Tag: las vegas

Architectural Relics: Las Vegas, Nike Missile Silos, and Train/Subway Stations

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userpic=las-vegasToday’s lunchtime “News to Chew On”™ deals with relics. No, I’m not talking about the US Postal Service, which has decided to stop Saturday delivery in August. Rather, I’m talking about architectural relics:

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Friday News Chum: Obits, Animation, Non-Christian Christians, Fecal Transplants, 404 pages, and Close Shaves

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Well, it’s Friday at lunch, and that means it is time to clean out the news chum links, toss them into the water, and see if anyone bites on them for discussion.

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Sunday Morning Musings: Space Shuttle Route, -Stan, Yelp, Vegas History, Porn, and More Politics

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Sunday morning… everyone else in the house is asleep, so I thought I would share a few articles I discovered yesterday:

  • Space Shuttle Final Flight. You’ve probably seen this, but they’ve announced the route for the final flight of the space shuttle. The itinerary starts on 9/17 with flyovers of its former Florida home. Continuing west, Endeavour will make low flyovers of NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and the Michoud Assembly plant near New Orleans. As Endeavour approaches the Texas coast, it will fly over Houston, Galveston and Clearlake. The 747 carrying Endeavour will touch down at Ellington Field near the Johnson Space Center. At sunrise on 9/19, Endeavour will depart Houston and refuel in El Paso at Biggs Army Airfield. The next low flyovers at 1,500-feet will take place over White Sands Tests Facility in New Mexico and the Dryden Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. After the Edwards flyover, the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, SCA, will land at Dryden. On 9/20, the shuttle will overfly Northern California, passing nearAmes Research Center outside San Francisco. It will make numerous flyovers of landmarks, NASA says, in multiple cities including San Francisco and Sacramento.The final flyovers will take place over Los Angeles before landing at LAX around 11 a.m. Pacific time. I’m sure we’ll all be out to watch it from the Circle A parking lot. On 10/12, the shuttle will depart again, this time using surface streets (Westchester Parkway, Sepulveda Eastway, Manchester, Crenshaw, MLK Blvd) to get to the California ScienCenter. Over 400 trees are being cut down to clear the route for the shuttle’s wingspan.
  • Hi, Stan.  One of my favorite books is “How the States Got Their Shapes“. I read it again over vacation, and learning the history behind the various boundaries is fascinating. So naturally I loved a recent Mental Floss that explored why so many countries end in “-stan”. The proto-indo-european root root, stā–, or “stand,” found its way into many words in the language’s various descendants. The Russian -stan means “settlement,” and other Slavic languages use it to mean “apartment” or “state.” In English, the root was borrowed to make “stand,” “state,” “stay” and other words. The ancient Indo-Iranian peoples — descendants of Proto-Indo-Europeans who moved east and south from the Eurasian steppe – used it to mean “place” or “place of.” It’s this meaning that’s used for the names of the modern -stan countries, which got it through linguistic descent (Urdu and Pashto, the respective official languages of Pakistan and Afghanistan, both descend from the Indo-Iranian language), or by adopting it (the former Soviet -stan countries have historically been mostly ethnically Turkic and speak languages from the Turkic family). Thus, a country such as “Afghanistan” means “Land of the Afghans”. Cool.
  • Impact of Yelp. With my daughter at UCB, naturally I’ve added the Daily Cal to my reading list. Last week there was a very interesting research report on the impact of Yelp on restaurants. Specifically, the research found that when you move up half a star, your probability of being sold out goes up by roughly 20 percent. Moving up from a 3 to a 3.5 star rating gives restaurants between a 20 and 40 percent chance of being sold out at peak hours, while moving up from a 3.5 to 4-star rating gives restaurants a 40 to 60 percent chance of being sold out. I’d be curious to see a similar impact of ratings on items at sale at Amazon, and on Amazon Marketplace sellers. I’d expect to see similar impacts.
  • Las Vegas History. One of my hobbies is the history of Las Vegas (and other areas with lots of development in the 40s and 50s). So naturally I found the article about the El Cortez Hotel seeking a historic designation interesting. Most hotels in Vegas (especially on the strip) want to get rid of their history. You’ll find very little of 1950s Vegas left on the strip: there is the original building at the heart of the Riviera, and the Circus area at Circus Circus. I’m not sure how much of the original building is left at Ceasars, but the rest of the original strip is either gone (El Rancho Vegas, Last Frontier, Dunes, Hacienda, Desert Inn, Sands, Thunderbird), due to come down (Sahara), or had the original portions remodelled away (Flamingo, Tropicana, Caesars). The El Cortez downtown has done none of that. Original walls, original signs, original everything.
  • Porn Changes. One of the people I read on FB posted a link to an interesting article from Time Magazine in 2005 that explored how porn has changed since the 1970s. It talked about the history of the porn movie, and how the early films at least had pretenses of being real movies with real stores… just more sex. Eventually, that trend died away, and we were left with the straight-to-Internet garbage of today. An interesting analysis, and one that begs an alternate history where the skin flick and mainstream movies merged, and it was violence in movies that died out and went underground.
  • A Political Closing Note. As you know, I’ve been following the election this year. One of my favorite sites is electoral-vote.com; if you don’t read it… you should. I’ve also got Facebook friends who post good political links. For example, Stephen Greenwald posted a link to a great piece on why it is so important that Our Side must win and the Wrong Side must absolutely lose. One of my favorites on FB is Gene Spafford (who, as he wrote, is looking to be put on a pedestal… he’s hoping that one day his plinth will come). Gene posted a link recently to his blog, where he wrote about all you need to know for this Presidental year. Well worth reading… and worth asking yourselves why the Republicans didn’t trot out a former president to recommend their candidate.
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Friday Link News Chum Stew: Politics, Resumes, Meters, Runways, Bananas, iPod Connectors, DirecTV

