"Todd Seavey vs. the World" gives everyone in the audience a chance to attack me with a skeptical question, which I will endeavor to answer -- this THURSDAY, Oct. 14 (8pm) at Lolita Bar (266 Broome St. at Allen St. on the Lower East Side, a block south of Delancey St.). It will help celebrate the release of the Seavey essay "Conservatism for Punks" in the Jonah Golderg-edited book Proud to Be Right (on shelves now).
The following chronological, periodically updated list indicates how the majority of the audience voted on each of the questions debated (and the month and year of the debate), not necessarily which position was represented by the most skilled debater — nor, certainly, the correct answer. Click a link for the original debate announcement.
Feel free to discuss the debates-in-general in the Responses below or to discuss the individual topics on their respective pages.
Is Macroeconomics a Fiction? NO 9/23/10
Are Bosses Usually Jerks? NO 9/7/10
Can There Be Benign Imperialism? YES 8/12/10
Is Burlesque Art? YES 7/8/10
Was Shakespeare Really Shakespeare? YES 6/2/10
(Rand reading by Todd Seavey: “Faith and Force”) 5/1/10
ObamaCare: Triumph or Doom? DOOM 4/7/10
Is Christianity for Wimps? YES 3/3/10
Is the Music Business Bad for Music as an Art Form? YES 2/3/10
Is Katz’s the Best Deli? NO (but we love it!) 1/6/10
Should We Abolish NASA? NO 12/2/09
Are Che, Chavez, Castro, and Their Ilk Bad for Latin America? YES 11/4/09
Is Obama Really a Natural-Born Citizen? YES 10/7/09
Should NY Reopen the 9/11 Investigation? YES 9/2/09
Have We Ever Been Visited by Extraterrestrials? NO 8/5/09
Is America Economically Doomed? YES 7/1/09
Is Zionism Racism? YES 6/3/09
Should Humans Radically Decrease Their Exploitation of Animals? YES 5/6/09
Does Religion Make People Better? NO 4/1/09
Should Sci-Fi Avoid Nostalgia? NO 3/4/09
Has the Right Hit Bottom Yet? NO 2/19/09
Is Intellectual Property Theft? NO 1/7/09
Should We “Eat Locally”? NO 12/3/08
Yesterday Was the Election: What’s Next? OBAMA 11/5/08
Should We Loosen Term Limits? NO 10/7/08
Is Modern Sex Good or Evil? GOOD 9/28/08
Is Israel Oppressing the Palestinians? NO 8/13/08
(Women Who Have Sold Their Eggs panel discussion 7/22/08)
Should Conservatives and Libertarians Vote for Barr Instead of McCain? YES 6/4/08
Should Manhattan Streets Have Congestion Pricing? YES 5/7/08
Does Christian Rock Suck? NO 4/2/08
Should We Deport All the Illegal Aliens? NO 3/5/08
(What Do the Political Primary Results So Far Mean? 2/6/08)
(Made in America author chat 1/2/08)
Does Military Strength Create Peace? YES 12/5/07
Did the Government Know in Advance About 9/11? NO 11/5/07
Is the Ivy League Superior? NO 10/3/07
Is Muslim Immigration a Threat to Democracy? NO 9/5/07
Is Gentrification Good? YES 8/1/07
(Should America Have More Respect for Its Own History? discussion 7/9/07)
Is It More Painful to Get Dumped or to Do the Dumping? GET DUMPED 6/20/07
Does the Beauty Industry Oppress Women? YES 5/2/07
Is Classical Music Better than the Music of Today? YES 4/4/07
(Radicals for Capitalism author chat 3/07)
Do We Face Catastrophic Climate Change? YES 2/07
Is Chastity a Good Idea for Singles? NO 1/07
(New Orleans/World Trade Center discussion 12/06)
(Post-election discussion 11/06)
Do Celebrities Have a Right to Privacy? NO 10/06
Was Israel Right to Invade Lebanon? YES 9/06
Does Big Business Prefer Big Government? YES 8/06
Should Superheroes Have to Register with the Government? NO 7/06
Should the U.S. Military Intervene in Iran? NO 6/06
Is Immigration Harming the United States? TIE 5/06 (Note: The only previous tie in the debate series occurred prior to the Seavey/Evanchik era, on the thorny question, “Which Is Better, Punk or New Wave?” debated by the singers of the punk band X-Possibles and the New Wave band My Favorite.)
