The annual Danish Tivoli Fest in Elk Horn, Iowa is history now. I fear it won’t be remembered as one of the best. The combination of a bad economy and rainy weather kept the crowds well down from last year.

As you may guess from this picture (though all the tents aren’t shown), our Viking encampment was also smaller. Which isn’t to say we didn’t have a good time. I’d say we had a very good time. We had a big battle on Saturday, and although I failed to survive any of the skirmishes, I wasn’t physically hurt at all, which is a fairly rare thing. The crowd for the fighting was large under the circumstances, and they were enthusiastic.

I didn’t sell many books.

Still, I consider it a success because I finished getting the footage I wanted for my Epic Book Trailer. Now I’m in the throes of learning film editing on the job. The big challenge will be sound—lots of wind noise in the outdoor shots, which was most of the shots.

I don’t think there’s an audio editor in Windows Live Movie Maker, except for music, though I’ll have to look again.

If I’m distracted for the next few weeks, it’ll be because I’m pondering my challenges as an auteur.

File this under: Super Cool Old Stuff. Old streets, rooms in medieval buildings, and ancient Roman sewers are being opened under Jerusalem for tourist use adding a new sub-level of antiquity to an already ancient city.

South of the Old City, visitors to Jerusalem can enter a tunnel chipped from the bedrock by a Judean king 2,500 years ago and walk through knee-deep water under the Arab neighborhood of Silwan. Beginning this summer, a new passage will be open nearby: a sewer Jewish rebels are thought to have used to flee the Roman legions who destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.D.

To our fallen. I don’t say it enough, but I owe you guys.

Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal, has launched a fellowship to award $100,000 to 24 people who will decide not to attend college for two years and spend that time developing business concepts. This, Roger Kimball writes, “is just the latest sign that the edifice of higher education is looking more and more like the House of Usher.”