I actually feel pretty good today, considering the fact that all I’ve got to blog about is bad news.

First of all, my desktop computer is having its mail forwarded to the repair shop over in New Hope (or Crystal. It’s often hard to tell in this part of town). Whenever I try to start it, Norton GoBack reboots it and tells me to run ScanDisk. But I can’t get in to run ScanDisk because GoBack keeps rebooting it.

The good news is that I still have my laptop. But the laptop can’t get DSL without talking to the desktop, so I’m back to 1990’s technology. (“Might as well send smoke signals,” he said, as he repaired his eyeglasses with tape.)

(Late update: I’m actually posting this after 10:00 p.m., because I couldn’t find my password to get in to use this blog on this computer. Phil and the developer finally rescued me.)

More than a bummer: I live in Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District. That means that there’s a very good chance that my next Congressman will be Keith Ellison, Nation of Islam member, reputed anti-Semite, radical lefty and scofflaw. Who says we Minnesotans aren’t ahead of the curve?

Finally, Aitchmark sent me this link from National Review’s Corner, about how Norwegian soldiers in Afghanistan not only aren’t allowed to fight, they aren’t even allowed to go into the deep end of the pool.

This is utterly unworthy of the descendants of the Vikings.

It appears they’ve reinstituted what I believe was called the Doctrine of the Broken Gun. T. D. O. T. B. G. was Norway’s official defense policy before World War II. It was a shining example of the real-world insanity of cuddly idealism.

The theory was, “The best defense is no defense. If your gun is broken, and everyone knows your gun is broken, nobody will ever attack you, because there’s no honor in beating an unarmed opponent.”

What didn’t occur to the theoreticians is that people sometimes attack you for reasons that have little to do with honor. They’ll attack you because they want your ports, or just because you’re an easy target.

In 1940 they learned just how wrong the doctrine was.

Apparently they need to learn the lesson again.

Andrew Klavan nails it (again) today in a 9-11 memorial essay over at Libertas. He ponders why contemporary moviemakers aren’t able to handle heroism as filmmakers used to:

…realism is mute when it comes to describing the best of what we can be, of what life can be. And this partially crippled form of communication is the prevailing style of serious cinema. You could almost say that we know a film is serious by how “realistic” it is. Conversely, when we see true faith and true heroism in movies, we feel we’re in the presence of rank sentimentalism, of powderpuff family entertainment. We feel that it must somehow be “unreal.”

I tried to decide what I’d post today, and had a hard time coming up with anything that would add much to the illumination available elsewhere. In the end I decided to repeat myself. A while back I posted my translation of a fable called “The Three Ages,” by the Norwegian writer Johan Borgen. It was first published in 1946, and intended to help his countrymen remember the lessons of the Nazi invasion and occupation.

Needless to say, the Norwegians have already forgotten it pretty much completely. But the lesson of the fable stands.

The Three Ages

The lion and the lamb were grazing side by side one day. The lamb said to the lion:

“What age do we actually live in, Lion?”

“Age?” said the lion. “We are alive, isn’t that enough? Anyway, the age we live in is always our age; otherwise we aren’t alive.”

The lamb thought that over a bit as they went along and nibbled grass in the bottom of a little valley.

“You are wise, Lion,” he said, “and of course you are right in that the age we live in is our age—at least for us. What I meant was that I’ve always heard that there are three ages: a past age, which was beautiful, but cruel; a present age, which is merely cruel; and finally a future age which will be so peaceful that the lion and the lamb will graze side by side. I heard it from a wise old ram, and that was why I believed that this is the future age.

Then the lion bit the lamb’s head off and said:

“Now that you remind me of it, I guess it’s the past age after all.”

Jesus said in Matthew 24:23-27, “At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or, ‘Three he is!’ do not believe it…. For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west so will be the coming of the Son of Man” (NIV).

The plain purpose of this passage, of course, is to warn believes about false messiahs who still show up fairly regularly to say, “I’m Christ Himself and I’ve come back in secret.”

But I think there might be a secondary meaning. It’s just plain reckless to imagine that the Kingdom of God has come already, that we have brought it about through our own wisdom and moral progress. We’re still in the present age, our enemies don’t just want a hug, and the emperor does not bear the sword in vain.

First of all, I’d like to make it perfectly clear that I do understand the irony of the spectacle of a blogger of my temperament complaining about somebody else’s blog being depressing.

It took me a few hours, but I did get it eventually.

