More on OCON 2006

 Posted by on 15 June 2006 at 9:28 am  Uncategorized
Jun 152006
 

Ms. Think asked for recommendations for particular OCON lectures to attend, since she lives in the Boston area. I presume that ARI offers some à la carte options for OCON, but you’d have to contact them to find out for sure.

I’ve already blogged about the Optional Courses I’ll be attending, so I don’t need to say more about that. Of the General Sessions, I’m particularly looking forward to:

  • “Motivation in Education” by Lisa VanDamme
  • “The Value of Ayn Rand’s Philosophy of Art” by Mary Ann Sures
  • “Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea” by C. Bradley Thompson
  • “Ayn Rand, Public Speaker: A Philosopher Who Lived on Earth” by Shoshana Milgram
  • “Unborrowed Vision: The Virtue of Independence” by Tara Smith

Those choices partially reflect my particular interests, but mostly reflect my judgment of the overall quality of the speakers. (I’m happy to answer questions about particular speakers via e-mail.)

Most importantly, I highly recommend that anyone remotely interested in ARI’s activities attend the free presentation on the “State of ARI” on Wednesday evening, July 5th, as well as the free “Academic Panel” on Friday evening, July 7th. If you’ve not attended those presentations before, prepare to be amazed, inspired, and generally blown away. That was certainly how I felt in 2003 when I first heard it! And that’s a pretty common reaction!

Update: Just as a side note, I am delighted to discover fans of NoodleFood at OCON… or anywhere else. However, please remember that, unless you comment regularly under your own name, I might have no idea whatsoever who you are. And so you probably know lots more about me than I know about you. That’s always a bit odd for everyone, but it gives you an excellent opportunity to bypass my fumbling chit-chat to talk about what interests you! Also, I should warn that I’m not just terrible at remembering names, but also at remembering faces. (Yes, it’s quite pathetic!) My memory dramatically improves once I have something substantial upon which to hang a name and face though, e.g. that we discussed Tolstoy versus Dostoyevsky, the limits of forgiveness, Nathaniel Branden’s slippery mysticism, a person’s moral responsibility for his emotions, an objection to a recent lecture, the psychology of addiction, whether genetic-based homosexuality requires innate ideas — or even whether you also happen to call your cats “fluffy little lovemuffins.” (I suppose that last is pretty improbable, but that’s surely because no kitties are as thoroughly fluffy-little-lovemuffin-like as my Elliot and Oliver!)

   
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