Well, from the looks of things, the night of the Darwinian goodness will be Sunday (it's actually a day early, but we just all have to promise to stay up until midnight). I figure 8 seems like a good time to start the festivities, but I'll probably show up around 7:30ish to try and secure a table, so feel free to come early (Hah! other people being early... that seems likely... :^) ) and feel free to dress as your favourite Victorian naturalist. (If anyone can figure out a good Baron Von Humbolt costume, I'd love to see it!)
hopefully see everyone there!
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8 comments:
Can I come as Carrolus Linnaeus? I know he's not Victorian, precisely, but you know me, I love the Latin... And, I can quiz you on taxonomy! Won't that be fun?!
well, technically calling Von Humboldt Victorian is pretty horribly wrong, verging on being inaccurate, considering he was only barely a contemporary of Victoria. Also, there is the problem that he was German, so calling him Victorian is roughly at the same level of historical boobishness as my calling Mark Twain Victorian.
So, in short, you can be any Victorian naturalist, where 'Victorian' means: lived at some point in the last 400 years, within 21000 km or so of England. I guess I can allow Linnaeus in under that definition.
Also, keep in mind, if you dress as Linnaeus, I might have to restrain my urge to punch you in the mouth all night, as a proxy for actually digging up his corpse and punching that in the mouth. There are no words for how much I hate binomial nomenclature.
Nobody wants to be Linnaeus... not even Linnaeus (that is why he changed his name). Also he was a god-damn botanist, I mean a botanist... who worked with plants.... plants!
Yeah, the only thing worse than botany is those damned zoologists...I mean, really, how many sessile animals do you see? almost none! The little cheaters have to locomote away from their problems, rather than standing up and facing them like a fern! (or drifting aimlessly like a diatom... I guess that's cool too)
I dont know any Victorian science peoples, so I'm dressing up as JS Mill and will argue that free discourse is a necessary condition for intellectual and social progress. We can never be sure that a silenced opinion does not contain some element of the truth.
Thus, allowing people to air false opinions is productive for two reasons. First, individuals are more likely to abandon erroneous beliefs if they are engaged in an open exchange of ideas. Second, by forcing other individuals to re-examine and re-affirm their beliefs in the process of debate, these beliefs are kept from declining into mere dogma.
It is not enough that one simply has an unexamined belief that happens to be true; one must understand why the belief in question is the true one.
And... yeah :-D
Honestly, I'm a bit confused as to the difference between me coming as Linnaeus, or coming as myself - either way, you'll spend all evening repressing the urge to punch me in the mouth, so it's a wash either way.
you should dress as DR. BEE!, victorian edition.
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