Syzdekistan

Those of you who know me, know I’m a big NPR fan and get most of my news from NPR and by listening to out local NPR affiliate, KNPR. Hot Wife enjoys NPR but not to the nearly excessive amount that I do. Recently, KNPR was having one of their pledge drives. I waited a few days for payday and “renewed our membership.” For my $100 donation, we got a $25 gift certificate to one of our favorite restaurants, Hash House a Go Go. Luckily, we didn’t get any tote bags or coffee mugs.

Anyway, on Monday night when I was in Mesquite doing fish surveys, I got an excited call from Hot Wife: “I just got home and checked the answering machine and there was a message from KNPR saying we won the sweepstakes grand prize and to call them back. Do you know what the grand prize is?”

I replied that I think it was a $500 gift certificate to some restaurant. Yesterday, I swung by the KNPR office to pick up the prize. Sure enough, it is a $500 gift certificate to one of the gourmet restaurants at the MGM Grand.

Now, a gift certificate for the Apple Store or REI, I could immediately apply to my internal wish list (for the family, of course). For food, it’s not so easy. So now we have some choices to make. Although we clean up pretty good when go to the Big City (hyuk, hyuk), one of the restaurants, Joel Robuchon probably exceeds the limits of our palate and would also exceed the limits of the gift certificate. Also, I don’t know how to physically prepare my body for a 16 course meal.

In any case, Hot Wife is analyzing the chefs, menus, and our tastes and likes. She doesn’t like sushi, so Shibuya is probably out.

I see this as an opportunity for some long awaited food experimentation. I’ve never had Kobe beef (from cows fed beer, saki, and given daily massages), truffles (ectomycorrhizal fungi hunted with pigs or dogs!), saffron (flower stigmas harvested by hand from a sterile triploid mutant plant completely dependent on its human masters), caviar (fish eggs from really cool fish that are going extinct), foie gras (liver from force fed geese), bird nest soup (the saliva of the edible-nest swiftlet), or any other number of strange and expensive foods.

Roll over Veblen, conspicuous consumption, here we come!

The $0.99 shrimp cocktails that we often enjoy at lunch at the Golden Gate in downtown Las Vegas have recently increased to $1.99.

However, I am glad that the Rj interviewed an economist for this story.

For the price of a valid email address, you can download Nine Inch Nail’s new album, The Slip.

I find it amusing each song has different album art.

From the AP:

RENO — The months of March and April were among the driest in the past 100 years across much of Northern Nevada, the National Weather Service said Friday.

It reported that 0.07 inches of precipitation were recorded at the Reno-Tahoe International Airport in March and only a trace in April. Typically, 1.21 inches falls in that period.

That ties the lowest rainfall for that period since 1906, the service said.

In 1959 and 1966, 0.07 inches fell during that period. Last year, 0.21 inches fell during that period.

Elko recorded the 11th driest April since the weather service started keeping records in the late 19th century. The 0.15 inches of precipitation was well below the average of 0.81.

Technorati Tags: rain

I’m peripherally involved with this project to study the breeding success of burrowing owls in the urban areas in the Las Vegas Valley. As natural areas become more and more urbanized, understanding how wildlife functions in urban areas is very important. And burrowing owls are very cute.

Both McCain and Clinton have proposed a summer tax holiday from the federal 18.4 cent per gallon gasoline tax. This is a stupid idea that just panders to the public upset by high gas prices. Don’t these candidates have economic advisors? Lowering the price of gasoline will increase demand and since supplies are tight, prices would increase. Furthermore, that tax is mostly used for bridge and road construction.

Let’s see how the gas tax would affect us here in Syzdekistan. In April, Hot Wife bought 55.544 gallons of fuel for the Jeep and I bought 47.124 gallons of fuel for the Buick. That a total of 102.668 gallons. Our gas tax savings would have been $18.89 cents for the month. If we assume the holiday is three months, that would save us $56.67 for the summer. That’s a nice meal out but not much more.

The gas tax holiday is a bad idea and I am glad Barack Obama stayed off of that bandwagon.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama

The local paper reported today that the “Nation’s Worst Governor” is going to charge Steve Fossett’s widow $687,000 for search expenses incurred when Fossett went missing in September in a small plane. This is utterly ridiculous on the part of Gibbons. Yes, I know the state is in poor financial shape. However, I believe that search and rescue should always be a free service provided by state and local government no matter how wealthy the missing person.

If governments began charging for search and rescue, I believe it would encourage people to wait too long to call for rescue. People would try to tough it out on their own to prevent being charged. Then, as their situation deteriorates, the rescue could easily become more dangerous and costly to the rescuers or lead to more severe injuries or death to the lost or injured party.

I know the fruitless search for Fossett was expensive. However, it was good training for the crews involved. I have trained with search and rescue personnel and there is nothing more meaningful to them than rescuing people. The failures are tough on them but they are satisfied by knowing they made a valiant search . Search and rescue is a service just like police and fire services that should be paid for by the taxpayers.

Some people say that Fossett was a thrill-seeker that the taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay to rescue. That’s incorrect. Fossett was a good pilot and known to be cautious and careful flyer. Just because he is doing something that most of us cannot afford doesn’t automatically mean that he was being reckless. We live on big planet and people, airplanes, and boats go missing all the time. If I survive an accident in a remote place, I want to know that rescue is coming for me. I would be comforted and have the power of hope, knowing that dedicated, caring people will be looking very hard for me.

Wouldn’t be fun to live in a place where the dominant land animal is a crab?

Nice article on coconut crabs on Daily Kos tonight.