Along with Tom Palmer, Gene Healy, Don Boudreaux and distinguished non-blogging others, I’m off to Quebec City for the Cato University seminar on the “Art of Persuasion.” Blogging forecast: 65% chance of light blogging; 35% chance of none. Depends on the hook up in le Château Frontenac.
Tom, being a St. John’s man, has been revisting the classics of rhetoric. I, not being a St. John’s man, have been revisiting Rodney Stark on conversion, George Lakoff on political mental models, and the social network and diffusions of innovations literature. I promised Tom I wouldn’t give a talk that sounds like it ought to have a title like “Prolegomena to a Hermeneutics of Meme Exchange,” and I won’t!, but it’s been a real challenge distilling all this stuff into something engaging and accessible. Wish me luck!