Yes, I'm still alive.

I've survived my first attempt to teach a continuing legal education seminar to a class of other lawyers (got to be a tough audience); even got some applause at the end. The topic? Oh, yeah: "Ethical issues and the use of the internet." Any questions?

Meanwhile, my wife, the archivist, has given me the schedule for the lectures in the spring 2008 session of the Richardson History of Psychiatry Research Seminar at the Weill Cornell Medical College. They all look very interesting. For those of you in the New York area, these lectures are at 2:00 p.m. on the day indcated, in the Baker Tower Conference Room F-1200, 525 East 68th Street.

January 2, Bradley Collins, Ph.D., Parsons School of Design, "Dysfunctional Holy Families: Loss, Rage and Desire in Renaissance Images of the Virgin and Child."

February 6, Dana Rovang, Doctoral Candidate, University of Chicago, "Habeas Corpus: or, why John Haslam will never get his due."

February 20, Sabine Arnaud, Ph.D., Texas A&M, "An imaginary and fantastick sickness? The narrativization of hysteria in eighteenth century French and English medicine."

March 5, Rev. Curtis Hart, M.Div., Weill Cornell Medical College, "William James' 'The Varieties of Religious Experience' Revisited." (No mention of whether nitrous oxide will be provided.)

March 19 (my 62nd birthday!), Siovahn A. Walker, Doctoral Candidate, Stanford University, "Heaven and Hell as Places in the Mind: Three Twelfth Century Witnesses."

April 2, Sander Gilman, Ph.D., Emory University, "Jews and Alcohol: Genetic and Social Explanations for Jewish Immunity to Alcoholism." (This brings to mind a quip by Al Coblenz, erstwhile part owner of the late, great Lion's Head: "We get an interesting clientele: Jewish drunks, Italian intellectuals and Irish lovers.")

April 16, Barbara F. Leavy, Ph.D., Cornell Weill Medical College, "Did Laius Kill Oedipus? The Continuing Debate."

May 21, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ph.D., Princeton University, "A Brief History of Common Sense." (It would have to be.)