Why? Because we care. Here we go!

• University Chancellor Jim Rogers still wants Gov. Jim Gibbons to call a special session to deal with the state’s ever-worsening budget crisis. Rogers is so adorable when he pretends Gibbons actually cares about anything other than not raising taxes, isn’t he?
• Oh, snap! Keith Olbermann and Rachael Maddow beat us to it on Countdown, because we were totally going to note that U.S. Sen. John McCain’s first TV ad was voiced by Powers Boothe, a wonderful actor whose most recent roles were brothel owner Cy Tolliver (HBO’s Deadwood) and corrupt Vice President Noah Daniels, who steals the presidency from the righteous black President Wayne Palmer (Fox’s 24). What, nobody at McCain HQ knows how to use IMDB? They have it on computers now, you know.
• Hey, maybe those 31 people laid off from their jobs at the city can help build the brand new City Hall?
• Starbuck’s CEO Howard Schultz is every bit as greedy, self-deluded and stubborn as our very own Steve Wynn. Hey, can we get a venti half-caf, soy milk, double shot of fuck you?
• Richard Florida, author of Rise of the Creative Class and Flight of the Creative Class, says Las Vegas ranks low for quality of life. And since the creative class can live anywhere it wants, that’s not good for us. Where’s the best place to live? Probably anywhere near Richard Florida, who labels himself “one of the world’s leading public intellectuals.”

We hate to write about Yucca Mountain, because it makes people lapse deep into alpha-wave sleep and dream of winged unicorns, which might actually happen when wild horses drink Yucca-contaminated groundwater years from now. But we couldn’t let U.S. Sen. John McCain’s visit pass without a little jab.

McCain, in town to lunch with fellow war enthusiast Sheldon Adelson, tried to imply that his enthusiastic support for Yucca had fallen behind, say, his enthusiastic support for war with Iran. “I will respect scientific opinion. The scientific opinion that I had up until recently was that Yucca Mountain was a suitable storage place,” he said.

So, did he get new info? Of course he didn’t! This is just a variation on the same political theme that all presidents use, from the president who signed off on Yucca Mountain in the first place — Ronald Reagan — to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush, who famously opined that “science, not politics” should decide the fate of the dump. That was right before he got elected and signed off on Yucca Mountain almost immediately.

So, if you believe that McCain actually has new information and will be the first Republican in living memory to seriously evaluate the science behind the dump and make a really informed decision on it, you’re:

A.) Former Gov. Bob List

B.) An employee of former Gov. Bob List

C.) Former Gov. Bob List’s secretary

D.) Insane

E.) All of the above

It shouldn’t be surprising, since Gov. Jim Gibbons often reverses himself, but on Friday the governor decided to abandon his quest to unseat three members of the Board of Medical Examiners. Clearly, somebody told Gibbons that getting rid of the Medical Board Three — and Executive Director Tony Clark — would be a long, costly and ultimately futile process that would do nothing whatever to resolve the health care crisis.

So, Gibbons will do what he should have done from the start: Appoint three temporary members to hear cases related to Dr. Dipak Desai’s Little Shop of Hepatitis.  If only he hadn’t wasted two weeks on a fruitless and unnecessary battle in the meantime.

But we couldn’t wrap this one up without noting one final irony. Check out what Gibbons said on March 17 when he first called on the board members and Clark to resign: “What we have is a public health care crisis and what we need is public health care confidence. That is why I am taking decisive action to restore public trust.”

And check out what he said the following day:  “They would do the right thing by resigning. I want members who can participate and vote on the issues. I want action from the Board of Medical Examiners to restore public confidence in the health care system.”

Now, check out what Gibbons’s spokesman Ben Kieckhefer said when the governor decided to abandon his push to get them to resign:  “The decision was made that in the best interests of restoring public faith in the health care system, we shouldn’t let this drag on.”

Sound familiar? That’s right, both forcing the Medical Board Three to quit and allowing them to remain — diametrically opposed actions — were ostensibly done for the exact same reason.

How’s your faith in the health care system, people. Restored yet?

The only real pen to use when attemping the Great Vegas Novel.

Reader Peter Magliocco writes in regards to my, ahem, incendiary piece on the lack of a Great Vegas Novel:

There are no great American Vegas novels because there are no great writers tackling the subject, OK?!

Those who have are very talented & have written good novels, but apparently that’s not enough for tippling acolytes praying for “the holy grail” of greatness in a city-of-crime where nothing’s holy but the sinking dollar; where its intellectual pundits are too self-consciously obsessed by this “novel” absence in a desert culture still suspect in more seriously accomplished big cities of cultural renown; and where “the entertainment capital of the world” thrives on a movie industry the mass-asses love escaping into while in-flight to their hotel rooms.

That Vegas has an image problem is an understatement. Its Unreality covers its innate criminal machinery and rules over its Reality, creating a pop-mythology for tourists & an ongoing tribulation of deceit for its residents.

You’d be better off writing the great American Vegas screenplay than spouting dweeby abstract notions about what you really hope to someday novelize: the dearth of local indigenous greatness, period.

You call my master ''nerd''? Plasma cannons, fire!

Our coming war for survival against the murderous cyborg legions inched ever closer Saturday as the next generation of robot warriors invaded UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center.

Yet two teams of budding engineers from defending national champion Cimarron-Memorial and upstart Valley high schools proved that — even in the barren hell of a state whose wanna-be neocon governor refuses to spare a sputtering public education system from the budgetary carving knife — the human spirit can endure. The two-day competition pitted high-speed, remote-controlled robots designed by 42 high school teams from across America and eight other countries.

After the two-day FIRST Robotics Regional Competition and endless rounds of quarter-finals, semi-finals and a championship match, the Cimmaron-Memorial Highrollers continued their roll to a second national championship, taking both the Regional Championship and the Chairman’s Award, the highest honor a team can earn. The Valley Robotics 9000 squad, fielding a robot warrior in its first-ever competition, advanced to the quarter-finals and snagged the Highest Rookie Seed Award.

Surprisingly, the scores of geek squads seem to have evolved into a new nerdic species, which, as it turns out, is a helluva lot cooler than you remember from your days playing grab-ass at So-and-So-High. These little radsters mash techno music with light shows, screaming, salivating fans in a subculture that is both surreal and cute.

Look for the full story in the April 3 edition of CityLife, along with some crazy pix from our photo editor, Bill Hughes. Pix like these:

Korbin Bennett-Gold, foreground, a mentor with the Sonoran Science Academy

Part of the game involved moving balls around a track.