The first license plate to remember Nevada’s history as the host of the US’s nuclear testing grounds drew criticism for featuring a mushroom cloud (see the plate on the right, above). Now it appears folks are at it again, this time with a plate that depicts the site’s area and includes the classic illustration of an atom’s electron cloud.

All of this generated enough interest to bring the local media out to the Atomic Testing Museum to gawk at the proposed plate, including an actual-sized rendition being shown off on a Lincoln Navigator.

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I guess not everybody in Nevada loves the Test Site as much as this postcard might suggest, but hey, what do tourists know? The image comes from _roberta’s Flickr photostream, and she doesn’t seem too critical.

About 850 miles southeast today, the Trinity Site — where the world’s first atomic weapon was detonated in a test on July 16, 1945 at 5:29:45 a.m. — is open to the public.

It’s said that visitors have already scavenged all the atomic glass from the desert floor under ground zero. Though it’s not the sort of thing you really wanna have in your pocket anyway.

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Las Vegas may be the most thoroughly American city. No other town has been so shaped by the singular desire to make a buck. Churches and strip clubs coexist in close proximity. Each competes for the hard luck — but not broke — gamblers seeking refuge from their losses. If Capitalism works, it works in Vegas.

Vegas is America’s liver. The worst of pop culture eventually finds a home someplace in Las Vegas or the surrounding Clark County. Good taste, if you wish to employ it, is imported from out of town. Some of the swankiest hotels and casinos host celbrity chefs or big name shows. Even those, however, are somehow reinterpreted in their most excessive forms.

Vegas looks like a construction site that was never cleaned up, and in many ways it is. Clark County, the home to the city of Las Vegas, grew by 85% between the 1990 and 2000 census counts, compared to 13% percent nationwide. The county, who’s only city is Las Vegas, accounts for over two thirds of the state’s population with 1.38 million people. Of course, more census facts are available online.

Of course numbers hardly tell a story. Follow these links to other sections for more:

    Part 2: Peyote.

    Part 3: Nukes and Moon Hoaxes.

    Part 4: Flesh.

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