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THE NEXT BERTRAND RUSSELL SOCIETY ANNUAL MEETING. The 36th annual meeting of the Bertrand Russell Society will take place Friday through Sunday, June 5-7, 2009 at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain Connecticut (5 miles southwest of Hartford CT and 95 miles from both New York and Boston). David Blitz is this year’s host. All are welcome! Talks there will include Stefan Andersson on “The People’s Opinion and International Law,” David Blitz on “Russell and the Dalai Lama on Happiness,” Ken Blackwell on “Misunderstandings of the Westminster Speech on War, 1948,” Andrew Cavallo on “Russell and the Myth of Simplicity,” Sarah Stebbins on “Russell and Brouwer: The Law of the Excluded Middle,” and many, many more talks about Russell. Registration fees are: members, $80 with banquet, $55 without banquet; non-members, $90 with banquet, $65 without banquet; students, $10/day (includes deli sandwiches Friday and breakfast, lunch and breaks Saturday and Sunday). Rooms (on campus – includes linen) are: single occupancy, $35/night/person; double occupancy: $25/night per person. Off-campus rooms at the Marriott Hotel: $99/night. See registration form for more information The conference website is at http://bertie.ccsu.edu/Russell2009/. To register, use the accompanying form, or download one from the conference website. APA EVENTS. The BRS will host a session of talks at the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association this December 27-30, 2009, New York City, NY at the Marriott Hotel in Times Square. Submissions for talks at the Eastern should be made by May 25, 2009. Send abstracts to rosalind.carey@lehman.cuny.edu. Please note that the Society hosts sessions at the Eastern and Central APA every year. Information on the APA meetings can be found online at: www.apaonline.org/divisions/schedule.aspx. NEW MEMBERS are always a good sign, and the BRS is fortunate to have had a bumper crop in the last 2 years. We welcome them to the Russell Society. NEW MEMBERS FOR 2009, so far, are: Frank Adams, Melinda Adams, Mirza Ahmed, Min Chang, Ryan Conti, Tim Facer, Doug Fitz, Jolen Galaugher, Mario Helman, Junling Hu, Herbert Huber, Terrence Hurley, Chris Kazanovicz, Brett Lintott, Seyed Javad Miri, Dustin Olson, Mark Overmyer, George Reisch, Alvin Rogers, Michael Staron, Derek Stoeckle, Robert Summerfield, Warren Wagner, and Edward Yates. NEW MEMBERS FOR 2008 are: Robert Blais, Solomon Blaylock, Andrew Cavallo, Daniel Colonari, Brian Dodd, Kenneth Gallant, Sebastien Gandon, Ray Gattavara, Billy Joe Lucas, Amber McAlister, Fred McColly, Sylvia Nickerson, Charles Peterka, Eric Walther, Robert Zack, and Weiping Zheng. BOARD OF DIRECTORS ELECTION RESULTS, 2009-2011. The Russell Society holds elections each year to select one third of the directors to its board for a three year term. Once elected, directors carry out the duties of running the Society, conducting Society business requiring a vote at the annual meeting and taking care of other Society business by means of committees and email contact. Nominations for the board occur in October and elections (by mail and email) take place in November and December. Any member of the Society may stand for election, and the Society encourages all who wish to participate to do so. This year’s election results are as follows: Nicholas Griffin 34 votes, Peter Stone 34, John Ongley 33, Cara Elizabeth Rice 31, David Goldman 30, Gregory Landini 29, Marvin Kohl 28, Justin Leiber 24, Billy Joe Lucas 23, with the first eight – Griffin, Stone, Ongley, Rice, Goldman, Landini, Kohl, and Leiber – thus being elected. We thank all these people for participating in this year’s election. THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING THE BRS! The Society welcomes gifts of all sizes and kinds. In 2008 we gained our most recent LIFE MEMBER, Justin Leiber, who joins the nine others who have contributed by means of taking out a life membership. THE SOCIETY ALSO GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES the generous support in 2008 of the following members: PATRON: David Goldman, SPONSORS: Charles Weyland, Marvin Kohl, and Robert Riemenschneider. SUSTAINER: Peter Stanbridge. CONTRIBUTORS: Jay Aragona, Jr., Ken Blackwell, Robert Davis, Linda Egendorf, William Everdell, John Fitzgerald, Ricard Flores and Silvia Pizzi, Mark Fuller, David Henehan, Carol Keene, Karen and Ray Perkins, Tom Stanley, and David and Linda White. LIBRARY NEWS. The Bertrand Russell Society’s Library website will soon have a new web address: www.russellsocietylibrary.com. Members are urged to take advantage of the many audio/visual materials available in the members’ area at the Library website. These include radio and television interviews with Russell on the humanist approach, liberty, religion, human nature, the atomic bomb, and a wide variety of other subjects. Just email Russell Society Librarian Tom Stanley at his new email address, tjstanley@myfairpoint.net, for a username and password to the site’s ‘members only’ area of either the current or future site and spend tonight listening to and watching Russell speak his mind! WRITING FROM THE PHILIPPINES. A new humanist newsletter has arrived – The Freethinker’s Reader. Published in the Philippines, this reincarnation of an earlier effort by the late Joachim Po is now under the editorship of Joshua Lipana, president of the Center for Inquiry, Philippines. The first issue features a devil’s advocate essay on democracy, a page of quotes (ranging from Voltaire’s “Crush the infamy” to Obama’s “Yes, we can”), an essay on Nietzsche, and an especially good one by Poch Suzara, in honor of Jose Rizal. No Russellian could object to what is clearly intended to be a venue defending the secularist position, but a better newsletter would result with better overall writing and a clear idea, once and for all, of how to write Russell’s name: with two l’s, as in ‘spell.’ Matters improve with the second issue – the newsletter is quick on its feet. In essays that focus, e.g., on the battle over reproductive rights in the Philippines, the issue takes aim against religion and sometimes aims low, as in a jokey piece on “natural planning” that recommends practicing a kind of sex it imputes to priests. Despite an uneven tone, the newsletter conveys clearly the frustration experienced by embattled secular Filipinos, giving voice to the dismay of atheists and freethinkers living in the Philippines. The newsletter can be found online at afreethinkerslife.blogspot.com/ or you can order a copy by contacting philippines@centerforinquiry.net. NEW AND RECENT BOOKS. Russell Society member Timothy Madigan’s new book, W.K. Clifford and “The Ethics of Belief,” (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Jan 2009), has just been published. The book is on the noted mathematician W.K. Clifford, who, in his essay “The Ethics of Belief,” argued that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one to believe anything on insufficient evidence.” Madigan describes the historical background and context of this essay, along with its influence (William James’s “Will to Believe” was a response to it) and its continuing relevance. ALSO NEW IN PRINT. The Historical Dictionary of Bertrand Russell’s Philosophy (Scarecrow Press, March 2009), by Quarterly editors Rosalind Carey and John Ongley, which has also just been published, has several hundred entries to provide the reader with access to everything from Russell’s logic and mathematical philosophy to his moral, religious, and political views.
DECEASED. Chicago radio personality, oral historian and author, Studs Terkel passed away on October 31, 2008 at the age of 96. A much loved and energetic man, Studs wrote numerous books – including Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression; Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, and the 1985 Pulitzer prize winner, The “Good” War – and conducted regular interviews on his daily radio show with people from all walks of life, including, in 1962, one taped in England with Bertrand Russell. Mr. Terkel visited the Russell Society at its 2003 annual meeting in Lake Forest, Illinois on the occasion of his accepting the Bertrand Russell Society award. He will be remembered with affection.
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