So, on hot summer days, the people of Las Vegas like to escape to the relative cool of nearby Mount Charleston. In winter, there’s even skiing. From this particular vantage, it is said that you could have viewed above ground atomic testing Back In The Day.
Time: Sunday, July 21, roughly 7:30 AM
Place: Driving on US Hwy 95, headed north out of Las Vegas and towards Mount Charleston
This is a summary of the conversation and not a verbatim transcript.
Me: I sure am glad the Carpenter 1 fire is under control.
Him: Well, only 95% under control, but they can’t get to where it is and it can’t get out either. I wonder if we are going to see any burned areas.
Me: I don’t think so. It jumped Kyle Canyon Road, but it never got as far as Lee Canyon Road.
Him: It’s going to take a long time to get back to normal. Mary Jane Falls is probably going to be closed for months.
Me: What about Cathedral Rock? I heard the fire got very close.
Him: Yeah, that too. But Mary Jane Falls is a better hike. Harder, and very rocky, but worth it.
Me: So I was watching the news the other day. They were pointing out that up on the mountain, you should be careful in burned areas because trees might fall and ash might cover places you could fall.
Him: Yeah, we were told that in the meeting Friday too.
Time: Monday, July 22, roughly 9 PM
Place: Mary Jane Falls
A hiker — not the gentleman in the first part of our story — is stranded on a cliff. The only way to rescue him is by helicopter. In the process, a police officer from an elite search and rescue team falls to his death.
Aftermath
I wasn’t going to cover this as it is mostly “local interest,” but CNN thought it was newsworthy so here we are.
There are a lot of great places to hike around the Las Vegas Valley, and Mount Charleston is a favorite in the middle of summer because it’s substantially cooler up there. In the winter, there is even skiing.
So the short version. This hiker knew or should have known the following:
Go ahead and come hike around Las Vegas. But for pity sake, use your head. Don’t be like this guy, who got a cop killed rescuing him.
In Closing: Nate Silver; interpreting stats on research papers; read it all before letting your knee get all jerky; glad somebody in the administration has balls; and yoga with cats.
And no, I’m not talking about the two multi-acre blazes within 4o miles of Las Vegas.
Well, the internet has been all abuzz over the latest from Sharron Angle. Everybody and their dog has already had something to say about her latest interview, including the guy who interviewed her. No wonder she does so few of them! Ezra Klein points out that the choice should be fairly simple, given that Nevada has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, Angle thinks all those unemployed people should get up off their lazy asses and find a [nonexistent] job, and Reid keeps trying [and failing] to get unemployment benefits extended to at least try and prevent all those unemployed people from becoming homeless too. At least her website has been updated with a little less crazy. She still does think it’s unreasonably hard to get a ballot initiative up in Nevada. I have long urged people to Just Say NO to all voter initiatives, so this is just fine with me.
But wait! Let’s not forget that The Other Reid (he’d prefer to just be known as “Rory“) is in an election too, and his opponent Brian Sandoval has also been campaigning. This week he announced a plan for Nevada schools. It includes giving a “grade” to each school and allowing kids in poorly graded schools to transfer to better schools. Now, there’s 2 problems I see with this. First is that No Child Left Behind already allows the same freaking thing; why reinvent the wheel? The second problem is geography. Nevada is a big state with a small population, and 73% of the population is in one county. While the idea almost makes sense in the Las Vegas Valley, the Reno area, and the Carson City area, it makes no sense in the rural areas where the next school might be an hour or two away.
His second plan is the popular idea of making teacher pay dependent upon student performance. Well, here’s the thing. Teachers can only control what happens in their classroom, and even then only most of the time. When you’ve got kids worried about living on the street, kids stealing ketchup packets so they can have dinner, gang violence, child abuse, parents who don’t give a damn, official curricula that still use sight words*, limited ability to discipline students who are out of line, a bureaucracy that would make any government proud, and a half dozen impediments to learning in the classroom, merit pay is a sick joke.
And idea three is to outsource non-educational services. That would include janitorial services, human resources, and food service. It makes me wonder what firms I would find if I were to look closely at Mr. Sandoval’s investments! There is just no way that it’s cheaper to have a cleaning crew come in at night than to have one or maybe two people on hand all day to clean messes as they occur. Hiring a for-profit catering service to put the cafeteria ladies out of work is just madness. This is aside from the concern some parents will have over whether the employees of these firms might maybe have some desire to harm a child. As much as I would like to dismiss this as tinfoil hat lunacy, the fact of the matter is that Clark County School District has had incidents where non-teachers are accused of harming students.
* I was just horrified to learn what constitutes homework for a first grader!
In closing: A tangible Good Thing from health insurance reform starts today; mortgage rates at record lows, why aren’t we borrowing? (because unemployment is around 10% and most homes are worth less than what is already owed, duh); a financial reform package passed the House and is headed for the Senate, let the hunt for loopholes and political favors begin (it’s ok, banks will ignore what they don’t like anyway); fiscal austerity still doesn’t work; Real Socialists beg the wingnuts to stop calling Obama one of them; a bit of follow-up, the list of countries Van Der Sloot can be extradited to for more charges grows; both of these statements are logical, but both cannot be true; 100 Yen shops, the Japanese Dollar Store; vaccinate your kids!; smart pet tricks; flying cars; and libertarians.