Dr. Gene Edward Veith gave a big thumbs-up to West Oversea today at his Cranach blog.

Tonight I have Photobucket, so I can explain what I learned over the weekend.

I knew Touchstone Magazine. And I’d heard and read the word “touchstone” many times. I vaguely understood that it had to do with testing the value and authenticity of something or other.

Sam the Viking, down in Story City, the guy who owns the Viking boat, showed me how it actually works. He does some silversmithing, and knows about these things.

Sam and I have similar whetstones. His is a little prettier than mine, but the shape is the same. Here’s mine. Continue reading Touchstone (not the magazine) →

The Global Language Monitor estimates English has a million words now with the last addition being “Web 2.0.” I’m sorry. “Web 2.0” is not a word. It’s a term, and they are not the same thing as words. . . .

Wow, Bartleby.com doesn’t have the American Heritage Dictionary anymore. What happened?

Uncommon Knowledge did an interview last month with Big Hollywood’s Andrew Breitbart in which the voice for conservatives in Hollywood talks about that town’s on-going McCarthism, his personal development, and his plans for the future.

Very Short List recommends an interesting war movie that you may have missed. “The Hurt Locker” focuses on a bomb squad in Iraq and the daily pressure they face when they disarm explosives. Could be good.

I was all set to write something tonight, and it depended on my uploading a photograph. Unfortunately, Photobucket appears to be out of order (it seems to be doing that a lot lately), and I’m flummoxed.

Just got word from my publisher that they’re buying an ad for West Oversea in Ted Baehr’s Movieguide. (No point looking for it, it doesn’t appear to be there yet.) That’s kind of cool, I think. Doubtless it will bring the book to the attention of Hollywood Insiders, and we’ll soon have a movie deal.

My publisher asks, “Where else should we buy ads?”

Any suggestions?

In which Mark Corallo illustrates the biggest problem facing modern movie studios: that juvenile story material is weighted with filthy humor. This is the fruit of the immature men making movies today.

You can’t say this isn’t cool. A tornado team films a funnel cloud turned away from them so that they can film down its spout.

Friday and Saturday were the days for Story City, Iowa (just off Highway 35, south of, oh, I don’t know–Clear Lake and Mason City, by about an hour).

We were in the lot by the Sons of Norway hall as before, but a reconfiguration put Denny and me (the only members of our group who came–the lodge got a discount) behind Sam the Viking and his beautiful Viking boat. The weather wasn’t bad on Friday, but the convection of the crowd currents didn’t bring many people back to us. We were able to spread knowledge to a few young guys who wandered in, but didn’t see a lot of traffic. Continue reading Weekend report, plus exclusive tunic photo! →

When asked to specify what “climate disaster” will be avoided by enacting emissions reduction policies, three experts testifying before congress gave an unclear answer. There’s uncertainty region to region, they said. Perhaps real world results are not what climatologists deal with.

In other news, the forecast for this year’s hurricane season is “unexceptional.” No doubt, we’ll all be dead by the end of it.