[extropy-chat] American Humanists Association 2004 conference report - complete!

[Robert J. Bradbury]

A brief comment on Michael's review of Las Vegas (leaving aside
his discussion of the humanist conference since I wasn't there
and he seemed to give it a balanced discussion).

Yes Vegas has its negative side (not the least of which is the
cigarette smoke).  But this is slowly changing.  The NY Times
had an article today on the decline in smoking in NYC due to
tax hikes and a restaurant ban and one quite populated county
here in WA state recently banned public smoking (now the subject
of active court fights).  So progress is being made.

However without a doubt Vegas over the last 20 years has transformed
itself into an entertainment capital.  The rides at the Luxor are
cool, the shops and restaurants in Caesar's Palace are very nice
and one could spend hours watching the fountains or artwork at
the Biagio or browsing through the memorabilia at the Hard Rock.
And let us not forget things like Siegfried & Roy & the tigers
(if they ever come back) or the Starlight Express show...

Now I realize that Michael may have been unable to take advantage
of some of these things which is unfortunate.  But Las Vegas
is to a large extent what a significant part of what life may
look like when serious life extension kicks in.  According to
my handy dandy spreadsheet that I have here -- if you stick $5000
into a reasonable mutual fund earning ~6% after inflation (reasonable
given historic long term stock market returns) when you are 21 then
by the time you hit 130 years you are a multi-millionaire.  And
this doesn't even take into account increased living standards
due to nanotech development over the next 130 years.

At that point much of the population will be looking for entertainment.
Thats what Las Vegas is all about.  It used to be that gambling
was the primary entertainment but a number of years ago they
realized that you can use that to please some of the people
some of the time but not to please all of the people all of the
time and set about fixing that.

So Michael -- next time you get to go to Las Vegas don't be afraid
to go out and explore a little.  There is more there than one
might expect at first glance.

Robert