WEEK IN REVIEW: Reporters’ notebook

Whooping cough is no laughing matter. The illness can cause pneumonia, brain damage and death. So it was alarming to learn last week that the Nevada State Health Division was investigating four cases of it in Churchill County.

Only that's not what one local station reported. In a breaking news flash Wednesday, KLAS-TV, Channel 8 warned instead of a possible outbreak of "whopping cough." Which honestly sounds much worse in a kind of hilarious way.

Seriously, though, health officials are urging children and adults caring for infants to take preventative measures, including getting vaccinated for whooping cough.

The only known cure for whopping cough, meanwhile, is proofreading.

HENRY BREAN

When the Board of Regents named Bart Patterson the new president of Nevada State College, there was so much love in the room for the man that someone had to do something or there might have been inappropriate hugging.

After Andy Kuniyuki, the college's dean of liberal arts and sciences, told a heartwarming story about Patterson with metaphors and everything, Regent Kevin Page quipped: "Andy, is it true that President Patterson is the new mascot as well?"

A chuckle went around the room before Kuniyuki answered, "He should be."

RICHARD LAKE

When the Nevada Department of Wildlife rounded up a dozen bighorn sheep from a park in Boulder City last week, the wildlife veterinarian assigned to the operation was named - no kidding - Peregrine Wolff.

But Wolff, whose friends call her Peri, insists her parents weren't trying to influence her career path at birth.

And before you ask the other question she gets all the time, no, her folks weren't hippies, either.

"My father was an economics professor," Wolff said.

HENRY BREAN

TWEET OF THE WEEK: @TClippardsSpecs: Bryce Harper needs no glove for catching. Sheathing the hands of God with the hide of hooved beasts serves no purpose in his game.