The slogan is "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," but since Neatorama sponsored my trip to the BlogWorld and New Media Expo 2010, I had to report my experiences to Alex -and I might as well share some of them with you. It was my first excursion to any kind of trade convention, and my first trip to Las Vegas.

(Image credit: Flickr user Justin Bugsy Sailor)

1. Bring more money.

Las Vegas, or at least the big resort casinos, are designed to extract as much money as possible from every visitor and then send them home. Rooms are relatively inexpensive compared to other cities, despite the fact that my room rate went up between the time I made reservations and the time I checked in. I skipped the $10 sandwiches in the airports and later regretted it, because the cheapest hamburger at the hotel was $15. Try the all-you-can-eat buffet, it's only $42. However, once you leave the hotel, you can find normally-priced food -IF you can figure out how to get there! I played the slots just enough to say I'd gambled in Las Vegas, but not enough to rate the free drink treatment. If there is one tip for a Las Vegas trip, it's bring more money.

2. Distance is an illusion in Las Vegas.

(Image credit: Flickr user Bill Rice)

Friday night I wandered down the strip and checked out the other casinos. Distance is deceiving in Vegas. The hotel and casino buildings are massive compared to buildings in other cities. You look out the window and tell yourself, "The Luxor is just next door -and Excalibur is the next building. No problem to walk!" But each resort covers many acres and "two buildings down" can easily be a half-mile walk. I walked as far as the Bellagio and probably put five miles on my feet. I was rewarded with a fairly nice video of the Bellagio Fountains (nice except when that woman stuck her camera in front of mine) and blisters on my feet. My legs were sore for a week afterward. That didn't stop me from doing the same walk in the sunlight on Saturday! When planning the particulars of your trip to Vegas, take your age and physical condition into consideration.

3. Las Vegas is built for tourists.



The strip has lots of wonderful street performers: costumed characters posing for pictures, musicians and magicians, a woman with a snake, and one fellow who invited me to his Facebook page. It was like Times Square, except in New York there are some locals in the crowd. Here, you can tell the residents because they are working.

4. Jet lag is a killer.

Christoph Neimann illustrated the laws of physics as they apply to our daily lives. I can really relate to this one.

But back to Newton: he discovered that any two objects in the universe attract each other, and that this force is proportional to their mass. The Earth is heavier than the Moon, and therefore attracts our bodies with a much greater force. This explains why an empty refrigerator administrates a much smaller gravitational pull than, say, one that's stacked with 50 pounds of delicious leftovers.

He also explains physics as it relates to waking up, subway crowding, and hair loss. Link -via The Daily What

Just because we like to keep you on your toes, this week we have a second round of the Name That Weird Invention! contest. Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of wacky inventions in his weekly Museum of Possibilities posts. Can you come up with a name for this one? The commenter suggesting the funniest and wittiest name win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Contest rules: one entry per comment, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Please make a selection of the T-shirt you want (may we suggest the Science T-shirt, Funny T-shirt, and Artist-designed T-shirt categories?) alongside your entry. If you don't select a shirt, then you forfeit the prize. Good luck!

Update: Congratulations to our winners, Noah, who suggested "Colostocamp", and Hannah for "Loitering Within Tent". Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!

Honorable mentions: CB Dragon "The Tuggie", Old Geezer "The Sleep-walker Outdoorsman", Deathbyawesomeness "Porta-Tent", Michael Hicks "Roam Dome Tent", Trevor "The Burkamper", Trevor "The Eskimove", and John P "Dome of the Walk".

You read the books, but not all characters are likable (just like real life). This list will no doubt spark discussion both for who it includes and for who it omits. I won't tell you who is number one, but you know Scarlet O'Hara is on this list. Melanie made it, too.

4.) Scarlett O’Hara

Gone With the Wind

Author: Margaret Mitchell

For every fan who finds Scarlett O’Hara romantic and admirable, there is another who thinks her a selfish, altogether loathsome figure with few redeeming qualities.

48.) Melanie Hamilton Wilkes

Gone With the Wind

Author: Margaret Mitchell

Along with chief romantic rival Scarlett O’Hara, Melanie Hamilton Wilkes garners quite a bit of hatred as well. Many readers think of her as far too perfect to be relatable, insufferable at worst and boring at best.

Which literary characters do you really dislike? http://librarysciencedegree.org/the-50-most-hated-characters-in-literary-history/ -via Interesting Pile

Cake Wrecks asks the question: How hard can it be to make a pumpkin cake? And then answers it by posting the worst attempts at making a cake look like a pumpkin. This is just one. Eight more await your viewing. Link Also check out the roundup of horrible Halloween cakes. Link

In this 1950s ad for soft drinks, the new 12-ounce size is labeled as "King Size". Contrast that with the more recent sign below.



Sociological Images looks at how food and drink serving sizes have grown over time. Link -via Boing Boing

On one hand, it is kind of sad to think of anyone eating instant noodles for Christmas dinner. On the other hand, the campaign will raise money for overseas troops. The new British product called "The Pot Noeldle" from Pot Noodle is turkey and stuffing flavored noodles.

A donation of 2p from every pot sold will be made to the RAF Association's Wings appeal to support the Miles More Minutes project, which gives troops posted overseas more time to telephone their loved ones over the Christmas period.

The flavour was developed and trialled last year for personnel serving on 27 Squadron after member Sergeant Ian Hobbs said troops regarded the brand as a home comfort.

Squadron Leader Stuart Balfour, head of RAF licensing, said: "The snack is enjoyed by so many of the troops and it's great to know that every pot sold will help them keep in touch with loved ones at what is a really important time of the year."

