Opinion

A 26-page report from the Texas Comptroller concludes that the state needs 306,000 additional homes, a shortage that has sent housing costs soaring, The Texas Tribune reported. Homebuilding hasn’t kept up with the booming economy as millions of new residents have moved here over the past decade, leaving more than half of the state’s homeowners and renters struggling to find and keep affordable housing.

Our Jiu Jitsu teacher is one of the greatest competitors of all time. He was the first to win the Jiu Jitsu grand slam by winning four major tournaments in one year. Since he won that in 2007, only a few other great competitors have reached this pinnacle of the sport.

Uncle Mort had never heard of “support parrots,” but admits that he shouldn’t have been surprised. “Seems like way too many of my friends are either sued or getting sued, but none of the squabbles involve birds,” he laughed.

The dog-day heat wave has sent power demands to new records, the Austin American-Statesman reported. With much of the state enduring an excessive heat warning, power demand peaked at 85,559 megawatts last week, breaking a record set last August.

It was the slowest of hot, muggy days in the thicket. Mercury in the thermometer bulged and lodged in three-digit territory.

My wife and daughter came to me this past week, asking for my help with our daughter’s first writing prompt in school. The need for assistance involved applying critical thinking to Aslan’s death in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” C.S.

As Texans endure the dog days of summer, experts say deaths related to heat in Texas and nationwide are likely undercounted, the Texas Standard reported. With climate change causing warmer days and nights, last year was the hottest on record in Texas.

It’s a line lifted from a short poem written by Robert Gray in 1868. “Ignorance is bliss when it is folly to be wise.” Ever fresh, it is an ongoing ponderance, like whether spearmint gum retains its flavor after overnight repose on the bedpost.

B Ivens My dad used to tell me that when you play in the hog pen, you begin to smell like a hog--his instruction for finding good friends and associating with people who made smart choices. What my parents did not apprehend was that I was the child parents warned their kids about.

Texas public schools received more than $19 billion in pandemic relief funds over the last four years, but that pipeline of cash will largely end on Sept. 30, The Texas Tribune reported.