Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Scenes from the Geekfest

"Geekfest" is my term of endearment for the APSA, where several of your humble NLT bloggers are now camped out. True, political scientists not as geeky, as, say, a gathering of English professors or economists, but still rate a solid 8 on the 1 - 10 Geekiness Scale (with 10 being physicists).

We moved up a solid notch last night during dinner at the Capital Grille, where the Claremont Institute had graciously invited about 25 of us pasty-faced fellow travellers to overindulge red meat. (I thought you had a tan from the beach in California?--Ed. Yes, but it’s fading quickly, and the lighting was very dark.) About midway through the festivities, a totally hot babe from a nearby table wandered over to inquire who the heck we were.

Now here was an opportunity to deploy Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche to their highest and best uses. But no. What does the fearless leader of our table do? He tells her the truth--that we’re all political scientists attending a convention. You could almost see her next thought--back away veeerrry slowly from this table. I wanted to intervene about us really being talent scouts for the next Bond girl, or investment bankers just closed on a billion dollar deal, or spies, or something, but it was too late.

Discussions - 12 Comments

It’s chilly here in Philly. We’re staying in the historic district being tourists (I’m part-time, the family is full-time). Last night, we took a carriage tour; today there’s lots of walking until it rains.

Did run into a fellow conventioneer this morning--David Alvis, son of John Alvis.

Identify this "table leader" and account for how it is he got to be "leader!" This is troubling news, indeed . . .

You *did* vote him off the island, didn’t you?

I thought I ought to save R.J. the embarrassment of publicly identifying him. Ooops.

Joe, check out Nick’s Roast Beef, or Reading Terminal Market, Monk’s Tavern. BUT DO NOT frequent Pat’s or Gino’s, over on Passyunk Avenue, their reputations are wholly undeserved.


An honest answer to a dishonest question is rarely productive. But it is still the better answer.

However good-looking, this lady does not qualify as one of the Permanent Things.

Au contraire David. The imprint that a beautiful woman leaves upon a man’s very soul is SURELY PERMANENT. At least I can attest as much. The Bible says that "Heaven and Earth pass away...," but it never says that the remembrance of a woman’s beauty is ever effaced.

This is what a beautiful woman can do, not what all beautiful women necessarily do. I simply said that this particular beautiful woman is not worth remembering, especially since she won’t remember anyone at the table. My guess is that everyone in question will have more or less forgotten her within a year.

Perhaps only the geeks remmember beatifull women..."My guess is that everyone in question will have more or less forgotten her within a year." Perhaps not... but a true Don Juan would forget about her the next morning.

What if the question of the existance of permanent things...(people like David Frisk and Dan M certainly assume they exist) is only a measure of how uncommon the thing in question is...In the Gods must be crazy...a bushman is forever changed by a coke bottle...but like Don Juan we rarely remmember our last or first coke...and if we do we can’t remmember the ones in between.

Same question: If political scientists rank an 8 out of 10 on the geek scale what is to say that the ontologies they propagate make any sense to those who are not 8’s? At least they aren’t physicists(10’s) searching for the unified theory? Or economists(9’s?) boiling down quantitative models of supply and demand on SAS?

Having spent far too many evenings in the company of political scientists and philosophy students, nothing about this post surprises me in the least. They are not less, but more geeky than other academics. Why? Because they should know better. Most of them cannot apply their knowledge of the erotic to reality. Or perhaps they live in the ideas. My very practical engineer husband used to be amazed at the quality of the so-called "parties" he attended with me in Claremont. The conversation was wonderful, the drinking moderately enjoyable, but there was no social interaction of the sort one might expect at a party filled with young unattached people. And there was a noticable lack of female presence to begin with. Indeed, it was as if it were impossible to consider remedying that situation! I will never know how most of these folks ended up married! But R.J.--more than most--did better than he had any right to expect in that department! Right Barb?!

Is manliness the quality that leads us to "apply" our eros to "real life"?

I suppose it would be if it were there to begin with. But I don’t want to be harsh. I may join in the jest, but some of my best memories are of long evenings talking my brains out with such geeks.

Leave a Comment

* denotes a required field
 

No TrackBacks
TrackBack URL: https://nlt.ashbrook.org/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/8905


Warning: include(/srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/sd/nlt-blog/_includes/promo-main.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/2006/09/scenes-from-the-geekfest.php on line 706

Warning: include(): Failed opening '/srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/sd/nlt-blog/_includes/promo-main.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/opt/sp/php7.2/lib/php') in /srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/2006/09/scenes-from-the-geekfest.php on line 706