I met some great people in Orlando - lots of them, in fact. On the last day, Jenny and I got to know Eddie Tabash a bit during the amaaaazing excursion to the Kennedy Space Center. And I've mentioned some of the others previously.
But there were also some people there whom I really wanted to meet ... but we somehow passed like ships in the night. Among them were 50 Voices of Disbelief contributor (and important person all round) Victor Stenger, who made some powerful points in his talk about the incompatibility of science and religion.
Another was Elisabeth Cornwell from the Richard Dawkins Foundation. We actually sat kind of opposite each other at one of the big tables at the conference banquet on Saturday night, but that was too far apart to introduce ourselves and talk ... and we ended up being ships in the night otherwise. Her talk - emphasizing the need for people of reason to get involved in politics - was something of a highlight of the convention, at least for me, and I'd have liked to have told her so.
Oh well, next time.
About Me
- Russell Blackford
- Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019); AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021); and HOW WE BECAME POST-LIBERAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOLERATION (2024).
2 comments:
I did get to talk to Liz (but not to others, such as Vic Stenger); she's swell. Conferences are very ships in the night-ish, aren't they. At QED just this past weekend D. J. Grothe and I kept passing in the halls while sprinting somewhere and agreeing that we had to talk...and we never did manage it.
Yeah, that's true. There were others as well whom I did speak to briefly but not properly. I was wrongfooted when I first ran into Melody Hensley as I was sure she'd said she wasn't going (apparently,in fact, she changed her mind late in the lead-up). Oh well. Anyway, there's always next time with these things.
Next stop is the Global Atheist convention in Melbourne, where there are several people whom I look forward to meeting.
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