Judith Posted December 3, 2006 Share Posted December 3, 2006 I just found this at the official web site:http://ios.org/cth-13-1826-SS07SaveDate.aspx----------------------------Announcing the 2007 Summer Seminar Dates and Site!The Atlas Society's Objectivist Center will hold its 18th Annual Summer Seminar conference in the second week of July, 2007. The chosen site is Towson University. Towson is near Baltimore, Maryland and is just an hour's drive from Washington, D.C., Annapolis, MD, and Philadelphia, PA. Towson University offers excellent facilities at affordable rates, and has an on-campus hotel for those looking for the best quality accomodations. The Summer Seminar brings together a wide-ranging community of experts, intellectuals, and enthusiasts, to discuss and explore Objectivism, the philosophy founded by Ayn Rand, author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Over 30 faculty members offer 50 or more hours of sessions on the arts, politics, culture, history, law, philosophy, and the Objectivist art of living. Note: the Summer Seminar will be held on a new schedule for 2007. Arrival and registration is planned for SUNDAY, July 8. The final sessions and a blow-out party will be held SATURDAY, July, 14, with Sunday, July 15 as the departure day. Wednesday, July 11, will be a mostly free day for local excursions. For those who have attended past Summer Seminars, this represents a slight change of custom. This new schedule allows travellers from the West Coast to lose the least amount of week-time possible travelling to and from the Summer Seminar, and offers those who can only make it for the second half of the Seminar a three-day set of sessions in place of the traditional two days. The Summer Seminar program is still being planned, but anticipated speakers include Stephen Hicks, Edward Hudgins, David Kelley, David Mayer, Robert Poole, and many others. The full program will be posted in January, 2007. Registration materials will be distributed by mail and posted online in the late Winter. We expect to begin taking registrations in February. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Grieb Posted December 4, 2006 Share Posted December 4, 2006 Thank you Judith. I have been waiting for this information. The change of date is interesting. Thank you again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kat Posted December 4, 2006 Share Posted December 4, 2006 Thanks for the heads up. I've added the Summer Seminar to our calendar. I am certainly looking forward to this summer. I had a such great time at my first Seminar and really enjoyed meeting so many of my online friends face to face for the first time as well as many new friends. Kat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Grieb Posted December 4, 2006 Share Posted December 4, 2006 Kat; It was nice meeting you also. I still would have rather had it at Georgetown or Catholic in DC but Towson is good also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Bissell Posted December 5, 2006 Share Posted December 5, 2006 It's good that the details are out for the 2007 Summer Seminar, but unfortunately, Becky and I will be unable to attend. We have a combination of family and work situations that will not permit our coming East for the get-together.REB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Grieb Posted December 5, 2006 Share Posted December 5, 2006 Roger; You will be missed. A week is a lot for a family. It was great to meet you and Becky last year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Heaps-Nelson Posted December 5, 2006 Share Posted December 5, 2006 I will probably miss this year's Summer Seminar as well because my wife and I will likely be going to Taiwan to visit her terminally ill brother. I wish everyone well.Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danneskjold Posted December 18, 2006 Share Posted December 18, 2006 Baseball_________PhilosophyToo bad too. I think either the Stanford showcase or the Junior Olympics is that week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Grieb Posted December 18, 2006 Share Posted December 18, 2006 Jeff; We'll get you to a Summer Seminar some time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Heaps-Nelson Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 (edited) Does anyone know if TAS is putting a bunch of new stuff on their website? I keep getting a "Server is too busy" message when I try to go to their website now.Edit- OK, now I can get it.Jim Edited January 4, 2007 by James Heaps-Nelson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Posted February 4, 2007 Share Posted February 4, 2007 Does anybody know if Barbara Branden is giving a talk at this year's summer seminar - I really enjoyed her talk last year and I'm hoping so. Of course she can always answer for herself if she's online?