Jennifer writes:

Let me just say that the UCLA campus is HUGE, and the event was dispersed throughout the entire facility. And more importantly, it is free, and big names such as Gore Vidal, Danica McKellar (Winnie of “The Wonder Years”), Maria Shriver (my Govanatah’s wife), Padma Lakshmi (of Bravo’s “Top Chef” and former wife of Salman Rushdie, lucky bastard), and Ray Bradbury were attached this year.
I arrived at 10:30 and waited on the stand-by line for the panel, “History: Crisis Points,” moderated by Elizabeth Taylor (no, not that Elizabeth Taylor) with guest speakers Patricia Goldstone (“Aaronsohn’s Maps”), Lynn Olson (“Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England”), and Zachary Karabell (“Peace Be Upon You: Fourteen Centuries of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Conflict and Cooperation”). I met some nice people, such as John, who as it turns out is a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Irvine and gave me recommendations for classes in his field at UCLA. We got it.
Goldstone’s book, from what I gathered, chronicles the life of Aaron Aaronsohn, who saw the Jordan River as the best border of Palestine. She offered that investigating Aaronsohn was a difficult task, since there were many gaps in classified documents. Lynne Olson’s book, which she co-wrote with her husband, is about Tory rebels in Parliament who saved the West by seeking to replace Neville Chamberlain with Winston Churchill. Olson recalled the trepidation she experienced when anticipating her first major review. Yet if I had only one recommendation to give, it would go to Zachary Karabell, whose book deals more with peace than with conflict, and points to successful instances of coexistence in history as possible models for how nations could behave today to achieve similar results. And peace doesn’t have to be one group’s profound recognition of the others beliefs, with a universal religion or political/economic system; peace can also be construed as practical, mutually beneficial interactions not resulting in bloodshed. But Karabell acknowledged that humans have a tendency to only remember negative events – he says years ago, after teaching one semester to a class of twenty-five students, he can only remember his singular negative evaluation, with no memory of the twenty-four positive reviews he received.
The second panel I attended was called “Science and Culture.” Fascinating and well…entertaining! The panel was moderated by M.G. Lord — author of “Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science,” and “Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll,” —who was quirky and hilarious (the sort of person you’d want as a strange aunt). The authors included archaeologist Brian Fagan, whose book, “The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations,” documents the effects produced by a 1-degree rise in the global climate during the Medieval centuries. He said he will scream if people continue to ask him to choose sides (in the great global warming debate…is there still a debate about this?) – that there is a general trend toward drought and that it is not a question of whether or not it will occur, especially here in North America, but rather of how we will choose to deal with life in a dryer world. Another author, Gino Segre, promoted his book “Faust in Copenhagan: A Struggle for the Soul in Physics,” which chronicles a meeting with renowned scientists in around 1932, led by Niels Bohr. Dava Sobel, author of “The Planets,” discussed the debate presented in her book of what constitutes a planet, after Pluto’s woeful demotion in 2006; should Pluto remain a planet because of its resonance in culture despite the fact that it doesn’t meet other planetary requirements? Sobel is also working on a play about Copernicus, in order to divert attention from Bertolt Brecht’s play, Galileo, which she hates. Douglas Hofstadter presented the audience with his latest edition, “I Am a Strange Loop,” which he has also affectionately named “I Is a Strange Loop”; it deals with what “I” really means and brought a philosophical edge to the panel. Hofstadter also coined new phrases in his book, such as “thinkodynamics” and “statistical mechanics.” M.G. Lord remarked, after his five minutes of promotion were completed, “Well, it’s not like you’re tackling something ambitious.” This panel was recorded for purchase (audio only) from the L.A. times website, I believe…I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND giving it a chance.
After the second panel, it was nearly three. I had a lengthy discussion with two elderly ladies about the changing workplace, fashion (“These baggy shorts the kids wear have these ridiculous pockets all over them…you can’t even iron them!”), and of course, their grandchildren. At about four I returned home —sweaty, tired, but glad that I went.