Should the U.S. Fund Abortions and Contraception Overseas? YES 4/06
Should Gun Control Be Abolished? YES 3/06
Should the Law Make It Harder to Divorce? NO 2/06
Do Public School Boards Have the Right to Mandate the Teaching of Intelligent Design as Science? NO 1/06
Is Dating Tougher for Men or Women? MEN 12/05
(Urban Exploration presentation 11/05)
Is New Jersey Inferior to New York City? YES 10/05
Are Chain Stores and Big Box Retailers Hurting New York City? NO 9/05
Is America a Meritocracy? NO 8/05 (Note: I argued “yes” in this one and was defeated by Michel, both of us stepping out of our usual host/moderator roles — and prior to becoming host, I was defeated in my efforts to defend the positions that “Morality Is Objective,” “America Is Oversexed,” and “Humanity [As We Know It] Will Be Extinct in a Hundred Years,” the first of those being the first debate in which L.B. Deyo, co-founder of the debates, ever triumphed. I did win against Jacob Levy in my defense of tradition over individualism, but Jacob had only a day to prepare after being talked into the debate while he was in New York on vacation.)
Will Videogames Become More Important Than Movies? NO 7/05
Should Marriage Be Only Between a Man and a Woman? NO 6/05
Does Poetry Still Matter? NO 5/05
Does the Whole World Need Western-Style Democracy? NO 4/05
Are Women Naturally Better Suited to Be in the Home? YES 3/05
The Debates at Lolita Bar fissioned off of the older Athenaeum meetings run by JinxMagazine.com (a site dedicated to “urban exploration” and co-founded by Lefty Leibowitz), from which the monthly Dionysium events (run by L.B. Deyo) in Austin, TX, also spun off.
TODD SEAVEY author of Libertarianism for Beginners and writer of/speaker about many other things
65 comments:
[...] I mentioned my opposition to feminism in an earlier post called “Brief Statement of Principles,” which is now also posted as one of the Permanent Things in my right margin, as is my half-joking Personal Ad — something you should read instead of the current post if you happen to be a feminist who might be willing to date me but will cease to be willing if you read my denunciation of feminism. Also among the Permanent Things is information on the monthly Debates at Lolita Bar that I organize and host, which next month (May 2) will feature an intra-feminist argument between comedian-debaters Charles Star and Jen Dziura over the question “Does the Beauty Industry Oppress Women?” So come hear them and, if the current blog entry upsets or inspires you, come give me a piece of your mind while you’re at it. [...]
[...] But what is more important is that the burrito in Captain America’s pants is a reminder that responses to my most recent post, criticizing feminism, boil down in the end to the complaint that women get a lot of nasty comments from anonymous online commentators or encounter lewd behavior by men and thus feel intimidated a lot (this strikes me as either a pre-feminist or post-feminist complaint — at least in so far as feminism proper was an apparently temporary pretense of equality, versus the current frank recognition that women scare more easily or are intimidated by different things than men are). And I am not defending Captain America (or any of those louts) now, merely noting that I am unaware of any pre-feminist philosophy that committed one to supporting his behavior. People have been saying we must protect the womenfolk against boorish men since the Victorian era or perhaps the dawn of time, so it’s not clear to me how one needs feminism for that — and despite several people accusing me of having an unrealistic view of feminism, no one really did (as of this writing) spell out what we do need it for — but let’s leave the rest of the feminism discussion for bar conversation on May 2, at Lolita Bar (when one of our debaters will herself be someone known to have a thing for superhero costumes but perhaps not burrito-crimes). In the meantime, I find that the Captain America incident also turns my mind to national electoral politics, since America, mostly for ill, increasingly defines itself through elections. I recently concluded that in the next year’s primaries it would be foolish of me not to seize a rare opportunity to vote for a full-fledged libertarian who is also a major party candidate — Republican Ron Paul — thus sending a clearer signal than ever to the GOP that it should be moving in a libertarian, fusionist direction. In the general election, by which time Paul will probably have been defeated, I can always do the sensible thing and vote for Giuliani or McCain or whoever survives the whole ugly process — unless McCain gets still more “maverick†left-leaning ideas instead of sticking to budget cuts, or Giuliani loses his newfound interest in federalism and just starts acting upon his authoritarian impulses, in which case I may end up voting for a libertarian in the GOP primary and then a Libertarian in the general election, which will really mean losing with my purity intact, by my political standards. [...]
