Here’s a thought that won’t be of any help at all.

Due to my remarkable decrepitude, I can remember all the way back to the 1950s (it occurred to me recently that, since I was born in 1950, and 1950 was technically part of the decade of the 1940s, I was actually born in the ’40s. That’s cool. It explains that whole Bogart vibe I give off) and I remember when the culture war was very different.

When I was a kid, there was essentially only one pressure group trying to keep people from smoking. That was evangelical Christians. We considered smoking a sin, second only to the mortal sin of drinking. Or maybe dancing.

If you weren’t around back then, you can judge what I say by looking at old movies. Everybody smoked back then. Mothers smoked while feeding their babies. Waitresses smoked while serving meals. Business offices were as smoky as Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh was as smoky as Vesuvius on a bad day. Considering how dangerous they tell second hand smoke is nowadays, it must be a sign of God’s favor that any Boomers are still alive at all. Continue reading Never mind, then →

What columnists or bloggers do you read for political opinion or insight on the news? Do you read the writing of those you disagree with? I confess I don’t read any columnist regularly. I take in Olasky, Belz, Seu et al with World Magazine, both online and in print. I’ve gone to The American Spectator occasionally for comment on specific pan flashes. But I don’t look to anyone for contrary opinions and turn on NPR once in a blue moon. It would probably serve me well to understand opposing arguments, but I don’t have enough interest in it–at least, I haven’t had enough interest. How about you?

I’m going to be speaking up in Fargo, North Dakota next Saturday. I’ll be giving a PowerPoint presentation to the annual meeting of the Georg Sverdrup Society. G. Sverdrup was a prominent Norwegian Lutheran educator around the turn of the 20th Century. He was the chief intellectual of the Lutheran Free Church movement, a (pretty small) movement to merge Lutheran theology with congregational church government.

Only a small portion of his writings have been translated into English, and a major purpose of our little society is to translate his collected works. I’m editor of the journal, and I’ve been asked to do a talk on the subject, “Problems in Translating Georg Sverdrup.”

I like to use a lot of pictures in my PowerPoints, and here’s one I’m using to illustrate a point I won’t bore you with just now:

Continue reading Hoist up the John B.’s sail →

There seems to be some confusion about who won last night’s presidential debate.

In my capacity as Final Arbiter, I shall clarify.

John McCain won. He won strong.

No need to thank me. Just doing my job.

Mickey McLean at World Magazine reports on a Nebraska state senator whose lawsuit against God was recently thrown out of court.

I think I read elsewhere that the senator wasn’t actually in earnest (Gee, you think?), but was merely attempting to make some kind of point.

What kind, I have no idea.

Nor do I care.

Tonight’s the big night. Tonight I get the chance to see the television broadcast I’ve been waiting for, arguably the most important night of TV this year.

I mean, of course, the return of “Pushing Daisies” on ABC.

I wish somebody with Ned’s life-giving touch could give a massage to the McCain campaign.

Olasky writes: “Not only Sarah Palin is running against The New York Times. So is a new musical that opened on Broadway last month, A Tale of Two Cities.“ I wish I could see that play.

The Obama campaign is getting money through false credit card charges (or a supporter is doing it for them). From the Washington Post:

Steve and Rachel Larman, a Missouri couple who vote Republican, told local reporters that they found a $2,300 charge for a donation to the Obama campaign on their credit card statement that they could not explain. Patricia Phillips, a Virginia Republican, had a similar experience, she said, when she opened her MasterCard statement last month to discover a $5 charge from the Obama campaign. “I thought, ‘Oh, my! This is not from me,’ ” she said.

Other donations have arrived under such obviously bogus names as Edrty Eddty and Es Esh.

Isn’t this the kind of thing ACORN does?

First of all, thanks to the folks at the Kråkeelva Lodge of the Sons of Norway, Hutchinson, Minnesota, for their hospitality Saturday evening. They were incautious enough to invite me to speak to them, and to pretend that my PowerPoint presentation on Leif Eriksson and Vínland was interesting.

Speaking of Leif Eriksson, it’s Columbus Day. We Norwegians celebrate Leif Eriksson Day on the 9th, not because we think Leif reached America on that date (he would have sailed as early in spring as possible), but in order to preempt Columbus’ celebration.

Not that anyone notices.

Dr. Gene Edward Veith posts today on an important issue I’ve covered before on this blog—that the old story that says Columbus sailed “to prove the world was round” is complete codswallop. It’s something Washington Irving put into a biography of Columbus (apparently on a day when he didn’t have the energy to walk to the library to verify his information), and school children learned it and believed it for generations.

Here’s a fact—almost every educated person has known the world is round since the times of the ancient Greeks. Continue reading Leif vs. Chris: Grudge match! →

We, the People, may be in serious trouble.

[In a post called “What a Mole,” Patrick] Deneen . . . insisted that the failure of political leaders to call for self-restraint is “an indication of our enslavement to appetites over which we have no control. This latter condition was defined by the ancients as a condition of servitude, not liberty.” In an entry dated October 2, 2008 called “Democracy in America,” Deneen raises questions about the viability of democracy in a culture that eschews limits and self-control. Citing Tocqueville’s insight that democracy was a collection of mores as much as it was a system of government, he reviews Tocqueville’s warning about how the very success of democracy could lead to its undoing.

Here’s another thing I’ve noticed about the magical experience of Høstfest in Minot (a curse is a kind of magic, right?).

I remarked on this while I was there, and a couple different people agreed that they’d had the same experience.

Minot is upwind from everywhere.

When you drive to Minot (at least for Høstfest), you face a headwind.

When you drive home, you have a headwind again.

It’s always like this. Every year.

I’d say that God hates Scandinavians who live east of Minot, except that I half suspect that people who live west of Minot experience the precise same phenomenon.

I suspect that Minot is in fact a vast living creature, an Avoidant one that takes very long breaths. During the days leading up to Høstfest, it expires. And when the festival is over, it sighs (Scandinavians inhale when they sigh).

I had one of the most intriguing conversations in Norwegian I’d ever had, this year at Høstfest. Continue reading No swords for Nazis →