Elvin Bishop plays at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe South Shore Room on May 26 at 7:30pm.

Ticket are $27.50. Call 800.786.8208.

On Saturday night between 8:30 and 9:30pm, Harrah’s and Harveys Lake Tahoe, along with sister property Harrah’s Reno, will darken all non-essential lighting in support of the World Wildlife Fund’s annual Earth Hour events.

More than 5,200 cities and towns in 135 countries worldwide are expected to switch off their lights for Earth Hour to send a message for action on climate change.

Harveys and Harrah's will go dark one hour March 31. Photo/LTN file

More than eight years ago, Caesars Entertainment Corporation – Harrah’s and Harveys parent company – formalized its commitment to the environment and sustainability under the banner of CodeGreen.

In the area of energy savings, Harrah’s and Harveys Lake Tahoe have converted nearly 60 percent of all incandescent lighting to energy efficient, CFL and LED lighting throughout the properties in just a little more than two years time.

Recently installed LED external signage at Harrah’s and Harveys is reducing energy consumption by thousands of kilowatt hours per day, realizing a savings of more than $165,000 annually. Additional, dramatic reductions in energy use were recently accomplished with the installation of a state-of-the-art chiller system for cooling water, which also created dramatic cost savings.

In all, the savings in 2011 reached approximately 17 million kilowatt hours, enough electricity saved to power 1,560 residences for one year. This amount translates into $1.7 million is cost savings.

By Matt Weiser, Sacramento Bee

It was January 2010 when Shawn O’Brien visited her favorite paddling spot on Cache Creek, in Yolo County’s scenic Capay Valley, and noticed something wasn’t right.

The path to the water alongside Rumsey Bridge, which she had used for a decade to launch her canoe, was obstructed. Tree limbs, stumps and brush had been piled against the bridge, blocking the popular path.

For now, the Upper Truckee River is not part of discussion. Photo/LTN file

In subsequent visits over the next few months, the debris pile grew larger and the message became clear: The public wasn’t welcome.

“I was so disappointed,” said O’Brien, who lives in Ukiah. “It made me crazy, and so I kind of went to work.”

O’Brien thus became another agitator in the loose cadre of citizens fighting to protect access to creeks and rivers.

Public access to coastal beaches has been a high-profile struggle for decades. The same battle on inland waterways, however, has received far less attention. The public has similar legal rights in both situations, but the legal thicket seems to get bigger as the waterway in question gets smaller.

“Even as an experienced attorney and kayaker, it’s hard to know what to do to approach this problem,” said Walter Schmelter, a Sacramento attorney and longtime kayaker who teamed with O’Brien to fight for access to Cache Creek. “It’s a daunting task for an individual of any stripe.”

One of the biggest fronts in the battle may become the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where 1,000 miles of levees have provided public fishing access for more than a century. In recent years many of those levees have sprouted forbidding “No Trespassing” signs.

The California Constitution since 1879 has guaranteed the public the right to access waters of the state. In addition, the water itself and the fish that swim in it are legally owned by the public.

Yet ensuring that citizens can reach the water and its fish is not always simple.

Read the whole story

By USSA

WINTER PARK, Colo. — Julia Mancuso of Squaw Valley landed a massive 1.2 second super G victory at the Nature Valley U.S. Alpine Championships Friday to extend her national title record to 14 in spring-like Winter Park.

Leanne Smith of North Conway, N.H., nabbed silver with Laurenne Ross of Bend, Ore., bronze.

It was the fourth super G U.S. Championship gold medal of Mancuso’s 12-year career with the U.S. Ski Team.

“Winning my 14th national title is pretty cool, but I’m going to race until I have 30,” Mancuso said. “It’s spring conditions and kind of like an obstacle course. It’s always fun to come to nationals to see all the enthusiasm of the clubs from across America.”

Women’s Nature Valley U.S. Alpine Championships action continues Saturday with giant slalom in Winter Park.

