Call it a big fat coincidence, but days after Rep. Doug Lamborn backed off his efforts to cut funding for renewable energy research, Golden’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory has unveiled a colorful online magazine promoting the practical applications of its work. Now Lamborn can read about all the alleged boondoggles…
Two guys meet up in a bar and exchange a few words. Nobody gets hurt. No reason to make a federal case out of it. Unless, of course, the two guys are Lance Armstrong and Tyler Hamilton. Then the FBI, the AFLD and even TMZ want to know exactly who…
Summer beckons in Colorado’s high country, which means it’s time for an annual reminder to all whose usual encounters with nature don’t extend beyond a petting zoo. Pawing and picking up baby wildlife, no matter how adorable or seemingly in need of rescue, is almost never a good idea. This…
William Blake saw heaven in a wildflower. The energy industry sees nothing but trouble. Last week, a federal judge in Denver ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision not to declare an obscure plant as endangered was “arbitrary and capricious” — a ruling that could have far-reaching implications…
On Saturday, June 11, devotees of Ultimate Frisbee will be sailing discs with abandon in spirited competition on a field in Centennial — while raising cash for “random acts of kindness” in response to an act of senseless violence that claimed one of their own. Andrew Gelston Graham would have…
Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” — pumping massive amounts of water mixed with toxic chemicals into tight formations to extract oil and gas — remains a sore subject among environmentalists, neighbors of drilling rigs and some lawmakers, even as energy industry boosters insist it’s safe…
On June 17, 1971, President Richard Milhous Nixon announced that the United States of America would commits its vast resources to armed conflict against a hostile enemy known as “drugs.” Yes, that’s right. Next week, the War on Drugs officially turns forty years old, and it’s showing every bit of…
“All In,” this week’s cover story on University of Denver professor Robert Hannum and his research on probability and gambling, discusses how casinos try to keep enough of a house advantage for steady profit without driving players away. But some games offer a considerably higher house edge than others. So…
There are two revolving doors in every prison system. One is for the inmates, many of whom fail on parole and keep coming back. The other is reserved for top administrators who, even amid scandal, move easily from high-powered positions of public trust to high-paid jobs in the private prison…
Proving on paper that poker is primarily a game of skill, not luck, is trickier than it sounds, as University of Denver professor Robert Hannum explains in this week’s feature “All In.” But fans of the World Series of Poker see that thesis in action on the tube every time…
You know a straight flush beats a full house and the odds of landing that inside straight in Texas Hold ‘Em with just the river card left are worse than 10-1. But how good are you with the numbers, really? Robert Hannum, the DU professor whose poker research is the…
This week’s cover story, “All In,” focuses on the work of University of Denver professor Robert Hannum, who’s been researching the mathematics of gambling and the science of poker for almost two decades. Of course, we all know (or think we know) something about Las Vegas casinos and card games,…
Lawmakers can’t make up their minds about America’s wild horses. While one congressman recently introduced a resolution celebrating the birthday of a stallion made famous by a Colorado filmmaker, the state’s own legislature has declared its opposition to any expansion of range for the iconic, imperiled or overpopulated (take your…
There was this casino, a major online operation based in Europe, and this casino had a problem. A little problem, sure, one lousy player on a hot streak. But he was getting to be a bigger problem every day. The player — call him Ludwig — was a regular customer…
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar was back in his home state yesterday, cutting a ribbon at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge’s new visitor center and unveiling several big-as-all-outdoors conservation projects for Colorado. The most ambitious project of all, which he described as his “hope and vision,” has to…
A delegation from Bent County and Governor John Hickenlooper’s office went to Washington this week in an effort to interest the federal government in “repurposing” the Fort Lyon Correctional Facility, a remote and troubled state prison on the eastern plains that’s scheduled to close next year as part of the…
Greeley author Connie Willis was in Washington over the weekend, picking up her seventh Nebula award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Yes, her seventh. The SFFWA’s 1,500 members awarded best novel honors to her epic two-volume work, Blackout/All Clear, a tale of time-traveling historians trying to…
Under pressure from ranchers to take as strong a stand against Army expansion in southern Colorado as his Democrat predecessor, freshman Republican congressman Scott Tipton managed to get a funding ban reinstated in a bill yesterday, earning him kudos from some of his sharpest critics. “Congressman Tipton backed up his…
Call it a decision that doesn’t hold water. The Colorado Supreme Court’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel has found no grounds to impose disciplinary measures on former congressman Scott McInnis — even though the fact he received $300,000 from a private foundation for plagiarized writings on water law was enough…
Ranchers in southeast Colorado battling the Army’s grand expansion schemes for the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site watched in dismay this week as a congressional subcommittee removed from its budget bill a provision that has kept the military from acquiring additional land for the 367 square-mile site for the past four…
A year after being chastised for being too hasty in opening up offshore oil leases for exploration, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar was fielding questions from former colleagues in the Senate about why the administration isn’t issuing more drilling permits to boost domestic production. But Salazar defended the administration’s…
The story of Scott Howard, who endured extortion and rape by an inmate gang in Colorado’s prison system, was told in detail for the first time in my feature “The Devil’s Playground” three months ago. But our account quickly went viral — and Howard, now free to speak out about…
