Kenny Chesney With Miranda Lambert AT&T Stadium, Arlington Saturday, June 4, 2016 Making an emotional connection is what music is about. But it’s still embarrassing to get caught up in the moment and feel much of anything for an artists when you’re just one in a crowd of 50,000 people…
Donald Trump is being lambasted for his Trump University, a business that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is calling “phony” and “heartless.” The company marketed itself as a school that would teach students how to make money in real estate, even though it wasn’t accredited in any way. Instruction included…
There’s a tunnel connecting the U.S. Embassy in Kabul to the U.S. Agency for International Development office building across the street. It’s a popular — and safe— thoroughfare for the diplomats, accountants, Foreign Service officers and non-governmental agency workers involved in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Jeff Millslagle is walking through…
Dallas’ biggest live act last weekend wasn’t even technically alive. Hatsune Miku’ is a 3D projection, an animated singer created in Japan who sings and dances next to a live band on stage. Her acolytes began to arrive at The Bomb Factory on Saturday afternoon, hours before the concert, and they…
Every three hours, a satellite called the Global Precipitation Measurement Observatory records the rain and snow that falls, worldwide. This week, the big precipitation story is Texas. East Texas got 6 to 12 inches, with similar totals for eastern Oklahoma. Houston tallied the highest downfall, at nearly 15 inches. “The main culprit…
Defense industry money is a lot like military aircraft. Sometimes it arrives loudly, like a cargo plane rumbling down a runway. Other times it slides into a local economy like a stealth bomber — quietly but effectively. This clumsy analogy brings us to last week’s announcement that the Pentagon is spending…
Dalton Rapattoni, freshly famous from his strong showing during the final season of American Idol, isn’t turning his back on North Texas. “Dude, I will work wherever people need me to be, but North Texas is my home,” he told the Observer during a media call today. “I can’t relax anywhere else. This…
Plane spotters and aviation workers around Dallas Love Field Airport are always on the lookout for new aircraft. Last week SevenMikeCharlie took to Reddit to note a unique military arrival. “I created this post because I recently saw a new P-8 Poseidon arrive at Love Field,” he wrote, sparking a…
One of today’s bombing attacks in Belgium occurred at a familiar location — an airport. This is not unique or surprising. Here are a few reasons why terrorists choose to strike there, and why it’s so hard to stop them. 1) They are irresistibly soft targets. Let’s start with the…
The Dallas County Courthouse filled with African American luminaries on April 18, 1921. Something special was going to happen, and the assembled group was there to show support as public testimony decided the fate of two children. On a Saturday evening in early April, firefighting trucks from two stations responded…
I knew I was in trouble when I saw the subject line: “Reminder for Career Expo at Richardson High School.” I had committed to appearing to represent journalism as a profession to thousands of impressionable kids. My reaction was immediate and vulgar and aimed at Dallas Observer staff writer Eric…
Opinions about the F-35 Lightning II are ubiquitous, and they are usually focused on its staggering $200 million-per-airplane cost. Other coverage details the engineering struggles of the airplane as the Pentagon program advances, concentrating on evaluations from the Government Accountability Office and internal Pentagon program evaluators. The Texas factory outside…
There are plenty of conspiracy theories floating around out there claiming political opponents murdered Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to open up a seat on the court. Radio talk show host Alex Jones, never one to pass up an opportunity to stir the pot, said he feels this happened “in his…
Running a third party candidacy is no picnic. Just ask Russell Verney, senior political adviser to H. Ross Perot during the 1992 presidential election and his 1996 campaign manager. Perot headlined the two most successful third-party campaigns in modern U.S. political history. The Dallas native and billionaire received 18.9 percent…
Dr. Christopher Perkins just started his job as director of Dallas County Health and Human Services in 2012 when an emerging disease took root in Texas. The West Nile virus, spreading across the United States on the wings of mosquitoes, infected hundreds of people in Dallas county — more than…
Dallas Police Chief David Brown isn’t afraid of media interviews. Or if he is, he does a great job hiding it. Maybe he sees them as a challenge — he exhibits all the signs of a person who is energized by struggle. Case in point: As the interview goes on, he…
The most iconic feature of Dallas’ skyline is the geodesic sphere atop the Reunion Tower. The 259 high-output LEDs around this ball form patterns for holidays, sports victories and various remembrances. But someone has to keep the sphere in shape — cleaning windows, inspecting the light nodes and changing the…
This is the story of a hometown product that is influencing events — and killing people — across the globe. And you’ve probably never heard of it. This week Lockheed Martin, our friendly neighborhood defense contractor, sent a celebratory statement declaring that the U.S. Army and Marine Corps have used…
Dallas doesn’t get many world movie premiers, not to mention ones that have potential to change the trajectory of presidential elections. That made last night’s world premier of 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, Michael Bay’s slick but effective movie of the siege of Benghazi in 2012, and event…
A trio of national leaders of the Bandidos motorcycle gang have been arrested on federal racketeering and drug charges related to a war the group waged against the rival Cossacks club, according to federal authorities. That war erupted publicly during the now-infamous shootout between members, and police, in Waco in…
Last week, West Texas farmer Larry Hancock left his home in Muleshoe to survey the damage of Winter Storm Goliath on his cattle. He’s farmed this land since 1978, but that day he saw a weird, alien landscape. “We’re in the desert so we’re used to drought, not a lot of…
This week’s Dallas Observer features a story on the rising use of electronic implants in high-end universities and tattoo parlors in North Texas. It turns out there are commercially available radio frequency identification (RFID) implants that people can order from the website of companies like Dangerous Things and Cyberise.me. Body hackers…