[...] Tibbie, incidentally, is tentatively slated to be one of the combatants in the August 1 (8pm) presentation of our Debates at Lolita Bar, on the question “Is Gentrification Good?” She was also the defender of punk (in her capacity at the time as lead singer of the X-Possibles) in a debate there, back before the Seavey/Evanchik era, on the question (which may sound hairsplitting to some philistines) of which is better, punk or New Wave, the only debate we had had at the time that ended in a tie, and the only one in which I (back then a humble audience member) abstained from voting at the end of the debate (Tibbie now has a new band, Kissy Kamikaze, which includes among its members Suzy Hotrod from Gotham Girls Roller Derby, the league founded by the same man who co-founded our debate series, Lefty Leibowitz). [...]
[...] Indeed, I can’t help wondering how the author, a friend of mine for years, decided to use her real name and her mother’s (for the protagonist and the protagonist’s mother), while changing her brothers’ names, but that’s a trivial detail — and something you can ask her yourself if you attend the June 20 session of the Debates at Lolita Bar I host, since Katherine will be one of the two debaters, the other being downtown performance-humorist-nerd “Rev. Jen” Miller, on the question “Is It More Painful to Get Dumped or to Do the Dumping?” [...]
[...] With less than a week to go before our big Debate at Lolita Bar on the question “Is It More Painful to Get Dumped or to Do the Dumping?” (between Rev. Jen and Rules for Saying Goodbye author Katherine Taylor), it might be worth unveiling my girlfriend Koli’s reaction (written without any urging from me) to our differences and to my own mammoth, undiplomatic personal ad: [...]
[...] Here’s the skinny: Whitney Matheson, a pop culture columnist for USAToday.com, was holding a meet-up of her column readers at a Lower East Side bar called Lolita. Since I’ve been a loyal reader of Whitney’s for many years, I figured a slow but painful trip into the city from my suburban New Jersey hidey-hole would be worth it. And, as luck would have it, I had been to that bar before, since a writing acquaintance of mine holds debates there every month. Huzzah! All I needed to do was shoot through the Holland Tunnel, make my way up Houston, and I’d be there. [...]
Idea for a debate: Is contemporary popular culture in America (literature, music, fashion, architecture, art, theater) an improvement on anything that came before?
Or is it utterly, laughably (hollow, sardonic laughter here) not?
Oops, never mind, that topic is way too broad.
[...] I mentally prepare for these debates, which are held each month on a new topic, by wondering what questions I might ask of the debaters. This helps me to anticipate their arguments and to more fully contemplate the issue at hand. The questions are at times philosophical, and often provocative and logically fallacious. I think the fallacious questions are important to allow a debater to address questions that are in the back of people’s mind and thus dispel unreasonable doubts. [...]
[...] He also — in his very cautious, tentative, unassuming way — expressed some skepticism about the official story about the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. I’m not sure if a willingness to listen to libertarian and conspiracist ideas makes him a natural Ron Paul voter (not that I’m saying Paul claims it was an inside job, but some people who do claim that like his anti-establishment tone, for good or ill), but it at least means Moby should attend our Nov. 7 Debate at Lolita Bar between Sander Hicks and Karol Sheinin on the question “Did the Government Know in Advance About 9/11?” (though I imagine that will focus more on the World Trade Center — hometown pride and all). [...]
[...] How did I come to know two people with such opposing takes on this issue? Well, Karol co-hosts the monthly Manhattan Project non-leftist media gatherings with me and Mark Cunningham, while Sander (who, despite his being a Marxist and onetime pursuer of the NY Green Party nomination for Senate, I met through libertarian novelist Katherine Taylor of all people) is technically responsible for me hosting all of these Debates at Lolita Bar, since it was his invitation to see him debate the pros and cons of globalization that led, in 2002, to me first encountering the Jinx Society, then the hosts of the debates. (As it happens, I recall that the cover of National Review on stands the week of 9/11/01 depicted a scary-looking antiglobalization protester with the slogan “Back to the Barricades!” though that antiglobalization protester with his black mask and his fist in the air looked like a well-mannered piker after the Trade Center came down.) [...]