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Well, it’s Friday at lunch, and that means it is time to clean out the accumulated links that never quite formed into a theme:

  • And The Plan Is… Let’s get some politics out of the way first. One of my big problems with the GOP of late is that their position seems to be solely what they are against, not what they are for. The LA Times captures this well in an article that discusses how the GOP focus regarding “Obamacare” is the repeal, and they have taken no actions — even actions they  promised — towards finding a better solution. This was evidenced this week with the 33rd vote in the house to repeal the act, with knowledge aforethought that it would never pass the senate, let alone be signed. I think the GOP would have a lot more respect if they would work to modify the act into something better, as opposed to just tossing it out whole-cloth with no replacement.
  • Whither the Resume? CNN has an interesting article on the potential death of the resume. Their basic question is this: In this era where our job history is easily available via LinkedIn or even Facebook, why have a resume at all? Work history can be easily found out.
  • Broken Meters. Gov. Brown just recently signed a bill making it legal to park at broken parking meters. It takes effect January 1, 2013. But there’s a catch. Cities can create superseding rules… and it is expected that Los Angeles will be one of those cities.
  • Side Effects of Heat. As you know, it has been hot. You had it in the east; we’re getting it in the west right now. It has been up into the 120s in Las Vegas. Heat has an interesting side effect: it makes air thinner, and thus it is harder for planes to take off. Luckily, the Las Vegas airport is one of the few engineered specifically for hot weather. Specifically, McCarran International Airport has two built-in advantages that help pilots deal with extreme heat: an exceptionally long runway and one that goes downhill just enough — 1.1 degree over its 14,505-foot-length — to help jets reach takeoff speed.
  • Sequencing the Banana. Bananas are an interesting fruit. The best bananas are sterile, propagated by shoot. The majority of the bananas consumed are a single variety — the cavendish — because others do not travel as well or look as good. This has made bananas very susceptable to disease and hard to improve. Thus, it is significant news that they have sequenced the genes of the banana. No, not the cavendish, but something close enough that they might be able to use the information to improve the banana. In related news, did you ever wonder why people slip on banana peels?
  • Pinning it Down. Lastly, an interesting article that explores the Apple iPod Dock Connector: why the shuffle uses a 4 pin connector; why that doesn’t work for most iPods (which have 30 pin connectors), and why there might be a 19-pin connector in the future.
  • Compensating for Nick. CNN is reporting on how DirecTV is compensating for the loss of the Viacom channels. Supposedly, according to DirecTV’s facebook page, “to thank you for your patience until Viacom channels are returned, all eight Encore Channels (including Encore Family) will be made available to all customers thru July 31st”. Further, the article notes that some subscribers have gotten discounts on their subscriptions for multiple months due to the loss.