By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger

In the early days of the Solyndra debacle, as the reality dawned on the White House that its half-billion-dollar investment was about to go belly-up, former Obama economic adviser Larry Summers famously observed that, “Government is a lousy venture capitalist.” The quip, discovered after House Republicans subpoenaed White House e-mails about Solyndra, fairly well characterizes good Washington opinion these days in the wake of the Solyndra bankruptcy.

But before we conclude that government ought to get out of the business of betting on new technologies, we’d do well to try imagining our modern economy without computers, the Internet and jet travel, all of which were heavily subsidized by the federal government.

Critics of government investment in technology cherry-pick high-profile failures such as Solyndra, the 1970s “synfuels” program to make gasoline out of coal, and corn ethanol. But these relatively marginal failures pale in comparison to the long history of successful government investments that have transformed our economy and contributed mightily to our affluence over the last century.

The idea that technological innovation is what drives economic growth – 80 percent or more by some estimations – is now broadly accepted by most economists. And there is even broad agreement that not all technologies are created equal. The technologies that really matter are those that economists call “general purpose technologies,” things like the steam engine, electricity, and microchips. General purpose technologies make an outsize contribution to economic growth because they find their way into all sorts of new applications, increasing productivity across large swaths of the economy.

But the question of where general purpose technologies actually come from remains hotly contested. The pat answer that mainstream neoclassical economists offer is that technological innovation primarily happens when private firms, disciplined by competitive markets, create new technologies and products in pursuit of profits. They argue that government investments in innovation have been, at best, a sideshow and brandish economic studies which purport to show that nations that spend more on public research and development don’t grow any faster than those that spend less.

Ted Nordhaus is the chairman and Michael Shellenberger is the president of the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland.

Read the whole story

Discover dabblers, divers, and other feathered friends on an early morning walk with Jim Woods, local birder and member of the Lahontan Audubon Society.

See what species are coming and going during the annual spring migration, and what birds will stick around all year. In May, the males will be singing their territorial and nesting songs and will be filling the forest with song. In August, identify the birds in changing plumage from breeding to winter feather and from fledgling to adult as they prepare for the upcoming winter migration. The trips will be along the Carson River and surrounding lands.

The dates are May 26 and Aug. 4, both from 8-11am, and starting at Sorensen’s Resort in Hope Valley.

More information is online.

By Richard N. Velotta, Las Vegas Sun

Gov. Brian Sandoval will solicit all viewpoints on Internet gambling — including those of Las Vegas Sands Chairman Sheldon Adelson and other critics — to develop policies to manage and regulate the rapidly changing industry that could be headed to the United States someday.

Sandoval, presiding over the first meeting of his revamped Gaming Policy Committee on Wednesday, said the 11-member panel’s objective would be to recommend public policy positions and suggest legislation in advance of online gaming approval and to make sure Nevada continues as a global leader in industry regulation and commercial competition.

The 90-minute meeting was primarily a policy review session for the committee, comprising industry leaders, state legislators, regulators and the public. Sandoval said the committee’s purpose would be finely focused and within a strict timeline — he wants the group’s efforts to be completed by the end of August so that it can issue a report and suggest bill drafts in advance of the 2013 legislative session.

Sandoval said the committee would meet four more times, roughly every four to six weeks, and he encouraged representatives of the gaming industry to weigh in with their views on how Nevada could best leverage Internet gambling and enable the state to be the gold standard in regulation and policy.

The Gaming Policy Committee is a seldom-used sounding board to discuss issues critical to the industry. The committee was initiated by Gov. Grant Sawyer in 1961 and last used by Gov. Richard Bryan in 1981 to discuss pari-mutuel race wagering. Over the years, the committee has addressed the role of entertainment in the casino setting as well as discrimination and equal rights in casinos.

Read the whole story

By Robert D. Dávila, Sacramento Bee

Eleanor M. Cavitt, matriarch of a historic Northern California ranching family, died March 22 in Sacramento. She was 103.

