The View From Kalamazoo

From the Invisible Adjunct, whose final comment is really the icing on the cake:

“Michael Bérubé has an idea for a conference on the conference:

One of these days I want to put together an academic conference that addresses the phenomenon of academic conferences. It will be called ‘The Longer Version,’ and will be distinguished by three features: one, every paper will have a respondent who, instead of waiting for the paper to end, will simply snort, harrumph, and blurt ‘I think not!’ at random moments during the paper. Two, questioners will be required to begin all questions by saying, ‘this is really more of a comment than a question– I wonder if you could say more about X,’ on the condition that X was either unmentioned in or tangential to the paper itself. (Questions must be at least three minutes long.) And three, every speaker will be required to answer these questions by saying, ‘I actually address this question in the longer version of this paper,’ regardless of whether there is a longer version or not. (If the conference proceedings are published, they will consist only of sections of papers that were cut for time during the actual conference.)

I’d like to condition for just one more requirement: for every paper delivered, there should be at least one questioner the substance of whose remarks amount to, ‘That’s all well and good, but why aren’t we talking about my work?”

What didn’t make me laugh: Invisible Adjunct is calling it quits. A shame…a blog I’ll miss a lot. I can’t say anything more than is already being said about this great loss to the greater academic on-line community all over the web… Maybe it’ll be enough to just say that I’m glad I was a regular reader, I’m probably something better for it…