When former Dallas Observer Editor Joe Tone left the paper in 2015, he told us it was to work on a book about how a young FBI agent helped take down the Zetas drug cartel. Turns out, he wasn’t kidding. He not only wrote a book, due to be published…
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor has made himself perfectly clear: An order he issued in August to stop the Obama administration from enforcing guidelines that would push school districts to allow transgender students to choose which restroom and locker rooms they use applies everywhere in the U.S. Texas Attorney General…
Not that newly retired Dallas police Chief David Brown is asking for the Observer’s advice, but that’s never stopped us before, so here goes: Sic transit gloria mundi. That’s Latin for “the glories of the world are fleeting” or, less literally, “don’t get a big head, pal.” It’s what slaves…
The Antichrist, the embodiment of evil, manifests itself in the internet. The wired world isolates humans, ruins them mentally and physically and releases their darkest impulses, yet humanity has grown so dependent on it that one good solar flare could be enough to fry the ‘net and civilization along with…
Dr. Susan Harper isn’t the first woman to be called a “feminist witch.” She’s just one of the few who don’t mind. Why should she? She has traveled far, spiritually and geographically, to earn the title. Professionally, Harper is the graduate reader at Texas Woman’s University, editing and offering guidance…
Last November, the National Institutes of Health announced that it would stop providing funding to biomedical research using chimpanzees as test subjects. “NIH will no longer maintain a colony of 50 chimpanzees for future research. All NIH-owned chimpanzees that reside outside of the Federal Sanctuary System operated by Chimp Haven,…
The old cotton gin on the west edge of Gunter seems an odd place to launch an economic boom. A breeze blows through broken windows and holes in its rusting, corrugated metal walls. Inside, a half-dozen or so squat machines that once separated cotton from seed sit corroding in a…
Turns out that the Walker Stalker Con that hit the Dallas convention center last week was not, in fact, devoted to the city’s favorite TV son, Walker, Texas Ranger. Nope. This con was for the fans of The Walking Dead, who came in whatever the collective noun is for the…
Didn’t get ticket to last month’s Magic Men show at the Bomb Factory? No worries, the Observer did, and videographer Sarah Passon brought along her camera to boot. Take a look at what you missed — acres of ripped male flesh, mainly…
A 55-year-old “non-pregnant” patient from DeSoto who traveled recently to El Salvador is the fourth person to test positively for infection with the Zika virus in Dallas County, the county’s Health and Human Services Department said Tuesday. Of the four Dallas cases so far confirmed by the Centers for Disease…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed the first case of the Zika virus, contracted through sex, in a Dallas County resident in 2016. The virus, which causes a relatively minor illness in adults, has tentatively been linked to birth defects in the children of infected women. At…
The Observer has a new food editor on the way at the end of January. Her name’s Beth Rankin, and for the past five years she has been editing the Beaumont Enterprise’s Cat5 Magazine, a weekly arts, entertainment and dining tabloid. She also created, hosted and produced the Local Scene on 91.3 KVLU,…
Earlier this week, Eric Nicholson told you about the latest travesty in the Great Trinity Forest: a long muddy gash of felled trees, cut through the woods by a contractor working to build the private Trinity Forest Golf Club on city property. Ben Sandifer, one of the chief defenders of…
It’s that time of year when we look back at what was and give serious thought to what we need to do to become better people in the year ahead. Which, come to think of it, probably explains why we drink so heavily on New Year’s Eve. Either direction we…
In the big picture, you could say Rowlett was lucky. No one died when an EF3 tornado tore through the northeastern suburb the day after Christmas, unlike in neighboring Garland, where an EF4 twister from the same storm killed eight people as it tossed cars and trucks into the air…
Please welcome back for a return engagement, Joe Pappalardo, who takes over as the Observer’s editor on December 7. Longtime readers with good memories — we’re pretty sure they exist — will remember Joe from his time as a staff writer here 15 years ago. He recalled us fondly, as…
There are a lot of “official surveys” created as backdoor marketing strategies for companies. Car companies will release clever angles on road trip statistics or someone like a doggy poop pick up service might release a list of the poopiest cities in the country. Then, they’ll send these lists out…
Based on what we know, calling University of North Texas journalism dean Dorothy Bland a race-card-playing, self-aggrandizing, lying, cop-hating bigot is entirely unfair. Not that some people care. Trolls, mainly. Still, some serious humans are upset with Bland too. She’s the target of an online petition demanding her firing for…
In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 20 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Can Turkyilmaz. The flood of Central American children who poured across the Rio Grande last fall has ebbed. Anti-immigrant protesters have packed up their signs, and reporters…
Possibly, some adult somewhere in America doesn’t know the mystery of Citizen Kane – why newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane whispers the word “rosebud” on his deathbed. Who hasn’t seen the groundbreaking 1941 masterpiece by Orson Welles, a thinly biography of William Randolph Hearst that’s widely hailed the greatest movie…
Here are some questions to ponder as you wander through the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, 650 S. Griffin St., during the annual DFW Auto Show. (And many will wander. The show’s vast display of current, concept and classic cars and trucks and product exhibitors drew 400,000 last year, according…
Listen, context is everything. Is Indiana Jones’ sidekick Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom a bit … um … un-P.C. by today’s standards? Perhaps. Is the film’s depiction of Hinduism and India on par with, say, a Three Stooges short’s portrayal of bone-wearing African tribesmen? Maybe…
