The UNT-Dallas enrollment saga: “Already” at 640 or “just” 640?

I guess the full-time equivalent enrollment at UNT-Royce WestDallas all depends on how you look at it.

The way I look at it, the enrollment growth rate is tapering off and it won’t cross the state-set 1,000-student FTE bar to officially open as a four-year university in its own right until after 2010, if not approaching 2015.

And, that Lancaster development on Houston School Road that’s predicated on this? If there’s just, say, 1,200 students at UNT-Royce in 2015, there ain’t gonna be a whole bunch of higher-end development, whether retail and hotel, or the proposed tech/research stuff on the north side of I-20.

Can you say white elephant?

Smokey Joe Barton: OK, maybe he has a bit of cause to be right on TXU

The Texas Public Utilities Commission hearing on the would-be TXU buyout by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts alleges TXU has used legal barratry to drive awayanother would-be buyer. Given that this is TXU, anything is possible. And, given Joe Barton, even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while. Of course, given Joe Barton, he might have some connection to Hunt-owned Sharyland Utilities.

OK, so Lancaster ISD is just off $14 mil, not $17 mil

And it’s “just” bad accounting practices, not embezzlement.

The LISD audit still has to be seen as reflecting badly on Superintendent Larry Lewis. After all, former chief financial officer Eugene Smith was a “prize hire” of Lewis’ 18 months ago.

There’s also this:

Eugene Smith is no longer with the school district, but Lewis has said that departure was not connected to the audit.

Well, then to what reason IS his departure connected?

Lewis goes on to cite “rumors” and “naysayers” who will never be satisfied. Well, earlier, more proactive communication would have helped at one time; that train is way out of the station, though, and isn’t coming back.

PBS needs a skeptical thinking cap on the Shroud of Turin

Instead, Secrets of the Dead gives us an episode HUGELY biased in favor of “it’s Jesus” Shroud worshipers.

On the entire hour of showtime, I saw just one actual skeptic, and he got no more than 60 seconds of air time.

All the old bogus arguments got trotted out:
1. There’s bloodstains (no, that’s vermillion pigment).
2. The CO2 dating is off due to “contamination” (no, it would take twice the total CO2 weight of the shroud to throw its dating off by 1,300 years).
3. A sudarion (2,000-year-old style) head cloth from Spain “validates” the Shroud (no, it undercuts it, because how could it have blood and a face image as well as the Shroud itself).
4. Pollen only from the Jerusalem area is on the Shroud (it was lifted with Scotch tape, very likely to have been contaminated itself).

That’s just the top four, for starters. I could easily list half a dozen more. For example, if the Shroud itself were an actual burial cloth, draped over the body of Jesus or whomever from head down, why aren’t the forward and reverse images on the Shroud touching each other at the top of the head?

OOPS!

(Note: Since I posted this, I discovered this was a rerun of a show that originally aired in 2004. If anything, that makes PBS’ crime even more egregious.)

Beware libertarian fine print on global warming

Libertarian op-ed columnist Steve Chapman appears to agree that global warming is real, but strongly opposes government regulations as any part of the solution. Here’s part of why, he says:

The government's fuel economy standards also haven't done much to promote conservation. On average, new vehicles get lower mileage today than they did 20 years ago, thanks to the proliferation of large trucks and SUVs.

That’s the government’s fault ONLY because it kowtowed rather than being more proactive, and cutting SUVs out of “truck” mileage standards and instead putting them in car mileage standards. That said, Chapman is right about this:

Other motorists will keep driving their gas-guzzling cars and trucks for years to come, blissfully spared any incentive to conserve.

His quasi-typical “free market is everything” answer? A carbon tax.

Steve, these aren’t mutually exclusive issues. We actually need both, if we’re going to be serious about global warming, anyway. And, we need the CAFÉ standards for vehicle mileage increased to address Peak Oil issues anyway, which a carbon tax won’t directly touch. And, the part that he’s right about? That means we need to up the CAFÉ now rather than waiting.

“Exotic” non subprime mortgages could also get crunched

Interest-free mortgages and other so-called “exotic” mortgage offerings could also face trouble.

Not as risky as subprime loans, they’re still definite more risky than more traditional mortgages. And the bursting of the housing bubble, especially in California and elsewhere on the West Coast, could spell trouble.

In California, a housing downturn in San Diego, Sacramento and other markets is already pressuring many exotic-mortgage holders — and not just subprime borrowers — to default on their loans or sell their homes, according to Paul Leonard, director of the Durham, N.C.-based Center for Responsible Lending's office in Oakland, Calif.

Even if this sector of the market takes just a mild ding, it reinforces perceptions of a shaky mortgage sector of the economy.