Tim Hodge

I mean seriously:

Police were reviewing video from surveillance cameras in an attempt to identify who trampled to death a Wal-Mart worker after a crowd of post-Thanksgiving shoppers burst through the doors at a suburban store and knocked him down.
Criminal charges were possible, but identifying individual shoppers in Friday’s video may prove difficult, said Detective Lt. Michael Fleming, a Nassau County police spokesman.
Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and customers stepped over him and became irate when officials said the store was closing because of the death, police and witnesses said.

For the first time in a long time gas is below $2 a gallon in my neighborhood. Hopefully this doesn’t mean we lose our focus on the need for more sustainable transportation options, but I’m not terribly optimistic about that. It seems that people only really change when their wallets make them change, and this $1.92 gas sure is comfortable.

Monsanto is surely taking over the world. It’s bad enough they already own most of the seeds used to grow our food, and their growth hormones contaminate most of our milk, but now they are taking it over the top by trying to patent pigs. It’s almost too crazy to be real, but it is.

I’m going to start getting my photo albums up.  First one is The Zoo, where I will collect adorable pictures of the animals running around our house.  Enjoy.

I’ll believe it when I see it, but given the incoming President’s environmental stances along with this recent quote from Harry Reid, and I’m starting to feel a little better about it:

“Yucca Mountain is history, OK?” Reid said in an interview Wednesday. “Just watch, we’ll see what happens real soon, just watch. You will see it bleed real hard in the next year.”

I have an idea - why not take the $20 billion still sitting around for the project and use it to build some serious solar and wind projects out here in the middle of the desert?  Let the states that use nuclear power figure out where to store their own garbage.

If you’ve flown out of Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport anytime in the last couple years you know what a mess it can be to find a good parking spot.  Hopefully things will get better with Tuesday’s opening of the new Economy lot where the old rental car lots were near Terminal 2.  The good news is that there are roughly 1,000 more spaces than there were at this time last year (along with fewer flights and less people).  The bad news is that the cost has jumped up to $8 per day.

For the more budget minded there is still the $5 Remote lot across the street from the new car rental complex.  It will stay open until the first of the year, and after that it will only be used for overflow.

Last year Dubai World dropped $6 billion for a 9.4% stake in MGM Mirage and a 50% interest in City Center.  Now the investment arm has gained approval to aquire up to a 20% stake in MGM Mirage, although it is planning to wait until market conditions warrant such an action.

In other news, MGM Mirage CEO Terry Lanni is stepping down on November 30th.  Going to spend more time with his family?  Getting out before the market really tanks?  Or is it because the company is selling his planes?  Who knows.  Whatever the reason, I just hope incoming CEO Jim Murren can turn this boat around, open up the corporate pocketbook, and get some of these renovations going again.

Just a couple hours ago I made reference to a study that claimed Lake Mead has a 50 percent chance of drying up by 2021.  On a slightly more optimistic side, researchers at the University of Colorado released on Tuesday a report that says there is a less than 5 percent chance of the reservoir drying up by 2021.  It says there is a 40 percent chance that it will go dry in any given year after 2050.

Says the guy with the earlier more dire numbers:

“The point is, whether it’s 40 percent in 2050 or 40 percent by 2030, that’s a hell of a problem.  The main factor is we’re taking more water out of the system than Mother Nature is putting in. And as long as that’s true, you can tell what’s going to happen.  You don’t have to be a rocket scientist.”

It’s complex stuff and seems like a moving target as our desert cities continue to grow, but I think we can all agree that any percentage higher than 0 is just a little higher than we’d like.

At the beginning of this decade the WHO estimated that 1.1 billion people did not have access to clean water.  The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us that by 2050 that number will climb to 2 billion, and 3.2 billion in 2080.  That’s roughly half the people on Earth.  A recent article in Inc. magazine claims that “by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population will face periodic and often severe water shortages,” and that water managers in 36 U.S. states are “predicting significant shortfalls within the next decade.”

Here in Las Vegas those shortages could come as soon as 2010 as the Southern Nevada Water Authority rushes to build a third intake in Lake Mead (which has a 50 percent chance of running dry by 2021) while they simultaneously try to get water pumping from the northern part of the state.

If you don’t think global warming is an issue now, just wait fifteen years, turn on your kitchen sink, and see what comes out.