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Dallas County County Commissioners Sparred Over The
Meaning Of Black Holes? |
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A special meeting
about Dallas County traffic tickets turned tense and
bizarre. County commissioners
were discussing problems with the central
collections office that processed traffic
ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally
done by the JP Courts. |
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Commissioner Kenneth
Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central
collections "has become a black hole" because
reportedly paperwork has become lost within the office. |
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Commissioner John
Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted Mayfield with a
loud "Excuse me!" and then corrected his colleague
by
saying the office has become a "white hole." |
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That interruption prompted Judge
Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology
from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy. |
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Mayfield shot back
that it was a figure of speech and a science term. A
black hole, according to Webster's, is perhaps "the
invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an
intense gravitational field from which neither light
nor matter can escape." |
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Other county
officials interceded quickly to break up the
argumentative session and get
the meeting back on business. All commissioners were aware that TV news cameras were
rolling! |
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* * *
END * * * |
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Observing
Our World:
Dallas commissioners should be happy that their
central collections office has not devolved into a
white hole. A white hole is a theoretical object that
ejects matter from beyond its event horizon. |
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Maybe now
the commissioners have
learned -- but likely do not understand -- that a
black hole pulls matter in. Their Dallas office, if
like most other bureaucratic entities, pulls
money in and shuffles much of it under some sort of
object known as a table which has various connected
people in attendance with hands containing black
holes. |