Burning Man and Yucca Mountain have something in common - both are highly dubious projects in the Nevada desert. Let me explain.

Burning Man, the annual naked drug festival co-sponsored by San Francisco-based Black Rock City LLC and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), will take place over the Labor Day weekend in the Black Rock Desert near Gerlach. It will attract some 40,000 "free spirits" who will pay between $250 and $400 apiece for the "privilege" of baking in the sun for a week. Doing the math, it's clear that the festival will gross more than $10 million for its aging hippie organizers. And the BLM will rake in about a million dollars - last year's BLM take was approximately $843,000 - for looking the other way as participants do drugs and get naked in the presence of young children.

For years the Burners have claimed that their event is nonprofit and non-commercial and that they're dedicated to art and assorted consciousness-raising activities. But seven-time Burner Chris Taylor, who writes for the techie magazine "Business 2.0," has revealed the truth about the festival in the July issue of that magazine. Taylor confirms that Burning Man is a $10 million business that is now seeking corporate sponsorships. So much for the high-minded New Age baloney that Burning Man organizers "lord Larry" Harvey and "Maid Marian" Goodell peddle to the media every summer.

"We've got four properties in Nevada totaling more than 200 acres," Goodell told Taylor in an interview, "and three people in accounting managing a budget of $10 million." And, sounding exactly like one of those despised CEOs, she confirmed that Black Rock LLC is now seeking corporate partners who will exhibit their products at this year's event without displaying their logos.

MY RESOURCES:
www.nevadaappeal.com/article...08120088