As thousands of Las Vegans flock across the California state line to get their Powerball tickets; the one question on most people’s lips is, why doesn’t Nevada get on board?

There is a memorable episode in the now-classic sitcom Scrubs in which the conniving Dr. Kelso unveils a plan to peddle useless “full body scans” as a new revenue stream for the perpetually cash-strapped Sacred Heart Hospital. The irascible but ultimately patient-protecting Dr. Cox objects loudly. “I think showing perfectly healthy people every harmless imperfection in their body just to scare them into taking invasive and often pointless tests is an unholy sin,” he says. Undeterred, Kelso launches an advertising campaign that promotes the scans in a tear-jerking television commercial and a billboard screaming “YOU may already be DYING.”

Las Vegas is the backdrop for plenty of comedies and dramas both in print and on screen. The Strip has also been the focus of many a scholarly examination, including a now classic study on design, undertaken nearly five decades ago by a trio of Yale professors.

Both were great generals. Both Virginians. Both came from slave-owning plantation families. Is it really so far-fetched to put Robert E. Lee in the same category as George Washington, as President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday? Many historians say yes.

Senator Dean Heller’s position on health care reform—he’s against it after having been for it while he was against it—has become a contortionist act worthy of the Circus Circus big top or Absinthe tent. But the Republicans’ recent display of legislative incompetence also brings to mind Harry Reid and Ralph Roske.

If you’re anything like us, you probably have solar eclipse fever: You've had August 21 marked on your calendar for days with dozens of sun and moon emojis; you’ve got your special viewing glasses, and you’re planning on taking your lunch break precisely at the eclipse’s peak moment (for all of you New Yorkers out there, that’s 2:44 p.m.). If you’re really committed to 2017’s total solar eclipse, you might even have travel plans to the path of totality to see the phenomenon in its truest form.

Saturday's violence in Charlottesville, Virginia is bringing renewed attention on an old problem plaguing the country -- white supremacist groups and extremism. Experts say white supremacy started to reemerge from the shadows a decade ago and the Internet has helped in the growth and re-branding of an old idea.

A group of Nevada researchers plans to take solar eclipse viewing to new heights. They’re launching a balloon outfitted with cameras to the edge of space just as the eclipse shadow rolls over eastern Oregon and Idaho. The idea is to capture unique images from the first total solar eclipse viewable from the contiguous United States since 1979.