Intellectual Pursuits (or at least an approximation)
Brad deLong blogs the American Economics Association conference:
"Do you know all these people you are waving at across the hotel lobby? Or are you just waving at random? Who are those two--they look really confused." "I wasn't waving at them, I was waving at Aaron Edlin behind them.""You must have done a bunch of research to learn that much about the connections between Lord Dalhousie's 'Doctrine of Lapse' and the Anti-British Revolt of 1857." "Well... Sort of... It was in the distant past, and only if reading pulp historical fiction novels by George McDonald Fraser counts as 'research'."
"If he'd had that diagram, it would have made things much clearer." "If he'd had that diagram, the seminar would have been over in five minutes, and then what would he have done with the rest of his time?" "But it would have been a really impressive five minutes."
Patrick Nielsen Hayden says that this is yet further evidence that the world is being slowly conquered by science fiction fandom.