The state fish of Texas, the Guadalupe Bass, is close to extinction according to the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. The species was endangered when it was made the official state fish in 1989. Re-stocking efforts in two Central Texas streams led to inter-species mating with small-mouth bass. ...

Photo by Mike Tigas on flickrFormer Longhorn standout Roger Clemens was among the players named Thursday in an investigative report into steroid use in professional baseball. The report, which put the blame on both players and management for the drug problem throughout the game, was released by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell after 20 months of study. Clemens played at the University of Texas in the 1982 and 1983 seasons and has been one of......

Score one more for the acquisitions team at the Harry Ransom Center. Yesterday morning, the UT facility announced that it had purchased the papers of Tim O'Brien, American novelist and resident of Central Texas. O'Brien teaches at Texas State University in San Marcos....

This is a good example of poor judgment.The students of Penn State University should have taken a note from their counterparts at Tarleton State University when picking out this year's Halloween costumes. Even more idiotic than their costume idea was their decision to post the resulting pictures on Facebook. Photos of two Penn State students donning Virginia Tech t-shirts, covered with bullet holes and fake blood, were put up on Facebook and quickly spread over......

Artist sketch courtesy UTPDThe University of Texas Police Department would appreciate your help in finding a man linked with a certain "terroristic threat" that occurred last Wednesday. The University of Texas at Austin Police Department needs assistance with identifying an individual who is a person of interest or witness in an investigation into a Terroristic Threat. The incident occurred on December 5, 2007 at The University Teaching Center (UTC). We are asking that anyone with......

Back in November, we caught the brief, free run of A Mystical Quest To Slay Normalcy at Southwestern University in Georgetown. We enjoyed this remarkable, site-specific work so much that we have to talk about it, and share rehearsal / promotion video. Described as “exploring disability,” the performance by Southwestern's Department of Theatre and the Theatre For Social Justice started off at the Jones Theater on campus. The show then mocked the fact that wheelchair......

Photo by *clairity* on flickrA public hearing is scheduled for tonight to discuss a proposed city-wide ban on panhandling. The ban would outlaw panhandling on roadsides and within 1,000 feet of all schools. The current solicitation ordinance prohibits panhandling in three zones of downtown, including the area around the University of Texas, a section of North Austin near the 51st Street day-laborer site and the Second Street District down to Lady Bird Lake. APD reported......

Image provided by Soundcheck MagazineWhile attending the University of Texas at Austin, one faces a constant barrage of “the weekend starts on Thursday” type advertisements. Although largely for exposure of Thursday night drink specials at bars on 6th Street, the intrinsic appeal of that statement bleeds through on days like these. Kick off your weekend early (and gently) with Swedish singer-songwriter José González at The Parish or dance away at the Electric Six show at......

Image from www.kut.orgBefore you get too bogged down with finals, papers, end-of-the-semester projects, etc., you might consider this for next semester: KUT is currently taking applications for their Spring Break/SxSW Intern Program. Interns in this program will undergo an intensive week-long audio journalism training program under guidance from KUT and NPR staff. KUT is looking for two student journalists to cover Film and three to cover Music during the SxSW Festival. You must be at......

Photo from Soundcheck Magazine Austin's 2nd Annual Green Holiday Festival, "The Sustainable Shopper's Ball!", returns to the Sunset Valley Farmers Market with over 60 local vendors and educators offering everything from bamboo homewares to luxury organic linens SXSW Film Festival Producer Matt Dentler shares some insider tips on what the film programming team is looking for - "Should you spend money on a fancy press kit? Should you check your DVD screener 4 different times......

The death toll from the cyclone that hit Bangladesh is over 3,000 now; the UN says a million people have been left homeless. We're (*cough*) so surprised: Austin named the fall allergy capital of the nation. Alberto Gonzales didn't have an easy time speaking at the University of Florida last night. After child workers were found at one of their factories in India, Gap is determined to improve working conditions there. US Military calls......

SFist witnessed a new apartment building tszuj the skyline with spectacular, gaudy turquoise aplomb, the (informal) renaming of the Mission/SOMA neighborhood border, the return of the Maltese Falcon, the Mayor Gavin Newsom mea culpa-ing over his Hawaiian getaway during the oil spill, and double-decker buses hitting the streets of San Francisco. Oh, and some baseball player named Barry Bonds is a liar whose pants, it seems, are totally on fire. LAist continues to cover the......

On October 17, a UT student committed suicide in the Gregory Gym pool. Austin unveiled Texas' first hybrid school bus yesterday. Those helicopters flying over Austin yesterday were "supposedly" practicing for this weekend's football festivities. New study finds that most Texas High School graduates are not prepared for college. Clever: Give inmates jobs. Borderline: Give them jobs cleaning cars. Not-so Clever: Leaving the keys in the ignition. Even more proof that in this day......

Photo by johnkoetsier on flickr Utter Reading SeriesMonday, Nov 5BookPeople [map]7pm, Free[info]This month’s Utter Reading Series features two standouts from a couple hours south on I-35. Both teach at Trinity University in San Antonio, and both are long-overdue candidates for the Utter Series, which spotlights hot Texas-based writers. One has just won a national award for his short stories, and the other is an Austin-bred recent graduate of the Michener Center at UT. After the......

Image from Brackenridge Field Laboratory Development StudyMembers of the Integrative Biology section of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Texas have come forward with their own plan (large pdf) for the portion of the Brackenridge Tract currently containing the Brackenridge Field Laboratory. UT's Brackenridge Tract Tack Force recently recommended that the University hire an outside master planner to propose redevelopment for the entire tract, including the field laboratory. The biologists' plan contemplates......

