The Case for Safety

When it comes to radio frequencies (RF), safety can be mighty tough to define. Many people who warn about the risks of nonionizing radiation below thermal levels, including B. Blake Levitt, the Connecticut-based author of the award-winning 1995 book Electromagnetic Fields: A Consumer’s Guide to the Issues and How to…

Not in Their Backyard, Either

The clash between Lookout Mountain residents and broadcasters is a minor scuffle compared to an incident in Usfiya, a village in Israel near Haifa. On March 15, the Jerusalem Post reported that eighteen people, ten of them police officers, were hurt there during a riot provoked by anger over cell-phone…

Honor Rolled

On December 13, 1999, Scott LeRoy’s seven-year-olddaughter came home from Majestic Heights Elementary with a letter explaining that her school might close. The letter said that in order to save money, the Boulder Valley Board of Education planned to consolidate several schools within the city. The note came as quite…

Takin’ It in the Pants

A vasectomy performed with a scalpel goes something like this: The doctor reaches for a scalpel, makes an incision on both sides of the patient’s scrotum, fingers around for the vas, cauterizes each side of the spermicidal conduit, and stitches ’em up. If the patient is lucky, he can expect…

Child’s Play

The most pressing things on the minds of most eleven-year-old girls is whether Mom is going to let them wear makeup before they’re sixteen, or if the boys in English class are ever going to stop pulling their braids. The eleven-year-old boys, in the meantime, are busy playing Little League…

Class Wars

Parents in northeast Denver have had enough. They’re sick of learning every year that their schools are failing, they’re tired of hearing that their kids aren’t doing well because they’re from poor neighborhoods, and they’re fed up with bringing their demands for better teachers and more schools before the Denver…

Off Limits

Last week’s news that the state legislature wants to cut the lieutenant governor’s budget by 25 percent — meaning the elimination of two positions from a six-person staff — came as a blow to Joe Rogers, the man who currently holds the job. But since there are only four people…

Oldest Living Snowpunk Tells All

I’m sitting in the snow at the top of the half-pipe at Eldora, watching Chris Pappas ride down. The eighteen-year-old boys around me stop doing whatever they’re doing and stare down into the pipe. They all know who Chris is, and it’s commonly accepted that on some level, he has…

The Making of a Media Event

Journalists love anniversaries — and why not? It’s all but impossible to plan in advance for the specifics of breaking news, since in most cases no one knows where, when or how it will happen, or whether it will ultimately achieve a lasting significance. But story commemorations don’t suffer from…

Iced Out

Basketball players and boxers, in particular, like to talk about how they get no respect. What this usually means is that the athlete allegedly being disrespected (see also: “dissed”) feels his opponent is not showing proper regard for the dissee’s sporting skill. Denver-area curlers, though, have a much more basic…

Letters to the Editor

Mad TV Regarding T.R. Witcher’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised!” in the March 30 issue: What a typical Denver story: A legitimate bid for a building is rejected so that the city can play favorites with a certain political faction. But this time, the joke is on the Hispanic…

The Accidental Jurist

Lee Hill pulls his truck over to the curb in an older, tree-lined Boulder neighborhood. He gets out and glances around, a Glock 9-millimeter handgun concealed beneath his black trench coat. The home where he’s stashed The Witness is a few blocks away, but he doesn’t want to park in…

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised!

On Wednesday, February 23, Sharon Vigil and Scott Flores, the president and chairman of the Denver Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, respectively, posed in front of the former Denver District Attorney’s building at the busy corner of Colfax Avenue and Speer Boulevard. They were announcing that the Hispanic Chamber would be…

And Now, In Living Colours…

Tracy Jenkins sounds like she’s fielding three calls at once. It happens when you’re one of two people responsible for a new cable channel that was supposed to air last week but at the last minute has been delayed. Though the Hispanic Entrepreneur Channel has fizzled out, the Black Entrepreneur…

Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness

Near the mouth of Denver International Airport’s Jeppesen Terminal, right before Peña Boulevard splits into the east and west entrances, and just out of view, is a huge parking lot filled with hundreds of taxicabs, a dozen shuttles, several limousines and an RTD bus or two. In the middle of…

A Dog Gets His Day

Bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman slips out the front door of his office, which is across the street from Sloan Lake Park, dodges the cars speeding down Sheridan Boulevard and rescues a fellow dog, a large black poodle named Copper. Lost for hours, Copper had roamed onto the street. When…

Follow that story

Cranky Calls Criticism last week of a US West-backed bill that would deregulate the monopoly phone carrier prompted an attack on the state’s consumer advocacy group by the bill’s sponsor, House Majority Leader Doug Dean. The proposal is a watered-down version of a previous bill that was defeated earlier in…

Off Limits

Mayor Wellington Webb traveled to London in mid-March to meet with government and business officials and to formally open Denver’s new British trade office there. He also took time to observe London’s current mayoral race and to offer personal grooming advice to Frank Dobson, a Labor Party candidate who is…

What’s in a Name?

Whenever someone asks Marcus Roybal about her ethnicity, which seems to be happening a lot these days, she simply glances at the back of her 82-year-old hand and checks the color of her skin. “Chicano,” she says. But if you really want to know the truth, she’s part Sioux and…

Paper Trail

A lot of businesses have dispensed entirely with printed memos, preferring instead to go with the electronic variety. But the Rocky Mountain News is still doing things the old-fashioned way, and we’re glad they do — because a couple of memos intended for News employees that found their way to…

Letters to the Editor

Ramsey Tough Very good tag-team coverage in the March 23 issue of the continuing Ramsey screwups. Although I enjoyed Michael Roberts’s outing of Ramsey sympathizers in “The Message” and Patricia Calhoun’s continued bashing of the Jeffco persecution — oops, make that prosecution — in her column, the reader’s choice prize…

Super Bowl Champion!

There are many fine bowlers in the state of Colorado. There is George McDonald, who, in his 68 years on this piece of earth has won 36 state and local championships, a record that makes people like John Wooden, UCLA’s Wizard of Westwood, look like a flash in the pan…