Rodney Dangerfield and the state of New Jersey

...both get no respect.

It's the time of year when we all have to decide if there are any conferences we want to attend next year. Budgets are being drawn up and now is the time to stake your claim on travel money.

A colleague and I were combing a few scientific society websites to see if there were any good meetings being held in any good cities in the coming year. We stumbled upon a wholly irrelevant meeting that caught our attention because the location was simply listed as "overlooking New York City."

What could this ever mean? Would the meeting be held in a blimp over the city? A constantly circling airplane? A very high treehouse?

We looked at the details on hotel accommodations to see if we could figure it out from that. A lovely description of the easy access to the city and the nearby attractions filled that page. Still no mention of an actual city and state. But there was a hotel name: Hyatt on the Hudson.

Hyatt on the Hudson, it turns out, is located in glamorous Jersey City, New Jersey. Now, despite a recent revitalization, Jersey City doesn't exactly have the greatest reputation in the world. And it's not exactly a tourist hotspot. So, I can accept that Jersey City isn't a great selling point. However, you could at least mention the state of New Jersey.

The NY Giants play in New Jersey. Concerts in New Jersey are billed as being in New York. We got our claim to the Statue of Liberty taken away from us. Now, we can't even trust scientists to come if they know it is in New Jersey....