A Random Passage "In the hall outside the Rothschild offices in nineteenth-century Paris, it was claimed that a man took off his hat when the Baron de Rothschild's chamber pot went past. Prestige can have that kind of effect on people." Joseph Epstein, Snobbery.

Body and Soul "Bodies are mutually attracted by nearness, knowledge, and pleasure but souls by distance, mystery, and suffering." Such thinking could trend into Cartesian dualism, which undermines the sacramental nature of existence, but it's always important to reassert that the soul and body are not

Even though both Israel and Hamas fired on one another during the five-hour humanitarian period yesterday, the U.N. secretary general said both sides "mostly respected" the cease-fire. That's like leaving the house without pants and saying you're "mostly dressed."

Here's an article about the surging hard cider market [http://www.cleveland.com/drinks/index.ssf/2014/07/cider_finding_its_refreshing_n.html#incart_river_default] . Excerpt: > "Cider is made just like wine, but you drink it by the pint," said Richard Read of

After Nigeria was eliminated from the world cup, the Nigerian captain personally offered to refund all the expenses of fans that traveled to Brazil. He said he just needs their bank details and pin numbers to complete the transaction.

Bullets I'm using today's main post to clear out some links I've been meaning to blog about. Most come from Listverse: Pope Joan is Number 3: "10 People Who Achieved Great Things (Despite Never Existing) [http://listverse.com/2014/06/18/10-people-

Brazil's coach resigned following the country's historic 7-1 loss in the World Cup last week. He says he wants to spend more time focusing on not being murdered.

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

H.I.F. Not just interesting, but stunning. I can't believe these stats [http://news.msn.com/us/government-report-finds-23-percent-of-americans-gay-or-bisexual] saw the light of the mainstream media's day: > This year's National Health Interview Survey was

Many years ago, I read that T.S. Eliot wouldn't read Flannery O'Connor's fiction because he found the violence too unsettling. The idea of avoiding a mode of entertaining for such a reason had never occurred to me (in my arrogance, I probably figured