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Heaps-Nelson Posted February 4, 2007 Share Posted February 4, 2007 Does anybody know if Barbara Branden is giving a talk at this year's summer seminar - I really enjoyed her talk last year and I'm hoping so. Of course she can always answer for herself if she's online?? I don't know, but based on a few comments I've seen online from other presenters/participants, I'm pretty sure TAS has already made many of their program selections by now. Will Thomas could tell you. If you do get over to Maryland, and I hope you do, you should consider a visit to the Smithsonian museums on the free day. Taken together, they are some of the most spectacular museums in the world, not quite the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre or the British Museum, but the variety is amazing.Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Grieb Posted February 4, 2007 Share Posted February 4, 2007 'Both the Smithsonian Museums and the National Art Galleries are gifts to the US. Andrew Mellon gave the US the National Gallery even through the FDR tried to send him to prison for tax evasion. The whole ghostly story is told in the new book about Andrew Mellon. Andrew Mellon was our longest serving Secretary of the Treasury. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judith Posted February 17, 2007 Author Share Posted February 17, 2007 Something else to do in Baltimore or DC this summer:Anatomy Made ControversialExhibit's Use of Human Cadavers Is Often CondemnedBy Fredrick KunkleWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, February 16, 2007; Page B05Ever wonder what another person might look like without makeup or hair? How about without skin?Washingtonians will soon be able to gaze at -- and, in some cases, handle -- human remains that have been transformed at the cellular level into silicone mummies at an exhibition in Arlington this spring."BODIES . . . The Exhibition" will open in the former Newseum building in Rosslyn in mid-April, organizers said. It is one of at least three exhibits using human cadavers that have stirred controversy nearly everywhere they go.Catholic and Protestant churches have protested the opening of body exhibits in Europe, and the directors of an off-beat museum in Seattle filed a legal challenge to "BODIES . . . The Exhibition" there. The German physician who pioneered the preservation method created a competing exhibit and has been accused of using bodies without proper consent, which he has denied.The specimens include entire human bodies that have been skinned, dissected, rubberized, colored and reassembled to highlight particular organs. They are then posed doing everyday activities, such as kicking a soccer ball or pedaling a bicycle. At the end, visitors can handle a kidney, a brain or a heart. Arnie Geller, chief executive of Premier Exhibitions Inc., estimated that the Washington exhibit could draw as many as 500,000 people over six months."It's the kind of education you'll never get in the classroom," Geller said in an interview this week."BODIES . . . The Exhibition" and the competing exhibits have been riding a voyeuristic craze for several years, drawing hordes of the living wherever they go. Their fans and backers say they offer startling but ultimately wholesome opportunities for ordinary people to explore and demystify human anatomy.But others dismiss the ventures as ghoulish freak shows mounted by modern-day P.T. Barnums. Questions also persist about the provenance of the specimens, especially because many come from China, where there have been documented abuses in the sale of organs for transplants. Some organs sold to Westerners for transplants, for example, have been traced to criminals executed for petty offenses.Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a professor of medical anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, said some of the bodies might have come from people whose consent was not obtained or was obtained involuntarily, despite recent laws designed to crack down on such abuses."Consent has no meaning in China," said Scheper-Hughes, who created Organ Watch to monitor international trafficking in organs.But Roy Glover, who is the medical adviser to the coming exhibit, said all specimens in his company's exhibit were obtained legally and ethically.Glover, a former director of the University of Michigan Medical School's polymer preservation laboratory, said the bodies are from people who died of natural causes and had no known family member to claim them. Under Chinese law, such bodies are given to medical schools or other institutions for educational uses.Premier Exhibitions said its bodies are all obtained through Sui Hongjin, a doctor at the Dalian Medical University Plastination Laboratories. The Chinese government also has given them "letters of assurance" that the bodies were obtained legally, he said. Glover and Geller said the reason so many bodies come from China is because no other country has such a supply of technically skilled people who can dissect them."I would not be associated