[...] No, I haven’t finished writing a book (though Conservatism for Punks will exist eventually, sooner rather than later, I hope — and for a little right/left remixing in the interim, check out what’s on deck for our Dec. 5 Debate at Lolita Bar, now that I’ve found a hawk and dove to spar). However, I have written book reviews — not just the twelve monthly Book Selection entries that preceded the one you’re reading now (which began even before the blog was fully operational) but previous reviews for venues like New York Post and People magazine. [...]
[...] 5. and, of course, host monthly live debates at Lolita Bar (like the one this coming Wednesday, 8pm, between a Clintonite hawk and a Buchananite dove), but even if hearing two sides beats hearing only one, it might be argued that shoehorning issues into two sides — when the topic might be better served by dividing it into seventeen — does violence to the truth. [...]
Is Malice going to be arguing with himself? Or, in honor of his co-author, punching himself out Fight Club-style?
As a Russian radical, he embodies the dialectical process even when alone.
[...] On a more hope-inspiring note: Tim Burton (who was at one point slated to direct that ill-fated 90s Superman mentioned above) is now working on a big Alice movie, and Wonderland seems like the perfect place for the man behind movies like Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — which our Jan. 2 Lolita Bar speaker Michael Malice once declared his favorite movie, though I never summoned the will to see it, since I just didn’t think it’d be the same without the songs from the classic Gene Wilder version, like that awesome number by Veruca Salt (the character, not the band). [...]
[...] Michael Malice, co-author of this blog’s first Book Selection of the new year, will speak tomorrow night (Wed., Jan. 2, 8pm) at Lolita Bar, with a rousing introduction from me and autographed bookplates at the ready to slap on your copy of the tome. [...]
[...] Regardless of where things go from here, though, the nominee of each party will almost certainly be known by Feb. 6, the day after the so-called Super Duper Tuesday primaries, when about half the states vote — and on that day-after, we’ll gather at Lolita Bar at 8pm to hear some reactions to it all (Obama, Paul, Giuliani, race politics, math, or whatever else he feels like talking about) from National Review’s John Derbyshire, himself a Ron Paul booster heretofore. [...]
[...] •I just today received word that Ron Paul will be on the New York Republican primary ballot (never an easy thing to achieve — Buchanan didn’t get enough signatures in 1992). So now I have to decide, in my Kantian-yet-utilitarian way, whether I should still cast at least a protest vote for him on Feb. 5 or just pick a new, second-choice candidate. (You can ask me — and my fellow Ron Paul sympathizer John Derbyshire — what we ultimately decided to do when you see us at Lolita Bar the next night, Wednesday, Feb. 6, at 8pm.) Tomorrow, I’ll try to post an entry about the daunting task of hierarchizing my options for a “second choice,” which involves almost as many mixed feelings as have been expressed in this entry. [...]
[...] It was then that I had a brief long-distance romance with a woman who, despite having led a fairly wild, rock n’ roll lifestyle, had undergone a gung-ho conversion to Christianity — the first of three such women I’d be involved with over the years, as it happens, and surely at some point I have to ask whether there’s a telling pattern there. The wonderful woman in question started out as a penpal, writing to me in response to my National Review article about going to Woodstock ’94 (described in my prior Retro-Journal entry). She was pleased to see there was another conservative out there who appreciated rock and pop culture, something young conservatives were starved for in the mid-90s. (She had dated — and promoted — rock singer Brian McCarter, who, despite believing in God, will argue yes on the question “Does Christian Rock Suck?” in our April 2 Debate at Lolita Bar, against non-believing yet Christian-pop-culture-appreciating Daniel Radosh, as mentioned yesterday.) [...]
[...] •Arch-conservative friend Jim Kalb — an unabashed traditionalist who questions the very idea of individual rationality — led a monthly or so Tuesday Night Traditionalists gathering (TNT — totally unrelated to the coincidental same-named Tuesday gatherings led by one of my more left-wing friends, Gersh Kuntzman, around the same time, at which the primary tradition under discussion was getting more beer). Kalb’s gatherings took place at a bar on the Lower West Side, and they helped to sharpen my ideas about tradition and innovation, stirred over the preceding few years by my encounters with paleoconservative thinking. Paleocon John Carney, now an occasional combatant in our Debates at Lolita Bar was another participant and a friend of short-term Stossel underling Brian Taylor from their days as political trouble-makers together at SUNY Binghamton. [...]
