And our noontime competition continues . . .
We had some good arguments on both sides yesterday.
Jonathan writes:
In my experience, comedians are great when they’re on-stage and morose and unappealing off-stage. Sullivan, on the other hand, was morose and unappealing on-stage, and witty and charming off-stage, or so I’ve heard. This comes down, then, to deciding whether the speaker treats the seminar as a stage or not. I don’t think Sullivan would, because it’s not a “rilly big shew.”
That’s some fancy counterintuitive reasoning: Go with Sullivan because he won’t take it seriously so his pleasant off-stage personality will show up.
On the other hand, Zbicyclist goes with the quip:
Your Show of Shows -> Your Seminar of Seminars. Render unto Caesar.
I like it. Sid advances.
For our next contest, things get more interesting. In one corner, the greatest female athlete of all time, an all-sport trailblazer. In the other, the chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, who’s been in the news lately for his investigation of Russian involvement in the U.S. election. He knows all sorts of secrets.
If the seminar’s in the statistics department, Babe, no question. For the political science department, it would have to be Adam. But this is a university-wide seminar (inspired by this Latour-fest, remember?), so I think they both have a shot.