Dave walks us through a few things to look for when examining tracks in the snow.

As states across the country struggle with budget shortfalls, key lawmakers expect Lynch to lead during his third term.

Chuck Close studied art at Yale in the late 1960s, when abstract expressionism was still the rage. Close went his own way, creating painstakingly detailed portraits of friends like the composer Phillip Glass, artists Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra. He also famously painted a portrait of himself looking like a disheveled thug in a giant mug shot, cigarette in mouth, dark brows uniting over thick black glasses, each tousled hair perfectly rendered. He wasn’t going for beauty -- the subject’s crows feet, pores and rosy noses are blown up in excruciating detail on nine- foot canvasses.

In the late 1980s, a spinal cord injury left close paralyzed, but he learned to paint again, making portraits based on photographs composed of marks, thumbprints and multi-colored pixels that together make up a whole.

Chuck Close, a feature-length film by Marion Cajori, tracks his life, his art, and reflections by the artists who love him. The film screens this Thursday night at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center in Vermont, where a collection of works called “Chuck Close: Self-portrait, Scribble, Etching Portfolio” is also on view. We speak with Mara Williams, chief curator at the B.M.A.C.

The country’s largest trade show officially kicks off tomorrow in Las Vegas. 130,000 techies are now converging on Sin City for the 42nd annual Consumer Electronics Show. The event is always a headline-grabber. The VCR debuted there in 1970, Atari unveiled its game “Pong” at the show five years later, and the first CD players and DVD players were rolled out at C.E.S.
The current economy is putting a damper on some of the fun this year, though. Registration is down by 8 percent and producers realize that consumers might be more worried about hanging onto their jobs than buying the latest electronic doo-dads.


Dylan Tweney arrived in Las Vegas last night and joins us live on the show for a preview. Dylan covers gadgets for Wired.com, where he’s a senior editor.
Click here to check out all of Wired’s C.E.S. coverage.

New Hampshire fared better than many other states in 2008, but analysts warn that we are not immune. Home sales have fallen by a quarter, foreclosures are up and there have been major cuts in the state budget. We’ll explore how New Hampshire has fared in this economic crisis so far and what may be ahead for 2009.

Guests

• Ross Gittell, Economist and Professor of Management at the Whittemore School of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire
• Russ Thibeault, President of Applied Economic Research in Laconia