Yesterday our friend Ori sent me a link to an article (which unfortunately appears to have disappeared from cyberspace) on the custom of dueling, a tradition which (as you know) is of some interest to me.

The author’s thesis (making some use of game theory) was that the duel of honor was more than a ritualized method for obtaining personal revenge. It served a legitimate economic function in cultures where modern banking was unavailable, or where private borrowing remained a recourse for gentlemen in desperate circumstances.

In other words, imagine you’re a gentleman who sometimes needs a short-term loan, and your only source of credit is to borrow from another gentleman.

Now, imagine that someone publicly calls you a liar. Continue reading Dueling for dollars →

The City, a publication of Houston Baptist University, has its Spring edition out using zmags.com as a delivery platform. Read it here, and note the poem, “Fairy Tale Logic” by A.E. Stallings.

I made it through the Festival of Nations, and now I remember why I usually skip it. This is the most exhausting way to spend three days just sitting around that I can think of (other than suffering through a Human Resources seminar).

Somehow it seems even more tiring than Minot’s Høstfest, though that’s longer. On the other hand, it has the advantage of being only a half hour’s drive away. But human interaction exhausts me, as I’ve whined before in this space. And the Festival of Nations is a twelve-hour day, 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., in a concrete bunker without sunlight. Like Hitler’s Last Days, with “It’s a Small World” piping in the background.

We Vikings were ensconced in our usual space, a sort of wide place in the corridor just off the vendors’ hall. Out of the way from one perspective, but a lot of traffic went by. I worked on tooling my leather trinkets—bookmarks and wrist bands—and sold a few of them, plus a moderate number of books. Nothing to write my publisher about, but enough for me to feel I hadn’t entirely wasted my time. Continue reading Multicultural me →