with Premier Exhibitions or have any dealings as a spokesman for the exhibit if the bodies we were using were obtained illegally or unethically," Glover said. "Members of the company spent a considerable amount of time in China finding just the right partner."Premier Exhibitions is a publicly traded corporation. A subsidiary, RMS Titanic Inc., owns the rights to artifacts salvaged from the sunken ocean liner.One of the competing exhibits, "Body Worlds," is the work of Gunther von Hagens, the German doctor widely credited with inventing the preservation process, known as plastination, in the 1970s. His exhibit made a cameo appearance in the latest James Bond movie, "Casino Royale."The other competing exhibit, "Our Body: The Universe Within," is produced by Baltimore-based the Universe Within Touring Co. LLC and contains 20 human bodies obtained from China. The Baltimore group says on its Web site that its specimens were obtained "consistent with the laws of China."Tickets to "BODIES . . . The Exhibition" will cost $26.50 for adults, $18 for children 4 to 12, and $10 for children on field trips. Geller said more than $25 million was invested over five years in acquiring the preserved specimens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Posted February 17, 2007 Share Posted February 17, 2007 I went to a similar event in London about 6 years ago - there's something very unnerving about seeing bodies that were living people until just a short time ago. We are so isolated from death these days - although I have to admit to being relieved about this - having watched my dog being put to sleep I never want to experience anything like it, ever again.What was very poignant was a 7 month pregnant woman with her abdomen sliced open to reveal the foetus (not sure about the background i.e. why they couldn't rescue the baby). I was particularly in awe of the human rider atop a horse - the difference in muscle strength was staggering - a puny human controlling an incredibly powerful beast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Grieb Posted February 17, 2007 Share Posted February 17, 2007 Judith & Fran; After reading your descriptions I think I'll go to see the Constellation or the Aquarium at Harbor Place. The frigate Constellation fought in the War of 1812. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judith Posted February 18, 2007 Author Share Posted February 18, 2007 Wow. For a change, we're going somewhere where there's lots of stuff to do quite nearby. Too much for a single free day! Maybe some of the lectures will be boring and we can play hooky, but that's too much to hope for; usually my problem is deciding which of two I can bear to miss....Judith Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bidinotto Posted February 18, 2007 Share Posted February 18, 2007 Judith,You jolly well better not cut class during MY lecture!!!!Robert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Grieb Posted February 18, 2007 Share Posted February 18, 2007 Robert; We want the info. Tell Will to get off his backside.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judith Posted February 18, 2007 Author Share Posted February 18, 2007 Judith,You jolly well better not cut class during MY lecture!!!!Robert(*wicked grin*) Hmmm. Depends. What's it about, O great one? :devil: Judith Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bidinotto Posted February 18, 2007 Share Posted February 18, 2007 Chris and Judith,Will is definitely NOT lounging idly on his backside. He has many complicated responsibilities, including production and distribution of the Summer Seminar brochure and making arrangements for the whole event. And he HAS posted detailed information about the Seminar.In fact, a whole site devoted to the Seminar can be found here.Click here for a day-by-day schedule of events (each entry is a link).And for those of you with the excellent taste and intellectual refinement to wish to attend MY talk, the information about it can be found here.So there! Satisfied? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judith Posted February 18, 2007 Author Share Posted February 18, 2007 So there! Satisfied?Well --Yes!Thank you.Judith Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Grieb Posted February 18, 2007 Share Posted February 18, 2007 Thank you Robert! I will look. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judith Posted March 12, 2007 Author Share Posted March 12, 2007 Hey, folks! The detailed schedule is up:http://www.atlasevents.org/schedule.htmlI can see already that I'm going to have to make some tough decisions.Fran is running a three-part session in the evenings!Enjoy.Judith Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Campbell Posted March 24, 2007 Share Posted March 24, 2007 Looks like a really good lineup.I'm sorry I won't be there this year.Robert Campbell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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