First of all, thanks to Dr. Gene Edward Veith for linking to my book trailer at his Cranach blog. Much appreciated.

But of course, my thoughts are mostly in Norway today. As I understand it, we don’t have a final death count in the bombings and shootings that happened today. But even if it rises no higher than the 15 or so we read about at the moment, bear in mind that Norway is an extremely small country in population–only about 5 million people. Oslo is by far the largest population center, with less than 900,000 inhabitants. This is huge.

My first assumption was that this was an act of Islamic terrorism. Latest reports say that they think the two incidents are related, and officials are downplaying the Islamist theory because the camp shooter was an ethnic Norwegian. Frankly that’s just the sort of thing I’d expect them to say, considering the European reluctance to connect anything violent with “the religion of peace.” European converts to the religion are hardly unheard of.

A group called Ansar Al-Jihad Al-Alami very quickly claimed responsibility. There have also been security concerns recently, due to the decision of a Norwegian prosecutor to put a “refugee” Iraqi named Mullah Krekar on trial for threatening Norwegian politicians.

It’s not unthinkable that a Norwegian neo-Nazi group would join forces with Islamists.

I’ll apologize if I’m wrong, but I still expect further investigation to discover that this is an act of Islamic jihadism.

I worry about Norway all the time. As a culture, they have drunk deeply at the well of Jean Jacques Rousseau, and their characteristic posture in the world, ever since the Viking spirit emigrated to America, has been one of genial defenselessness.

The Art of Manliness makes good points on “How to Be More Civil Online.” Brett & Kate write, “Being a gentleman online simply involves the application of common sense. But anyone who leaves their home each day knows how uncommon common sense can be.”

There are a number of hashtags for writers and book publishing fans on Twitter, and the Christian Science Monitor has a good list of them. A hashtag, btw, is a Twitter tag for the thoughts written there, e.g. #nowyouknow.

Jason Evans is calling for 250-word stories inspired by an image. Deadline in a few days. Prizes are Amazon gift cards. Evans explains how he will judge.

I award up to 45 possible points for the following elements:

Pacing…10 points

Entertainment Value…10 points

Technical Use of Language…10 points

Storytelling…10 points

Voice…5 points

It’s a bit like Iron Chef without Alton Brown. There are already 30 entries.

This song goes out to all the congressmen, president, and presidential staff in Washington D.C. Have fun this weekend, boys and girls.

I think I may have been talking through my hat for months, and only just now realized it.

I was absolutely certain that I’d read reports from archaeologists that they had found skulls in Viking graves whose teeth had had horizontal indentations filed into them, and then filled with gold. Since then, I’ve given many people the benefit of my “insight” that this may be the origin of a statement in the eddas that the god Heimdal had “golden teeth.” Probably a high status thing.

But when I set out to write about it here tonight, I looked for a source, and could find none. There are numerous articles like this, about finding Viking skulls with horizontal filing marks on them, but nothing about gold inlays.

So never mind. These articles tend to make references to modern inlays and “grills,” and perhaps I conflated two separate matters.

The moral of this, if you hadn’t figure it out already, is never believe anything I tell you, even in my areas of expertise.

Sheesh.

To maintain the spirit of the Independence Day holiday, while shrewdly combining it with themes in my Davy Crockett post a couple days back, I thought I’d share a few examples of Crockett’s own prose (or Chilton’s, or Abbott’s). Things that I found amusing or illuminating. Then I’ll draw a vapid conclusion.

From A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee, by David Crockett [and Thomas Chilton]:

“And for the information of young hunters, I will just say, in this place, that whenever a fellow gets bad lost, the way home is just the way he don’t think it is. This rule will hit nine times out of ten.”

“I didn’t think that courage ought to be measured by the beard, for fear a goat would have the preference over a man.”

“We were in a devil of a fix; part of our men on one side of the creek, and part on the other, and the Indians all the time pouring it on us, as hot as fresh mustard to a sore shin.”

“We considered this a good warrant, though it was only in verbal writing.”

“I was determined to stand up to my lick-log, salt or no salt.”

“But I asked a bear no favours, further than civility….”

[Of the political practice of buying drinks for prospective voters:] “…for [politicians] all treat in that country; not to get elected, of course—for that would be against the law; but just, as I before said, to make themselves and their friends feel their keeping a little.”

“I voted against this Indian bill, and my conscience yet tells me that I gave a good honest vote, and one that I believe will not make me ashamed in the day of judgment.”

From David Crockett: His Life and Adventures, by John S. C. Abbott:

“There were some gentlemen that invited me to go to Cambridge, where the big college or university is, where they keep ready-made titles or nick-names to give people. I would not go, for I did not know but they might stick an LL.D. on me before they let me go….”

And finally, a quotation by Abbott himself, which might help to explain why he chose to produce a censored version of Crockett’s own book, though he obviously found the man’s manners and morals unacceptable to the refined mind:

The idea seemed never to have entered his mind that there could be any person superior to David Crockett, or any one so humble that Crockett was entitled to look down upon him with condescension…. And this was not the result of thought, of any political or moral principle. It was a part of his nature, which belonged to him without any volition, like his stature or complexion. This is one of the rarest qualities to be found in any man.

Abbott’s book isn’t worth a lot, but I think there’s some insight there. Crockett was an early example of a kind of American politician which would later be perfected in another son of frontiersmen, Abraham Lincoln. A new thing was happening in America, something never before seen in the world, and I think it’s appropriate to celebrate David Crockett as a political, as well as a geographical, pioneer.

For Independence Day, this rather silly vignette, loosely based, not on an actual event, but on something Benjamin Franklin once proposed in jest. From the film version of “1776,” featuring Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson, Howard Da Silva as Franklin, and the great William Daniels as John Adams.

A happy Fourth to you all!

The Wordsmith’s Word of the Day is focusing on words with meanings that contradict, such as today’s word, ravel, which can mean to entangle and untangle. For example: “Colin Innes, from the Department of Public Works, says the roads tend to get worse in the spring. ‘In the spring here we’ve seen all kinds of failures related to frost boils and things raveling apart and potholes.'”

Right now I’m reading another of my free Kindle downloads; an American biographical work that I’ll review when I’ve finished it.

The story itself is pretty interesting. The manner of the telling, not so much.

The author, according to his Wikipedia entry, was an estimable man. A Christian clergyman, he devoted his life to the production of uplifting literature.

The man can barely stand to go a paragraph without pausing to direct the reader’s attention to the moral lesson. He wants to make very certain that we are never in doubt when he himself disapproves of his subject’s words or actions.

He also shows very little critical sense. He moves from fairly reliable source material to pure fantasy, and doesn’t seem to notice that his subject’s character and manner of speech have changed radically from one source to the other.

In short, he doesn’t really care about the facts. He only cares about imparting moral lessons. Like the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland, he can’t stop saying, “And the moral of that is…”

And it occurred to me, how is that different from the writings of the postmodernists, in most any discipline? For them as well, facts are irrelevant. The point is the narrative. Since truth (they believe) is relative, whatever you say is true, provided it promotes your personal truth.

The only difference is the goal. The old moralist sought to serve an absolute morality.

The new moralist seeks to serve his own private vision, which for him overrides all other considerations.

But in their methods they are identical.