Here’s a somewhat technical article on disappointments in Mr. Obama’s temporary (I think) appointments to federal positions in arts and humanities. Apparently, one of them is liar and the rest have little arts experience.
Why would anyone want a cabinet level office on American culture? I didn’t think people wanted government in their lives.
I think this comparison is horrendous. Actor Edward Norton says the upcoming Earth Hour, where participants will turn off “non-essential lighting” for an hour for the sake of saving energy and saving the planet, is symbolic just like the march in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, where participants were beaten by police, was symbolic. I wonder Norton thinks the student who stood before the tanks in Tiananmen Square were standing symbolically too.
Got this from our friend Roy Jacobsen, of Writing, Clear and Simple, who lives in Fargo:
If you decide it’s not appropriate for Brandywine Books, I understand; however, if you’d post a request for prayers for the safety of people in the Red River Valley, I’d greatly appreciate it.
They’re predicting a 41 foot crest on Saturday—that’s a foot higher than our last big flood in ’97, and the highest on record. We’re cautiously optimistic, but it’s a near run thing.
It’s appropriate, all right.
From what I hear, they’re having trouble getting volunteers to help with sandbagging up there. I can’t help wondering if that’s partly a result of one of the “lessons of Katrina”–that the federal government is responsible for everything.
For the record, Roy isn’t one of the shirkers. He’s been out filling sandbags, and the weather’s pretty nasty.
“Whenever politicians declare a crisis, or an emergency, watch out. Chances are this means they want to impose something before the public discovers the truth.”
I love this. In Bangkok, a fireman dressed as Spiderman to save an autistic boy who was sitting on a third floor balcony, trying to avoid third grade.
I had a very nice lunch with an old friend on Saturday, but the big excitement was when, for the first time ever in my life, I actually called in to a radio talk show.
It’s not a national show (though they podcast nationally), but you might call it a nationally-known show. Some years back, big-dog talker Hugh Hewitt named several Twin Cities conservative bloggers “The Northern Alliance,” and eventually they commenced a Saturday show on local station WWTC 1280, The Patriot.
There are 3 segments, each hosted by a different team of bloggers, but my favorite has always been “The Headliners,” starring Mitch Berg (of Shot in the Dark) and Ed Morissey (of Hot Air). Continue reading On the air
Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie–Note the one in the middle at the top, “Shears from the Tree of Knowledge.” (snort)
More Viking news tonight. I know this is a book blog, but by thunder I write books about Vikings.
Does Phil write books about coffee? No, he does not. And yet he blogs about coffee.
So I blog about Vikings. Not because I think you want to read about Vikings, but simply in order to bug Phil.
Because it’s really fun to see how coffee drinkers twitch when they’re bugged.
Anyway, my favorite photoblog, Haugelandet.net in Norway, just posted a link to a spanking new web site devoted to the history center at Avaldsnes, Karmøy island.
Avaldsnes, Karmøy island, Norway, is (as you doubtless recall) the home community of my great-grandfather Walker. It was also, for many centuries, a Norwegian royal farm, and is the site of several stirring events in the sagas.
Since the last time I’ve been to Avaldsnes, they’ve opened this history center, concentrating on the importance of that area in the Viking Age, most especially in King Harald Finehair’s (or Fairhair’s) enterprise of beginning the unification of Norway as a single country.
The site is offered in Norwegian and English, although the English section isn’t yet completed. However, if you go to the “News” section, you can read about the big project they’re planning, to build the longest (114 feet) Viking ship replica in the world. Its name is to be “The Dragon Harald Fairhair.”
They plan to have the ship finished and ready for its maiden voyage by May, 2013, at which time they hope to sail it to Paris. (Paris? They hate Vikings in Paris. France is probably the most Viking-unfriendly country in Europe, from all I hear. Ah well. Not up to me.)
Now, if I can just succeed in becoming world-famous as a Viking novelist by 2013, maybe they’ll want me to go along. I’ll only be 62—prime of my life.
It would be physically miserable and also dangerous. But I’d do it in a minute.
Heck, if I died on a Viking ship, I’d go out thinking, “Wow, it doesn’t get any cooler than this…”
One of my mental hobbies, one I’ve been carrying on for years, is to close one eye, peer along the line of recent social trends, and to predict, on that basis, what will come in the future. I built much of Wolf Time on that exercise and, although things have certainly happened since I wrote that book that I didn’t expect, I don’t think any of the things I actually predicted have failed to appear, either as political causes or actual laws (one exception would be the re-legalization of smoking, but that was a metaphor for Something Else. And no, I won’t tell you what).
So I thought that tonight I’d just save us all a lot of time, and pre-transcribe the arguments I expect to hear, not too far down the line, for a number of further changes to law and the social order. Continue reading Change I don’t want to believe in