Mrs. Cavitt was the widow of James Henry Cavitt, whose family traveled by wagon from Iowa to Truckee during the 1840s and later homesteaded 10,000 acres in Placer and Sacramento counties that became Cavitt Ranch. She married at age 16 and had three children by age 20.

She kept house on a working ranch and pitched in with the family’s dairy and beef operations, including the J.W.S. Butler Ranch near Folsom and a summer range at Sattley in Sierra County. She cooked for cowboys, milked cows, cleaned barns, rounded up cattle and raised 4,000 turkeys for market every year.

“She was very devoted to her family,” said her daughter Dorothee Cavitt Mull of Sacramento. “She never stopped working. She washed and ironed and always kept a clean house.”

Mrs. Cavitt was born in 1908 in Sacramento, one of 11 children born to German immigrants Carline and George Spahn, a railroad worker.

Read the whole story

Tahoe Tri Club is putting a triathlon on July 1 starting at 11am for ages 4-14.

Cost is $35.

It will be at Lake Baron in Tahoe Paradise.

For more information, go online.

By Mandy Kendall

As the days get longer, thoughts might be turning toward coming out of hibernation and getting out and about for a bit more exercise.

I think most of us know why we should be exercising. We know it’s good for us: it builds muscle and reduces fat, it strengthens bones, it boosts our energy, combats depression and generally makes us feel good about ourselves. So what is it about exercise that can make it seem like such a chore?

Mandy Kendall

I’m not the most energetic of people and I often find it very easy to come up with plenty of excuses not to exercise on a regular basis. So I wondered if there might be a few changes I could make to my attitude about exercise that might help change that.

How do we exercise? For a lot of us an exercise routine is easy, but boring. Then the body stops responding to exercise the way it used to and we get discouraged.

Why do we exercise? For some of us it might be to change the way we look. So we exercise and we change the way we look, then what? We’ve reached our goal and then there’s no more incentive to keep us exercising.

When do we exercise? Who has time to exercise really? We rush off and try to cram in some exercise like another chore, when we have a gazillion other things we should/would rather be doing, and we may end up resenting it for taking up our valuable time.

So, here are a few Qwik-e (quick and easy) tips to putting some fun back into exercise:

Have some fun! – Mix things up a bit and try a new class or sport; it will challenge areas of your body (and brain) that might have been missed with your regular routine. Most places will let you try a couple of sessions, to see if you like it, before signing up for a whole class. Also, switching between exercise that challenges your breathing and exercise that challenges your muscles helps prevent your body from plateauing in improvement and staves off boredom.

Make it social — Working out with friends and family solves the problem of never having enough time to spend with loved ones and exercise too. It will also help to keep you motivated to exercise on a regular basis.

Multitask — If you find it difficult to allocate a whole hour or more to exercise, try and incorporate movement throughout your day. A few minutes here, a few movements there will make a big difference over time. Lunges and stretches while cleaning the house, or doing chores, may feel a little silly but will make the most of your time. Cycling on a stationary bike or doing weights watching your favorite show will make the time fly by (and will probably take your mind off sitting and eating those cookies too). I have a friend that even does squats while she’s cleaning her teeth.

Set a goal — I’m better when I have a target to work toward. So whatever works for you; setting a distance to run, a standard or level to achieve or a competition to win. Often just some good-natured competition with a friend is enough incentive to keep you focused. When you reach that goal then just set a new one. Weight loss is not the best goal to work towards because once we reach our ultimate goal weight then where do we go? We can’t keep getting thinner, but we can always strive for a better time, longer distance or higher level. Just try and make sure that each goal is realistic and achievable in the near future so you don’t run the risk of being discouraged.

Until next time.

Mandy Kendall operates Health Connective in South Lake Tahoe. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me an email at healthconnective@gmail.com, visit us on Facebook, or keep an eye out on Lake Tahoe News for regular Qwik-e tips on how to make healthy changes one Quick and Easy step at a time.