Back Talk Far North Dallas

Around the web: Early voting, Star Trek, justifiable homicides, natural gas drilling

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn’t necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting:

• Early voting for the November election begins Monday. You can find out where to vote here (complete with a Google map link, as the Dallas County elections department goes high tech). Early voting has already started in several states, with mixed turnout.

• Entertainment Weekly takes on the spring 2009 Star Trek XI movie. Says the director, Lost’s J.J. Abrams: “We weren't making a movie for fans of Star Trek, we were making a movie for fans of movies.” Some interesting stuff, if you don’t mind some truly annoying writing. The studio trailer is here.

• In the wake of yesterday’s Lakewood shooting, the FBI says the number of justifiable homicides committed by police and private citizens has been rising in the past two years to their highest levels in more than a decade. Says one expert: “Clearly there is a message out there that citizens may be able to defend themselves.”

• So much for Tarrant County homeowners striking it rich by selling their property’s mineral rights. Gas producers have stopped trying to lease land and are cutting bonus offers in the Barnett Shale, thanks to lower natural gas prices and the credit crunch. One man saw his bonus drop from $142,500 to $5,000.

Technorati Tags: early voting,Star Trek,Barnett Shale,natural gas,justifiable homicides

Around the web: Missing newscast, miniature golf, crime safety test, a voting nun

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn’t necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting:

• Channel 8’s 10 p.m. newscast mysteriously vanished Saturday night, reports UncleBarky.com. It started late because of an auto race, didn’t have any audio, and then disappeared, replaced by Entertainment Tonight. A station official said an audio board stopped working, and the backup audio board didn’t kick in.

• One of the oldest miniature golf courses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area will close after 40 years in business. The Putt-Putt course on East Division in Arlington held its final tournament over the weekend. Said one long-time golfer: “Back in the early ’70s, Putt-Putt is what you did as a kid. Kids today are more interested in technology. But when I was 12 years old, I pretty much lived at Arlington Division. I can still hear Saturday in the Park by Chicago.”

• An Argentine publicist uses bicycles to gauge crime, leaving an unchained bike in certain neighborhoods to see how long it takes for the bike to be stolen. His theory? The longer it takes, the safer the area. He records the bikes a using hidden camera, and posts the videos on the Internet. Sounds like something we should do here on the blog, doesn’t it?

• A 106-year-old American nun, who hasn’t voted for president since 1952, says she’s going to vote for Barak Obama. Sister Cecilia Gaudette, who lives in a convent in Rome, voted for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. In the interest of fairness, if anyone knows any 106-year-old nuns who are going to vote for John McCain, let me know and we’ll put it on the blog.

Technorati Tags: crime,Channel 8,miniature golf,2008 presidential election

A.H. Belo stock heads down again

Go figure –- the stock market went up almost 1,000 points yesterday, a record, and the parent company of Dallas’ Only Daily newspaper lost almost 11 percent. If that’s not enough to roil the 401K of the remaining Belo employees, volume was very heavy, about one-half more than normal. This usually means something is up.

Belo is releasing its third-quarter results in two weeks or so. Have investors already decided the news will be bad and are selling ahead of the earnings?

Yet, no matter how bad those numbers are, they can’t be that bad. For one thing, Belo has no debt. For another, the stock is paying 12 percent in dividends. For a third, if the bosses liquidated the company tomorrow, it would probably be worth more than its market capitalization. The real estate that the News’ building sits on downtown is listed on the tax rolls at $28.2 million, which means it could be worth twice that. And none of this takes into account the possibility that management will take the company private next year.

Hey, even I see an opportunity here, and I’m just a middle-aged ex-sportswriter. It’s time to buy Belo stock, and I’ll probably get 100 shares later today. Of course, this raises the question of whether I’ll have to add one of those disclaimers –- Jeff Siegel owns shares in A.H. Belo -– whenever I write about The News.

Technorati Tags: A.H. Belo,Dallas Morning News,stock price

Pop culture: Current TV shows us the green side of Dallas

OK, I admit it. I'm not as environmentally-conscious as I should be. I don't ride DART, I don't buy organic, and most the light bulbs in my house are not the energy-efficient ones.
But I am taking baby steps towards turning green. I started recycling about a year ago when the city I live in (Richardson) started providing me with the free bags to do it.
And I've just recently stopped using plastic grocery bags. That decision came after I watched a great pod on Current TV explaining just how bad those plastic bags are for the planet. For example, did you know that a single plastic bag takes one thousand years to disintegrate? Yeah, me neither. I also learned about other cities that have actually banned plastic bags--and in fact, Dallas is now considering doing the same.
I also watched a Current TV pod about how green Dallas is. I know, it surprised me, too. Sure, we're not as progressive as Santa Monica--but we are doing some things right, as evidenced in this viewer-created pod.
If you're not familiar with Current TV, you should be. It's an innovative network where about one-third of all the content is viewer-created. It's sort of like the citizen-journalist approach to broadcast. If you don't get cable, no worries: You can watch all their pods online on their website, which is highly addictive, so consider yourself warned.

Around the web: Top universities, fuel-efficient police cars, the president and the Park Cities, spam and the stock market collapse

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn’t necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting:

• Just in time for Texas-OU weekend: The University of Texas is the 70th best college in the world, according to a survey from an international education network, QS Quacquarelli Symonds. Oklahoma isn’t ranked among the top 200. But before the Orangebloods get too cocky, know that UT dropped from a tie for 51st last year, and is ranked behind the University of Wisconsin in this year’s survey. Harvard and Yale are first and second for the second consecutive year. (Note to Northwestern alumni club: NU is 33, down from 29 last year).

