Nov. 20, 2007

Conference Confidential

As academics eagerly scan the latest listings for conferences to attend, this season’s offerings promise a bumper crop of something for everyone: a chance to share one’s findings on missing commas in Madame Bovary at the Annual Meeting of the Flaubert Society of America, for example, present a paper on the vibrational frequencies of wind chimes at the High Energy Physics Colloquium in Berne, or just get the hell away from campus for a while.

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For those of us at U. of All People, located in the depressed region of a state shaped like a bent potato, conferences present an opportunity to travel, to stay in a hotel room by oneself and enjoy a meal out that’s not at Taco Bell or Burger King. Of course, conferences are also occasions to exchange scholarly ideas and see far-flung colleagues we may have not slept with or even encountered for years. In short, we’re the same as academics everywhere. And here are some of our choices for the coming months:

January 4-5, 2008: Seventh Annual Conference on Cold Fusion in Salt Lake City, Utah. This year’s conference is titled “Harnessing the Power of Water in a Glass.” Sample topics include “Can Cold Fusion Solve Global Warming?” and “How to Procure a Grant without Straining Credibility.” Abstracts required; research highly suggested. Guest speaker: the Energy Czar.

January 19-20, 2008: Inaugural meeting of the Arnold Frisk Memorial Society, a group devoted to preserving the memory of this prolific but unjustly forgotten author (The Question of Whom, Writhe and Shine, A Sonneteer’s Diary). The meeting will take place at the Smithlawn Sanatorium in Bearville, Minn., where Frisk ended his days, surrounded by 70 unfinished manuscripts.

February 1-?, 2008: Conference in Belize, subject yet to be determined, but what the hell, it’s Belize in the winter. Possible topics: something on pedagogy, maybe something in the humanities, or even better, the intersection of the humanities and the sciences because that brings in a lot more people.

February 14, 2008: History Is Bunk: the one-day convocation of the D.H.T.A., Disgruntled History Teachers of America. 120 Main Street; Centerville, Anystate, U.S.A. Half scholarly presentations, half gripe session, this gathering is for those brave souls in the front of the classroom tired of teaching deadheads what happened in 1812. New addition: spousal support group and Valentine’s Day Party in Room 420 of the Holiday Inn.

March 7-9, 2008: Esperanto (Sigh) Again. Overly optimistic linguists and language teachers of all persuasions gather in Tijuana to promote the hopeless cause of this doomed but eminently practical means of communication. Special guest speaker: an actor channeling the spirit of language reformer George Bernard Shaw.

April 3-5, 2008: Sudoku R Us: Mathematics and Pedagogy for the 21st Century. Takes place on the campus of S.I.T. (Slobovian Institute of Technology) in upstate New York. Three days of workshops, lectures, and pure darn fun! Difficulty level: easy. Door prize for best mathematical costume at the Puzzlers’ Ball.

May 1-3, 2008: Conference on Conferences. Takes place in a large upscale chain hotel in a major city. Papers may range from the art of scheduling events to the provocative topic “When Is a Session a Session and Not a Panel or a Forum?” Please indicate on entry form whether you’d like to be a moderator, a contributor, or that rarest of attendees, just an audience member.

David Galef is a professor of English and former administrator of the M.F.A. program in creative writing at the University of Mississippi. His latest books are the novel How to Cope with Suburban Stress and the co-edited fiction anthology 20 over 40.

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Comments

Esperanto Doomed?

I’d hardly say Esperanto was ‘doomed’ on any account. The Esperanto language community as a whole has been gaining speakers throughout its 120 year existence.

Dave Rutan, at 8:20 am EST on November 20, 2007

Esperanto

Esperanto thrives today, thanks in part to the Internet (www.esperanto.net). The renowned Folger Library accepted 17 translations of Shakespeare last week: Esperanto bears cultural weight while also serving to protect languages endangered by the economically powerful ones. It is the only constructed language to become a living language—a second tongue for all, not to replace any ethnic vernacular.

E. James (Jim) Lieberman, M.D.Former Pres., Esperanto-USA

EJames Lieberman, Clinical Prof, psychiatry at Geo. Washington Univ., at 10:40 am EST on November 20, 2007

“Overly optimistic linguists and language teachers of all persuasions gather in Tijuana to promote the hopeless cause of this doomed but eminently practical means of communication.”

You owe a serious apology to professional linguists and language teachers!

Professional linguists (=PhD in Linguistics, working in Linguistics departments) interested in Esperanto are about as common as PhD Biologists interested in intelligent design and creationism.

