Live Rhyming the TAS Summer Seminar

I'm here in beautiful Towson, MD, for the TAS Summer Seminar, where I am seeing lots of friends, at least one of whom I had never met in real life.

Today, the presentations began.

Instead of normal note-taking
I have the bad habit of making
Rhymes with some passing relation
To the formal presentation.

But sometimes I skip the essential
And go straight to the tangential.

First talk I attended was Ed Hudgins on the State of the Culture:

What is the state of the culture?
Do the circling vultures
Prove that we are doomed?

Or shall the soaring eagles,
Glorious and regal,
Chase away the gloom?

Next was Glen Fletcher on the Laws of Nature:

The older idea was that natural law was descriptive,
Orders from God that told physical things how to act.
The newer idea is that such so-called laws are descriptive
Patterns we see that run true in the world of fact.

Next up was my wife, Marsha Familaro Enright, talking about Social Skills. At one point she explored how one of the obstacles to clear reasoning, for many people, is the fact that clear reasoning challenges the beliefs held dear by family and friends:

Sometimes the use of reason
Feels like a kind of treason
To the "truths" we've imbibed
As a child of the tribe.

Okay, that's all I've got so far.