Sphinx

The Berliner Antike-Kolleg has recently put out a call for volunteers, both for participants and for organisers, for an Altertumswissenschaft-Slam! (or, as they more prosaically put it, an altertumswissenschaftlichen Science Slam. Why is there always this science envy..?). Sounds great fun – though probably something more for Young People, or at least more extrovertedly enthusiastic people, or at any rate people who remember to include the occasional joke in their presentations – and it did lead me to wonder about other possible competitive academic events, not least because today I was doing the ‘impromptu 10-minute response to three conference papers not previously seen’ thing at the European Social Science History Conference in Valencia. Freshly-squeezed Valencia oranges, superb seafood, the wackiest craft beer you will find (Beer with rosemary and rosemary honey! Beer with sea water!), and a lot of ancient Roman network theory; wish you were here…

Obviously some discretion needs to be exercised – the equivalent of the IOC deciding that bridge doesn’t qualify for the Olympics, but without the bribes that led them to include football and tennis instead. So, endurance events are excluded on the basis that they are (a) very boring for the spectactors and (b) too easy; no ‘longest overrun of 20-minute slot despite numerous warnings from increasingly frantic but excessively polite chair’, and no ‘longest self-interested peroration in guise of on-topic question’. We should rather be rewarding speed, agility and precision. Most interesting theoretical critique (>30″). Most devastating rejoinder (ditto). [Incidentally, we’re going to need weight classes, so ECRs don’t get matched against professors, or at least not until later rounds]. Neatest sidestep of potential awkwardness. Most courteous dismissal of idiocy. And obviously a whole set of separate events for the Twitter field…