Miscellaneous

Uncommon Valor Heroes are made every day: "Six adults and two young children were inside watching television when the room began filling with smoke. After the children were rescued and everyone made it outside safely, Walter Serpit told WVTM television that he went back inside to retrieve his beer.

St. James Sag I often put books for the season in our family room. During December, there are books about Advent and Christmas. During Lent, books about the Passion. This year, I put out a book about ghosts. The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits by Rosemary Ellen Guiley No one

H.I.F. Good late night According to a new report, more than 700 fake Obamacare websites have been created. Security experts say it's simple to identify the phony sites because they are easy to log on to. Leno Kanye West went to a baseball stadium in San

I've never really understood the appeal of Franz Oppenheimer's The State, yet it is the seminal work of the political worldview I adhere to: the State constitutes a class within society. From this, a person logically concludes that, if you're within the class, you

H.I.F. The best pithy parenthetical of the month comes courtesy of Zero Hedge, which posted today that Ohio does not have enough of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital to carry out a scheduled execution next month. Zero Hedge writes [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-28/ohio-

That's a picture from the Clear Creek Abbey's October grape harvest [http://www.clearcreekmonks.org/news.html]. From their e-newsletter: "The monks of Saint Benedict engage in many forms of manual labor. Recently it was harvest time in our vineyard. We grow grapes of

H.I.F. Apparently no one read new health law very carefully. In two spots, it says tax credits are available for people who buy insurance "through an exchange established by the state." But 36 states opted not to establish exchanges, so is the act effectively dead in

H.I.F. The insightful Arnold Kling breaks down the Obamacare website. The debacle borders on the scary [http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/the-obamacare-suitsgeeks-divide/]: "This is not a technical screw-up, and it will not be fixed by technical people. It is an organizational screw-up.

BYCU A long-time TDE reader sends along this great anecdote about fin de siècle medicine [http://sanduskyhistory.blogspot.com/2013/09/walthers-peptonized-port-sold-in.html] . "Peptonized Port was helpful for 'people who are nervous, cannot stand noise, start at the least unusual sound” and