An interesting review of Thomas B. Allen’s new book, Tories: Fighting for the King in America’s First Civil War.

For three days four EU commissioners cooked to their heart’s delight under the approving eye of renowned chefs. The event was organised to highlight European cultural diversity.

It’s worth noting, of course, that the “cultural diversity” displayed at such events is of a distinctly Potemkin variety, roughly analagous to the old Soviet custom of regularly rolling out a troupe of folk dancers from some crushed nation or other whenever they wanted to reassure the easily duped that the USSR was indeed a happy brotherhood of free peoples.

Turf roofs in Norway are a tradition and you will see them everywhere. Roofs in Scandinavia have probably been covered with birch bark and sod since prehistory. During the Viking and Middle Ages most houses had sod roofs. In rural areas sod roofs were almost universal until the beginning of the 18th century. Tile roofs, which appeared much earlier in towns and on rural manors, gradually superseded sod roofs except in remote inland areas during the 19th century. Corrugated iron and other industrial materials also became a threat to ancient traditions. But just before extinction, the national romantics proclaimed a revival of vernacular traditions, including sod roofs. A new market was opened by the demand for mountain lodges and holiday homes. At the same time, open air museums and the preservation movement created a reservation for ancient building traditions. From these reservations, sod roofs have begun to reappear as an alternative to modern materials.

From Jesse James to Tony Soprano, outlaws have always held a singular if ambiguous place in America’s popular imagination: we fear and loathe their appetite for violence, yet we envy and covet their freedom. In early 1965, LIFE photographer Bill Ray and writer Joe Bride spent several weeks with a gang that, to this day, serves as a living, brawling embodiment of our schizoid relationship with the rebel: the Hells Angels. Here, in a gallery of never-published photographs, Ray and Bride recall their days and nights with Buzzard, Hambone, Big D, and other Angels (and their “old ladies”) at a time when the roar of Harleys and the sight of long-haired bikers was still new, alien, and for the average, law-abiding citizen, simply terrifying.

A Masculinist View of the Futility of the “Right”

So while the Right deprives itself of the elitist cultural creativity of homosexuals, the Left “accepts” and thus attracts them, but then demands submission to an anti-cultural feminist-socialist-egalitarian “Gay” identity.

Best short profile of Yukio Mishima I’ve ever come across…

Scientists tracing the genetic origins of an Icelandic family believe the first American arrived in Europe around the 10th century, a full five hundred years before Columbus set off on his first voyage of discovery in 1492.

Norse sagas suggest the Vikings discovered the Americas centuries before Columbus and the latest data seems to support the hypothesis that they may have brought American Indians back with them to northern Europe.

“thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now”

A ghost writer of university essays- an “academic mercenary”- spills the beans on the shocking decline of American higher education…

The politics of Pablo Picasso- the self-proclaimed royalist and “apolitical communist”- was rather complicated. He even had a Falangist connection:

This lack of funds played into the hands of the newly created right-wing political organization the Falange and its charismatic leader, José Antonio Primo de Rivera (whose father had endeared himself to Picasso in 1917 by approving of his work). To give the Falange the cultural gloss that Marinetti’s futurists had supplied to Mussolini’s Fascist movement, Rivera—called “El Jefe”—had appointed as his cultural adviser the brilliant, fanatically right-wing Ernesto Giménez Caballero. Formerly editor of the country’s avant-garde La Gaceta Literaria, and a passionate aficionado whose concept of the corrida de toros as a mirror of Spain’s inherent theatricality rivaled Picasso’s, Caballero had transformed himself into the blackest of Catholic bigots. Still, his job was to inveigle prominent poets and painters, above all Federico García Lorca and Picasso, into the Falange. An easy conquest was Max Jacob. A former poète maudit who had converted to Catholicism (with Picasso as a godfather), this superb gay poet needed no coercion to join the Falange cause. Lorca would try to stay above politics and ended up murdered by the Fascists. When contacted by emissaries of Caballero, Picasso initially played it safe.

Aware that Spain’s greatest artist was taking his family on a bull-fighting tour in August 1934, Caballero invited him to a dinner in his honor in San Sebastián given by the Falange’s gastronomic society. Picasso accepted. During dinner, El Jefe proposed a retrospective exhibition in Madrid financed by the Falange. Besides providing a Guardia Civil escort for the works, they would cover the insurance. Thirty years later, to cover up his acceptance of Caballero’s invitation, Picasso told his Argentinean friend Roberto Otero that when Caballero likened his eyes to Mussolini’s, he had taken the next train back to Paris. Untrue. He and his family stayed on in San Sebastián for several days being entertained by the Falange. No wonder Caballero later boasted, to Picasso’s rage, that he had won him over.

Once upon a time, the Fab Four—having slain the pop charts—decided to set their sights on the Dark Lord Sauron by making a Lord of the Rings feature, starring themselves. One man dared stand in their way: J.R.R. Tolkien.

Says it all…

The Vatican has warned bishops worldwide against “deviant” behaviour by a small traditionalist Austrian movement that promotes devotion to angel…

Formed half a century ago in Austria and close to traditionalists, the Opus Angelorum association claims, among other things, that women who have had abortions are possessed by the devil. Present in Europe, Asia and America, it counts about 140 members, including 80 priests, and is suspected of sectarianism.