A reader e-mails: “I wish it would be MORE stodgy. We can do without all the pop cultural referents and make this more like one of Mortimer Adler’s old Aspen Institute jam sessions. Bring on the gravitas!!” Just for the record: Mortimer Adler was half-fool and half-fraud, as was the Aspen Institute. Happily, today the Aspen Institute is now the height of highbrow gravitas, as the “first annual Aspen Ideas Festival” sponsored by the Insitute gets going this July with Queen Noor, Jim Lehrer, Wesley Clark, Jane Goodall, Chris Matthews, Arthur Schlesinger, Colin Powell, Toni Morrison, Cokie Roberts, Charlie Rose, Mort Zuckerman, Steve Case, Kurt Anderson, Nina Totenberg, Ken Auletta, and others. Yes sir, whole lotta ideas there. Ideas, ideas, ideas. I understand Queen Noor and Toni Morrison will be getting together to solve the “ontology recapitulates phylogeny” conundrum, while Charlie Rose and Nina Totenberg will have an encounter that will both continue and supersede Plato’s “Symposium.” (Memo to organizer Walter Isaacson: Ideas are generally not the proper material for “festivals.”)