• High gas prices are hurting police departments, too. Traditionally, cops have driven cars like the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor, which has a powerful engine annd big back seats for stashing people who get arrested. But rising fuel  prices mean more departments are using hybrids and smaller more fuel-efficient cars.

• Park Cities, get ready for the Bushes. Sources are reporting that Laura Bush wants to move back to Highland Park when the president’s term is up in January. “It’s her turn,” said a Texas member of the House with knowledge of the move who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He wanted the ranch. She wants a home in Dallas.”

• I even got one of these –- an email telling me my bank had been sold and I needed to send financial information to the new owners. In fact, federal authorities say scammers posing as the new owners of banks or the federal agencies charged with oversight of failed banks are phishing for account information. Which is pretty despicable, even for people who perpetuate Internet fraud.

Technorati Tags: university rankings,Highland Park,Bush family,police,hybrid cars,phishing attacks

Quick, more booboos from Belo

Dallas’ Only Daily Newspaper gets its share of criticism in these cyber-pages, but we try to be constructive. Everyone knows how much trouble The News and its parent, A.H. Belo, are in -– sinking stock price, plunging revenues, layoffs and even dropping comic strips (predicted here in December, if I may be so bold). So the last thing it needs to do is to shoot itself in the foot.

But that’s what happened the other day in Quick, Belo’s tabloid aimed at younger people who don’t read newspapers. A humor columnist named Alibaster K. Abthernabther (which I’m told is a pen name for a real person) wrote a piece about having sex with Big Tex. At least that’s what I think it was about, because I’m not young and hip enough to understand the humor. Or at least that’s the explanation Quick editor Rob Clark is giving to some readers who have complained.

National Night Out: Estates West

I went to the Estates West National Night Out celebration last night, as I'm sure a lot of you did in your own neighborhoods. Mayor Tom Leppert, councilman Ron Natinsky, and Advocate's own Ask A Cop columnist Deputy Chief Elliston were all guest speakers. I got to visit with several neighbors, many of whom have graced the pages of Advocate magazine. I snapped some photos throughout the night, which you can see online now. Thanks to all the Estates West neighbors for the lovely dinner, good conversation, and for making me feel so welcome, as always.

Woman thrown from car on Dallas North Tollway: update

A few weeks ago on this blog I told you about a woman who was thrown from a moving car on the Dallas North Tollway. The police are still trying to track this man, who is described as being about 20, having an olive complexion, short dark hair and driving a light-colored, older-model, four-door sedan. The victim says she met the man at Oktoberfest when he was with a group of friends. The victim's family is now reaching out to the public in the hopes that someone who was with him that night might come forward, or someone may recognize his car in the TxDOt video. If you any information, please contact the police at 214.671.3503. 

Around the web: Good drivers, Texas taxes, extinct mammals, road salt

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn’t necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting:

• Little Elm police are ticketing drivers who follow the law, part of a program in the Denton County community to reward good driving. The Little Elm Police Officers Association is handing out gift certificates to a local restaurant to road-friendly motorists.

• Texas is one of the most business friendly tax states in the country, says the Tax Foundation in its 2009 state business tax climate index. Texas is ranked seventh, while Wyoming is first. California, New York and New Jersey are 48, 49, and 50.

• At least 25 percent of the world's mammal species are at risk of extinction, according to the Red List of Threatened Species. The group, part of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, says Asian primates are especially at risk. The cause? Mostly loss of habitat, including deforestation.

• And another reminder how nice it is not have winter. Road salt, which cities and states put on highways to melt snow and ice, is in short supply across the country. Even worse, the price of a ton of salt has doubled and even tripled in some areas. Southern Wisconsin had 100 inches of snow last winter and used 645,000 tons of salt on state highways, up from the typical 400,000 tons.

Technorati Tags: Good drivers,road salt,extinct animals,Texas taxes

A.H. Belo stock hits record low

Monday afternoon update: The Dow Jones average lost 800 points at one point today, before closing down 365. Belo was one of the few bright spots.  It opened at $4.02, another low, and then rallied to $4.75, a 14 1/2 percent increase. Trading was light (just more than half of normal), which may account for the odd swing up. Or investors saw a chance to buy a stock whose capital assets, like real estate, are worth more than the company's stock market cap.

A.H. Belo, the parent of Dallas’ Only Daily Newspaper, saw its stock fall to $4.15 on Friday, easily dropping through the previous 52-week low. It’s probably headed lower today, given the meltdown in the Asian and European markets this morning.

What’s interesting is that the stock had rallied since the middle of last month, getting as high as $7 a share. And then the bottom fell out, falling 41 percent in three weeks. The rally makes a little sense –- Belo announced layoffs and cutbacks this summer that included closing The News’ bureau in San Antonio, and that always makes Wall Street happy. Plus, it cut its dividend in half at the end of last month, which also pleased the stock analysts.

But the slide? Who knows? It’s probably a combination of the general stock market malaise, Wall Street’s displeasure with newspaper stocks, and some unique Belo problems. The company doesn’t announce monthly results, like other major chains, and the stock tends to be sold off because it doesn’t.

The end result of the slide? Belo’s market capitalization is less than $90 million, which means it’s ripe for a takeover –- if anyone can raise the money in these historically tight credit markets and if they can find away around the company’s two-class stock system, which makes takeovers more difficult.

Technorati Tags: A.H. Belo,Dallas Morning News,takeover,stock price