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While the organizers of last year’s North Texas Super Bowl are wondering why the football gods couldn’t have delivered us the weather we’re having this week in 2011 – instead of the Snow-and-Ice-Mageddon we got – Smithsonian.com reflects upon another Texas contribution to our country’s annual orgy on football and new television commercial campaigns: the Frito.

Those little fried corn chips were given birth in San Antonio in the 1930s, and they remain a cornerstone of business for the Plano-based Frito Lay company, which owns the trademark for the “Frito Chili Pie”: officially a “packaged meal combination consisting primarily of chili or snack food dips containing meat or cheese corn-based snack foods, namely, corn chips.”

But Smithsonian traces the true roots of Fritos much further back in the history of the Americas:

As much scorn and derision as today’s leading nutritional gurus heap onto processed foods, it’s worth noting that Fritos arrived here by way of a Mesoamerican staple and their invention and flavor owes a debt to one of the greatest food processing technologies ever invented: nixtamalization. The 3,000-year-old tradition adding calcium hydroxide–wood ash or lime–so greatly enriches the available amino acids in masa corn that Sophie Coe writes in America’s First Cuisines that the process underlies “the rise of Mesoamerican civilization.” Lacking this technology, early Europeans and Americans (who considered corn fit for slaves and swine) learned that eating a diet exclusively based on unprocessed corn led to pellagra, a debilitating niacin deficiency causing dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia and death.

Just a little something to think about as you’re dipping your chips this Sunday.

GM To Open $200 Million Plant in Arlington. The automaker is being a bit coy, but everyone assumes it will announce this morning that it is building a new stamping operation at its Arlington Truck Assembly Plant. In related news, I will announce tomorrow morning that I am opening next to D Magazine headquarters a new $100 million tramp stamping plant.

Deep Ellum Worries About New School. The charter school network Uplift Education is set to open a new school in Deep Ellum. You can imagine the possible conflicts. I’ll give you two leads. The first is from Jay Gormley at CBS Channel 11: “When most people think of Deep Ellum in Dallas, they probably think of bars, night clubs and late-night partying. But schools? ‘I don’t see how it’s a good environment for them,’ said bar owner, Josh Bridges.” And now Avi Selk’s story behind the paywall at the Morning News: “Restaurateurs and entrepreneurs came by the dozens Monday evening. They sat on the thin carpet and spilled out the doors of the Deep Ellum Foundation’s lobby to pepper city officials for an hour with variations on their shared concern: How do we keep our bars safe from that school?” That there is how it’s done, folks.

Khloe Kardashian’s New Radio Gig in US Weekly. By now you likely know that KK is doing a regular segment on Mix 102.9. Her first installment was yesterday. Here’s the lead from US Weekly: “Live on the air, it’s DJ Khloe Kardashian! Now fully settled in Texas with her husband Lamar Odom hard at work for the Dallas Mavericks, Kardashian, 27, took on a new gig as a radio disc jockey Monday, signing on the air at Mix 102.9 for her show, The Mix Up With Khloe.” Zac, I would like you to explain to everyone what’s wrong with that lead.

DISD To Install New Bathroom Stalls. From a press release: “The Dallas School District’s new HDPE Hiny Hiders bathroom partitions from Scranton Products will help reduce wear and tear, bacteria, dents, scratches and vandalism.” I think I speak for the 177 teachers who are slated to be laid off when I say I am outraged — outraged! — that, at a time like this, the district is spending money on new Hiny Hiders.

Update (2/1/12) — I was, of course, just looking for a joke to make about Hiny Hiders. Nonetheless, that DISD stat needs to be corrected. From Jon Dahlander, DISD spokesman: “By consolidating the 11 campuses, 177 positions will be reduced, 65 of which are teacher positions. We expect several of those teachers to follow students to their “new” schools. Those who don’t follow their students will go into the job pool and have the first opportunity to teach at other campuses. Because we have a lot of attrition through retirements and resignations, we expect all of the teachers–and the 11 principals–to find other positions within the district.”

Seems about right.  Take your team to the World Series two years in a row, even if your managerial decisions may have allowed for a heartbreaking Game 6 collapse, and you’ve earned two more years on the job. He should be in the dugout in Arlington through 2014 at least.

Congratulations, Wash.

We’re looking forward to more of this:

(Via Baseball Nation)

So last week I dropped by the Record Building downtown to pick up new license plates. “Dropped by” is accurate: the entire transaction took about four minutes. Contrast that with the Department of Motor Vehicles, where a four-hour wait is the norm*.

Maybe John Ames, the county tax assessor, should be hired to reform how the DMV does business. Or Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. The average wait in Indiana’s DMV is 6.5 minutes.

* I would love it if someone from the DMV would like to challenge that estimate. But they won’t. And the reason they won’t is that they don’t know if it’s true or not, because unlike Indiana, they don’t time their performance. They don’t time their performance because that would measure their performance. Of course, measurement is the first step to improvement. But don’t tell Texas that.

