Yesterday our friend Ori sent me a link to an article (which unfortunately appears to have disappeared from cyberspace) on the custom of dueling, a tradition which (as you know) is of some interest to me.

The author’s thesis (making some use of game theory) was that the duel of honor was more than a ritualized method for obtaining personal revenge. It served a legitimate economic function in cultures where modern banking was unavailable, or where private borrowing remained a recourse for gentlemen in desperate circumstances.

In other words, imagine you’re a gentleman who sometimes needs a short-term loan, and your only source of credit is to borrow from another gentleman.

Now, imagine that someone publicly calls you a liar. Continue reading Dueling for dollars →

I made it through the Festival of Nations, and now I remember why I usually skip it. This is the most exhausting way to spend three days just sitting around that I can think of (other than suffering through a Human Resources seminar).

Somehow it seems even more tiring than Minot’s Høstfest, though that’s longer. On the other hand, it has the advantage of being only a half hour’s drive away. But human interaction exhausts me, as I’ve whined before in this space. And the Festival of Nations is a twelve-hour day, 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., in a concrete bunker without sunlight. Like Hitler’s Last Days, with “It’s a Small World” piping in the background.

We Vikings were ensconced in our usual space, a sort of wide place in the corridor just off the vendors’ hall. Out of the way from one perspective, but a lot of traffic went by. I worked on tooling my leather trinkets—bookmarks and wrist bands—and sold a few of them, plus a moderate number of books. Nothing to write my publisher about, but enough for me to feel I hadn’t entirely wasted my time. Continue reading Multicultural me →

I won’t be posting as usual tonight, because I’ll be at the Viking table for the Festival of Nations at the River Centre in St. Paul today, Saturday and Sunday. Stop by if you’re in the neighborhood. I’ll be back Monday.

In another milestone in the United Nations’ march toward a finer, freer world, the world body has “elected” Iran to a seat on its Commission on the Status of Women. Here’s the story from FOX News.

NEW YORK — Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged “immodest.”

Let’s pause for a moment to savor the bittersweet irony of this.

It’s a classic U.N. Compromise – “We have something for everyone! For liberals, we have enthusiastic support for abortion on demand. For conservatives, we have the stoning of women. Everybody should be happy!”

It’s hard to make anything like meaningful statements about “world opinion” and “international sentiment” (which is one of the basic problems at the core of the whole U.N. enterprise), but it seems to me a lot of the world (especially Europe) is counting on perpetual Islamic hatred for the United States to keep them out of the terrorists’ sights.

But this won’t last forever. Eventually, either because America has stood firm and scared the jihadists off, or because it has succumbed to dhimmitude, Islam will turn its eyes on the rest of the non-Muslim world (or, as it’s called in the Koran, “The House of War”).

And then, “the world community” will either have to man up and defend what they think of as their values, or say goodbye to their sexual experimentation, “gay” rights, feminism, and secularism.

It occurs to me that I probably ought not to worry as much as I do about the advances of social liberalism in America. They will almost certainly be stopped in time, either by a resurgence of Christianity in this country, or by the substitution of Shariah.

Tip: Townhall.com blog.

Photo credit: Getty Images.

I’m not much use today, I’m afraid. A drowsy numbness pains my sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk. Slogged my way through work, and then drove home knowing I ought to mow the lawn, but pretty sure (I was correct) that I didn’t have the energy to do it.

I woke up last night a little before 3:00 a.m., to the sound of someone pounding on a door. I’m not sure it wasn’t my door, but in any case it’d stopped by the time my head was clear. I pulled on some clothes and went out and looked around, but saw no sign of either Paul Revere or the Angel of Death. So back to bed, and insomnia (as is my wont when my sleep’s disturbed in any way at all). Got up again. Checked email and Facebook. Finally grew tired again and managed a couple hours more sleep before the alarm went off.

So instead, just a link to Mitch Berg at Shot In the Dark, who came out with this gem today:

Our father in heaven:

In the past year you took away my favorite b-list cheesecake actress, Britney Murphy. You took away my favorite libertarian-conservative columnist, William Safire. And you took away the inventor of one of my favorite guitars, Les Paul.

I just want you to know that Barack Obama is…

…still the worst president of my lifetime. Don’t take him…

Read the rest here.