The usual venue for The Amazing Meeting: the Southpoint Hotel, a huge gambling and entertainment emporium in Las Vegas:
My room: for some reason it cost me $22.50 per night, half the going rate for a weekday (and $45 is incredibly cheap), but I’m not asking questions. I came a day early to chill, and so am paying for my room for one night. The rest is gratis as I’m a speaker.
Nice room!
A room with a view: the bleakness of Vegas, but the surrounding desert is lovely (the windows give everything a green tint):
Registration:
The official tee-shirt:
And the man of the hour: the amazing Randi!
Awesome!!! Say “Hi!” to Randi and George Hrab for me 😉
Those of us with 2 year olds don’t get to make it out like that very often… one year, I will!
“My room: for some reason it cost me $22.50 per night, half the going rate for a weekday (and $45 is incredibly cheap), but I’m not asking questions.”
Subsidised by he gambling I’d say. Nice looking room for the price, and a good size. I hate tiny hotel rooms.
That was my guess too. Do they also keep track of how much you spend at their place and lower the rate further to keep you spending?
YAY! Sounds like a blast! Butter & I are jealous. If by any bizarre chance you are able to swing by Colo Spgs, our door is open. Butter aka “Anonypuss” is dying to meet you!
(Stephen Muth)
Hmmm. I’ve met someone from the Springs (I live here, too) nicknamed Butters. Is this either David or Rita?
Must be a different Butter… our little Himmy is Butter-Tea. He got a nice little article right here in WEIT. Butter is a terror when he gets his paws on a Blackberry. Amazing computational prowess that cat posseses. He’s been known to rival even the Pharyngula horde in his powers, fixing online polls.
Oh, it’s an animal…gotcha…
Not just ANY animal… 😉
linky didn’t work… Trying again.
I’d like to read your opinion of Jamie Ian Swiss “testability” talk.
Have fun! It is a great line up this year.
I’ll be at TAM tomorrow: hope to meet up with you. If other readers are there maybe there can be a mini-WEIT get-together. You’ll thus have an entourage like the cool kids.
TAM used to take place in Vegas in January — and it used to be on the strip. Given that it’s not only been changed to July but is currently hot even by desert standards, it’s just as well that SouthPoint is its own little city. You do not want to walk around outside. Even the night is oppressively hot … but it’s a dry heat.
Hot? Vegas?
Why…it’s not even forecast to break triple digits all weekend.
That’s not hot; that’s pleasantly warm. Enjoy it while you can, before the chilly fall conditions set in and it doesn’t even make it into the 90s in the “heat” of the day!
Cheers,
b&
I’m up for a WEIT meeting. I’ll be looking to see what is going on.
See you Thursday night. Got to water the plants and feed the cats then we are on our way to TAM. By the way don’t look to close at that picture on the wall. The perspective is terrible.
I’m going alone because all of my friends think this is way too geeky…even the atheists. Wife is upset, but I’m going anyway. So any chance to meet some new folks out there would be welcome–any suggestions on where to meet? I’d say Friday at lunch?
Ha! You’re friends sound like my friends….maybe we have the same friends! 🙂
$22.50 / night is cheaper than almost all mortgages. I don’t think I’ve spent less than $85 / night on a hotel room in ages, and I go for the cheapest rooms I can find. (That’s because I’m not going to spend any time there except for when I’m sleeping and showering, so why spend oodles of money on niceties I really don’t give a damn about?)
Give my thanks to Mr. Amazing for all the amazing things he’s done over the years, and try not to subsidize your room too heavily at the slot machines.
Cheers,
b&
In my dottage I find that I appreciate larger, attractive hotel rooms. The aspects of hotels that appeal to me are pleasant, largish rooms, with a decent sized bathroom, a nice lobby and quietness. I never backpacked and so never got used to lack of space and privacy. A hotel I once stayed at in Dublin was one of the best: instead of a narrow corridor leading past the bathroom in to the room proper, as is usually the case, the bathroom was off the main part of he room, taking up half the length of the room. The fittings were genuinely old, altogether a really nice place. I find the narrow, dark passage from the door to the main part of the room rather depressing. In cities I don’t generally stay in lower than four star rooms.
What they lose on the hotel room fee, they make up at the blackjack tables.
Not, apparently, with skeptic conventions… or so the common wisdom goes. TAM moved around a lot on the strip for years. The rumor was that Randi would get a great deal from a hotel casino … once. Many people; few gamblers.
I mean, it’s skeptics. No “lucky numbers” or “hunches” for us.
If you have some leisure time, and hiking’s your thing, Red Rocks Canyon is really gorgeous (although a hiker recently died there…).
Okay that parenthesis part made me laugh inappropriately because it sort of ruined your recommendation. 🙂
That would depend on who died, I should think….
b&
Hmm. I just checked in and my room rate is $65.
Special for you! Everyone else $45? :-}
I loathe Las Vegas and everything it stands for, but the room price is great. Hope you have a good meeting.
Las Vegas is basically Chuck-e-Cheese for grown-ups with a pinch of Blade Runner thrown in for good measure. Enjoy the conference.
sub
I only now noticed the boots.
Jerry, if you have some time left (and a car), I can recommend a trip to Red Rock Canyon: beautiful out there. You can probably see it from your Hotel, I estimate it a 20 to 30 minute drive from where you are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Rock_Canyon_National_Conservation_Area
Keep an eye out for Gold (his only name), Chair-entity [we’re non-bioist] of the New Zealand Skeptics. He’s into boots too.