Christopher Hitchens and his godless views attracted only a dozen cadets from the Air Force Academy recently, probably because the get-together, which took place at a Colorado Springs restaurant, was forbidden on campus. An Academy spokesman said Hitchens was not welcome because he’d made comments that were “degrading to others,” reports the Colorado Springs Independent. Hitchens, of course, is nothing if not confrontational; in his book, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, he railed against religious belief as irrational, old-fashioned and unnecessary. During his conversation with the students who were curious enough to show up, the British-born atheist warned them about the military’s top chaplain in Afghanistan: “Good people are going to get killed because of his stupidity,” Hitchens said. A video of the chaplain has been widely seen on the Web; in it, he advises U.S. soldiers to “hunt people for Jesus” by converting Muslims to Christianity. Hitchens, who paid his own expenses, spent more than two hours talking to the cadets. He concluded with this advice: “Don’t keep the faith. And don’t fly too close to the sun.”

A 2-year-old black bear, sympathetically described by wildlife experts as lonely, scared and kicked out of home by his mother, raced around Seattle backyards recently, for days eluding police, who dubbed him the “urban phantom.” Kim Chandler, a Washington state Fish and Wildlife officer, told the Seattle Times that the 125-pound bear was as wily as a house cat and that chasing it was “kinda like the Keystone Kops.”

A police sergeant in Arvada, Colo., said that in his 15 years in law enforcement, he’d never charged a guy on a horse with drunk driving. But when the tipsy rider ambled into a busy strip mall on his horse, you couldn’t help but notice that he was falling out of the saddle, reported 9news.com. A crowd gathered while police ticketed Brian Drone for riding an animal while under the influence. Then the cops had to figure out what to do with the horse. Fortunately, a local stable owner gave the rider and his mount a ride home. Drone, who said he was merely out for a “joyride,” was fined $25.

During the West’s last nine years of drought, the level of Lake Mead, which backs up behind Hoover Dam, has plummeted 100 vertical feet, causing unexpected and peculiar things to happen. Where there used to be flat water with no pizzazz on the reservoir’s edge 120 miles east of Las Vegas, a dangerous rapid has emerged. “The so-called Pearce Ferry Rapid features a sharp drop and a hard right turn, as the Colorado River tumbles around a rock outcrop,” says the Las Vegas Review-Journal. In fact, the new rapid is so fierce that one rafting Web site rates it as Class 4, on a scale of 1-6. This is not the kind of problem the National Park Service is used to dealing with at Lake Mead, says Mark Grisham, who heads the Grand Canyon River Outfitters Association: “There is an irony there that these flat-water guys are now dealing with whitewater issues.” What makes the new rapid so challenging, he adds, is that it “runs right smack into a wall and turns.” The falling reservoir level forced the Park Service to close its boat ramp at Pearce Ferry in 2002. Now, however, it plans to build a two-mile dirt road for boaters just upstream from the rapid.

Here’s a conundrum: How do you convince 2,000 backpackers to use human poop bags at a crowded camping area high in the mountains this summer? Over the years, Conundrum Hot Springs has become the most heavily visited overnight wilderness destination in the Aspen area. You might also call the 11,000-foot-high hot springs slob central: The Forest Service studied the area in 2006, and found that 71 percent of campsites had “partially unburied solid waste” within a short distance of the core camping area. What’s more, the water in the hot springs has sometimes tested positive for fecal coliform bacteria, and the hot springs are part of the water supply for the valley far below. Help is on the way, however, if hikers agree to pick up one of the 2,000 ingeniously constructed poop bags available at the trailhead — and use them. According to the Aspen Times, “Waste goes into an inner sack that contains enzymes and polymers that change the composition of the waste.” The inner sack is then wrapped in a protective outer bag. Safely contained, the whole thing can be packed out and later tossed into the garbage, much like a used baby diaper. The Forest Service hopes that the Restop 2 brand bags, which were partly financed by the Aspen Skiing Co. employees’ Environment Foundation, will appeal to hikers’ sense of environmental ethics.

