The Newseum is a monument to journalism, the so-called "fourth-estate," which in its finest form has kept kings, presidents, politicians, scammers and mobs in check and at its worst pumped up wars, spread tyranny, "live shots" of car chases and celebity DUIs.

I had a dream that the Grand Lisboa tower, a hotel-casino that now dominates the skyline of Macau, came alive one night, pulled itself from its mooring, marched across China's Pearl River Delta and, like Godzilla, tossed trolley cars around Hong Kong.

Ka-Ching? (a Chinese expression?)

Like Vegas in the 90s, this former Portuguese backwater colony, now called East Las Vegas, has gone over-the-top.

I think about my week in Macau last year as I walk the strip in Las Vegas, past rubble-strewn lots that look like some lizard of mass destruction had just swung through. Past construction cranes that have not moved an inch since my last visit a year ago. Past women stuffed in short tight skirts like shrimp in sushi rolls, alone or in pairs, peering at their mobiles. This is not the Las Vegas of the mid-century when Mo Dalitz and his pals ruled and in the words of a longtime restaurateur, "knew how to take care of people." This is not the Vegas of the 90s when the Steve Winns and corporate poobahs built palaces and faux New Yorks and Venices and "family values" was the motto. This is the Now Las Vegas: down and a bit dirtier, but not out.

In this age of smart cards, smartphones and "i" this-n-that, you might wonder what value an electronic gizmo not linked by satellite, Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, GPRS, GSM, WMD, or even a string connected to a soup can would be to a traveler. I wondered too, when I first eyed the WikiReader, which crams the entire text of Wikipedia, 3 million-plus articles, into a palm-sized device. (A journalist acquaintance came up with the ultimate pickup line to describe it: "I've got the knowledge of the world in my pants...wanna see it?")