Since my last post--and yes, I know, it's been a while--I've been for the first time to Las Vegas, Nevada. I went with my wife, just for a weekend. The occasion was a history teachers' conference on the nuclear age, held at the Desert Research Institute, which houses the Museum of Nuclear Testing. Yes, there really is such a thing, and it's where it is, of course, because the testing site for lots of U.S. tests was in the nearby Nevada desert. Pretty good conference: Jeremy Bernstein, a eminent senior scientist who personally witnessed the 1946 test, was there and told some great stories. He told us Leibling's Gambler's Prayer, for example: "Oh Lord, let me at least break even....because I really need the money." Ambassadors Avis Bohlen and Jim Goodby were there, also Hans Mark, former Secretary of the Air Force and an MIT physics PhD, and several other not-too-shabby presenters. And, of course me. But that's not what I want to talk about. 

Las Vegas is just weird, and since most of Nevada's two million people live there, Nevada is weird. We're told that these days Las Vegas is a normal town, and that less than half its economic activity depends on The Strip of hotel-casinos and associated activities. Well, maybe, but it doesn't matter: If hadn't been for the gambling and the booze and the whores in the first place, none of the rest of that stuff would ever have developed. The whole place is built on what amounts to once-removed theft. It's not outright theft, but it's a systematic taking advantage of people who, for one reason or another, think that probability and statistics apply to everyone on the planet except them. 

In every other American town I've ever been in, and I've seen a few, the freebie newspaper kiosk things are full of real estate brochures, restaurant coupons and stuff like that.  In Las Vegas, they're full of dial-up naked women. There are hordes of Mexicans on the street, lined up in gaggles of six, eight, twelve -- some of them older women -- handing out little cards, just slightly smaller than a baseball card, with pictures of mostly naked women on them, and the members of the advertising gaggle are all wearing the same orange t-shirts emblazoned with black letters reading "Girls, in 20 minutes" and some other gibberish and a phone number.  And yet this is a city of family entertainment, you bet; and absolutely there are huge number of people there with their little kids, infants, toddlers, elementary school kids, junior high school kids.  Are these people out of their minds?!

And you never saw such gaudy, ugly footwear in your life. I always wondered what kind of woman would buy high heels that looked like they've been dunked in birthday cake glitter. Now I know.

There are some elegant things to see and experience, it is true.  I liked the Bellagio best, all of it, but especially the fountain water ballet, and that especially at night. We took in a  Cirque de Soliel show, which was magnificent. But my basic inner feeling was one that drove me to a long, hot shower as soon as I could avail myself of one, just to wash off all the inner filth I felt from being there. 

We did not gamble. Not one penny. No reason to.  I did not understand some of the card games, and I've been playing poker since I was eight years old. Long enough ago to have since learned that playing against the house is not my idea of a fair fight. As for the machines, there not slot machines anymore like the old ones my parents took me to out route 301 in the old days around Waldorf, Maryland.  No arm to pull down; no obvious randomizer at work. The new machines are not electro-mechanical but digital. They can be programmed to a zillion sequences, and while they will pay a win now and then, it has nothing to do with the player, or with counting the odds seeing how the machine patterns out. You cannot reason that there even is a randomizer at work, except by inference that if there weren't, the credibility of the whole thing would suffer and people wouldn't come so much. But it just did not seem right to me, did not feel right, and I didn't play. It's not even the money I cared about; it's the extremely unpleasant feeling of being had.  I'd rather lose $1,000 at a fair game than 30 cents at a fixed one. 

The city was crowded; shows were sold out; if there's a recession in this country, you can't readily tell it from walking around Las Vegas. The local news show had a story while we were there talking about how many more girls -- I think they mean young women -- are going in for stripping and more besides. The experts opined that the common explanation for this--hard times so they need the money--seems right, but probably isn't. They said it just provides a pretext for women who are looking to do this anyway. Well, I don't know. No way for me to know. All I know is, if I had a ten year-old, I wouldn't take him, and especially her, there. 

Oh, and what about President Obama? Well, there's been the Geithner bank plan playing out and getting hammered by experts left and right. 

There's been the revelation of the new Afpak strategy, and attacks on it. 

There's been the vaunted return of U.S.-Russian strategic arms control, a useful activity in its own right, but something easy to do only when one doesn't really need it. 

And a NATO and G-20 Summit is going on right now. It won't end so well, but it won't matter so much either.  It's an initiation ritual. The sides will get serious later. 

There's been the revisitation of the lunatic North Korean regime with its missile test, and the Secretary of Defense pronouncing in public how we were not going to knock it down on the launch pad, and how the Pyongyang crowd seems uninterested in diplomacy--not, in my view, the sorts of things it is wise to say out loud. 

Our Secretary of State actually told the truth, out loud, about Mexican drug-gang warfare actually being our fault, in this case I think a wise thing to say out loud. But then there was that handing of some letters from Ambassador Holbrooke to an Iranian, and the the State Department had the audacity to say it was a chance, unanticipated encounter. Folks, you don't prepare diplomatic correspondence in the hopes of a chance encounter. Lies are fine if they serve a purpose in this sort of game. But when they are transparently false, obviously false, it is embarrassing even to try to lie.  Maybe the State Department should hire some unemployed types from Wall Street.  They're experts.

A lot has happened lately, in fact.....but it'll have to wait for comment later. Too much other work to do.