The Wheel Award for Excellence in Documentaries

Oscar night is long gone. Oscar picked "Amy" for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. I've finally gotten around to viewing all five nominees and am ready to weigh in on the question of which documentary should have won. Can I get a drum roll?

POTD: The Star of Ranthambore

From 2016 02 07 Ranthanbore

There's nothing like a close encounter with a tiger in the wild at dawn to get the heart pumping for the day. Today's photo-of-the-day is from India's Ranthambore National Park and Tiger Reserve. The tiger in the photo is Sitara (aka T-28), the "Star" of Ranthambore (for the star-shaped mark above his left eye). This is the dominant tiger of the national park.

Tourists tour the park in open jeeps. People ask if it's safe. The answer is, yes, unless the tiger decides it isn't. The previous dominant male tiger was relocated last year to captivity in another park because of charges that he killed at least three humans. There were no incidents the day we visited. Sitara was the only tiger we saw. We have no way of knowing how many tigers saw us.

Bonus photo after the jump.

RISD Bond Election Analysis

Source: Dallas County Votes. Dark Green: YES. Bright Green: No.

Richardson ISD voters approved a $437 million bond proposition in the May 7 election by an overwhelming margin, 67% to 33%. Turnout was 9,507 voters. Diving into the details, there are a few interesting, if maybe not surprising, details.

Demography is Destiny

Source: New York Times.

The New York Times did a deep data dive into "Money, Race and Success: How Your School District Compares." That's the Richardson ISD in the upper middle of the plot of every school district in America. The RISD is a little richer than average as measured by parents' economic status. And it stands in the upper reaches of academic performance of school districts with similar economic status, 0.6 grades ahead of the overall average. What's it all mean?

Cartel Land (2015)

IMDB

Cartel Land (2015): Citizen armies on both sides of border fight drug cartels. Doesn't anyone wear a white hat? Ignores demand. Bleak. B-

OTBR: Blue House near Wheaton College

Latitude N 41° 52.116
Longitude: W 088° 06.144

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".

The Look of Silence (2014)

IMDB

Look of Silence (2014): Picking at 50 yr old scab of an Indonesian massacre of a million people. Tragic. Inhuman. Inexplicable. Personal. B-