Refuseniks, Bullpups, purity, God is Dead and Cheney's bathroom reading

Great googly-moogly: the Russian philosophers really are having their day, so to speak. It's come to the point where one simply can't joke about anything. Next thing you know, it's going to turn out that George W. Bush is, like, President of the US or something.

Na'ah. Couldn't happen.

The Yale invitation went out yesterday from the Bullpups, and sure enough, I'm on there as working tab. I'd told Chris Palmer of the MFL that I'd be happy to help out because I felt that, not to put too fine a point on it, I'd had a modicum of experience in tab rooms hither and yon, with decent success. They've promised to limit their numbers, and apparently all LD is in one building, etc., etc., etc., all of which should work toward making it a successful tournament. They certainly get a good field, and always have. But the annual turnover of directors makes for discontinuity of operation knowledge, and anything can happen. Old Tim Averill, the God of Pffft, had ironed them out for a while, but now he has Pfffter fish to fry. So Chris has assembled a tab room of me and JoVan and Lynne and Minh and Jenny Cook. Jeesh! It's going to be like Grand Central in there! But we should prevent things like rounds starting after midnight and the like. I have assembed my 95 Theses which I'll be e-nailing to them shortly. It's not like I'm over-organized or anything, but I do like things just so...

I've been enjoying the discussion of the NFL LD committee over on DMV. I had thought that the purity of LD had something to do with naughty bits, but it turns out it simply means distinguishing it from Policy and Pffft. Damn. What a disappointment.

As for future lectures, if you wish to follow in your books, we're going with Beyond Good and Evil because, according to old Zen Ethics himself, it sums up his stuff pretty well. I'd forgotten what a good writer he is. I started last night and was zipping right along. It's hard not to like a guy who manages to put down religion, Plato and Kant before even getting up a marginal head of steam, and I was smirkily satisfied to see that he, too, thinks that science may be a better path to truth, such as it is, than philosophy. Still, whenever you read anything about old Fred, the author tells you that everybody else always misinterprets him (except, presumably, the person you're reading at the moment). This is a load off my mind. If I'm going to misinterpret him for my own evil ends, it's nice to know that I'm in good company.

And an interesting aside for West Wing non-fans: in the final episode when they're cleaning out Martin Sheen's office during the inauguration of his successor, they find a copy of a book by Foucault (it went by too fast for me to catch the title). If you were worried about the state of our fine country, it's nice to think that if Bartlett could sit around reading Foucault, so could Dubya. In the original Greek, I'm sure.