Humorous
H.I.F.
A few "[Crappy] Today I Learned from Reddit:
When people say "break a leg" they're not actually telling you to break a leg.
If you smoke enough weed, dynamiting a beached whale seems like a good idea.
"Baby carrots" are
Eric Scheske
De Lubac and Nietzsche
"God is dead." Anyone who graduated eighth grade has heard that famous Nietzsche
pronouncement. It makes Christians cringe, but Nietzsche meant nothing by it. He
was merely pronouncing what the rest of Western civilization had impliedly
concluded. He needed to slam shut the book on Christianity so he
(Untitled)
Never Knew That
Writing about Mencken's column, "The Free Lance" in The Baltimore Sun (1911),
Terry Teachout says "Mencken appears to have been one of the first modern
American newspapermen to write a signed editorial-page column in which he
commented regularly on major issues
(Untitled)
An Ass
Theodore Dreiser's The Genius (1915) was "a self-serving obviously
autobiographical novel about an artist whose wife failed to understand his need
to copulate at will with other women." Terry Teachout, The Skeptic: A Life of
H.L. Mencken (Harper Collins, 2002), p. 128.
Interesting, BYCU Version
H.I.F.
For all you beer nerds out there: "Beer Studies: BJCP Classic Example
Scoresheets with Audio [http://www.bjcp.org/course/ClassicStyles.php]." Pretty
extensive effort.
Friday
Kingsley Amis: "Charles Jackson's marvellous and horrifying The Lost Weekend,
still the best fictional account of alcoholism I have read."
I'm going to have to get that book. First, it deals with booze. Second, it's
endorsed by a man of literary quality
Interesting
H.I.F.
A few more from Reddit's Today I Learned
[http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/]:
A black woman in 1828 won a lawsuit against a white man who sold her son into
slavery. She was the first black woman to win a lawsuit against a white
Conan
Marvel Comics is introducing its first major superhero who is a female Muslim.
The female Muslim superhero can fly, which comes in handy because she's not
allowed to drive.
History of Rome
While preparing for a trip to Rome, I downloaded Rick Steves' Rome 2014 guide.
In his (intentionally) comically short history of the Eternal City, he wrote the
following:
> Ancient Rome lasted a thousand years (500 B.C.-A.D. 500), half as an expanding
republic, half as a
GKC
Background: When I was the editor of Gilbert Magazine
[http://www.chesterton.org/explore-the-acs/gilbertmagazine/], I was responsible
for the "Tremendous Trifles" column. It was occasionally hard to find a
sufficient amount of interesting GKC material to fill the page, so John Peterson
sent me a