Crisis matters.
I say this not just as a person obsessed with what has come to be excused as "news coverage" and not just as an academic for whom continual crisis is the most common student excuse. I say this as a migrainous, aging, introverted scholar suffering among the throbbing millions seething through the streets of Ibiza. I say this as a person for whom Motrin has become a way of life, as a person facing a throng for whom continual crisis has been successfully sublimated into a moveable beast.
Our intentions, of course, were pure: Ibiza is well located for an international conference, and its accommodations are up-to-date. The multicultural flavor of the conference ought, we thought, to be enhanced by such a location. Besides, we had a grant, and that money had to be spent—not easy for Midwesterners used to both self-imposed and government-inflicted austerity.
So, the Palacio de Congressos Ibiza became the place, and amid the flashing lights, the too-bright sun, the foam parties, and the trance music, between the pools of booze and puke on the sidewalk, between the Bieber-aimed punches of Orlando Bloom, some actual conferring took place.