Hey Todd,
Are you having a viewing party for the debates tonight at a bar? If not, do you know of any bars in NYC that will be showing the debates? Sorry to hassle you but I am viewing them with my friend’s father and thought it would be fun to do so in a bar setting and know that you do that sometimes. Thanks so much. My email is kevcreamer@gmail.com
Nope. The group Drinking Liberally meets at Rudy’s in Hell’s Kitchen tonight at 7:30, but I have no idea if they’ll watch (or be able to hear) the debates.
[...] Somehow, eleven years have passed since then without me yet putting the capstone on the tradition project, a book — though I’ve had articles from the project published on Liv4Now.com, NationalReview.com, Spiked-Online, TCSDaily.com, and HealthFactsAndFears.com (the site I edit by day, for the American Council on Science and Health), and in Skeptical Inquirer and Reason (and this project ain’t done giving yet, if I have anything to say about it). It was also the basis of my arguments in one of the series of monthly bar debates I’d go on to host, a debate about the relative merits of tradition and individualism against a very courageous Jacob Levy, who got shanghaied into doing the debate while in New York City on vacation. [...]
[...] But I don’t mean by any of this to make it sound like my own life was unpleasant: between the trips I’d been taking for work — including visiting places from Chicago to New Orleans and Santa Fe to San Francisco for my research on tradition — and a second trip to London, waking life was good, and in the realm of dreams, where I apparently died — in a dream my left-leaning fellow New York Press veteran Daniel Radosh had that year — I apparently got a nice eulogy from him, so on a personal level, those left-wing media people aren’t so bad, really. And I suppose nice behavior in dreams does count for something (not that Daniel isn’t also nice in real life — and you can see him defending Christian rock, oddly enough, in our April 2 Debate at Lolita Bar, one day after the release of his book on Christian pop culture, Rapture Ready!). [...]
[...] And in merely eight days, I shall return unto you, with my special April Fool’s Day Book Selection: Daniel Radosh’s Rapture Ready! (one day after which, remember, he’ll appear in our April 2, 8pm, Debate at Lolita Bar). [...]
[...] 6. Daniel Radosh, whose book Rapture Ready! about Christian pop culture will be my April Book Selection (when the book is released, on April Fool’s Day), mailed me and others a promotional CD of Christian rock mentioned in his book –the kind of stuff he’ll bravely defend in his April 2 Debate at Lolita Bar (hosted by me) on the question “Does Christian Rock Suck?” with God-believer and rocker Brian McCarter, cast against type, arguing yes. [...]
[...] And last month’s debate, by the way, marked the third anniversary of the Todd Seavey/Michel Evanchik team running these debates — the announcements from this period all being retroactively posted on this (merely year-old) site, for anyone interested in history. [...]
[...] P.S. In more substantial and more narrowly libertarian news, Bob Barr officially announced his presidential candidacy yesterday, giving new relevance to our perhaps obscure-sounding topic for the June 4 Debate at Lolita Bar. [...]
[...] Lolita Bar Debates: Reactions to the Presidential Primaries Wednesday, Feb 6th (tomorrow!) Lolita Bar, 266 Broome St., basement level Free admission 8pm (Details) Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
[...] I see only three reasons for qualms (though pro-Barr Avery Knapp and pro-McCain Ken Silber will argue all this in greater detail at our momentous June 4 Debate at Lolita Bar — where I will genuinely listen with an open mind): [...]
[...] •There are “high” nerd-culture manifestations, like that exhibit of superhero-based fashion and art at the Met — fittingly, pointed out to me by someone who has a certain friend, a past Lolita Bar debater (who shall remain nameless) who was struck by how “dirty” our Lolita crowd looked — just imagine the debater’s reaction if we had Rev. Jen’s “low-nerd” pals in our crowd every time. [...]
[...] P.P.S. I loaned him my copy of the July Reason to read on the plane back home — having brought it mainly as a prop to wave around while telling the audience that next time we’ll have a panel of women who’ve sold their eggs, including Reason editor Kerry Howley — so join us July 22. [...]
