Las Vegas Trip

My Final Entry

I had such a great time on this trip, it's hard to write a closing entry for this blog. Unfortunately, Dom had a terrible time. His had an earache and his sinuses were bothering him, he didn't sleep well in the hotel, he hates meeting new people, and, although he enjoyed many of the sessions at the conference, he's not fond of the conference schedule with so much information packed into such a short period of time.

One of my favorite parts of Day 2 of TAM4 was the presentation by Carolyn Porco, a scientist from the Cassini Imaging project in Boulder, Colorado. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Cassini, it is a probe that NASA sent to Saturn to take pictures of the planet along with its rings and moons.

The pictures are absolutely gorgeous (larger versions are available on their website). I wish I'd be around in 500 years when it might be possible to take a flight to tour the Solar System!

As far as talking about the politics of science, Carolyn discussed how scientific missions in space can be threatened by manned space-flight missions. I'd never thought about this before, but she says the manned missions are very political and that they are hugely expensive. Because they are publicized so much, they become the priority of the space program. Any time these large projects run out of money, they siphon funds from smaller programs. Unfortunately, the manned space flights are often not focused on scientific exploration, but rather on PR.

I'd like to write more, but I'm really tired. We got home at about 11, after getting stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic going through Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70. There was a little snow and ice, enough to require trucks to use chains, but it wasn't really all that bad. However, we hit the area just in time to join all of the weekend skiiers on their return trip to Denver. Poor planning, but we were stuck. We did make it home eventually, and immediately crashed in our own comfortable bed.

Last day....

At present, I don't have much to add to the blog. The conference sessions today were excellent, and I have a lot to think about and may post some more tonight, after I have a chance to have dinner. Tomorrow morning we're leaving at about 6am so we can make it home in time for Dom to get some sleep before he has to get up for work on Monday. I'm not quite ready to go home. I could use a couple of extra days of vacation, but I also have a lot of work to do this week.

TAM4 Day 1 Recap

I won't write about every session, because you can read a quick blurb on the TAM4 website here. But there was one particular session that resonated with my own recent musings.

Michael Shermer, the founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine, read a short essay called "The Soul of Science." This little book explores how we can find spirituality without the belief in the supernatural. Shermer defines spirituality as "a way of being in the world, a sense of one's place in the cosmos, a relationship to that which extends beyond ourselves," and explains, "Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in spades."

This is a topic that I'm very interested in. When I left Christianity and returned to my childhood interest in science, I found that my ability to appreciate the beauty in nature was magnified. Learning about biology, evolution, physics, and astronomy made everything just a bit more wondrous.

Earlier this week, as we drove from Colorado to Nevada, I was enthralled by the rock formations in Utah. Yellow, red, green, and purple hues covered the mountainscape like watercolor paints gently brushed onto a canvas. The soft colors were in stark contrast to the rugged shape of the landscape. In some places, jagged cliffs predominated. In others, formations of hard rocks were balanced on top of softer stone that had eroded leaving the impression that the landscape had been chiselled away by an ancient Michaelangelo. Still other sections were filled with flowing rock formations that looked like piles of sand that had slowly broken off of the surface of the mountain and slipped down around it's ankles like a pile of silk fabric. At the gift shop at the Lake Mead Visitor's Center, I bought a book on geology to read before we leave, so I can have a greater appreciation for what I'm looking at on the drive home. (I'm sure my friend, Christine, who is a geologist will recommend additional reading.)

When I'd been a born again Christian, my curiosity was flattened by the common belief that the earth is only 6,000 years old and that it had been created by God. That belief made the universe seem small and finite to me. Admittedly beautiful and wonderous, nature inspired us to sing songs such as this:

Morning sun light of creation
Grassy fields of velvet flow
Silver clouds a shimmering curtain
He's designed a perfect world
I'm amazed at His talents
I stand in awe of one so great
Now my soul begins to sing out
To the source from which it came  

Bless the Lord who reigns with beauty
Bless the Lord who reigns with wisdom and with power
Bless the Lord who reigns my life with so much love
He can make a perfect heart

This song has emotional impact for many people who believe in God. But without an understanding of the true age of the universe, the processes by which magnificent mountains were formed and delicate flowers bloom, for me the universe was a flat canvas painted by the hand of a single being. When I started reading about science again, in my late 20s and early 30s, I began once again to experience the joy and excitement of learning that was common for me when I'd been a young child. Knowledge gave me the ability to see beneath the surface superficiality and look deep inside to see the molecules, atoms, and the invisible internal workings of nature.

