Student protest: Image: Joe Plette, cc 2.0 Used with permission from the Coachella Valley Independent CNN reports: The turmoil at Columbia University ramped up Monday as simmering tensions on campus halted in-person classes and officials scrambled to ease security fears. The Ivy League school has become the epicenter of unrest on U.S. college campuses, turmoil that spread to New York University as well as Yale University, where dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested Monday. Security concerns are so significant that Columbia officials decided to make all classes virtual on Monday ..read more

Passage by Lake Tahoe Artist Jason Forcier – image courtesy of Kayla Anderson Fire ecology is a scientific discipline concerned with natural processes involving fire in an ecosystem and the ecological effects, the interactions between fire and the abiotic and biotic components of an ecosystem, and the role as an ecosystem process. Dry and just plain hot, you could literally fry an egg on the concrete or on the hood of a car thanks to the sweltering 113-degree Fahrenheit heat. I was born and raised in Redding, tucked into a valley in the dead center of Northern California. As I grew up, I neve ..read more

Climbers and non-climbers alike will appreciate the dramatic landscape of Fisher Towers. – image: Matt Johanso Those who climb the Kor-Ingalls Route of Castleton Tower, a classic adventure on a coveted desert tower, face a choice near the top. There are two ways to scale the rough, tough, foot-wide crack between its vertical sandstone faces. Option one requires shoving the left side of the body into the crack and painfully forcing one’s way up through awkward contortions about an inch at a time. I jammed my left arm and leg into the crevice and attempted the inchworm maneuver. After multiple g ..read more

Dead Horse State Park, Moab, Utah, Andres Haro, Unsplash Author: Pepper Trail. Used with permission from Writers on the Range. Let’s play a game, the climate-change game that every living thing on Earth has no choice but to play, starting … now. The game is called Adapt/Move/Die, and the rules are simple. The object of the game is not to die. And the winners, well, the winners get to keep playing the game.  You may say wait, what about Solve? Isn’t solving the climate crisis an option? Yes, of course, and a worthy goal. But even if humanity somehow musters the now-lacking resolve to rapi ..read more

image courtesy of the Brewery Arts Center In 1976, the Brewery Arts Center in Carson City was established “to enrich the quality of life by cultivating arts and culture for all” and one of the truest ways that the Arts Center is fulfilling its mission is with the purchase of a new mobile stage to support its popular summer concert series. Held outdoors at 449 King Street, the summer concerts are free to the public and feature a wide range of musical styles that appeal to all kinds of music lovers. There are 10 shows held per season every Saturday from 7 to 9 pm, and each one opens with a loca ..read more

Rainbow over Cheesebox Butte – Highway 95, photo by Stephen Trimble Author: Stephen Trimble Three presidents have signed Bears Ears proclamations. Barack Obama established Bears Ears National Monument in 2016, but supporters were devastated when Donald Trump eviscerated the monument the following year, reducing its area by 85%. In 2021, President Joe Biden restored the original boundaries and then some. What’s clear is that Bears Ears remains reviled by Republican officials and cherished by Indigenous tribes and conservationists. The monument, 1.36 million acres in southeast Utah, lies within ..read more

Rocky Mountain Oyster Fry, Virginia City 2024, image courtesy of Kayla Anderson He said it like it was a bad thing, when ninety percent of the people in Virginia City that day were putting balls in their mouth, and they liked it. Almost everyone was dressed in green as it approached St. Patrick’s Day, which happened the day after the annual Virginia City Rocky Mountain Oyster Fry. Otherwise known as the Testicle Festival, on this 33rd annual event, eleven Northern Nevada chefs were given sixty pounds of raw bull testicles which they used to grind, cook, and place in tacos, tamales, jalapeno p ..read more

Image courtesy of Don Molde. In the political arena, the mechanics of the Electoral College can result in the election of a President who loses the national popular vote by millions. Half the country’s population (living in 10 states) is represented by 20 U.S. Senators, the other half, living in less populous areas, has 80 senators.    In Washington D.C., a handful of far-right congressional Republicans can bring the U.S. House of Representatives to a grinding halt on a whim. Tyranny of the minority also exists in wildlife management, both in Nevada and around the West. &n ..read more

Journalist Tim Burke has been indicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for his online newsgathering. Photo courtesy of Tim Burke. Published with permission from the Freedom of the Press Foundation whose work is licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution International License. While the indictment is short on facts, it reportedly arises, in part, from Burke’s dissemination of outtakes from a 2022 Tucker Carlson interview with Ye, formerly Kanye West, where Ye made antisemitic remarks that Fox News chose not to air. Ye’s antisemitism has been global news ever since. The indictment ..read more

A new battleground is forming in the state of Nevada, where an influx of federal funding and state-level tax incentives are seeking to kickstart a critical mineral economy necessary to support the renewable energy transition. But while critical minerals provide foundational components to all of our electronic devices – from everyday technologies like cell phones and laptops, to renewable energy technologies like wind turbines and electric vehicle batteries – extracting them from the ground does not come without its costs. Sierra Nevada Ally’s science and technology reporter, Scott King recen ..read more