University of Texas at Austin

Your Friday Afternoon Ebola Digest

Heading into a much needed weekend, here's the latest Ebola news of note: The condition of the patients. Nina Pham is now being treated at a National Institutes of Health facility in Maryland. She is listed as being in fair condition. While she was listed in good condition at Presbyterian, doctors ... More >>

Spotify Study Reveals Hilarious Listening Habits of Texas College Students

You probably love Spotify, lest you're an old-school rock dude, like Thom Yorke, or believe the Internet is evil (well, it kind of is). The ease and wide-ranging catalog is the equivalent of having Christmas everyday for music enthusiasts. Unless we have a cool dad or mom, most of us don't really co ... More >>

Wallace Hall Was Right About UT All Along

Maybe the University of Texas at Austin and its many passionate defenders had reason to beware of Wallace Hall when Governor Rick Perry appointed him to the UT System board of regents in 2011. Perry was pushing some plan he got from a rich oilman to eliminate research as a criterion for granting pro ... More >>

How Ruling on Race in UT Admissions and Charges of Backdoor Deals Tie Together

Yesterday's ruling by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding race as a criterion for admissions to the University of Texas at Austin comes on the heels of another big UT-Austin story -- the alleged role of under-the-table political influence in admissions at UT and th ... More >>

Texas, Accused of Downplaying Cancer Fears, Grudgingly Re-examines Flower Mound Cluster

People who live in Flower Mound may or may not be at higher risk for developing cancer. The state already assured the public that there isn't a cancer cluster back in 2010, but after a UT-Austin researcher published a recent report challenging the state's methods, Texas has grudgingly agreed to look ... More >>

Texas Researchers Find That People Who Drink Live Longer

Good news for fans of America's national pastime. A new study finds that even heavy drinkers have a lower mortality rate than people who are complete teetotalers. The University of Texas at Austin study, headed by psychologist and national hero Charles Holahan, just released the results under the ... More >>

Ethan Couch Should Have Gone to Prison, but Justice? There's No Justice for Texas Kids.

The Ethan Couch story is a tough one for me, because you know I always like ragging on rich people. And it seems hard to read District Judge Jean Boyd's sentence any way other than as a get-out-of-jail-free card for a kid whose parents could afford to put him in a high-rent whiskey school. See also ... More >>

Science Will Prevail In Texas Adoption of Biology Textbooks

The State Board of Education left us with a bit of a cliffhanger last month. Despite the concerted efforts of creationists, nearly all of the biology textbooks sailed through the adoption process. Two, however, became mired in completely unsurprising ideological objections from the appointed expert ... More >>

After Family Planning Cuts, More Than 17,000 Dallas County Women Lost Access to Care

In 2011, as we just cannot seem to stop mentioning, your state legislators cut $73 million from the state's family planning budget, instituted a tiered funding system designed to give family planning clinics any federal dollars dead last, and launched a weird war on the Medicaid Women's Health Progr ... More >>

Poll: Majority of Texans Favor Both "Fetal Pain" Proposal and Abortion Rights

Yesterday, Collin County state Representative Jodie Laubenberg filed a bill that would ban all abortions after 20 weeks, calling it the "Preborn Pain Act." The bill is premised on deeply questionable science which claims that fetuses can feel pain at that point in a pregnancy, and ignores a heap of ... More >>

Your Government Says It's OK to Spray You With Poison. Anybody See a Problem?