Today (right on time, the State Fair being over and the kids being back in school) was the first day of autumn. Not in calendar terms, but in terms of the nuance in the air. It didn’t get up to seventy today, and most of the time it was cloudy. Today was winter, phoning in its reservation. We’ll have more warm days, but they’ll only be temporary reprieves, Indian-giver Summer (I apologize for the ethnic slur, but the line was too good not to use).

Picking up again the subject of male-female differences, this fascinating story comes, like so many good things, by way of Blue Crab Boulevard. Has any woman in the history of the world ever tried a stunt like this (OK, Luci Ricardo might have, but she was a fictional character)?

And what do you bet that a dozen Hollywood sitcom writers aren’t working this into scripts at this very moment?

Say, wasn’t there a guy named Phil who used to hang out around here?

The subject of National Review’s Corner came up today in an e-mail exchange. I mentioned that I’ve stopped reading it pretty generally.

This was a sad departure for me. Ever since 9/11, the Corner was my favorite online hangout. Intelligent conversation from smart, well-informed people who knew a lot of stuff. What could be better? I even e-mailed the columnists and got replies once or twice. And one time Jonah Goldberg posted a Norwegian translation I did for him.

But the grape has raisined. Nowadays, you go to the Corner to get a good depression on, as an excuse for binge drinking. First I started being irritated with John Derbyshire’s knee-jerk pessimism and Anglican-tinged lukewarm religion, blended with fervent scientism.

Then Heather MacDonald started coming in to attack theism.

And Jonah Goldberg doesn’t seem to show up much anymore. And when he does he’s not as funny.

And they’ve all decided the war is lost.

Spare me.

If I want dysphoria I have a large stock of my own, thank you very much.

Also a little depressing: an interview Dennis Prager did today. It was with Marianne Legato, professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University and author of Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget. Her theory is that men and women’s brains (in general) work very differently, and that in order to get along they need to take those differences into account.

Overall, I like this thesis very much. Any defense of innate sexual differences is Gershwin to my ears. No problem there.

The problem was in something she said about how men and women argue differently. Women, she said, play arguments over and over in their heads after it’s done, and tend to get angrier. Men, once they’ve blown off their steam, walk away and forget about it. They actually feel better, having enjoyed a nice spritz of adrenalin.

Here’s my problem: I’m just like a woman in this. I don’t feel better after arguments. I obsess over what the other person said, and what I’m sure they meant, and what I should have said.

Guys, help me out here! Is she right? Do you forget arguments as soon as they’re done? Do you in fact feel better afterwards?

Tell me I’m not an utter wuss.

Blast. Still a couple weeks until my next chance for live steel combat. And that’ll probably be the last one of the year.

I do feel better after that kind of fight.

Hit me with an axe, somebody.

Maximum comfort weather in Minnesota today. Warm but not tropical—a little above eighty, low humidity. Summer has mellowed, like a drunk at a party who’s passed through the stage where he’s telling everybody what he really thinks of them, looking for a fight, and is now sitting quietly in a flower bed, saying, “Man, I love you guys. You guys are so great.”

Summer has lost its edge. The days are kind.

But I’m not taken in. I’m not fooled. I hear, in the background, the voice of Mother Nature (who, as far as I can tell, has much the same character as my own mother) saying, “You like it cooler? I’ll give you cooler. Just wait a couple months.”

Strawberries taste like summer to me. I know a lot of people reserve that distinction for watermelon, but I never liked watermelon.

I never liked raspberries either. One of the chief distinctions between my brother Moloch and me has always been that he likes raspberries while I like strawberries. Recent research indicates that people are born with different numbers of sweet or sour receptors on their tongues. If you have a lot of sweet receptors you’re sensitive to sweet, and will prefer sour. You’ll be a veggie eater. If you have a lot of sour receptors, on the other hand, you’ll prefer sweet. You’ll truly appreciate the wonders of the strawberry, and be forever barred from appreciating the virtues of its raspy cousin.

I buy Driscoll’s, of course. Until they showed up, you had to grow your own to get anything in this country that could come close to the wonders of Norwegian strawberries.

From Front Page Magazine, this review by David Forsmark of the new book Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War.

Here is one of Philbrick’s most valuable points: Despite the priggish image perpetrated by the scoffers — including the first revisionist, novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne — the Pilgrims were adaptable people willing to compromise in order to live in peace despite their strict code and religious outlook.

Now that looks like a worthwhile read.