Cleveland

Joshua Hall asked me why the people who research economics of sports tend to be so free market in their orientation (do they love competition and measurement?  I still don’t have a good answer; any takers?).  Sarah Skwire (a LibraryThing fan) and I debated who had geekier taste in popular culture; it remains a stand-off to be settled upon a future meeting.  Paul Cantor promoted his theory that Dante was a heretic and possibly a follower of Averroes; I wondered why Christ isn’t prominent in Paradiso and why isn’t Saladin of all people in the Inferno?  Medieval Sufi poetry, and the voyage of discovery toward God, is all over his work.  There was a contrast between commercial society in Deadwood vs. Mad Men (I prefer the latter).  The very charming Rachel Lomasky and I discussed which is more beautiful: natural logs or the fact that the square root of two is an irrational number?  I wondered whether a good conference could be organized on "Liberty and Computation."  And there is eugenics all over both Dreiser and Norris.  The buildings in downtown remain superb, as does the art museum.

That’s what’s so good about Liberty Fund conferences.