Michael, I made my request on all three sites, so I was expecting the Sharks to perhaps post here and the Jets to post on either OL or RoR. No dancing or nuptials required.

I think this is a great topic, but isn't it a bit naive to expect ARI and TOC people to share gooshy anecdotes in the same message space? It's like asking the Jets and Sharks how their respective effigy-burning festivals went.

Jeff also has made some very insightful posts on literature on this board or perhaps RoR (I forget). It's a field which he teaches and where he has far better read than the average know-noting Oist or libertarian. He turned me on to Dickens - the first book of his I didn't warm to, but the second, "A Tale of Two Cities", was superb...I used it this past year as one of the books I taught in my lit. class...with very good results.

I think he would make a good speaker at a future TOC conference. (Or at an ARI one - but the chances of his getting hired by them are slightly less than that of seeing bears swim upstream to lay eggs in shallow water.)

...Yes, I know I'm hijacking my own thead , but it's clear several days on that no one attended either conference or has any intention of getting off their lazy butts and posting some substantive detail.

Jeff-

Thanks for the very nice job you did with the audiobook version of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming by Christopher C. Horner!

This ain't idle praise. I bought the book after listening. A different audiobook with a different reader was putting me to sleep - not what one wants when behind the wheel of a car. So, I end up listening to your version, twice, three times, four...? - when I ought to be READING the book itself for the graphs and looking up reference instead.

So, O'ists - if you wanna hear a good read, get going and get it!

> Or perhaps many of the people who attend the conferences are not there primarily in search of new knowledge -- though such, doubtless, would always be welcome -- but rather in search of social interaction with intelligent people who share their worldview.

Well, Jeff, you troublemaker, you....I go for both - with the former being more important since I, of course, already know everything.

But you knew that.

"It would be great if people who went to summer Objectivist conferences -- whether ARI or TOC -- made some long posts about them, while the knowledge is still fresh and before it becomes lost."

"Perhaps there are very few people who like to post on Oist discussion websites who actually spend the money and invest the time to attend summer Oist conferences and take notes at them?"

Or perhaps many of the people who attend the conferences are not there primarily in search of new knowledge -- though such, doubtless, would always be welcome -- but rather in search of social interaction with intelligent people who share their worldview.

Could it be?

JR

>I will try at some later date to produce summaries of those talks I listen to on CD. I'm particularly interested in Walter Donway's talk on Brain Science and the Self and Jay Friedenberg's talk on Emergence. [JHN]

Jim, if you're willing, I'm willing to post some things (either from last year or from CD's of this year). If people post some notes good stuff from ARI talks as well, I'm willing to post some notes on good stuff from TOC conferences. Geez, I might even post some clips from my own talks...which I know Jim Valliant and others have been waiting breathlessly for

Phil,

I didn't attend a summer conference this year, but I think a better question would be: What pathbreaking new work was unveiled at the Summer Conferences this year? This is the legacy we have from Ayn Rand and it is the legacy we should aspire to. In addition we should recognize and applaud when this standard is met by those outside Objectivism.

I will try at some later date to produce summaries of those talks I listen to on CD. I'm particularly interested in Walter Donway's talk on Brain Science and the Self and Jay Friedenberg's talk on Emergence.

Jim

I have no doubt that what you say is true -- I was just trying to forestall an avalanche of deductive inferences from the blank stare you're getting here.

... would love to hear accounts of the conferences. Them as went ... come on you lazy buggers!

Jim, notice that so far I've gotten no substantive details on either RoR or OL where I posted this. The three boards together have a cross-section of viewpoints.

And many other topics and threads I've started have gotten lots of response on all three boards.

The lack of interest here may not be the fault of the topic...

The spectacular town of Telluride is only a five hour scenic drive from me in Colorado, USA. I had the chance to go for three days. I was especially interested in catching "Property Rights in American History" taught by Eric Daniels.

It WAS worth my time and money. But the course of real life and work, together with festering problems with illness, kept me putting off from making the commitment to go. Nontheless, like Phil, I'm still curious to know how it went.

The center-piece of the ARI Conference was Leonard's several talks on his DIM hypothesis, his forthcoming book. Like Lindsay, I suppose, I also wondered if I went, could I contain my derisive smirk at the thought of Rand's heirs (errs?) advocating their sacred votes for - as our genial and generous host so colorfully puts it - Dem-scum? Would my dissent be found out? And what would I say to the loyalists of the New Orthodoxy? I did not know.

One story of how the gold mining town - where the ARI met, Telluride - got its name is as a cat-call by relatives who told the argonauts "To Hell you ride!" or as a contraction of the same. Thus, T'ell-U-ride, or Telluride became the town's name.

Of course, we are not Christians and don't believe in any Hell, but we do have our hierarchy of Devils, or at least devilry. Which might make the ARI's chosen locale particularly apt!

I guess life's full of colorful ironies - and not all of them are Aristotelian.

Perhaps there are very few people who like to post on Oist discussion websites who actually spend the money and invest the time to attend summer Oist conferences and take notes at them?