As the Denver Post blithely put it, “the geyser was not erupting at the time.” The time, that is, when two seasonal workers at Yellowstone National Park urinated into Old Faithful. But something almost as startling was happening, thanks to technology: The destructive silliness was covered live by a Webcam. As NewWest.net put it: “If you’re going to pee on a national treasure, you ought to make sure you’re not being live streamed to the Web.” Sure enough, someone watching the Webcam while waiting for the geyser to spew called the park’s dispatch center to complain. According to PEER — no pun intended; it’s the acronym for the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility — this was the first time the Webcam functioned as a protector of natural resources in the park, or (depending on your point of view) as an intrusive Big Brother. Both workers were fired by the Old Faithful Inn, and one, a 23-year-old man, has already been sentenced. He was fined $750, placed on probation for three years, and banned from Yellowstone for two years.

Kelley Coffman-Lee is a vegan who likes tofu so much she wanted her license plate to proclaim it to the world: ILVTOFU. Not acceptable, reports the Denver Post; the state’s Division of Motor Vehicles bans “FU” altogether, even with “TO” placed in front of it, because “FU” so often refers to something entirely different from coagulated soy milk pressed into bland blocks.

Living green can be dangerous to your health, reports The Associated Press. Perhaps you aspire to drive fewer miles and use less gasoline in your car, and so you decide to try cooking up your own biodiesel. But if you do whip up a batch of cooking oil and wood alcohol or methanol — and heat the blend to 120 degrees or so — watch out! You might burn down your house. That’s been happening in several Western states, including Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Colorado, and although no one has been seriously injured, some fire officials warn it’s only a matter of time. Hundreds of Web sites tout do-it-yourself biodiesel, and it’s a “fun little hobby like making your own beer,” said Lyle Rudensey of Seattle. But Rudensey also advises people to keep a fire extinguisher on hand and store all highly flammable liquids in metal containers. The fires that have reportedly started from cooking biodiesel have been spectacular, spewing clouds of black smoke and quickly wiping out sheds, garages and, sometimes, houses.

In the western Colorado resort town of Crested Butte, the debate over housing regulations centers more on the small stuff in people’s backyards — those picturesque sheds, old-time outhouses and even falling-down chicken coops. The town council recently passed a law protecting all of it — no matter how dilapidated — since many outbuildings in town date back to the olden days of the 1880s, when the town supplied nearby silver and coal mines. The requirement irks residents such as Elaine Weston, who told the Crested Butte News, “It galls me to have to support an old chicken coop when I can’t have a chicken.” Homeowner Karen Anderson agreed: “I think the town is asking a lot of my private property. I don’t have the inclination or the money to do this.” The new law offers landowners a small carrot: Stipends of $200 are available to help pay folks for keeping their historic outbuildings upright. No word, however, on whether residents also have to maintain old washing machines or those rusting vehicles up on cinderblocks out in the backyard.

The environmentalist who boasted that his new house would be the “greenest home in North America” is running into a few problems. For one thing, Ronald Abramson, the chief executive officer of a renewable energy company called NextGen Energy Partners, chose to build his 13,000-square-foot home in Boulder County, Colo., which prides itself on its green-building code. The BuildSmart rules require Abramson to make sure that his mansion creates almost as much energy as it uses, and that, says the Boulder Daily Camera, means he must install “a sea of solar panels.” But Abramson doesn’t have enough south-facing roof to hold all those panels. And because he has to comply with county regulations protecting open space, he can’t place that sea of panels somewhere on the ground. So the green CEO — the first to test the BuildSmart requirement — is asking Boulder County for “flexibility.” Readers commenting on the building project were quick to accuse Abramson of “enviro-friendly carbon hypocrisy,” but a handful of defenders sprang to the attack. They argued that his wealth does not make Abramson a bad guy or his mega-house a major mistake: “Your idols, Al Gore and John Edwards, live in houses far larger than this,” said one reader. “Edwards is in a 29,000 square-foot home. And Gore only threw up a few solar panels on his roof after an immense public outcry.”