Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to press candidates for high U.S. courts on their opinions of most of the amendments and clauses in the Constitution. Elena Kagan favors censorship, no doubt of only those ideas she disapproves. What other unconstitutional ideas does she support?

Today is Syttende Mai, Norwegian Constitution Day, the chief national holiday in the beautiful country of my ancestors. Congratulations to all our Norwegian readers.

My Norwegian flag is flying.

Photo credit: Getty Images.

I’ve begun to microblog and tweet here. I’m already cranky.

Stuart Brown talks about the science of play and why we need to keep playing as adults.

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 →

The City, a publication of Houston Baptist University, has its Spring edition out using zmags.com as a delivery platform. Read it here, and note the poem, “Fairy Tale Logic” by A.E. Stallings.

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.