Each year on the arrival day for the AALS Annual Meeting, the Faculty Section of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society holds a conference, and I am on the organizing committee. The conference includes a panel discussion on some topic of broad interest to the members of JRCLS (this year: "Current Frontiers in Religious Freedom Litigation"), works-in-progress presentations, a speaker (today we had Larry Echohawk, my BYU Law colleague who is currently serving as Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior), and a Roundtable (which this year included Christine).

Like most conferences, this one offers a nice combination of learning and networking. Two particularly memorable moments for me: Larry Echohawk gave a moving account of his work with Indian tribes as Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, and one member of the Roundtable denigrated blogs as "a pox on the face of the legal academy" ... just before Christine stepped forward to respond to a question about the role of blogging in developing a national reputation.

During the works-in-progress session, Kaimi Wenger mentioned the word "confabulation," which is, essentially, a fabricated memory. It occurred to me that some fabricated memories could be quite wonderful ... even confabulous! 

Turns out that "confabulous" appears in the Urban Dictionary, though not for the meaning I suggested. If confabulation is "honest lying," then "confabulous" could be a very useful word. When someone tells a farfetched story and you don't want to accuse them of having an intent to deceive, you could say, "that is a confabulous story!" It might even be taken as a compliment.

Conferences | Bookmark

TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8345157d569e20168e5012116970c

Links to weblogs that reference "Confabulous":