[...] As my birthday outing that year, I saw the live-action Thunderbirds movie with a posse that included the tragically obese manager of Victor Niederhoffer’s libertarian Junto discussion group, who has since passed away from a stroke, in his forties. Happier Thunderbirds-related outings that year, though, included a return to the Museum of Television & Radio to see Supercar (another marionette sci-fi show from the creator of Thunderbirds), and a sangria-enhanced viewing of the Thunderbirds-inspired film Team America: World Police (from the libertarian creators of South Park) while on a visit to Austin, TX to see LB Deyo with Scott Nybakken and Christine Caldwell Ames. While there, I met Diana Fleischman, an evolutionary psychology expert who’ll be one of the egg-sellers on our panel of egg-selling women next month at Lolita Bar. [...]
[...] (3) I have recruited my informal advisor on the evolutionary psychology piece, Diana Fleischman, to be one of the three women who’ve sold their own eggs for our panel on that topic next month at the aforementioned Debates at Lolita Bar on July 22, 8pm (instead of our usual first-Wednesday). I hope she we will bring her monkey-loving experience to bear. [...]
[...] ToddSeavey.com » Debates at Lolita Bar I was offered $46,000 for my eggs in 2000 by two gay French dudes. I declined. Had they offered $57, however … (tags: capitalism progeny) [...]
[...] About one month after the blog’s launch, as it happens, I attended one of the CitizenJoe political speech/socializing events — the series written about this week, in the same TimeOut New York article as the Debates at Lolita Bar that Michel Evanchik and I run. And at that fateful CitizenJoe gathering, I met a lawyer (and Democrat) named Koli who introduced herself to me, amusingly enough, by expressing doubt about whether any actual Republicans attended the events. Like that night’s speaker (a Cato expert on the Iran situation), I’m a libertarian, but I’m also technically a registered (and increasingly disillusioned, if such a thing is still possible) Republican, on the grounds that when I registered, lo these sixteen years ago, shortly after moving to New York City, the Republicans were ostensibly the more free-market of the two major parties. [...]
[...] So, I’m thirty-nine (and perhaps growing to look even more like David McCallum, as Francis Heaney, TV producer Marc Dorian, and others have suggested, when people aren’t suggesting that I look like Niles from Frasier). This birthday was already celebrated at Iggy’s Karaoke, where Gerard Perry — who argued for a tough line on illegal immigration a few months ago at one of our monthly Debates at Lolita Bar — ironically found himself being upbraided by an immigrant, the bartender, for committing the real assault on culture, namely Gerard’s rendition of an Irish sea shanty. [...]
[...] Meanwhile, another Paul supporter (who went on to argue in favor of Bob Barr at one of our Debates at Lolita Bar), Avery Knapp, was in St. Paul yesterday for Ron Paul’s “alternate” convention of dissident libertarian Republicans, and I hope he found time to meet up with my co-worker Jeff Stier (who’s attending both the Democratic and Republican conventions) and New York Post’s Kyle Smith, who are also in that town this week. [...]
[...] Will all this become fodder for our Debate at Lolita Bar (this Sunday at 8pm) about sex between Stephanie Sellars and Anna Broadway? Join us to find out! But I sort of hope not. [...]
[...] So here we are, about a month and a half before a general election, with perhaps the most prominent libertarian in the country endorsing a man who wants to become president in order to combat the New World Order and homosexual conspiracies, with Congress contemplating socializing Wall Street (and one of my most popular libertarian-blogger acquaintances, Megan McArdle, arguing in her perhaps overly confident and quantificational way that it’s either accept the bailout or see our standard of living decline almost overnight by about a third), and, to top it all off, the conservative New York Sun going out of business this coming Monday with one last bar gathering (that’ll be two nights in a row for me, given Sunday’s Debate at Lolita Bar). [...]
[...] This may be about where things now stand (but you’ll forgive me if I’m too capitalistically concerned about the stock market right at the moment to expend great energy trying to increase human solidarity or fix other highly nuanced aspects of the culture — I try to be nice, though, and everyone’s invited to those monthly debates I host if you want to say hi). [...]
[...] And you can share your own thoughts about the election at Lolita Bar (266 Broome St.) the night after the election, at 8pm, when I host and Michel Evanchik moderates a panel about what it all means. [...]