Great. So tonight the government sprays us with piperonyl butoxide. To reassure us, the TV news last night shows us a guy from the company doing the spraying who tells us just not to worry. I say worry. The airplanes tonight will be spraying us with a compound called "Duet" You have heard already ... More >>

Fake Penalties for Penn State, Fake Grades, Fake Success: Learning Nothing from a Scandal

The important image is Jerry Sandusky down there in the shower-room doing it to kids. Somehow a penalty that involves not being able to play in bowl games just seems terribly out of whack. I do get what's right about it. Sandusky and others in this matter face tough criminal penalties, and that is ... More >>

UT's School of Public Affairs Trimmed the Wrong Letter Out of its Graduation Program

What is the single most embarrassing thing that could happen to a college? Accidentally writing 'pubic' in the school's title in the graduation program, of course. Hands down. No, not down there, gosh. And with the tagline 'Unlimited Possibilities' ... you just cannot make this stuff up. To the gr ... More >>

Too Many Dallas Teens are Getting Locked Up in Adult Jails, Study Says. And That Ain't Good.

An exhaustive new study has found alarming conditions for Texas teenagers housed in adult jails while awaiting trial, a practice that Dallas and Harris counties use more than anywhere else in the state. In essence, the study found that there's really no good way to keep teens and adults safely in ... More >>

A $12 Minimum Hourly Wage: Trading Cheap Happy Meals for a Happier Future

All right, I've got my lanyard whistle around my neck, and I'm set for a session here. Let's hustle up out there, Lawners. Time for today's knee-jerk calisthenics. Remember our interim motto: A knee-jerk reaction is better than not being able to feel your feet. (I'm working on shortening that.) I ... More >>

The Schutze-Notes Version of James Galbraith's Latest Book: We're Screwed

James Galbraith has a new book out, Inequality and Instability, arguing that ... well, you know he's an economist at the LBJ School at UT Austin, so it's pretty complicated ... I'm trying to boil down what I got out of it ... I need to put this into Get-Off-My-Lawn language ... so let's imagine its ... More >>

When Asked Where They'd Like to Live, Many Americans Said: "Dallas." Swear to God.

​I was born and raised here, like my daddy before me. Left only twice -- to attend the University of Texas at Austin in '86, then again, 10 years later, to help launch a sister paper in Los Angeles. Both times I came back as soon as I could, the second time after less than two years. Couldn't help ... More >>

Top 100 Reasons Texas Is Twice as Awesome as Any Other State

Merritt MartinOh, you can damn well bet this is on the list.​By now most of you dear readers are well aware of the Gawker-produced list of the 50 Worst States In America. Gawker placed their home base at 50, and the Lone Star State at 13. Sure sure, our placement could be worse, but instead of ... More >>

UT Researcher Leading Fracking Study: "We're Gonna Look at Every Claim We Can Find."

UT-Austin geology professor Chip Groat​A week ago today, as you may recall, the University of Texas at Austin's Energy Institute announced they'd be joining the growing ranks of universities with major studies of hydraulic fracturing, with a $300,000, nine-month project of their own. Today, thank ... More >>

Dallas "Visionary" and UT-Austin School of Architecture Dean Hal Box, 81, Died Sunday

Courtesy the University of Texas at AustinHal Box​Two years ago I posted a lengthy excerpt from the 1962 book The Prairie's Yield - Forces Shaping Dallas Architecture from 1840 to 1962, published by Reinhold in conjunction with the Dallas chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Among its ... More >>

Take Pride In The Power

Because the Only Thing That Would Have Made Animal House Better Would Have Been Guns

​Trey Garrison, a writer I admire and a contributing editor at D, has an op-ed piece in The Dallas Morning News today suggesting that Tuesday's suicide at the University of Texas at Austin makes the case for allowing all students in Austin to pack heat when they go to class. Perhaps from personal ... More >>

UT Austin and Dallas and Houston Power Providers Get Into the Energy-Sellin' Bidness

​Sports Business Journal calls it a "unique marketing effort," which is one way of putting it: The University of Texas at Austin, Crescent Court-based Branded Retail Energy Company and Houston-based Champion Energy Services this morning announced the creation of Texas Longhorn Energy. Which is? We ... More >>

