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Science Holiday

Science Holiday is a discordian look at the constructed reality of Las Vegas, from the PoV of a Disneyland enthusiast/high-weirdness afficianado.

The first thing to go in Las Vegas is your sense of scale. The highway sign says that you have 14 miles to go, but there it is, larger than life. One immediately gets the sense that this is a work in progress. Every vacant lot along the strip on the way into town has the same sign: AVAILABLE-ZONED FOR CASINO. The implications of this become really clear once you have attempted to find your way into and out of a super casino on foot. It is like they are saying that a dozen new Disneylands will open here soon. Plans are already afoot to build a bigger airport quite a distance from the strip. It is plausible to assume that the whole of this desert between this new airport and the current strip will one day be a vast amusement park. While entertainment resorts are not a new concept (Disneyworld and Epcot Center are decades old), the idea of a series of separately owned and operated entertainment centers in an area this concentrated is. There has never been this much room available before to do it. The current batch of super Casinos in a relatively finite space are already forming tentative alliances, offering monorails between venues that are separately owned and operated.

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(Thanks, Jamyang!)

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