You’re longing to hear all about My Trip To LA, right? No? Well you’re going to.
I think the talk went pretty well (she said modestly). I had fun doing it, anyway – I talked about some issues that are interesting to me. You guys contributed because of the discussion last week.
It turned out there were some people there who already had an opinion of me, and not a good one. (Perhaps they think I eat cat food.) There was one rather truculent question, but no rotting fruit, or even decanned cat food.
And we went to lunch after, and I talked to amazing Louise, until she had to go play the Auntie Mame part at a family gathering. Alice and Stacy and I went to Wacko, then the Museum of Jurassic Technology, then t0 meet up again with Amy and Johnny at a thrilling restaurant in the Hollywood hills, where they (Amy and Johnny) treated us all to dinner. Fabulous people.
The truculent question was why do I drag feminism into skepticism, when feminism is an ideology while skepticism is about questioning all the things (including, I think we are to infer, gender equality, but not gender inequality). I said basically that I don’t; my talk was about secularism and equality. As far as I know CFI doesn’t focus solely on skepticism. Then I said that on the other hand, I think it would be (or is) stupid for skepticism to drive women away from skepticism by treating them like crap. Apparently that’s a controversial view. Hmreally? Why?
Just now I went out, early while it was still coolish, and went north on Vermont past a bookshop and other nice stuff, then west a bit and back south, past CFI to Barnall Barnsdall Park which is across the street from them (and the Pentecostal church which snuggles up to their east wall). I went up to the top of the hill and was rewarded with a stunning view of the Griffith Park Observatory and the Hollywood sign and all the things to the north and west and a good deal to the south until the smog got too thick.
I like LA.