Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Americans for Prosperity Conference Wraps Up with a Heartfelt Kiss for the Free Market

I'm sitting next to a well-dressed home-schooled high schooler from just outside of Lafayette, Louisiana, watching failed Senate candidate and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina talking about the dignity of jobs that don't pay a living wage. Why Fiorina is speaking at Defending the American Dream isn't rea ... More >>

The Signal Is too Busy Blowing Minds to Tell a Story.

Dallas 2014 Mosquito Plan Lazily Defends Controversial Adulticide

Dallas thinks it's really great that some of you people are interested in environmental bullshit. That's the clear message we're getting from the city's 2014 Mosquito Plan, a report that makes a few lazy attempts to appease the environmental folks who have argued that Dallas' current mosquito-killin ... More >>

The Robots Are Coming. And They Can Sing.

Chomp Some Chomsky

Renaissance Wrestler

Is Anonymous Hacktivist Barrett Brown a Journalist? His Supporters Say So.

The media has had a hard time labeling Barrett Brown. "Anonymous spokesman" doesn't fit because Anonymous is too anarchic and loosely organized to have a spokesman. For the same reason, he's not the collective's "self-proclaimed" spokesman, though he did have more than his share of media appearances ... More >>

How Medicare Became a Thieves' Bazaar

In Dallas and across the country, hospitals, doctors and dealers have made Medicare the nation’s sweetest crime. The feds are now trying to shutter the door.

We Now Know the Middle-Income Job Is Basically Extinct, But What Do We Do About It?

There's a big Associated Press story making the rounds now, based on work at MIT and elsewhere, all about the permanent loss of many high and better paid jobs like meter reader and travel agent, gone forever because those posts have been filled by robots and software. Good jobs are gone forever and ... More >>

Can the State's Monopoly on Violence Endure in a Gun-Crazed Culture?

My belated New year's resolution: I absolutely refuse to read, talk about or use my brain to consider social theories based on Batman movies. Said. Done. There we have it. But. This morning's romp through the newspapers does provoke certain musings about the erosion of a social consensus around the ... More >>

Boom or Doom?

America’s fracking gold rush portends the greatest environmental disaster of a generation.

Tips For The Best Burgers You'll Ever Grill At Home

Summer is gone, and standing beside a hot grill no longer feels like an act of torture. That means it's time to fire up the charcoal, and one of the easiest way to coax the most flavor out of your kettle grill is by cooking top-notch burgers. Skip the preformed pucks the grocery stores try and sell ... More >>

Spraying to Stop West Nile - Is It Safe?

Watch the Invention That Will Solve All of Our Stubborn Ketchup-Bottle Problems

Apocalypse reversed. Stuffed in a lab for a couple of months, a few Really Smart People (it's fair to imagine the crisp white coats and twirling test tubes at this point) have discovered an innovation to cure the Heinz-Bottle-Knife-Clang and Mayonnaise-Flung-to-Crotch-Syndrome: LiquiGlide. (Video ... More >>

A Modest Proposal for Clearing Dallas' Filthy Air

I try. I keep offering. Dallas doesn't have any problems it couldn't solve if it just looked to more advanced cities. I make suggestions. Dallas gets pissed off. I don't know what else I can do. Recently I pointed out that Dallas could resolve its seemingly intractable 15-year-old standoff on what ... More >>

The Race For Dallas ISD's District 1 School Board Seat Is Going to Be Very Interesting

​Like I was saying, or writing, earlier this morning ...When Edwin Flores announced he wasn't going to seek re-election to the Dallas Independent School District board two weeks ago, the District 1 trustee said he'd hold off on making an endorsement. At the time, only one other candidate had annou ... More >>

Owner's Looking to Landmark His House, Designed by the Late, Great Harris Kemp

The "Harris Kemp House" at 2822 Maple Springs Boulevard​I've driven past this house countless times; it's not far from the office, after all, more or less just behind Maple and Motor on Maple Springs Boulevard. But till I saw the agenda for Monday's meeting of the Landmark Commission, I had no ide ... More >>

Dallas-Born Photographer Leonard Volk: "Grow Your Inner Critic"

Leonard Volk has always liked capturing images, and a camera has been his weapon of choice. He's spent a lifetime taking photographs, and now he's complied those images in one single collection: a book titled everyday. The images inside are just that - moments of the everyday that somehow rise abo ... More >>

Fear and Fracking in Southlake

In one of America's wealthiest suburbs, an unlikely band of drilling opponents helped drive away the world's biggest energy companies. Did they save the town or ruin it?

