Science writer Erick Vance asks why conservatives aren’t in favor of or proposing solutions to deal with climate change. Isn’t it an issue right up their alley? Conversation ensued.

I plan to see Max McLean’s production of The Screwtape Letters this weekend in Chattanooga. It should be terrific, probably even convicting.

Looking for that perfect Christmas gift? Look no further. Despair.com offers gifts “for the person who has everything, but still isn’t very happy about it.” Here’s a great suggestion for the business executive or the corporate stooge in your life. Get him the Demotivation lithograph, which says, “Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all of the unhappy people.” Or the Worth lithograph: “Just because you’re necessary doesn’t mean you’re important.”

Priceless.

Here’s an interesting puzzle that’s got people in Viking studies scratching their heads these days. If you go to this link at the Old Norse News blog, you’ll see a picture of a little silver figurine recently unearthed by archaeologists near the ancient royal site of Lejre, in Denmark.

The figure is seated on an elaborate throne. If you look closely, you’ll note that a bird sits on each arm of the throne.

Now Snorri Sturlusson’s Prose Edda, our chief source of information on the Norse myths, tells us that the god Odin had a throne in Asgard, and that he kept a pair of ravens, Hugin and Munin, who flew out every day to get news of the world, and then flew back to light on their master’s shoulders and whisper what they’d learned to him. Obviously, this figurine is a pretty good match for Odin. It even seems to have a damaged eye, and Odin was one-eyed.

The problem is that the clothing is clearly female.

What does this mean?

One possibility that comes to my mind is the obvious joke—it might be Odin in drag. One thing we know about his cult is that he was associated with a shamanistic ceremony called seið. There are numerous indications that seið was generally performed by women, and that men who participated in it were deemed to have performed a kind of unmanly act, comparable to sodomy.

Perhaps that’s the meaning of the figurine. Maybe Odin has changed genders to perform a seið. Purely a guess, from someone who has no great love of Odin.

One thing to bear in mind when studying Norse mythology is that, when Snorri wrote the material in the Prose Edda down, he was under the Church’s eye. He was purposely making the case that one could study the old gods academically, without falling into heathen practices.

Which makes it likely he left some stuff out.

This is the 700th anniversary of Alnwick Castle, the second largest inhabited castle in England. The Northumberland Earls and Dukes have lived here since 1309. This is also the location for some of the filming of the Harry Potter movies.

Kurt Schlichter, an Army guy, of Big Hollywood gives us a list of recommendable movies staring characters in the U.S. Marines.

Wednesday is Veteran’s Day, first observed as Armistice Day because on that day World War I ended. “World War I, then normally referred to simply as The Great War (no one could imagine any war being greater!), ended with the implementation of an armistice [temporary cessation of hostilities in this case until the final peace treaty, the infamous Treaty of Versailles, was signed in 1919] between the Allies and Germany at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of November, 1918,” according to a history page on the U.S. Army’s website.

Continue reading Socialism: Perpetual Civil War →

I got off a line today that I thought was pretty good. Over at Threedonia, Mike Kriskey had posted a link to this article about all the trouble scientists have been having with the Large Hadron Collider. The article quoted Dr. Holger Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute, who, along with Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan wrote a series of articles over the past year and a half in which they (semi-seriously) suggested that the project wouldn’t work because God “rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”

I wrote in a comment that, according to recent reports, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is drafting a resolution to bestow its blessing on Higgs particles.

Well, I thought it was funny.

What a nice weekend. I don’t think I’ve been able to say that a single time before since last winter. Finally now, when the kindly part of the year is almost past, we’ve actually gotten a stretch of good days.

Saturday was especially nice for me, as I did absolutely nothing in the way of chores or maintenance (except for washing clothes, which is a Friday night job and therefore doesn’t count). Instead I spent the afternoon with four other Vikings at one of the guys’ houses, training for live steel combat. We have a new guy, a college student, who seems to be as unhappy as I am to be stuck in this millennium, and was champing at the bit for some cold steel action.

But it was a good exercise for all of us, and did my spirit a world of good. Afterwards our host made hamburgers and brats, and we watched the almost good Viking movie, The Viking Sagas (better than most on authenticity, weak on story, characters and acting). It was the kind of guys’ outing I haven’t had enough of most of my life, because of my peculiar tastes and interests. How bully to have a gang of like-minded sociopaths to hang out with in my old age.

On this day, the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall:

(via The Heritage Foundation)