Super Genius

I get some nice perks for sitting on UM's Arts and Sciences Visiting Committee, and 2 came my way this week. On Tuesday, Wifey and I took Ken and Joelle to my fellow committeeman Lou Appignani's condo on Brickell, for a cocktail party honoring public intellectual Richard Dawkins. Lou's an interesting guy. He's an Italian from Queens, who made tons of money buying and then franchising the Barbizon School for Modeling. I remember their ads on TV when I was growing up on LI. Lou sold the business, and moved to Miami. He was raised a Catholic, and revolted. Really revolted. He became an atheist, and supports lectures and legal fights in church versus state cases. His foundation gives a lot to UM's Philosophy Department, and has become a friend of the famous atheist Dawkins. Lou has a gorgeous place on the 38th floor of the Santa Maria condo, with panoramic views of the amazing Miami skyline and Biscayne Bay. I arrived before Wifey and Ken and Joelle, ordered a gin and tonic (in honor of the English Dawkins) and met a little old man with a big beard and wizard like bearing. He was James Randi -- the Amazing Randi, and mentor to modern magicians and debunker of the paranormal. I had seen him on tv and read about him, and he was a charming character -- out of a Dickens novel, almost. He and Dawkins are friends, and later in the evening Randi did a magic trick -- identifying a passage from a book a guest picked out -- and the brilliant Dawkins was stupefied. As the academic dilettante I am, I loved hanging with the professors and scientists at the party. I met the new Chair of UM's Philosophy Department, and some Psychology Profs, and a neuroscientist who works at Miami Children's Hospital -- whose boyfriend is Sean Faircloth --head of Dawkins Foundation. Sean is another Catholic (he even attended Notre Dame) who is now an avowed atheist convinced all organized religion is the bane of modern civilization. Last night, I used some VIP tickets to the lecture, at the UM basketball arena. There were probably nearly 5000 people in attendance, and Dawkins spoke about the beauty of science, and science of beauty. His theme was essentially that studying beauty just makes it MORE beautiful, not less, as some poets feared. He quoted Darwin, Einstein, and Keats. He speaks in a clipped Oxford accent, in a soft but strong voice. It was the verbal equivalent of listening to James Taylor. I figured he got loads of smart chicks back in the day... Kenny leaned over and said he was a little disappointed -- he thought Dawkins was going to lampoon Mormons. He did take shots at religion during the Q and A session, but Kenny and Joelle had left -- to take their sons home. I read "The God Delusion" and will now read the rest of Dawkins' books. It's a nice experience to be around all that brain power. I spend a lot of time with lawyers -- most of whom just think they're smart...