"It's a Hummer."

Las Vegas stands out on the American landscape like Ski Dubai on the Arabian Peninsula. Even though the hotels use less water than you think (given the tropical greenery, water displays, misty evaporative cooling systems, and green lawns so perfect they look like astroturf) the contrast between the carefully contrived tropical illusion and the surrounding natural desert landscape makes me ashamed to visit and consume just that much more water.

Our trip was not very pleasant this year. Angry Father-In-Law is declining, and it was hard to see this once active and intellectual man struggle with simple tasks like walking and talking. He and I used to have great conversations, as we share some common research interests, and now he is unable to speak (although he is still lucid).

The last time we visited Las Vegas, Angry Baker and I spent a good deal of time hiking in the surrounding desert. There is no place on Earth more eerily beautiful than Death Valley; Red Rock Canyon has to be seen to be believed. Most of our positive recollections of Las Vegas came from these experiences. But now there is the Angry Kid.

We were unwilling to take the Angry Kid hiking in 110F heat, no matter how much the Angry Baker and I might enjoy the experience. This meant we had to stay on the Strip. If you don't gamble, and you don't like shopping malls, you will not have much fun on the Strip. We don't gamble, and we don't like shopping malls.

The Angry Kid had great fun in the hotel pool, slathered in SPF 60 sunblock. When we couldn't stand the sun any more, we took her to see the fake canal boats in the Venetian, or the moving statues in the fountain at Caesar's Palace. So, pretty much all we did was watch water evaporate into the desert air. (And Angry Baker lost $20 playing video poker.)

Things overheard on an airplane.

Oh, there were so many to choose from. Here are my favorites:

Flight attendant, to an elderly passenger: Is that a good book?
Elderly passenger: Well, I just started it. But I saw it in the bookstore and the salesperson told me that it's required reading in a lot of schools.
Flight attendant: Wow, really? Required? What's it about?
Elderly passenger: A boy's school.

Someone not currently employed as a math teacher: To declare my major they said I had to take Calculus III. Now, why on earth would I need Calculus III to teach math?

Someone else: Oh, I'm not at all adventurous. Sushi, Korean food, my husband eats that stuff but I can't stand it. Now, Chinese food, I love Chinese food. Have you been to P.F. Chang's?

In which I take a short vacation.

I have spent the past several days cleaning my office. It is now so clean that I am unable to get any work done in it. Apparently there must be a minimal amount of strewn paper and garbage over the surface of my desk before I can be productive.

This was the only task I had scheduled to complete post grant panel and pre family vacation. So now the Angry Family is off to Las Vegas. This is not our preferred vacation destination, but the Angry Inlaws are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary and Bakers are gathering in Las Vegas from around the globe.

Here is a conundrum, something that I think about every time I ready myself to go to Las Vegas. Suppose I take a sum of money ($i) to the roulette table and place $1 bets on red. The probability that I win on any spin of the wheel is p = 18/38.

Now suppose that my (modest) goal is to win $1. If i is large enough, the probability of winning $1 before losing all $i at the table is [(1-p)/p]^(-1) = 0.90. I like those odds.

So if I take $100 to the roulette table, I will, with probability 0.90, have $101 in front of me at some point before I go broke. My plan is to walk away from the table as soon as I have $101, and take my $1 and put it in my hotel room. Then I take my $100 and go back to the table and play again.

I know, I won't be able to recoup our plane tickets this way, even if I were willing to take 1200 dollar bills up to my hotel room one at a time over the course of four days. But it's fun to think about. I like the nickel slot machines, too.

I need an entomologist.

My compost heap is infested with ants. (I think they are Monomorium minimum.) When I say "infested," I really mean it. On cold days they clump together for warmth and I can scoop softball-sized clots of interlocking bodies off the top of the heap. Their eggs are everywhere, lining the walls mostly, and if I move compost off the top, I can find big clusters of eggs underneath. This is the biggest nest of ants I have ever seen.

This morning they swarmed. Thousands and thousands of workers coated the sidewalk and wall of the garage, led by what looked like one or two new queens and maybe half a dozen soldiers (or maybe they were all new queens - the soldiers that I see in the compost heap are much smaller than the 6-8 that were leading the swarm). The Angry Kid was fascinated. She could have watched them for hours, except that she got too close, and they swarmed onto the skirt of her dress. By the time we noticed she was pretty much covered with ants. She was a trooper, though. She thought it was more funny than creepy. (That's my girl!)

Here are my entomological questions:

Without looking at an actual specimen, does this description fit with my guess that these are little black ants?

Were the large "soldiers" in the swarm really new queens? I thought only one new queen went out at a time.

Is this nest something I should eradicate? The ants don't bother me much. They aerate the garden nicely, but they do kill earthworms when they find them. I would like to have my compost heap back. I'm betting that if I just empty the compost and start over they will have reestablished the nest in days (if not hours).

In which I realize that I work in a shithole.

S/he graduated.