I don't think Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins or any other scientits (what a great Las Vegas typo), who have written on this subject have hit the mark. Although I enjoy their books immensely and they may feel awe and wonder at the grandeur of the universe or be inspired by the beauty of a flower, their words somehow don't convey that feeling. I don't doubt their reports of their own feelings, I think the shortcoming is in their writing style. Because they normally write for academic or or scientific audiences, using technical prose, they don't have the poetic or lyrical writing style that is required to portray a sense of awe to the general public.

When you look at a beautiful painting, you can't tell if the artist was a Christian, Buddhist, or atheist. When you listen to melodic music, you can't tell if the composer was a believer or a skeptic. But when you read the writings of a scientist, you can almost always tell that the writer is not a poet. (Alan Lightman is one exception, and he's also written a book on this topic. I've had it in my Amazon wish list for quite a while. I guess it's time to buy it.) That's not to say that religious writers are any better at capturing their own sense of wonder on the page. Most religious writing is also technical (in a sense) and mundane.

Only a few novelists and essayists of any persuasion have been able to capture numinous, spiritual feelings in words. Their skill is in using words metaphorically to capture the essense of an instant in time forever on the page, rather than in explaining the minute details of a scientific theory or religious doctrine. The challenge is to capture what Alan Lightman calls " A Sense of the Mysterious" in the title of his book. Although I love reading science books written by scientists, for the particular task of awakening our feelings of mystery and wonder, I think the poet is the most qualified. I hope that in my own writing, I can learn to use the skill of a poet to succeed at this challenge.

The Amazing Meeting

It was nice to get to sit down yesterday, after spending all day Wednesday and Thursday on our feet. Attending TAM4 (The Amazing Meeting) is reason three for our trip to Las Vegas (in no particular order reasons one and two were visiting an old friend and cutting loose in sin city. The theme of this year's meeting is "Science in Politics and the Politics of Science." Its a four day conference, but we're only attending Friday and Saturday, when the main panels are being presented. I already wish we'd signed up for the whole shebang, because the topics that are going to be presented on Sunday sound fascinating.

More later...

Hitting the Strip

On Wednesday we spent the day checking out all the hotels that have opened since the last time we came through Las Vegas in 1998. Not much to say about it, but there is a LOT more shoping, a LOT more of a amusement park atmoshphere, a LOT more upscale everything (eating, shopping, casinos, architecture)... Las Vegas is all about everything that it worst about America. I don't mean the sex and gambling. I do mean the crass commercialism, the gaudy facades, and the total artificial atmoshphere that pervades everywhere. I don't know why, but I love it here.

We were supposed to meet a friend who lives here for breakfast at 9:00, but we got stood up. Well, to be honest, I knew 9:00 was too early for him but he thought it'd be OK. He called me at about 11:30 and told me that he'd just woken up at 10. Well, that's the way it goes.

After breakfast, we drove over the the Hilton at the north end of the Strip, and hopped onto the tram that goes up and down the Strip. It's hugely over priced, and was almost empty. I suspect if they cut the price in half, the tram would be totally full. At current prices, we bought two all-day passes and it cost us $30. There are less expensive tickets, but because we had no plans and we didn't know how many times we watned to get on and off the tram, we figured the day passes were the best way to to go. As it turns out, we only got off and on once, so we could have paid about $5 each for the lowest price ticket.

At the MGM, we went to the CBS studio and watched a demo version of a new reality show. Fits right in with Las Vegas in it's phoniness, don't you think? It was pretty dumb, but had a few funny spots. So for once we got to give our opinion on what should or should not go on the air. Since we're part of probably one of the smallest minorities in the country, we have our doubts about how much our vote will count. But really it was just a lark to kill and hour and do something different. Almost every show we really like gets cancelled in a year or two, while the retarded reality shows and ridiculous sitcoms that numb your brain until you think it will leak out your ears get to stay on for 8 or 10 years. Nor suprises there, I guess.

We rode down to the south end of the Strip, and got off the tram at the MGM grand. Then we walked back northward until our feet gave out, and we took the tram back to the Hilton and checked out the Star Trek tour.