When Joseph Campbell said, "Follow your bliss," what artist Jason Hackenwerth heard was, "If you love blowing balloons, git up on it." And so he did. Today, Hackenwerth's latex balloon sculptures are highly sought after; they exude an organic, 20,000 Leagues kind of invertebrate charm. Several colorful, oxygen-plumped specimens will be on display at The Blanton Museum, "...until [the pieces] run out of air." That will likely be around mid-November, unless an evil-doing darts player......

Better late than never -- here's a video clip of college football's play of the year. Last Saturday, players from San Antonio's Trinity University pitched the ball back and forth 15 times on the final play of the game to score a touchdown and defeat Millsaps College, 28-24. Just as amazing as watching the on-field action, where the play goes on for more than 60 seconds, is listening to the reaction of announcers Jonathan......

Mac Lethal has been called a “contemporary cross between a folk singer and a stand-up comic” by Rolling Stone – and that dichotomy of inane observation and thought-provoking insight defines his debut album, 11:11. We spoke with Mac Lethal from his tour bus while on the road for the Everybody Loves a Clown Tour with label-mates Grayskul and Atmosphere. That tour bus is currently parked outside of Emo’s, where the Everybody Loves a Clown......

Providing incentives for hybrids and investing in renewable technology are just a few of the environmental issues highlighted by U.S House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who spoke at City Hall yesterday. Speaking of her "New Direction Congress", she stood with U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett, city council members, and Austin Energy head Roger Duncan to highlight Austin's leadership in finding alternative energy sources and reducing energy consumptions. According to the Statesman: "The boast of a clean energy......

The University of Texas received a grade of B-minus on The College Sustainability Report Card, published Wednesday by the Sustainable Endowments Institute. According to the institute, the report card is the only independent sustainability assessment of campus operations and endowment investments. It grades universities with the 200 largest endowments in the areas of administration, climate change and energy, food and recycling, green building, transportation, endowment transparency, investment priorities and shareholder engagement. “The overall grade......

Local author Sarah Bird (The Yokota Officers Club, Virgin of the Rodeo, The Mommy Club, The Boyfriend School, and Alamo House) doesn't know how to just sit down and write a book. For her, research for a novel—say, one about flamenco music and dance—means picking up and moving to New Mexico for a summer to take flamenco dance lessons at The University of New Mexico. This may sound a little extreme when she could've hacked......

You probably know by now that perennial badass Robert De Niro donated his complete collection of film-related materials to the Harry Ransom Center in 2006, including annotated scripts and research materials from his character studies (that's right, De Niro is totally an anthropologist.) One of the main reasons De Niro chose the acclaimed University of Texas vault-of-goodness that is the Harry Ransom Center is because he knew that the materials would be available for students......

An early morning altercation led to a man stabbing three of his friends and running over two of them in a North Austin parking lot. Department of Labor awards $509,937 in a grant to Austin-based non-profit, American YouthWorks. The city won't be billing the 3 UT students for their rescue from the cave this weekend. 1983 KFC mass-murder case finally comes to trial in Bowie County. Panhandlers in Boerne may soon have to purchase......

UT's Brackenridge Tract Tack Force has released its initial recommendations regarding the land owned by the University west of Mopac and south of Enfield, which includes Lions Municipal Golf Course, West Austin Youth Association, the Colorado and Brackenridge Apartments, the Brackenridge Field Laboratory, a Randall's, and some other apartments and stores. The bottom line is that they suggest hiring an outside master planner to come up with a master plan for everything, and that......

The artist who was first to plant his flag at Austin’s Okay Mountain gallery last year is back and bringing more of his bizarre works on paper, sculpture and installation art in Impish Animal. Houston native Jason Villegas, whose work has been displayed in various cities around the country, helped open Okay Mountain in April 2006 with his solo exhibition, Repressed Burial Fantasy. Since his first Okay Mountain appearance, Villegas has completed his MFA at......

The Beauty Bar presents a quality bill of local pop-rock this Thursday night. Til We’re Blue Or Destroy, comprised of a number of multi-talented musicians, have recently wrapped up work on their debut record, This Train -- due later this year. The band’s delightful ditties fluctuate between catchy dance-pop and melodic guitar-rock, and that’s just fine with us! She, Sir support with an array of guitar laced soundscapes complemented perfectly by soft, distant vocals. Russell......

Photos from The University of Texas Performing Arts Center's renovation of Bass Concert Hall. Photos by Lauren Perdue. If you can't view the Flash slideshow above, an alternate version appears after the jump.......

It looks like our state legislators elected the wrong dinosaur to represent us as the official mascot of Texas: a new report claims that the bones found in North Central Texas, previously believed to be those of a pleurocoelus, are actually from an altogether different species. Southern Methodist University graduate Peter Rose devoted his master's thesis to studying the bones, which were discovered near the Paluxy River back in the 90s. Discrepancies arose when he......

The Austin Film Festival is right around the corner, and this year's Marquee programming is some of the best in the festival's history. With a wide variety of stellar comedies, dramas, and documentaries (not to mention several strong Oscar contenders) announced, there's something for everyone in the 2007 Marquee category. To help you plan out your festival schedule, we've put together a list of best bets for this year's program. The whole program looks excellent......

The University of Texas raised $26 million in athletic donations in 2006, putting it 16th among all U.S. universities. A study by The Chronicle of Higher Education found that money for athletics accounts for more than one-quarter of all contributions to some universities. The Chronicle survey reported that the country's largest athletic departments and booster clubs raised more than $1.2 billion in 2006 and 2007. The University of Texas wasn't the top athletic fund-raiser in......