The Day's News...

• A huge infestation of mountain pine beetles are turning a blanket of green forest into a blanket of rust red. Montana has lost a million acres of trees to the beetles, and in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming the situation is worse. In Wyoming and Colorado in 2006 there were a million acres of dead trees; last year it was 1.5 million; this year it is expected to total over two million. It is the largest known insect infestation in the history of North America, officials said; experts fear that the beetles could travel all the way to the Great Lakes. In the next three to five years virtually all of Colorado’s lodgepole pine trees over five inches in diameter will be lost, about five million acres.

• With retailers struggling to find credit and ordinary Russians being forced to change their spending, a vast lake of undrunk vodka is accumulating in distilleries across Russia. Official statistics indicate a collapse in demand for vodka over the past two months. November inventories of unsold vodka stock have risen to 82 million litres, a 600 per cent increase from 2007, according to the National Alcohol Association. The vodka lake has grown even as desperate producers have slashed output, which fell by 15 per cent in October according to industry estimates.

• Here's an interesting series of stories on the ways certain cities are attempting to manage what appear to be perpetual declines in their populations (Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Cleveland.) The articles promote city planning efforts to suburbanize decaying urban areas with malls, cul-de-sacs, and high-end housing, which appears to be the preferred approach of city governments seeking to expand their tax bases while reducing the costs of maintaining declining areas. An analysis of this state strategy is due, but in the meantime readers are directed back to the C.S.A.'s "High Pressure, Low Pressure" post.

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else."--James M. Barrie