The Christmas-dinner-flavored noodles will sell for £1.10 a package. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Martin Argles for the Guardian)

Paul, the octopus who predicted the outcome of World Cup soccer matches (featured previously at Neatorama), has died at his home at the Oberhausen Sea Life Centre in Germany. He was two years old.

After Germany's semi-final defeat, Paul tipped Spain to beat the Netherlands in the final, which prompted one news agency to report he had spurred a jump in demand for Spanish government bonds. Paul's prediction duly came to pass: Spain won.

Staff at the Oberhausen Sea Life Centre in western Germany said in a statement they were "devastated" to learn of Paul's death when they returned to work on Tuesday.

"He appears to have passed away peacefully during the night, of natural causes, and we are consoled by the knowledge that he enjoyed a good life," said the centre's manager Stefan Porwoll.

There was no indication that Paul had predicted his passing. Link -via Metafilter

The final flight of the space shuttle Discovery will begin on November 1. One of the duties of the crew is to test Robonaut 2, a human-sized robot that may one day work on the International Space Station.

The robot — I wonder if they’ll call it R2? — is an experiment to test how such devices can help astronauts in the future*. Pictured on the right (where it can be seen curling a 20 pound dumbbell, ostensibly so it can more efficiently kill Sarah Connor), it’ll be mounted on a fixed pedestal in the new module. Eventually, future models will be mobile, allowing them to do work on the station itself, both inside and outside. GM is partnering with NASA on Robonaut, so that the new technologies may be applied in the automotive industry as well.

R2 has his own Twitter feed, too. Get more on Discovery's last launch at Bad Astronomy. Link

Attention, fans of The Office! How well do you know the minor characters in the TV series? Find out in this Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. You'll be given a name, and you decide whether it is a character from The Office or a real paper company executive. I didn't even try, since I've never seen the show. How well did you score? Link

(YouTube link)

Sears has an entire advertising campaign built around zombies, complete with a zombie shopping website. Link -via Bits and Pieces

We’re thrilled to announce a new sub-blog we’re launching today, BitLit. Bit, as in binary digits, Lit, as in literature! As far as we know, this is unique to the blogosphere in that we’ll be serializing entire novels and short stories—even some poetry, many published by major publishers like Random House. Every day, a new chapter until the entire story is complete.

Plus, we’ll be interviewing authors and having contests to give away free, autographed copies of their books!

Today, we launch with three stories:



The first is an amazing short story called Nomen Ludi by Rob Beschizza, our pal over at boingboing. If you’re a fan of old computer games, like those created for the Amstrad CPC, if you love that kind of nostalgia, you’re going to love this one. You can read the entire story right here.

Next, we present the critically acclaimed, Frostbite, by David Wellington. Nipped by a wolf during an Arctic camping expedition, Cheyenne Clark suddenly finds herself feeling ferally frisky when the moon is up in Wellington's far from routine werewolf tale. It turns out that Monty Powell, the loner who gives Chey refuge, is no ordinary guy, but the werewolf who turned her. But then Chey is no ordinary camper: she was sent to draw Monty out by a band of professional hunters who want the oil beneath the vast acreage Monty prowls—and to avenge the death of her father, whom Monty coincidentally slaughtered two decades before. Check out chapter 1 right here.

Finally, a novel that our own David K. Israel co-penned with author Jennifer Byrne called Trivial Pursuits, a novel that follows two protagonists as they try to come to grips with loss. Fareed is a 15-year-old Druze boy living in an RV cruising around Los Angeles with his father and trying to land a spot on the Jeopardy! Teen-tour. His world soon collides with Eos, an older girl who he quickly befriends and who is able to help him accept his mother's death. Meanwhile Amy, who lives miles away in the Valley, is trying to deal with the loss of her infant-daughter. She relies on the help of an extra-marital lesbian affair that might quite possibly be her undoing. Start with Chapter 1, right here.

I always enjoyed roller skating, but I gave it up for good about four years ago (to the relief of my embarrassed children). I had borrowed my oldest daughter's skates, which were built for stunts and have no brakes. That won't happen again. I just found out that roller skating goes back about 300 years:

...the devices never really took off until London inventor Joseph Merlin created a more refined version that comprised of boots with metal wheels on them. He used them to crash a party in a grand display by skating into the crowd while playing the violin. He almost immediately crashed into a wall-length mirror, which brought him even more attention…although likely not what he was looking for.

Not to mention seven years bad luck! Read the events that make up the history of roller skating at Rue the Day. Link

The perfect Halloween entree, composed of meatloaf, noodles, and olive eyes. Complete directions with meatloaf recipe can be found at Gather and Nest. http://gatherandnest.com/gather-and-nest/2848 -via TYWKIWDBI

In the Roaring Twenties, Lillian La France made a living as a stunt rider in the Motordrome circuit, performing in cars and on motorcycles for crowds around the U.S.

In 1894, Agnes was the second of nine girls born into honest-livin’, hard-workin’ Catholic family standards. She christened herself  Lillian LaFrance and quickly shook the dust of her Kansas hometown from her boots sometime around 1916, and roared off to create the life she had always dreamt of, carving it raw as she went along.  She began Motordrome riding in 1924, and left a blurry, yet brilliant legacy behind that still haunts many who are taken by the images of her incredible spirit staring back through squinty eyes in a copy of a copy of old grainy photos.  Incredible.

See pictures of this amazing woman at The Selvedge Yard. Link -via Nag on the Lake