Here are a few places you can see in Vegas, a great way to explore a phony version of the world if you don't have a passport or the desire to change time zones.

Phony New York

Phony Paris

You can even go off world, on any version of the Starship Enterprise that strikes your fancy.

And in this chaotic and violent world, Las Vegas is probably the only place in the galaxy where you can find Borgs and Klingon's talking peacefully. So despite it's vices and shortcomings, Vegas does have its sunny side.

That was enough of a Vegas adventure for one day. We finally caught up with our friend. We hand't seen each other in about 20 years, and we had a lot of fun bullshitting and catching up for a few hours. Sorry, no pictures, we'd all rather remember ourselves and each other the way we looked when we were 20. It is amazing, though, how the eyes never age.

Sin City

This afternoon we took a walk partway down the Strip. It is amazing how much this city has grown since the last time we were here. Granted, that was eight years ago, but still.... in the end, however, Sin City hasn't changed much at all....

Hoover Damn, Chocolate Factory & Cactus Garden

Although there's a lot of new stuff here on the Strip that we haven't seen yet, we took our first morning to go to Hoover Damn because Dom's never seen it before.

This side of the damn is where the Colorado river exits and goes downstream toward Mexico. I read somewhere that no water from the river reaches the Gulf of Mexico anymore, but I don't remember where I saw that and I haven't fact-checked it.

Dom was more interested in Lake Mead, where we can come with the boat. Maybe we'll come back next year. It would take a couple of extra hours driving with the boat in tow, so perhaps we'd make it a 2-day drive instead. I know we'll be here next January again, because I'm going to a knitting trade show (TNNA for those who care) in San Diego next January. I really really really miss San Diego. As soon as we drove into here and saw the palm trees and the nice, clean, well planned freeways, I started feeling homesick. I never wanted to go back to New York or Tennessee after I left. But for about a year now, I've been missing San Diego. I don't know how we could afford to live there, however, because we are not willing to go back to the rat race and get corporate jobs. So I'll have to write a best seller or win the lottery (hey, I'm in Vegas, maybe I'll try my hand at poker or black jack tonight!)

One of our favorite movies (don't laugh, it only got like 2 stars but we like it) is Fools Rush In with Matthew Perry and Salma Hayek. Hoover Damn and the Arizona Las Vegas border plays a big part in the movie's plot, so it was fun to stop here and stand with one foot in each state to take this photo.

On the way back into Las Vegas, we stopped at a chocolate factory. Not the one owned by Willy Wonka, but they did have a few Oompa Loopas. They were hard to find, just like mountain goats hiding in the rocks at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. How many Oompa Loompas can you find in this picture?

The last place we stopped was a cactus garden that is on the same property with the chocolate factory. They have cacti and succulents from around the world. It was quiet and peaceful compared to the noise of the casinos. There's so much more to Nevada than Las Vegas and Reno. I picked up a small book called Wild Nevada: Testimonies on Behalf of the Desert that is filled with short essays and poems about the beaut of the desert. I could live here if it wasn't over 100 degrees in the summer. That would just wipe me out. We were here once in August and you could just feel the heat rising up from the parking lot burning your shins as you walked. And the air conditioner never did cool off the car. It's just oppressive, even if as they say, "it's a dry heat."

Well, I guess I'm just homesick for Southern California. :-(

I'm suppposed to get together with a friend whom I haven't seen in 20 years, but I just phoned him at 1:30pm and he's asleep. That's the Vegas life, I guess!

We have arrived

It took us 11 hours but we've arrived in Las Vegas. Got into town, checked into our hotel and took a shower.

The drive was gorgeous. The part of Utah we drove through was all beautiful scenery and no towns. In fact, there was a 100 mile stretch with no gas stations or McDonald's, and that's something these days!

Dom was a little worried about the car, because it's had a small coolant leak. It overheated once last summer and again a couple of months ago when it was 10 below zero and I was driving my mother to the doctor, and he fixed that problem. Now it's got this slow leak and he thinks the water pump is wearing out. So he piled antifreeze, water, and his toolbox in the back of the Jeep. In the end, it was an uneventful drive.

It was getting dark by the time we got to Vegas and, wow, has this town grown since the last time we were here about 8 years ago.

More tomorrow!

Dom & Donna

We leave in the morning

Hi everyone, we're on our way to Las Vegas for a few days. Check back daily to spy on us.