University of Texas at Austin to Help "Underserved" DISD High School Students

​The University of Texas at Austin sends word today that it's partnering with Dallas-based Education is Freedom -- the beneficiary of Mayor Tom's fund-raiser at the Dallas Zoo on June 26 -- on a pilot program intended to "support students who might not otherwise consider the university as an optio ... More >>

M.D.C., The Restarts, Warcola, Odor, Teenage Kamikaze

Sunday, May 23, at the Prophet Bar

Dallas Architecture Porn, Part 281: For Sale, a Photo of Lang and Witchell's Drafting Room

​Otto Lang and Frank Witchell built this city, more or less. Let's catalog, shall we: the Dallas Power & Light Building, the Lone Star Gas Company HQ,  the Sanger Bros. Department Store, the Fair Park Music Hall, the Sears, Roebuck & Co.'s Catalog Merchandise Center (now known as the ... More >>

As You Lock and Load Your Halo Wars Demo, Keep An Ear Out For Plano's Stephen Rippy

Xbox-ers are no doubt anxiously awaiting tomorrow, when Microsoft finally unleashes its Halo Wars demo in advance of the game's March 3 release date. (Am I the only person who misses Tempest? Ooooh -- thanks, Atari!) I digress. So happens there's an extremely local connection to the Halo spin-off: T ... More >>

Selling Shakespeare

The MAC offers one night with The Merchant

Wait, Doesn't Everyone Get Into UT?

A D.C.-based nonprofit called Project on Fair Representation today filed a 35-page federal lawsuit against the University of Texas at Austin. The suit claims that the school's admissions policies kept out a white 18-year-old high-schooler named Abigail Noel Fisher, who, says the very detailed legal ... More >>

Jim Moroney Goes to Austin, Promises Not to Give "Televangical" Speech

Dallas Morning News publisher and CEO Jim "Tre" Moroney delivered the keynote address today at the ninth annual International Symposium on Online Journalism on the University of Texas at Austin campus. Alas, we couldn't make it, but someone caught a little of speech on video and posted it to the You ... More >>

Why, Yes, I Do Give a Damn About the Ransom Center Film Exhibit

Insert your "you lookin' at me" joke, if that is how you roll. The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has a remarkable collection of film-related memorabilia -- everything from David Selznick's archives to Robert De Niro's taxi-driver's license. And today comes word that during ... More >>

UT Dallas Is a Wise Investment

Last year, Kiplinger listed the University of Texas at Dallas as the 69th-best deal for in-staters among public colleges. This year, the school formerly known as the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest moves way, way up to the No. 50 slot, after the personal-finance advisors factored in both a ... More >>

Help Wanted

R.C. Hickman, One of the Most Important Photographers in Dallas' History, Has Died

Ever Wanted to Start Your Own Texas History Museum? Now's Yer Chance.

The title of Stephen F. Austin's Translations is so long, you're really just paying per word. Looks like Heritage Auction Galleries' CEO is having a garage sale tomorrow at the Hall of State in Fair Park -- and you're invited, though you'll need a few big bucks should you want to purchase some items ... More >>

Sigh...

Buzz isn't buying conspiracy theories

Screw This

Politics are boring, let's talk about sex

The Soft Uncanny

Baby, I'm-A Want You

The Modern knows what Pretty looks like

Meredith Miller

Thursday, July 13, at AllGood Café

Dark Day

Ricardo Ainslie takes the Long Dark Road back to Jasper

Best Local NBA Hopeful (Who Actually Has a Shot)

LaMarcus Aldridge

Best Actor

Halim Jabbour

Glorious Feeling

Singin' in the Rain returns, happy again

Good for Nothings

From the SMU vaults, a collection of bad movies with, ahem, good intentions

Letters

High Hopes, Ugly Americans

Scene, heard

Jet is in labor on the WWW; Notes from KNTU's underground; Return of the Children of the Corn Mo; Prescription: Mark Ridlin; Rotating drum stools

Events for the week

To be or not to bop

Texan Jazz unveils the Lone Star contribution to jazz