I confess to being quite overcome at the Rev. Anyabwile's offer to edit a Festschrift for me. I would, of course, be honoured to decline such; and, if he can tell me where and when it is to be presented, I will make sure that, at the last minute, I am unavoidably absent due to being called away to...

The amount and the strength of the pushback on my last few posts leads me to conclude that either (a) I am completely wrong on the matter of conferences (and being completely wrong is not without -- ahem -- precedent in my bio) or (b) I am absolutely right on target (that would be unprecedented,...

Thanks to Thabiti for his comments. I appreciate them, read them as frank and friendly, and offer these in like spirit. To deal with the last point first, and to engage in some self-justifying, self-serving, purely self-interested defensive boxing (hey, at least I am honest), the Clarus conference...

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, I want to offer some radical suggestions for future megaconferences. I should say at the start - or rather reiterate, as I did say this yesterday - that I have mellowed in my view of such conferences over the years. Thus, I allow that conferences do offer great...