According to this report, Hillary Clinton “dropped a brick” (as the English say) when she met with her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. She’d had her crack staff put together a joke red button that was supposed to have the word “Reset” printed on it in Russian.

Instead, the word inscribed on the item by the Best and Brightest was one that means “overloaded.”

OK, I’ll cop to it. It’s all my fault.

In their zeal for equal opportunity, the State Department chose not to hire an actual Russian interpreter for this translating exercise, because Russian speakers have an unfair and undemocratic lock on such jobs.

Instead, in a bold affirmative action move, they broke the glass ceiling by hiring a Norwegian translator instead. And that translator was me.

My bad.

The little video Phil posted below advertises a fantasy game set in a sort of imaginary Viking world.

One thing that caught my attention was that the hero wears one of those over-the-shoulder back scabbards.

Allow me to rant about those for a moment.

It would be a falsehood to say that back scabbards have never existed in history. They have. Indeed, the kind of sword Mel Gibson carried in “Braveheart” went very appropriately with that kind of scabbard (although I don’t believe it’s actually the kind of sword William Wallace used).

However, such a scabbard doesn’t work the way you imagine.

You don’t reach over your shoulder and grasp it, drawing it out in a smooth (and cinematically pleasing) motion.

No, if you’re using that kind of scabbard, and you want to get at your sword, you

1) Take the whole thing off. Lift the strap over your head and remove the scabbard completely.

2) Hold the scabbard in your left hand while drawing the sword with your right.

3) Throw the scabbard away, but keep the sword. If you’re still alive at the end of the battle, you can come back and collect the scabbard. If not, who cares? (Scabbards are just a nuisance in a fight, anyway.)

The problem with a back scabbard is that you want two incompatible things. You want the scabbard to stay in place (not sliding down under your armpit so that the point sticks out under your arm) and you want to be able to… you know… actually draw the thing.

The only way to keep the sword from sliding down is to secure the scabbard to a tight-cinched baldric (which will chafe you, by the way), preferably at two points. But if you do that, you won’t be able to draw the sword from that position. The angle is entirely wrong. You can’t raise your arm high enough to get the thing all the way out.

That problem can be solved by making a “short” scabbard (I’ve seen them for sale to reenactors). Such scabbards are only three-sided for most of their length. The outward side is only covered for about the lower third of the scabbard.

The problem with that is that it leaves most of the steel exposed to the elements, which negates one of the main reasons for having a scabbard.

Back scabbards look cool. But don’t believe what you see in movies.