Bloglander

It's Fun to Tear Down the... In a 4-3 vote, the Spokane city council finally decided what to do about the YMCA. No, sadly, not "anti-gravity dodgeball." They're going with the old plan: Use conservation funds from Spokane County to help pay down the $4.3 million debt. Then, tear the sucker down.

Medical Merge In Idaho, Kootenai Health's three urgent care clinics will combine and evenly share operations with North Idaho Family Physicians' two urgent care clinics. The thinking is that merging would reduce overhead costs and give each doctor a larger patient pool to serve from.

Executive Pay Cut If you lost your job or saw a drastic reduction in your paycheck this year, don't feel bad. Just think how Idaho governor C.L. "Butch" Otter feels. The Idaho State Senate slashed governor pay from $115,348 to a paltry $110,734 a year.

Wind Fall Those bursts of wind yesterday took their toll. Avista reported 24 separate power outages, affecting more than 2,800 people across Spokane and Coeur d'Alene.

The Littlest Victories Dude! The Large Hadron Collider is finally colliding hadrons. You know what this means? Either a) the resulting collisions let us learn more about subatomic particles and, perhaps, ourselves, or b) all those Michael Crichton novels were right, and, by playing God, science has doomed us all.