I got back from my voyages on Monday (I announce belatedly).
PorcFest was anarchy in miniature: people were smoking weed, packing heat, selling unlicensed food and alcohol, and generally behaving in a peacefully unauthorised fashion. There were pistol safety classes, gay dance parties, and sessions on everything from polyamory, transhumanism, and cop avoidance to alternative currency, alternative medicine, and planning the revolution. C4SS, S4SS, ALL, AltExpo, Fr33 Agents, and SFL were all represented. In addition to my previously mentioned talks I was on a panel on agorism with Brad Spangler, Dan D’Amico, and Bob Murphy. If I go again next year I’ll bring some copies of Kevin’s Homebrew Industrial Revolution; PorcFest seems like the ideal crowd for it.
After that came the IHS seminar at Towson. The students were great, and I spent a lot of time talking with them about philosophy, libertarianism, and science fiction – which (as will come as no surprise to my readers) are three of my favourite subjects. One of the students was wearing a t-shirt with my picture on it! The topics of my lectures were approximately the same as last year. The other faculty were Dan D’Amico, Brian Doherty, John Hasnas, George Selgin, and Amy Sturgis, so it was an even more radical lineup than last year. We found a good Cuban restaurant; I also got a chance to see Jesse Walker, who lives nearby.
My next gig will be Mises University here in Auburn, July 24-30. And then of course there’s always the APS in September and Libertopia in October.
Re sf, you might be interested in my _Salamander_, currently up on Amazon as a Kindle. It’s fantasy rather than science fiction, but the sort of fantasy where the magic is supposed to feel like a science.
And the core idea I started with was a fantasy version of the central planning fallacy–although by the time the book was finished that was not the only idea. I like to say that no plot survives contact with the characters.
If you do read it, I would be interested in your comments.
I don’t have Kindle. Is it coming out in any other format?
By the way, I’m sorry you had to pull out of the IHS gig. Dan D’Amico told the students that they should storm out upon finding that the advertised Friedman had been replaced by him!
Brandon, would it be possible to add +1 to this site?
http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/+1/button/index.html
Done.
Thanks 😉 This will show up in my G+ profile.