Philosophy tastes better with beer

The ever prescient ms. wobs, being the cultural maven that she is, signed us up as members of the Smithsonian Institute (which, as I understand, gets us into the Smithsonians for free... wait a minute). They offer a variety of different activities, and we've decided to sign up for a philosophy discussion group that meets over beers at the Brickskeller. So, for the next six Tuesdays, we'll be swilling brew and discussing the Meaning o' Life with an underemployed philosophy professor from the University of Maryland. I'm imagining it'll be a lot like the Thursdays at High Street that I loved from grad school, but without the annoying departmental politics, the having to feign interest in someone's research in some bizarre backwater of post-structural theory, or the threat of comically horrendous bike wrecks.

Week one will be a discussion of determinism, a topic on which I should be able to hold my own until after the sixth pitcher, wherein the conversation will degenerate into an incoherent stalemate on the relative merits of the humanistic versus the structural Marx.

Looks like I'll have to find a beret and a pack of Gauloises.