Las Vegas

What a terrible waste of a perfectly good desert...

Or is it? Perhaps LasVegas is the crucible and prototype for a new kind of existence. Something not quite civilized, and yet highly technological.

An excellent place to observe attributes of the human condition that might be harder to detect in other settings.

I live here. I've spent about 20 years here. I find I have no emotional attachment to it.

And how can you? It is transient by nature.

I spent about 2 years in another locale (same climate, different society -- Phoenix) recently, and found myself wondering about frogs and pots of slowly boiled water. When I came back, one of my goals became getting out of here. I have school-aged children. LasVegas (ClarkCounty?) has an extraordinarily bad school system.

The largest single driving "industry" here is taking people's money in exchange for ... nothing. Ah, yes, "entertainment," well, you can't call that "nothing," can you?

The idea that this much "entertainment" needs to be experienced by a significant fraction of the population is ... not inspiring. The part that bothers me most is the deadpan delivery of pronouncements that this is actual value.

It doesn't help that I actually work for a company that's really big in the slot machine market.

Every transaction that happens in this town contributes to an overall moral deficit. But at least we make up for it in volume.

-- GarryHamilton

See LasVegasTest...