[...] For any readers in the the New York area, I’ll be part of a post-election panel discussion 8 pm tonight at Lolita Bar (266 Broome St. at Allen St. on the Lower East Side, a block south of the Delancey St. subway stop). I’ll be joined by Democratic campaign consultant Ben Geyerhahn and Dumbocracy author Marty Beckerman. Admission is free; drinks are not. Audience participation is encouraged. [...]
[...] (Chuck was one of our debaters at Lolita Bar on the topic of climate change a year and a half ago, and he faced Al Gore-trained Andrew McKeon of the Climate Project, who as it happens notes that tomorrow brings a UN/NYU-Poly Institute/AIG “green technology” conference, for those interested.) [...]
[...] 7. The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life by Austin Dacey: A head honcho of the Center for Inquiry and its influential magazine Skeptical Inquirer (which helped turn me into an atheist back in high school), Dacey now makes the brave argument that we should end the liberal trend toward treating religion as something relegated to the private sphere, taboo to argue about in public — because he thinks that only through frankly debating it in public can we put an end to irrational, superstitious ideas once and for all. Far from saying “Please keep your religion to yourself,” Dacey is in effect saying, as my conservative (and combat-loving) girlfriend Helen approvingly put it, “Bring it on!” And speaking of public debate, look for Dacey to be one of our likely Debates at Lolita Bar participants in April or May. [...]
[...] I may have disagreed with Neuhaus somewhat about life-extending technology, but I admired his speaking ability (and felt stupid after first thinking “He’s a great speaker!” when I later remembered “Oh, right, he’s a priest — that’s his job”), both in an appearance I saw him do with Ramesh Ponnuru after First Things’ controversial “End of Democracy?” symposium and at a gathering of the Phillips Fellows (a few of whom I’m still hoping will grace our Feb. 19 Debate at Lolita Bar with their presences — but we’ll get someone to do it). [...]
[...] A shameful irony behind the Debates at Lolita Bar I host is that despite being organized by a property advocate, me, they grew out of meetings of the infamous and shadowy Jinx Society, an organization dedicated to “urban exploration” — i.e., chronic trespass in and around buildings, ruins, bridges, and tunnels. [...]
[...] Two days later, we also visited Helen’s old stomping grounds, Yale, for a debate by Yale’s Party of the Right, an encouraging gaggle of eccentrics, contrarians, and extremists more philosophically stimulating than your average conventional Republican gathering (and there was at least one actual conservative punk, tattoos and all). These kids may yet generate some new ideas that will aid in a conservative renewal (much the way genetic diversity can increase the odds of a population springing back after a mass die-off, if you will — but please join me at Lolita Bar on Feb. 19 if you want to hear a fuller discussion about the right’s state of decrepitude or renewal — especially if you tell me within the next few days that you want to be the pessimistic half of the debate-pair). With a competitive intensity — and almost Polar-Bear-swimmers-like fondness for subjecting themselves to trials by combat, philosophical or otherwise — these young rightists were quite different from the more bland and conformist folk I recall among the College Republicans of my day. Almost enough to give one hope. [...]
[...] With Valentine’s Day coming up this Saturday, please take a moment to marvel at the fact that we wouldn’t fully understand the origins of the emotional attraction living things feel for each other without the insights Charles Darwin offered a century and a half ago, about the evolutionary incentives creating the reproductive impulse and the desire to protect kin — malleable though they may be to some extent in creatures as rational as ourselves. (We may get one or two Darwin-bashers at Lolita Bar one week from tonight when Ken Silber and Ryan Sager debate the question “Has the Right Hit Bottom Yet?” so consider that potential learning experience an extra reason to show.) [...]
[...] I have this much in common with that crowd, though: their moderator was from the skeptical/atheist Center for Inquiry — and so is one of our scheduled Debates at Lolita Bar participants for April 1, Austin Dacey, who will duke it out with Rabbi Simcha Weinstein. [...]
[...] However, this week also saw a children’s book holocaust, since ludicrously stringent anti-lead regulations, if anyone cares, have just made it illegal to sell or even loan to children any item produced before 1985 unless it goes through expensive lead testing. The result is that huge numbers of old children’s books and toys were simply discarded this week by devastated secondhand book and toy stores (but then, books before 1985 do not have Leader Obama in them, so they can’t be very good — more on that next week at Lolita Bar, though). [...]
