Miscellaneous

H.I.F. Coming to a childcare center near you: Mom fined $10 by daycare for packing 'unhealthy' lunch [http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/oddnews/mom-fined--10-by-daycare-for-packing-%E2%80%98unhealthy%E2%80%99-lunch-224131736.html] . Excerpt: "Kristin was fined $10, $5

Funny Quotes Max Beerbohm's older brother, Herbert, was a funny guy. Once, when a man walked past him groaning under a grandfather clock he was carting on his back, Herbert said, "My good fellow, why not carry a watch?" (Joseph Epstein, Partial Payments ). ******* Waugh, a stickler

Obama is wrestling with the healthcare rollout debacle. He urged Americans not to be put off by the Obamacare website and offered alternative ways to enroll, such as using the mail. Then the president got on his horse and rode off to spread the news to the next town. The

H.I.F. Sebelius orchestrates media event, visits a healthcare navigator location. The healthcare site crashes while she's there [http://miami.cbslocal.com/2013/11/19/hhs-secretary-sebelius-visits-south-florida-to-meet-with-healthcare-navigators/] . Excerpt: "At a second table, the secretary met Carmen Salero

H.I.F. Interesting perspective (via Lew Rockwell [http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/11/paul-rosenberg/the-catholic-church-abolished-roman-slavery/] ) about slavery, Catholicism, and capitalism. Excerpt: "If you eliminate profit ”“ innovative, rewarding commerce ”“ you get slavery. The form of that slavery may vary from one case to

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. During 2012, my parish raised money to build a community center for a poor village in the Philippines. It doubles as a typhoon shelter. It paid big dividends last week. From USA Today [http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/11/18/philippines-typhoon/3626117/] : "

"Men's activities are occupied in two ways--in grappling with external circumstances, and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind." William James. Really? James captures my existence with those words, but I honestly kind of thought I was alone. Almost

I told Alex and Abbie that we saw Pope Francis twice while in Rome. They didn't want to be outdone, so they sent me this picture they took with him. (It's a cardboard cut-out of the Holy Father at their Ann Arbor church. Even though

A Week in Rome Marie and I went to Rome for our twentieth wedding anniversary. I like to say that because our oldest son is 20, so it raises eyebrows. Marie and I have actually been married 22 years, but we just never got around to doing anything special for