Reporters’ Notebook

So last week the R-J called Mayor Oscar Goodman a Democrat. Which was wrong.

City spokesman Jace Radke, who has expressed an unhealthy and unnatural fear of ending up in the Reporter's Notebook, helpfully pointed out that Goodman changed his voter registration to "independent" when he was mulling a gubernatorial bid.

We reporters are only human, so when faced with evidence of a mistake, the only natural response was to accuse Radke of making one too.

Didn't he mean "nonpartisan," since "independent" is a party?

"Ha!" I said. "I correct your correction!"

"Is independent a party or is it Independent American?" he responded.

And dagnabbit, he was right again. There is an Independence Party, and others that use some form of the word, but the IAP is the only one registered in Nevada.

Still, you're in the notebook, pal. Ha!

ALAN CHOATE

Historian Dennis McBride is one of the foremost experts on Hoover Dam, which celebrated its 75th anniversary on Thursday.

Just don't ask him to stand near the edge. He said that experience was ruined for him when he was 3 years old and a cousin picked him up and held him over the side of the dam.

"It changed me for the worse," McBride said. "As much as I know that dam inside and out, I cannot go to the edge and look over the side."

HENRY BREAN

Here's something you might not know: The dam thing moves.

"Hoover Dam moves upstream and downstream every year. It flexes, contracts and expands," said Ken Rice, manager of the Lower Colorado Dams Office of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

That movement, caused by the shifting pressure of the lake behind it, is measured by the fraction of the inch. If the dam shifts any more than that, you might want to find somewhere else to be, Rice joked. "If you see a foot of movement, it's time to say adios."

HENRY BREAN