Yes, people. Water *is* wet.

Ok. I've often written aabout what unpleasant, mean, angry people Las Vegans are. Today, I'm going to touch on another side of the general populace of this desert city.

Stupidity.

I did bite into the subject of the low education standards in a previous article, but what I'd like to illustrate this time around goes beyond education. Lack of raw intellect.

For a very few minutes of a very few days of each year, a rare meteorological phenomenon occurs in Vegas. It rains. A fair percentage of the time when it does rain, the roads become exposed to water.

For those of you that are unaware...

Water is wet.

To many, many Las Vegans, this comes as a shock. Las Vegans are very aggressive and recless drivers, and wet roads do nothing to hamper their nascar-to-the-store style of driving. This behavior is even more hazardous in Vegas than most places, specifically because of the very limited annual rainfall. Cars leak oil. In most places, this il is purged from the road surface by the periodic precipitation. The rarity of rain in Vegas allows this otherwise normal oil leakage to build up so that when a typical Vegas-style rainy day [10 minutes] occurs, suddenly the roadways become a network of paths with the traction of your average ice rink.

Give it 15 minutes after a sprinkle, and you will start hearing sirens around the valley as the accidents begin to pile up.

This idea for this very article was sparked by an accident. I wrote this article from the 4th floor of the parking garage shared by the Ballys and Paris hotels. It had rained. The roads were wet.

I was waiting.

I love my BMW. It's a beautiful car. It's a few years old, now, and if some Gilligan that doesn't understand that wet roads are slippery slides into me and totals the car, the insurance will give me book value for it, and it won't come even close to the money needed to replace such a car that's in showroom condition. So, I do not drive in Vegas when the streets are wet, if I can help it. It's not as big of an issue as it might sound. It almost never rains. When it does, it's not for more than a few minutes, and then the desert air dries out everything shortly after. It almost requires a concerted effort to drive on wet roads, here.

So, I decided to simply stand 8 stories or so above the earth, enjoying the crisp evening air and the view of the valley and skyline that is one of the few things in Vegas I actually enjoy. And while I waited for the streets to dry I was greeted by the delicious crunch of two vehicles colliding on the employees-only road behind the hotel. Two cars going around a corner. On wet roads. Too fast. Too typical.

A week before, it had rained. A light drizzle, just enough to get the roads moist. My best friend's daughter called him while to come get her. She had wrecked her car in a one-car accident on the highway. Driving too fast. Lost control. Slammed into the cement guardrail. And while Mark waited with her for the tow truck to arrive, another car had the exact same accident. Then, still waiting on the tow truck, a two car collision.

Am I surprised? Not in the least bit. This is a very unique state. It's the only place in the world where the highest ranking court of law upheld a law making it illegal to use your brain. Card counting (blackjack) is nothing more than using your memory. The New Jersey state supreme court found this so in a case concerning counting cards in Atlantic City. How can it be illegal to use your brain? Nevada had no problem outlawing the use of the brain.

Why didn't this cause massive outrage among the citizens?

Probably because most of them don't use their brains in the first place.