Miscellaneous

. . . who asked for a book recommendation in the field of political philosophy: > I couldn't remember the book that really “hit me” and made me think, “Shi'ite, those libertarians are probably right after all.” All my life, I had disliked libertarians, primarily because Ayn Rand was

This is a historical truth that is slowly taking form in my mind: today's nations are a myth. The State, in the interest of developing central power, created the idea of the unified-in-purpose, one-language, nation that needed to be protected and advanced by a unified central government. In

From Reddit's Today I Learned page: "TIL that Johnny Cash, while working as an Air Force radio operator in Germany intercepting Soviet broadcasts, was the first American to report the death of Joseph Stalin."

Miscellaneous Rambling I've returned from vacation. All-in-all, it wasn't a good one. Great people, but no activities that really interested me and shabby accommodations. And worst of all: I got there and realized I'd brought myself with me, which is a sure recipe for

Theodore Dalrymple was apparently two hours from my house last month but I didn't know it. I doubt I would've made it to the lecture anyway, but I would've liked to have had the opportunity. No matter: His speech is printed here [http://imprimis.

Nassim Tale: “Never listen to a leftist who does not give away his fortune." Enter leftist Gene Nichol [http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/18167/]: > A controversial, outspoken law professor who frequently bashes Republicans and specializes in poverty issues as a self-proclaimed champion of the poor earns $205,400

I was never a Michael Jackson fan, but I mastered the moonwalk under the tutelage of another stock boy while working at K-Mart as a teenager. I didn't realize the move had been invented thirty years earlier. Here's Bill Bailey:

BYCU For those TDE readers who are in the dating world, this is for you: 40 Catholic Pick Up Lines [http://www.lauramcalister.com/2014/02/10/catholic-pick-lines/]. Some of them are pretty lame, but my nineteen-year-old daughter had identified these as her favorites: I'm no Joseph”¦ perhaps

A piece of rock 'n' roll history was sold yesterday. Some of Bob Dylan's handwritten lyrics from 1965 went up for auction and got $2 million. Paying $2 million for Bob Dylan lyrics is a good way to know that Bob Dylan would have hated you

Kontent from the Kindle "Georges Simenon," Nassim Taleb observes in Antifragile, "only wrote sixty days a year, with three hundred days spent 'doing nothing.' He published more than two hundred novels." In the same chapter, Taleb wrote: > [T]he great French poets Paul