The only Esperanists I’ve met with degrees in linguistics were people who washed out of or quit grad programs at the MA level who had big chips on their shoulders about Linguistics and how they got no respect. This is likely because they were motivated by grand utopian visions rather than a genuine interest in how real languages work. The point of linguistics as an academic subject is understanding how real human languages work, not promoting grand schemes and social engineering.

And language teachers are mostly interested in the languages they teach, and Esperanto is not taught at many universities the last time I checked.

Insulted linguist, at 12:30 pm EST on November 20, 2007

Come on, folks, lighten up

I fear some of you may have failed to grasp that this is meant to be wry.

Person With a Sense of Humor, at 12:30 pm EST on November 20, 2007

“The only Esperanists I’ve met with degrees in linguistics were people who washed out of or quit grad programs at the MA level who had big chips on their shoulders about Linguistics and how they got no respect”

Hmmm. I imagine John C. Wells, Marc van Oostendorp, and Probal Dasgupta, among others, would be amused by this “scientific sample” approach. Like the man said, this was supposed to be an amusing piece.

George Partlow, at 2:05 pm EST on November 20, 2007

What is Esperanto?

Esperanto is a working language. It was introduced in 1887, 120 years ago, as a practical planed language.

After 120 years of use by people in more than 100 countries, and many thousand books printed, some translations to Esperanto, some original Esperanto; Esperanto has developed like any other language.

There are a huge number of web pages. Google finds 73 million hits on the word “esperanto”

Esperanto is the home language for a few hundred couples ... who had met at an Esperanto happening and don’t have any other common language.

Please read this 2 web pages:

http://esperantofre.com/book/index.htm#piron

http://esperantofre.com/eroj/ilo01a.htm

Best wishes,

EnriqueFremont, California, USA

Enrique, at 5:20 am EST on November 21, 2007

Give credit

Aside from the humor, “wry” comment, etc, I give credit to the author for mentioning Esperanto, and even using it in the same paragraph with “practical” and “George Bernard Shaw.” Thank you.

Practical is one word often overlooked when describing Esperanto, because the proof is in the pudding. It works, and works well. It works in many countries in every application that one uses a language for.

Best regards, - FilipoTexas, USA.

Filipo, president at Esperanto-USA, at 10:15 am EST on November 21, 2007

Esperanto

The only reason I’ve heard of your webpage is because I speak (and teach) Esperanto.

Elizabeth Stanley, Mrs., at 11:55 am EST on November 21, 2007

This is a great piece. I especially liked the mock comments from the insulted representatives of Esperanto,which really captured the tone of over serious academics. A great touch!

Steve, at 12:40 pm EST on November 21, 2007

I realize this column is meant to be satire, but let me answer your question anyway:

“Can Cold Fusion Solve Global Warming?”

Arthur C. Clarke and I think perhaps it can:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ClarkeACthecominga.pdf

E-book “Cold Fusion and the Future":

http://lenr-canr.org/BookBlurb.htm

Note that cold fusion has been replicated by hundreds of world-class laboratories such as Los Alamos and China Lake. Researchers have published ~1200 peer-reviewed paper in mainstream journals such as Naturwissenschaften and the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics. Our web site, LENR-CANR.org, includes a bibliography of 3,000 papers on cold fusion, and the full text from over 600 papers. Enjoy!

Regarding global warming, if researchers ever learn to control cold fusion, and if the political opposition can be overcome, cold fusion will rapidly eliminate the use of fossil fuel. It can also be used to remove the carbon dioxide already added to the atmosphere from fossil fuel. This could be done several ways. The most promising method, I believe, is with massive desalination and irrigation projects to sequester carbon dioxide in trees, which would then be converted to charcoal and buried underground to form what you might call artificial coal mines.

This project would be surprisingly cheap, and it could begin quickly (10 or 20 years after cold fusion becomes practical). I estimated the amount of land and the number of desalination plants required in chapters 8 and 9 of the e-book referenced above.

Note also that the next actual conference on cold fusion will be held in Washington DC in August 2008, not in Salt Lake City.

- Jed RothwellLibrarian, LENR-CANR.org

Jed Rothwell, at 2:55 pm EST on November 24, 2007

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Conference Confidential

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Comments

Esperanto Doomed?

Esperanto

Come on, folks, lighten up

What is Esperanto?

Give credit

Esperanto

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Tenure Track Assistant, Associate or Full Professor
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Princeton University

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