MY INTERNET TIME runs out soon and I want to get downstairs to the book display before lunch, so this will be my last Atlanta post. But I do want to mention what an energizing and reaffirming experience this conference is. I've spent most of the last few months in a room by myself slaving over a book that deals with extremely difficult historical problems - the longer I work on them the more I realize how difficult they are. Sometimes I've felt discouraged. So it's been great to be here and to have conversations on the plane, in the PSCO session, and in the hallways with people who know the subject and who see the point of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it the way I am. As I said earlier, they have alerted me to texts I didn't know about. Also, the process of talking through a project with other people who are working in related areas is in itself helpful: verbalizing and summarzing what I'm doing makes me think it through again and distil the important points for myself in ways I hadn't before. And hearing about their projects sometimes gives me new angles on mine.

That's the real point of conferences (which, of course, is not to say that drinking and gossiping are entirely irrelevant), and it's something you can't get just by posting the papers online, much as I approve of doing that too. For that reason I don't think we'll reach the point of fully virtual conferences any time soon, if ever. At least I hope not.

By the way, I haven't had the patience to correct the time given in these entries, so they still reflect the Scottish time zone. Subtract five hours from all Atlanta entries to see what time I was actually posting them.

Look for me again on Wednesday.