not that the students were given any freedom of speech to do so. From the Liberty University student rulebook: "Student participation in on-campus demonstrations, petitions or picketing is prohibited unless approved by Liberty University administration." Liberty University can get away with this open suppression of free speech because it's a private university; public universities cannot. So much for Bill Ames's "excellent example" of campus free speech.

Anyway, what follows is my Facebook conversation with Bill Ames. His opening statement has been edited for brevity.