You may not be able to predict precisely which flights will get stuck on the tarmac, but Delaycast may be able to narrow it down for you. From Wired:

It’s a tool that allows users to track delays by airport, airline or specific flight. Sure, you can get historical delay info from lots of different sources, including the airlines themselves, but Delaycast is taking it up a notch — it’s using predictive modeling to anticipate future flight delays.

Definitely worth checking out.

And when you finish cursing the airlines for delays, security theater, and the rest of all that makes flying now such a joy, remember: Bash Airlines All You Want, But Flying Still Beats Driving.

Here’s a nice bit of tit-for-tat from The Lede: Harrah’s Entertainment is getting so peeved at the Las Vegas Review-Journal about its hounding the company about potential problems with its various construction and renovation projects that it no longer offers the local papers for sale in its gift shops or hands in out to guests as part of a suite package. But there’s more to the story…from The Lede:

But the reality may be even worse for the paper: Too few people wanted to read it.

“We actually provide comped newspapers to the guests in thousands of rooms every day, but in light of the current economic slowdown, we’re reviewing all of our expenses across the board,” said Gary Thompson, spokesman for Harrah’s, whose properties have a total of 20,700 guest rooms throughout the city, including those at Caesars Palace, Flamingo Las Vegas and Paris Las Vegas. “We asked, and virtually none of our guests say they read the local newspaper.”

Ouch. But I’ll bet the latter really is the case–I’m probably one of the few left who even read the paper when on the road, and among the even fewer who eschew USA Today for the local rag.

According to a post recently on the MeCo listserv, it looks like the housing pirates are still alive and well. You know, the folks who find your exhibitor and/or attendee list and try to market rooms to them for your show, sometimes posing as the actual show organizer, sometimes saying things like the block is sold out (whether or not it actually is) and offering rooms at hotels both inside and outside the organizer’s blocked facilities. Can anyone say attrition?

If you run into this, this article, though I wrote it a while ago, may have some tips on how to deal with pirates who try to raid your attendee block.