I’m enjoying the enlightening discussion of Flannery O’Connor’s stories on Jonathan Rogers’ blog. You may remember that I wrote about being disturbed by “The River” last summer. That’s the story for this week, and the group has open my eyes to this terrific work. It’s still disturbing, but it’s disturbing like a Reformed pastor’s smack-down now. This will likely be one of favorite stories from now on.

Has Google effectively taken telecommunications full circle with it’s new Google Tap? With three buttons, space, dot, and dash, Google’s app offers you the ability to send morse code to your friends.

Waitaminute… this is an April Fool’s Joke? I feel used.

I’m suffering from a sort of delayed drive lag today. Considering that my trip to Stromsburg, Nebraska was eight road hours either way, nearly 1,000 miles all told, I came home feeling surprisingly vigorous. I gauge my depletion by how hard it is to unload Mrs. Hermanson, my Chevy Tracker, when I get home, and it wasn’t too bad. Today I’m kind of dragging my feet and taking extra time to make simple decisions, like “Shall I zip up my trousers or not?” but all in all I came away with a good feeling.

Stromsburg, Nebraska calls itself “the Swede capital of Nebraska.” In spite of this, I saw no actual acts of violence committed against Norwegians during my time there. This was their annual Swedish Festival, and in my opinion it was a very impressive one, especially for a community of that size. They generally have a Viking encampment as part of the festivities, and I gather this year they tried to make it an extra large and impressive one. Unfortunately Viking attendance was down. On the upside, they had me.

Continue reading A sojourn among the Swedes →

Kevin Schut argues that games are good. They are similar to books in that they create new worlds for us. “But creative play, mental challenge, narration, and imagination in today’s games are similar to what we experience when we learn to paint, ride a bike, or bake a non-virtual cake. That’s not to say games should take over all the time we spend on those things! It’s not an either/or equation.”

Everything matters, but watch your time.

This is curious. John Cotter holds the magnifying glass over the reviews of Toni Morrison’s new book, Home. Is it a rich, emotional book or is it not quite what reviewers hoped to read? Perhaps some of these reviewers are suffering from their own expectations? Sometimes when you expect to see the really, really, really awesome and see merely awesome, you’re disappointed. Santa has set me up like that many times.

Tonight, a couple links, courtesy of Facebook friends.

First of all, by way of frequent commenter (and my de facto e-publisher) Ori Pomerantz, an open letter to the Bishop of Exeter, in England, from Telegraph columnist James Delingpole. The bishop, apparently, promoted a plan to erect two wind turbines in a rural locality, and is now offended that his plan was rejected (with some rather rude comments).

What surprised me about your letter was that a man intelligent enough to have gained two degrees (one from Cambridge) and canny enough to have risen to the not totally immodest heights of the Bishopric of Exeter should yet be puzzled as to why his flock might object to having a hideous pair of bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco-crucifixes plonked next to their tranquil North Devon villages.

I like the “bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco-crucifixes.”

I love this sort of thing—when it’s in service of my own opinions, you understand. It’s what I tend to write, and then (usually) not post. Sarcasm is my native tongue.

Not generally a very effective tool in debate, though. In my experience.

And my old roommate, Brother Brad Day, sent me this link to an article at medievalists.net, describing recently discovered 11th Century documents from Spain, detailing ransoms paid to Vikings for kidnapped women.

In the second case, which is found in a document dated to 1026, a man named Octicio describes how his wife Metilli and his daughter Guncina, were captured by Vikings in the same area. In his account, the women were released from the Viking ships after he gave them “a blanket of wolf skin and a sword and one shirt and three scarves and a cow and three modios of ground salt.”

I’m always happy to read of prisoners being ransomed. The whole slavery business is touchy stuff for any Viking enthusiast. Kidnapping and extortion are so much more civilized.

Interesting to hear of Viking successes in Spain too. Most accounts usually concentrate on the great raid of 968, which was pretty disastrous and ended up with the Moors hanging Norsemen from every palm tree in the city (I forget which city it was).

Forbes criticizes many useful words and phrases used by the utilitarian linguists in corporations around the world, great words like empower (“the most condescending transitive verb ever”), best practice (“pompous confection” from consultants), core competency (“Do people talk about peripheral competency?”), and take it to the next level (a reference to Super Mario Brothers).

I agree with most of this, but sometimes even these words and phrase can communicate appropriately, and while we may not choose to write with them, we don’t have to snark at those who do.

If you’ve ever noticed the email link in our sidebar for contacting us without leaving a comment on a post, it gives you the email address dnifriend at yahoo. Over the years, only one person has asked if that’s a reference to Cyan Worlds and their classic Myst games. Yes, it is. Thank you for asking. The D’ni are the ancient people of those stories.

I mention it today because I found the Internet Archive of a site I designed, wrote most of the content for, and collected the rest of it. It was called Rawa’s Home, a tribute to Richard Watson of Cyan Worlds. I probably still have all of the files for that site, but I can’t say at the moment. I need to do more new stuff. Looking back feels weird.

There will be no scenes like this, filmed on the Hardangerfjord in Norway, in the History Channel’s miniseries.



If I had cable TV I’d be all excited about the miniseries on the Vikings they’re filming for broadcast on The History Channel next year.

I trust it’ll show up on Netflix eventually.

Of course, if the final product follows the hallowed tradition of previous Viking movies, it’ll probably stink like a Saxon in summer in any case.

This article tells us that Gabriel Byrne, the Irish actor, has signed to play a character named “Earl Haraldsson” in the series.

The casting part is fine. Byrne is a good actor, and generally elevates any project he participates in.

The name “Earl Haraldsson” bothers me, though.

The news item doesn’t make clear whether this guy is supposed to be a Viking or not. One assumes he is, because Haraldsson is a Viking name.

The problem is that it’s not a Viking first name. “Haraldsson” is a patronymic. Not exactly a last name, but it serves the same function, differentiating a particular person from all the other guys who share his first name.

And we’re not given the first name. This makes no sense. “Earl” is a title, and ought to be followed by a first name. We don’t say “Queen Windsor.” We say “Queen Elizabeth.” If you have an earl, you’d call him “Earl Sigurd” or “Earl Olaf” or some other first name. And then, if you needed to, you’d add the patronymic, “Haraldsson.”

This choice of name (unless it’s just a case of bad reporting) bodes ill for the historical accuracy of the miniseries. If the writers are naming characters this way, then they just don’t get it, and aren’t listening to the technical advisors (note to Hollywood: I’m available for that gig).

As a sidelight, I also saw an article recently on a Norwegian news site (can’t find it, and you couldn’t read it if I could), which complained that the History Channel people had wanted to film at least part of the miniseries in the fjords of Norway (as Kirk Douglas did with his The Vikings movie [see clip above], back in the fifties). But production costs were just too high, so they’ll do the whole thing in Ireland.

Do you understand this, liberals? Big government is the enemy of art!