Mid Year

Well I haven't posted in a few days, but rest assured, I have had a good reason. I was in St. Louis for my fraternity's leadership training conference. This occurance (me being gone for conferences) is going to become a theme this semester.

The conference was...... average on the whole, but mostly a collection of awsome and boring experiences. The highest two points were when an alumni initiate of ours (Brother Spence) gave a short, 40 minute presentation about life planning and success to the group. It was filled with a lot of good information and some interesting ways of approaching things and while a lot of it is just "saying things that you already kinda know" it was still VERY helpful.

The second high point was Matt Hunt's ritual debrief. the session was filled with lots of good information and featured several interesting discussions. Combine this with having two of my biggest questions answered and it was an all around successful experience.

There were also some down points, for example the LONG discussion of generic campus problems.

Overall I am glad I went, I learned some things and had some fun. Additionally, I had some time to continue readin "How to Talk to Liberals If You Must" and thus far have four observations.

1. She does a fun job of taking liberal arguments, decomposing them, then saying what everybody is thinking (in terms of why it is a stupid argument) but doesn't feel they should say because it has been decided to be insensative or not PC. She has a lot of strong arguments.

2. A large amount of her arguments fall into a large series of arguments ad hominem (spelling) where she just attacks the people talking, for example "Ted Kennedy said X, probebeally while drunk and killing somebody."

3. I wish she wouldn't treat liberals as one entity. Just because a democratic president in the 60's said something doesn't mean it disproves or makes liberals hypocrits now.

4. A lot of her arguments (especially about the ways liberals have tended to argue recently) and the drastic shifts in what is important (ie honesty) from the Clinton presidency to now in their eyes are really interesting.

I look forward to finishing the book and seeing if these points continue to ring true.