Got a flu shot tonight. The first of my life.

Flu shots are another of those items that I’ve always categorized as “for old people.” I’ve always figured I’m tough enough to survive the flu.

But I got the flu last winter, and my reasoning changed to, “Yeah, I could survive the flu, but I, uh… would have a problem working it into my busy schedule.”

On the plus side, from all I’ve read over the decades, the flu vaccine seems to only be correctly targeted about once every three years.

More news below, for those of you who never get enough of listening to middle-aged men describing their ills… Continue reading If you’ve got a minute, I’ll show you my surgery scar too! →

The Internet Monk has a great rant on Halloween here.

My position is, basically, I agree with him. But I fear we’ve gotten to a place where it doesn’t matter anymore. The holiday has been coopted by the occultists–largely because we allowed it to be.

Hat tip: The Thinklings.

Here’s a thought that won’t be of any help at all.

Due to my remarkable decrepitude, I can remember all the way back to the 1950s (it occurred to me recently that, since I was born in 1950, and 1950 was technically part of the decade of the 1940s, I was actually born in the ’40s. That’s cool. It explains that whole Bogart vibe I give off) and I remember when the culture war was very different.

When I was a kid, there was essentially only one pressure group trying to keep people from smoking. That was evangelical Christians. We considered smoking a sin, second only to the mortal sin of drinking. Or maybe dancing.

If you weren’t around back then, you can judge what I say by looking at old movies. Everybody smoked back then. Mothers smoked while feeding their babies. Waitresses smoked while serving meals. Business offices were as smoky as Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh was as smoky as Vesuvius on a bad day. Considering how dangerous they tell second hand smoke is nowadays, it must be a sign of God’s favor that any Boomers are still alive at all. Continue reading Never mind, then →

What columnists or bloggers do you read for political opinion or insight on the news? Do you read the writing of those you disagree with? I confess I don’t read any columnist regularly. I take in Olasky, Belz, Seu et al with World Magazine, both online and in print. I’ve gone to The American Spectator occasionally for comment on specific pan flashes. But I don’t look to anyone for contrary opinions and turn on NPR once in a blue moon. It would probably serve me well to understand opposing arguments, but I don’t have enough interest in it–at least, I haven’t had enough interest. How about you?

I’m going to be speaking up in Fargo, North Dakota next Saturday. I’ll be giving a PowerPoint presentation to the annual meeting of the Georg Sverdrup Society. G. Sverdrup was a prominent Norwegian Lutheran educator around the turn of the 20th Century. He was the chief intellectual of the Lutheran Free Church movement, a (pretty small) movement to merge Lutheran theology with congregational church government.

Only a small portion of his writings have been translated into English, and a major purpose of our little society is to translate his collected works. I’m editor of the journal, and I’ve been asked to do a talk on the subject, “Problems in Translating Georg Sverdrup.”

I like to use a lot of pictures in my PowerPoints, and here’s one I’m using to illustrate a point I won’t bore you with just now:

Continue reading Hoist up the John B.’s sail →