Music: Raisin (1973 Original Broadway Cast): It’s a Deal

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Playing the Game

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Today’s lunch time news chum brings together a collection of articles all having to do with games and amusements (as opposed to gaming the system — I may have an article on that tomorrow):

P.S.: Appropos of nothing, simply because a like it: A recipe for avgolomono soup.

Music: Dixieland Cajun Style (Red Nichols): My Melancholy Baby

http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_20552860/649-5-million-bid-replace-gerald-desmond-bridge

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The Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Reading the news today, I’ve been unsure about whether we’re getting some articles for tomorrow today. After all, who would believe a new TV series about a former governor who decides to become a crime fighter and builds a secret high-tech crime-fighting center under his house in Brentwood, or Google being so blatently copycat as to introduce a “like” button. But those stories are true. Here are some other ones that caught my eye:

  • Jhon Royal Underwood Returns. We’ve all heard about how, in this “digital generation”, good-old-fashioned records are making a comeback. For some of us, they never went away (I was just recording vinyl last weekend). But that’s not all that’s coming back. The digital generation is embracing… the typewriter. Kids today are fetishizing old Underwoods, Smith Coronas and Remingtons, recognizing them as well designed, functional and beautiful machines, swapping them and showing them off to friends. At a series of events called “type-ins,” they’ve been gathering in bars and bookstores to flaunt a sort of post-digital style and gravitas, tapping out letters to send via snail mail and competing to see who can bang away the fastest. As I said earlier today, you can’t make this stuff up.
  • Only the Young. We’re all aware we’re a culture of youth and beauty. A survey that came out today indicates that women consider themselves over the hill when they reach 29; whereas for men, the number is 58. Women evidently consider themselves to be old once “assets go south”. Men? Decreased libido/not as ‘able’ in the bedroom. (As for me, it was when Nell Carter died at age 56, and I went “She was young”). But we do know that sex sells. Another survey that came out today (which I expect to see on “Wait Wait”) shows that women with larger chests get bigger tips (you know, there’s no good way to say that). Better service? A step up on a 1-to-5 rating scale of customer satisfaction translates into just a small increase (say, from 15 to 16 or 17 percent of the check). Who would believe it?
  • What a Past. They are creating museums for almost anything these days. In Las Vegas, a city that could no longer support a Liberace museum, there are going to be not one but two museums celebrating Vegas’ history of organized crime. The museum at the Tropicana features life-size holograms of chatty gangsters greeting visitors and offering them a chance to get “made,” as well as the diary of mobster Meyer Lansky, Spilotro’s gun and family photos and home movies from other infamous criminals. Not to be done, the downtown museum features the wall from Chicago’s St. Valentine’s Day massacre, the only gun recovered at the mass shooting and the barber chair where hit man Albert Anastasia’s life came to an end in a 1957 New York murder. No word yet regarding whether there will be field trips out into the desert.
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Tossed Salads and Scrambled Las Vegas Hotels

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

As I sit here eating my lunch from the salad bar, my thoughts turn to a Planet Money article about salad bars, which itself is a riff from a NYTimes article on the same subject. The jist of the article is that if you are going to pay outrageous prices per pound for that salad bar, at least make it worthwhile. Pile on the expensive items (i.e., those great than the per-pound price), and eschew the cheap items. That works fine if there are such items on your salad bar; alas, at work, we have little exotic or pricey out for selection :-(.