USA Today opines that when a company refuses to hire anyone who smokes tobacco it “crosses a troubling line.” The newspaper singles out Dallas’ own Baylor Health Care System, which formalized its anti-smoking policy as of January 1, in an editorial:

Treating smoking, in essence, like illegal drug use takes Baylor and an increasing number of other employers down a dangerous road, one that extends far too deeply into the private lives of prospective workers.

Joel Allison, the CEO of Baylor, discussed the ban with me during our recent breakfast at the Original Pancake House on Lemmon Avenue. The policy is not limited merely to smokers but includes use of any nicotine products:

“Is that legal?” I ask him, only half-serious.

“We would not do anything that would be considered illegal,” he says, completely serious. “We’re in the healthcare business, so we want people to practice good health.”

Allison also believes it’s important for Baylor to do what it can to keep its own costs down. Before this all-out ban, the company had already placed a surcharge on smokers who participated in its health insurance plan. “Five percent of the population uses up about 50 percent of the health care cost,” he says.

To which USA Today declares a SLIPPERY SLOPE ALERT:

Over the last few weeks, pastor Ed Young and his wife Lisa, of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, have received a lot of international attention for their book, Sexperiment: Seven Days to Lasting Intimacy with Your Spouse, and their 24-hour bed-in on the church roof–promotion for said book. Most of the coverage has been relatively positive, because who doesn’t want to see a Southern Baptist preacher encouraging more sex? Well, the writer of this Salon book review, that’s who. The reviewer, Tracy Clark-Flory, is a self-described “arrogant, unrepentant atheist and fornicator” and she has major problems with both the content of the Youngs’ book (and another Christian “sex advice” book released this month) and with the way the media has covered them.

Says Clark-Flory: “Having actually read these books, I can tell you they are not the wild sex manuals the media frenzy suggests – in fact, they are treatises against homosexuality, pornography and premarital sex. None of this is exactly surprising, but amid the sexy buzz surrounding these books, it’s important to underscore just how sexually stunted they are.”

That’s just the beginning. She goes on to rip several Sexperiment metaphors as well as the anti-porn message. But she concludes the books “also answer questions that most Christians are too afraid to ask their pastors about whether particular sex acts are God-approved and, according to them, masturbation, anal sex, oral sex, menstrual sex and sex toys are A-OK (again, within the context of straight, married sex).” She sees that as “a slam against the Santorums of the world.”

It’s way, way too long.

Best line comes early. “Can you get me a Coke?”  “What kind?”  “Dr Pepper.”

But that’s not even really a Dallas-specific thing, is it?

(H/T: Pegasus News)

DISD Teacher Calls for “Sick Out” Last week the Dallas ISD school board voted to close 11 campuses and extend teachers’ work day by 45 minutes without additional compensation. Now an anonymous teacher is trying to organize a “sick out” protest for February 29.

Mom Will Give Son Kidney: When Jace Glenn was four weeks old, he had both his kidneys removed. He has been on dialysis ever since, awaiting an age when he would be old enough to undergo a kidney transplant operation. Now three, all he needs is a donor. He found one in his mom.

Police Officer Saves Women From Car Sinking In Lake: Saturday night, Ngac Do and Nhi Tran took a wrong turn on Dalrock Rd. off I-30 and drove their Honda Civic into Lake Ray Hubbard. A police dash cam caught the rescue.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings says he isn’t surprised that gay-rights activists are upset with him for declining to sign a pledge supporting same-sex marriage. But he hopes Saturday’s closed-door meeting with about two dozen LGBT leaders will lead to more understanding, at least.

Asked before a North Texas Commission luncheon today whether he expected such an uproar from the LGBT community over his stance, Rawlings replied, “I was not surprised. They are an important constituency and passionate about their concerns. I wouldn’t expect anything less of them.”

So, what will he tell them tomorrow? “We’ll be talking about how we accomplish their objectives long-term, and how we understand the different players.” Also on the agenda: “How they can leverage me as a mayor, and how I can best represent their concerns. … That can only be accomplished through good conversations, and that’s what we’re going to have.”

Vowing not to be outdone by the Dallas Opera‘s move to screen The Magic Flute at Cowboys Stadium, Texas Motor Speedway says it’s decided to run its April 13-14 NASCAR Sprint Cup race through the streets of the Park Cities. The unusual plan was announced this morning by TMS CEO Eddie Gossage and the mayors of Highland Park and University Park.  “We want to get NASCAR out of the speedway, and bring it to a whole new audience,” Gossage said. “So we gonna do it up right.”

Under the plan, stocks cars competing in April’s Samsung Mobile 500 will follow a circular route bounded roughly by University Boulevard on the north, Preston Road to the west, Armstrong Parkway/Byron Avenue on the south and Hillcrest Avenue to the east. Those streets will be blocked off to usual traffic, and the cities will waive some noise ordinances, open-container laws, and restrictions against RV parking for the weekend event.

As a result of the latter, tailgating by NASCAR fans will be allowed during the weekend at Highland Park Village, on the grounds of some gated mansions along Preston Road, and on the golf-course fairways at the Dallas Country Club. Food trucks from Denny’s, KFC and other restaurants will cater the event. Tailgaters with special permits also will be allowed to relieve themselves in Turtle Creek during the weekend, the officials said.