UT Southwestern Docs May Have Found the Pathway to Revolutionary Cancer Treatment

Researchers at UT Southwestern published a study in the journal Nature Sunday identifying a cancer-specific metabolic pathway that fuels only the growth of certain kinds of kidney and adrenal tumors. This is a pretty remarkable finding, chiefly because if you can halt that specific metabolic process ... More >>

University of Texas Fracking Study: No Evidence That It Contaminates Groundwater

​The University of Texas released the preliminary results today of that comprehensive study on the controversial natural gas producing process known as hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), drawing no link between it and claims of groundwater contamination. "While there have been casing/cement ... More >>

How Much of a Pendejo is Gustavo?

And why are cholos always wearing such white shirts, shoes and socks?

Another Earth: Same Crap

Earth angel Brit Marling's world collides with reality.

Toxic Avenger: In the War Between the Feds and Texas, EPA Chief Al Armendariz has Science on His Side. Is That Enough?

Take Me Home Tonight: A Reagan-era Bacchanalia Succumbs to Nostalgia.

Coppell's Emily Elbert Gets Some Love From Glamour For Her Jazzy, Acoustic Stylings.

21-year-old area singer-songwriter Emily Elbert's no stranger to local music fans, having performed her fair share of gigs at Opening Bell and the Kessler Theater in recent years since picking up the guitar at age 15. She's no stranger to the Internet either: Her jazzy, acoustic take on Michael Jack ... More >>

Found: One Enormous Stash of Pictures From the State Fair of Texas Taken in 1977

Photos by Nick DeWolf​While searching for something very unrelated on Flickr moments ago, I stumbled across this collection of 61 photos just posted by a Seattle man named Steve Lundeen. Steve didn't take these photos of the State Fair of Texas in 1977 -- his late father-in-law, Nick DeWolf, did ( ... More >>

On the SMU Campus, Hispanic High School Students are Getting a Taste of College

Megan FeldmanDallas Mayor Tom Leppert, DISD trustee Edwin Flores and superintendent Michael Hinojosa at SMU's Hispanic Youth Symposium kick-off yesterdayA cluster of local educators and politicos -- among them Mayor Tom Leppert, Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, SM ... More >>

Re: FYI, Read This ASAP. OMG!

The following is a prime example of my curse here on Earth. A fleeting thought sprouts into a mild observation, only to bloom into a thesis that eventually flourishes into a blog item with sports branches. My apologies ... Got a text the other day, the salutation of which was LOL. It ... More >>

Over at SMU at This Very Moment, They're Playing Guitar Hero -- For Work

Wao-Wee

Wars Games

The FWMSH will hypnotize your Jedi mind

God in the Details

For a quarter-century Roy Abraham Varghese has been assembling God proofs. Along the way he won over the world's most influential atheist.

Waytago, Brainiacs!

Rock Star

The smart money wants a mayor with sex appeal

Mazel Tov, Mr. Akinpelu

The June issue of Ebony magazine contains a list of the top graduating African-American high-school seniors in the country. (The link has an incomplete list, but trust me.) "This year's top seniors are remarkable examples of the talent and intellect that today's Black youths possess," claim the edit ... More >>

DeFrantzanator

UTD hosts some high-tech dance

Yee-haw, Y'all!

Playmakers

Want to design video games? SMU's Guildhall can show you how, if you're willing to work like a dog.

"Nice Kid, But..."

To get into the right college, sometimes you have to be better than perfect

Screwing the Man

Electronic Robin Hoods claim music file-swapping is an act of civil disobedience

Mail Call

Letters, we got letters

Smoldering embers

The reflections of Allied Theatre's Fires in the Mirror are all surface

Take these records, please

Or: Yes, it was as bad as you think

Lofty pursuit

The man confronting you in the lobby of your apartment building just may be an artist

Out Here

Events for the week

Congressional hopeful Jerry Frankel has ideas, brains, and GUTS.

Dick Armey will eat his lunch.

Caught in the Web

Zach Loafman, a gifted St. Mark's teen, fights an addiction to the Internet.

Personal best

From a year full of startling and memorable movies, here are our favorites