But I digress. The point of my lunchtime post today is to talk about hotels… starting with one particular hotel: the Sahara in Las Vegas. The Sahara is closing in May, and there are two nice retrospectives from the OC Register and the Las Vegas Sun. These mention the stars and the facilities, but forget some of the other aspects. If you look at the development of the strip, the first hotels were on the northern end… beginning with the El Rancho Vegas, which was across the street from what became the Sahara. Next was the Last Frontier (approx. where the Frontier was built), and then, far to the south, was the Flamingo. The Sahara was part of the big 1950s expansion that included places like the Hacienda, Dunes, Sands, Riviera, Tropicana, Thunderbird, and the Sahara. Of these, only the Riviera remains with any 1950s infrastructure [the 9-story hotel at the heart of the Riv is the original… and was the first high-rise on the strip]… (I think they just tore down the old low-rise wings at the Trop; the Flamingo has been completely rebuilt in stages). I like the notion that was floated in one of the articles that the Sahara should be remodeled as an idealized 1950s Strip Hotel, reflecting the mob and rat pack days. Of course, I wouldn’t be economical. the truth is that the northern end of the strip is dead: all that is left there is the Riviera, some condos, and the Stratosphere. With the real estate downturn, it’s going to be dead for a while. Perhaps they could make money by operating ghost tours of the Sahara 🙂

Another interesting hotel related article has to do with amenities: in particular, how hotel amenities have changed over the years. This discusses how they’ve moved to name brand shampoos, flat screen TVs, and away from shoe cloths and mending kits. Interesting read.

Lastly: Need some amusement. Here’s a gallery of diaramas made from everyone’s favorite spring candy, Peeps.

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News Chum to Start the Year

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Well, it’s a new year, and time for our first collected news chum. So, without further adieu…

  • From the “Housing Crisis: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics” Department: A few interesting housing tidbits from the LA Times. You thought it was bad where you live… Consider our poor president. Over the last three years the president’s home and home office has lost nearly a quarter of its value. In the last month alone the value dropped almost $4 million. The 132-room mansion — 16 bedrooms and 35 bathrooms on 18 acres in the heart of the nation’s capital —was worth $331.5 million at the top of the housing boom, according to Zillow, the online real estate marketplace. But the latest “Zestimate” puts the price tag at a mere $253.1 million. That’s a 23.6% decline in value. But then again, it is still doing better than gold. What’s that, you say? Gold is at an all time high. That may be, if you considered just the last nine years or so. But if you go back to 1980, a house would have been the better place to park your money. Not counting transaction fees and holding costs, if you bought an ounce of gold in 1980 and held it until October, you would be ahead 95.5%. But if you adjust for inflation, you would have lost almost one-third of your investment. However,if you had purchased a median-priced home in January 1980 and sold it for the median price in October 2010, you would have notched a 252% gain, again assuming no transaction fees or holding costs. This is despite a 23% decline in values since 2006. Further, unlike gold, you would have been able to live in the property, reap the tax deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes, and realize a nontaxable gain of up to $500,000 when the house was sold. Even after adjusting for inflation, housing values are still 18.6% to the good over the 30-year period.
  • From the “Cleaning Up” Department: Live in New York and want to increase the value of your housing. Get a washer and dryer. According to the NY Times, laundry centers increase the value of housing in Manhatten—in face, a washing machine can add as much as 5 percent to an apartment’s price tag.
  • From the “Signing Out” Department: A nice article from USA Today on the revitalization of the Neon Boneyard in Las Vegas. Those who go to Vegas today don’t understand the neon Vegas of the 1950s-1970s. The signs of the hotels were spectacular, and weren’t just large screen TVs. This is the place that has them preserved. In a related story, the LA Times/Chicago Tribune has a story on “Bugsy Siegel’s Las Vegas”.
  • From the “Unanticipated Side Effects” Department: This was covered in a This American Life around the time of the Obamacare discussions: how drug company discount programs can actually increase costs. These are the programs that help you with the co-pays for the more expensive specialty drugs. By using them, it makes it less expensive for the consumer to use more expensive drugs, increasing the cost to the insurance company. It’s an interesting situation: people need these drugs to help them, and the drug companies help, but they also hurt the overall drug insurance side of the equation. Of course, they don’t do the sensible thing, like reduce the actual price of the drug. In a similar vein (pauses for groan), here’s a story about the unanticipated costs after weight loss surgery.
  • From the “Going for the Special Effects” Department: Here’s an interesting opinion piece from the family that produced the notorious flop, “Via Galactica”. They blame the failure on the focus on the spectacular, with a lack of focus on the story. They intend their post as a cautionary tale for the producers of “Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark”,
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