The city really, really doesn’t want you to smoke if you plan to attend the Austin City Limits music festival. Austin Parks and Recreation director Sara Hensley even said “please” during a news conference this morning. But there will be no parks rangers at the festival, and ACL organizers’ private security guards may not be actively hunting down those who do light up.

“We’re not going after the smokers,” Austin Parks and Recreation spokesman Victor Ovalle clarified on the telephone this afternoon. “We’re asking them to please help comply with the smoking and the fire ban in the park.”

“We’re really not trying to ruin anyone’s experience,” he said.

Because the smoking ban in parks is not a city ordinance, people can’t be fined for lighting up. But they can be asked to leave the park. If the smoker refuses, he or she could be issued a criminal trespass notice and be banned from city parks for a year.  

The Christmas Mountains, near Big Bend National Park in West Texas, will stay in public hands.

This morning Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson announced the remote 9,200-plus acre tract of land is being transferred to the Texas State University System.  It will be used for research and as an outdoor classroom for students.

If nothing else, the controversy over Texas Gov. Rick Perry's mandating the use of the human papillomavirus vaccine in 12-year old girls, demonstrates the pronounced contradictions in his professed world view.

The frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination accepts the scientific consensus when it comes to the safety and efficacy of the vaccine that prevents the HPV virus that causes cervical and other cancers.

But he has openly expressed doubts about the scientific consensus in the matters of evolution or the human role in global warming.

The remaining evacuees from the Bastrop Complex wildfire are returning home today, some of them still unsure if their houses were among the more than 1,600 that are now estimated to have been destroyed.

The last evacuation orders were lifted at 10 a.m. this morning in the neighborhoods of Eastern Tahitian Village, Pine Forest, McAllister Road, and the remainder of ColoVista.

Twelve days after the wildfire broke out in Bastrop County, firefighters have contained 75 percent of the fire zone’s 50 mile perimeter. While crews battled numerous flare ups overnight, no additional homes were burned.

 “They’re working day and night, and we think that every day that goes by, we’ll be making it safer and safer and safer for our citizens,” Bastrop County Emergency Operations Coordinator Mike Fisher said during today’s morning briefing. “I feel very comfortable that we’re not going to have a major rekindle of the magnitude that we’ve seen on the Labor Day weekend.”

The Gov is on the cov.

Rick Perry comes out swinging in an exclusive interview in the new issue of Time magazine, which hits newsstands tomorrow. Perry sat down with the magazine's editor, Rick Stengel, and Mark Halperin, its editor at large and senior political analyst; he was photographed for the cover by Platon in a tight close-up.

Portions of the interview are now online, but we've culled a few choice excerpts:

Christmas Mountains to Texas State University System

Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson is expected to announce that the General Land Office will turn over control of the Christmas Mountains to the Texas State University System. Published reports indicate the wilderness area will be used as an outdoor lab and wilderness classroom. There had been discussion of selling the 9,200-plus acre land tract next to Big Bend National Park to a private owner, but it appears now that Sul Ross State University will take over administration of the West Texas land.

Fearing that this drought could reduce lake levels lower than ever before, the board of the Lower Colorado River Authority, the wholesale supplier of water to Austin and other Central Texas cities, plans to meet next week to discuss reducing or ending its water sales to downriver farmers next year.

More than two out of five children with cancer in Texas rely on Medicaid for health care, according to an analysis of Medicaid in Texas by Families USA, a non-profit organization that advocates for affordable health care. The report comes as a showdown looms in Washington over how to manage costs of the chronically underfunded program.

With wildfires scorching thousands of acres of Central Texas, people have been particularly sensitive to the danger of a wildfire. Especially the danger posed by drivers tossing lit cigarette butts out the windows of their cars.

“I'm okay with smokers, but watching someone flick a cigarette out of the car window makes me want to force them to eat it,” Michael Burnett Tweeted this week.

“I might start tweeting license plate numbers of people who throw cigarette butts out. Been seeing it more than ever,” wrote Michael Vilaythong.

"There's a long tradition of people who don't like a particular message turning to attack the person delivering the message," former Vice President Al Gore just said on NPR's Talk of the Nation.

That's why, the 2000 Democratic presidential nominee added, "I view it as an honor, really," to be the target of Republican jabs on the issue of climate change.

A law requiring voters in Texas to show photo identification before casting a ballot is being challenged by several civil rights groups. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Advancement Project and others sent a letter to the U.S. Justice Department this morning, saying the law will have a discriminatory effect on minorities.

“These proposed changes -- both in the process and in the types of acceptable identification -- are unjustified and are unlawful under the Voting Rights Act,” the letter states.

If things go without a hitch NASA announced that its new Space Launch System could take its first manned test flight in 2017.

The new design looks a lot like the Apollo era rockets that took American astronauts to the moon, but NASA said the new spacecraft is much more powerful than any other rocket they've made before and could set up astronauts for deep space exploration. The SLS will be NASA's first exploration-calss vehicle since the Saturn V took astronauts to the moon.

At the unveiling of the plans Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) called it a "monster rocket."

Average scores on the SAT tests by Texas high school students plummeted last school year in all three subject areas: reading, writing and math. The national numbers also declined to their lowest levels on record.

Here in Texas, the average math score for students, including all public and private schools, dropped two points to 502. Critical reading scores declined four points to 479. Writing scores were down seven points to 465.

National scores declined also, but were still higher than the Texas averages at 506, 494 and 483 for math, critical reading and writing, respectively. The maximum score on the SAT test is 800.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry spent Wednesday morning preaching to the choir.

To uproarious cheers in a packed basketball arena at the world’s largest Evangelical university, Perry spoke more like a minister than a politician, motivating students to use their Christian values to wrest control of their futures from Washington.

Firefighters in Bastrop successfully battled about 18 flare-ups yesterday as winds gusted to 20 miles per hour and the relative humidity dropped below 15 percent. The weather outlook is slightly worse for today, but fire officials are optimistic they can contain the stubborn wildfire that has persisted for 11 days.

Most of yesterday’s flare-ups were in areas already blackened by the 34,000-acre wildfire. Fire crews and helicopters moved quickly to extinguish them. About 600 firefighters are still working on the Bastrop Complex blaze.

Meteorologists predict slightly stronger winds and low humidity today, but nothing like the 40 mile per hour gusts that initially fanned the flames on Labor Day weekend when the fire began.