Drivers and boaters will be subject to the Austin Police Department's "No Refusal" policy during this holiday weekend for the second year in a row. According to KVUE, this means "[i]f you are suspected of driving a car or boat while intoxicated, you will have two choices if you are pulled over by police. You will either have to perform a breathalyzer test or give blood to be tested for alcohol consumption." more ›

• Some local students see President Obama’s stay-in-school message. Some don’t.
• “Ike Dike” proposed in Galveston. This Dike would extend Galveston’s seawall by 50 miles and create a job for a Little Dutch Boy who’d save the city in case of malfunction!
• Do you get your own page in the yearbook for this? Would you want one? A 14 year-old Dallas driver led cops on a wrong-way chase.

A resolution set to go before the city council this week would change the rules of the road for Austin drivers. The measure would prohibit drivers from texting or emailing while driving and calls for a three-foot safety zone between drivers and pedestrians or cyclists. more ›

A couple of weeks ago Warren and I went to see the movie Moon, sort of a thematic mash-up of that old classic Gaslight meets the Disney flick Parent Trap meets Castaway with a dash of A Boy and His Dog thrown in and some sub-themes that might’ve been derived from Bowie’s Major Tom and Elton’s Rocket Man. That I was able to gather all this from the film is a testament to my ability to multi-task. While it’s true I sometimes purposefully multi-task in the theater—yes, I can knit in the dark—in this case I found myself unintentionally and unhappily tri-tasking. Because the couple sitting next to us WOULD NOT SHUT THE FUCK UP. more ›