It's the APSA conference (that's American Political Science Association--among this crowd you gotta watch yer alphabet), where Wagner (=V) meets Voegelin (=F) and contemplates the real world (not MTV's version, which has the TM symbol after it--which is one way to tell real worlds apart, I guess) on a grueling schedule (eight 2-hr sessions in two days--okay, seven, we skipped one, so sue us).
W's fave panel: The one that included Joe Pesci, Christopher Lee, & Louis Nye. (Not really, but W thought so. Also present--to W's eye, anyway: Robert Loggia, Jerzy Kozinski, John Rhys-Davies, Shaquille O'Neal, and Uncle Claude.)
W's fave paper title: "The Non-Experientiable Ordering Force: Reflections on the Kantian Baggage and In Search of Order."
W's assessment: Hundreds and hundreds of political scientists reading papers to each other...hmm...well, at least when they're doing that they're not back home shoveling dung into the heads of their students. The Voegelin stuff was good but the other stuff, well...the fact that these great political minds can't seem to properly organize even a simple hotel conference doesn't bode well for the future of politics.
(Or...maybe it does, at that, sez I: If we can keep these clowns at conferences, they won't have time to become policy wonks....)