[...] As it happens, on April Fool’s Day (really) at 8pm, our next Debate at Lolita Bar, on the question “Does Religion Make People Better?” will feature as one of its debaters Austin Dacey, who is the Center for Inquiry’s atheistic official representative to the U.N., trying to promote secularism and tolerance around the globe. Be there. [...]
[...] But with our Lolita debate on extraterrestrials — the first in a trilogy of conspiracy-related debates for us — two and a half weeks away, let’s take at least a few days to consider some more entertaining and positive space-things, starting with a mention of the approaching tenth anniversary of the day the Moon blew out of orbit. You didn’t hear about that happening on Sept. 13, 1999 (and even being celebrated with a party thrown by Liz Braswell — inspiring me to join in and abandon the completely separate nerd party that I, too, had been planning for that date)? I speak, of course, of Space: 1999, which I still contend has one of the very coolest title sequences in the history of television — and almost disco-funky enough to be worthy of, well, Prince. Apparently, it was an influence on the opening of the Battlestar: Galactica remake series (and was created by the producer responsible for my all-time favorite TV open, the ominous five-vehicles countdown from Thunderbirds). [...]
[...] On a similarly mournful note, let us end with the one moment of Starblazers that struck me most as a kid: the moment the long-feared Leader Desslok suddenly becomes a sympathetic character — because his mind cracks as he realizes that duping the Starblazers team into coming to his planet has doomed his world to destruction after a year of struggle against Earth. That’s gotta hurt a guy. I hope our August 5 Debate at Lolita Bar about extraterrestrials proves as moving. [...]
[...] I guess everybody’s meeting aliens these days — but learn more about whether that’s true at our August 5 Debate at Lolita Bar between Lillian Waters and Jen Dziura, of course. [...]
[...] And as for whether we really stand on the brink of forming a galactic federation, being invaded, or simply continuing to cope with messes of our own creation, remember to help us settle that question next week at Lolita Bar when Lillian Waters and Jen Dziura debate the meaning of the UFO phenomenon. [...]
[...] Well, if I do see The Collector, I guess August will be one terrifying month, since this coming Wednesday (8pm), of course, will be our Debate at Lolita Bar between Lillian Waters and Jen Dziura on the eerie question “Have We Ever Been Visited by Extraterrestrials?” [...]
[...] I still sort of like Mars Bar — part of the eternal Upper East Side/Lower East Side dichotomy in my soul (one for living, one for debating — debating this week about a Lower East Side deli that we’ll also visit, as it happens). Mars Bar remains, however, one of only two establishments where I have concluded the restroom was simply too frightening to use. [...]
[...] In grimmer entertainment news, I see the trial of the suspected murderer of former Ramones manager Linda Stein is set to begin today (not to be confused with the trial for murder of former Ramones producer Phil Spector). Rest assured the suspect is not invited to our Debate at Lolita Bar next week (Feb. 3) between ex-Misfits members Bobby Steele and Michale Graves. Perhaps, though, since the accused was an employee of Stein, we should mention the case at our planned April debate on the question “Are Bosses Usually Jerks?” [...]
[...] P.P.S. We might also benefit from discussing some of these issues at Tuesday night’s 6:30pm Manhattan Project gathering of political folk at Merchants NY East or even at the March 3 (8pm) Debate at Lolita Bar, which will pit Richard Spencer against Helen Rittelmeyer on the vaguely-related question “Is Christianity for Wimps?” Wusses will not be driven from the audience or beaten with sticks. [...]
[...] he wrote the King James Bible…You can weigh in on the debate tonight at Lolita, where writer Todd Seavey will host his monthly debate (club?). The evening will feature Christian Toth, an [...]
[...] crushing national debt and rampant Bjork performances (as pointed out to me by able webmaster and Debates at Lolita Bar moderator Michel [...]
is there a newsletter?
gcalendar?
No newsletter, and I don’t even know what a gcalendar is, but you can get an e-mail from me once a month about what we’re planning, after signing up in person at the debate (I’ll get back to you soon!) or e-mailing me at the address found on the “About/CONTACT” page linked in my front page right margin.
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