Two weeks ago I was in New Orleans for the PPE conference. I gave a talk at a panel on self-ownership, and moderated two panels I’d organised, one on anarchist legal theory (with [a subset of] the Molinari/C4SS gang), and one on race and social construction. We discovered a great 24-hour Middle Eastern restaurant, Cleo’s (the new one on Decatur, not the old one-inside-a-grocery on Canal).
Last week, back in Auburn, I attended our department’s 11th annual philosophy conference, this one on explanation and idealisation in science. During Q&A I rode my precisive/non-precisive hobbyhorse as usual.
Right now I’m in San Diego for the WPSA, where I’ll be presenting my Shakespeare/Godwin/Kafka talk. Yesterday I stopped by the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore and bought volumes 6 and 7 in the Expanse series (which I’ll be blogging about in due course; just for now I’ll say: it’s good, read it). Had a delicious farfalle al salmone last night at a sidewalk table at Buon Appetito in Little Italy, and enjoyed an omelette-and-bagel breakfast this morning at Harbor Breakfast to the sound of great jazz songs old and new. (I’ve also been violating the laws of physics, because why not?)
(The day before catching my plane from Atlanta to San Diego, I’d planned to drive up early, go to a bookstore in Atlanta, have a leisurely dinner, and then spend the night at a hotel. But the threat of tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, and two-inch hailstones kept me in Auburn until the evening when the forecast expired, so by the time I got to Atlanta there was time only for a quick bite at the 24-hour Waffle House across from the hotel.)
Next week I’m off to Prague, where I’ll be giving a workshop on praxeology at the CEVRO Institute, and then presenting a slightly revised version of my Čapek/Kafka/Hašek talk (yes, more Kafka!) at the PCPE. (The revision is a very slightly fuller discussion of my suggestion that Kafka’s bureaucratic nightmares are intended to be read at two levels – a political level, where they’re condemned, and a theological level, where they’re not. There’ll be a print version eventually, inshallah.)
Ah, Praha. I assume you’ve been to the Kafka Museum? I haven’t read Kafka since I was in college, but, having recently visited, feel the urge to do so.
Instead of simply clicking your hyperlink, I decided to Google “PCPE,” and got “Partido Comunista de los Pueblos de Espana.” That was a little eyebrow-raising, even by Roderick Long standards. I was happy to learn that you’re associated with the more respectable PCPE. Though I wonder whether the Spanish one is more generous about paying one’s way over to Europe. “From each according to ability, to each according to need” and all that.
Yes, I did the Kafka Museum on a previous trip.
The Partido Comunista will be happy to fund your travel to their collective farm. Leaving may be a more complicated matter, however.
By some strange coincidence, my University’s Office of International Programs has just asked me to serve as a faculty member on an all-expenses paid Study Abroad trip to Spain. To the best of my knowledge, no Communists were involved in this interaction, and if my luck holds, none will be.
Cool! Where in Spain, for how long?
In related news, our department used to have a study abroad program in Rome, and the administration changed it to Barcelona without bothering to tell us. We had all these posters up advertising our Rome program with no idea that it had ceased to be.