Public Health authorities across the nation are warning consumers not to eat fresh spinach packaged in plastic bags, due to an E. coli outbreak that has already killed one and sickened twenty. Officials in twenty states have issued public health warnings in the wake of the news.

A spokesperson from the Food and Drug Administration told reporters today that the source of the contamination has not yet been discovered. However there have been reports of sightings near food processing plants of a suspicious-looking large, fat ugly man “with a black beard and a sailor hat on his head.”

Director Peter Jackson appears to have purchased the film rights to a novel series in which dragons are used during the Napoleonic era. Naomi Novik, whose first novel, His Majesty’s Dragon, garnered a bit a praise, has written three books in her Temeraire series. I see that Sarah Weinman likes them, and so does Anne McCaffrey.

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.