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Perhaps by now you’ve read my little 5,000 word ditty about Museum Tower and how it is destroying the Nasher Sculpture Center. There’s one aspect of the story that I didn’t get to address in the printed version: what happens if the two sides go to court? I don’t think that will happen for several reasons, not the least of which is that David Haemisegger, president of both NorthPark Management Company and the Nasher’s board, doesn’t want to sue. But, still, a lawsuit lies within the realm of possibility.

More than one knowledgeable person told me that a fix on the Museum Tower side could run to $20 million. How do you attach a brise soleil to a 42-story building that was never intended to support such a structure? The fix would be expensive. And it would wipe out any profit that the building’s owner, the Dallas Police & Fire Pension System, could hope to reap. In fact, it could put the project in the red. So they won’t want to fix the problem on their side.

Since the city already has seven highways running through and around the downtown area, I don’t think it’s the craziest idea in the world to say we don’t need yet another. But don’t say that to Dallas Morning News editorial writer Rodger Jones, because he will essentially say, “WHAAAT?” and then “That sh– cray.”

“Do you proudly wear the label ‘wild-eyed idealist’? ” I asked Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs after a 30-minute conversation on the future of the Trinity River parkway.

“I prefer ‘progressive pragmatist,’ ” Griggs replied.

What prompted my question was Griggs’ explanation that the central city does NOT need another highway to add to the confluence of seven major ones we’ve got there now. The six additional lanes from the proposed Trinity River parkway would NOT eliminate congestion, he said.

I mean, I understand both arguments. One side says another highway would relieve traffic, the other side says it would just create more. No matter what version you agree with (I’d definitely lean toward the latter), what Griggs is saying is not in-a-perfect-world, utopian-village crazy talk.

Trinity Parkway: Still Crazy After All These Years: The Federal Highway Administration has released a report commissioned in 2009 that analyzes various alignments of the Trinity Parkway, and you can see all four volumes of the report in this blog post, which circumvents the pay-walled DMN story here and this rundown of the details. The takeaway: the report favors the city’s favorite alignment, to stick the parkway in between the river and the east levee. Still unknown, however, is how to pay for the $1.76 billion road; whether or not the Corps of Engineers will actually allow a road to be built in a floodway; or, most importantly, whether the traffic relief or development-spurring potential of the parkway is worth the astronomical cost or squandering the full potential of transforming Dallas’ largest natural asset in a usable public space. There will be a public hearing on May 6, but you know what you will hear then: The citizens of Dallas voted for a park. We now have a bridge and a plan for a road. Same as it ever was.

UTD Researchers Build Robotic Jellyfish: You know what is cooler than building a parkway in your park space? Building a robotic jellyfish (paywall). That’s what researchers at UT Dallas and Virginia Tech have done, and the hope is that the hydrogen-powered RoboJelly, as they are calling it, will be able to generate its own energy while being deployed to perform underwater surveillance. Here’s a video of the robo-beast in action.

Excited About The Return of Rangers Baseball? Yu Betcha! The Rangers took the season’s opening series last night. Tonight’s the night Yu Darvish throws his first major league pitch. Napoli will catch. The Rangers are expecting a near-sellout, with just 6,000 tickets left for tonight’s game.