Miscellaneous

Nock Notions A few years back, Jonah Goldberg wrote a pretty good piece about Nock, but I think he missed the Nockian essence. "Nock's greatest mistake," wrote Goldberg, "lay in his fatalism . . . he in effect surrendered to the same consensus that [collectivism] was the '

"Syrian dictator Assad says he may run for re-election next year. In fact, today he went over the results of next year's election and he said it looks pretty good." "Circulation of newspapers has fallen to all-time lows. They say newspapers are becoming obsolete. I&

H.I.F. I've started "Twitter following" The Catholic Thinker [https://twitter.com/ThinkerCatholic]. S/he puts out some great quotes, like this one: “If you live today, you breath in nihilism...it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the

"We do not nowadays refute our predecessors, we pleasantly bid them good-bye." That's Santayana, in Character and Opinion in the United States, around 1920. Things, of course, haven't changed in this regard. Nock pointed out that Henry George was never refuted, just ignored. A

H.I.F. Ryan Basen takes apart the NFL pink annoyance [http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/62332742/]. He says it's what I suspected: just a marketing ploy cooked up between two organizations, except a few large corporations are involved, too. The kicker: some people think it does more

Russell Kirk's autobiography, The Sword of Imagination, is a splendid work. I read it carefully while preparing this piece [http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-05-041-f] ten years ago. For the past decade, the person of George Scott-Moncrieff has stuck in my mind, so much so

A new survey found that only 46 percent of Americans have actually read a book in the past year. Which gets even worse when you hear it was just the instruction manual for Grand Theft Auto 5.

Steyn on Detroit Mark Steyn wrote a great piece about Detroit last summer [http://www.nationalreview.com/article/353959/downfall-detroit-mark-steyn]. I can't believe I missed it. The entire thing is worth reading. Here are just a few of the better passages: "To any American time-transported from the

My gosh, the Cialis commercials sound like the SNL Happy Fun Ball commercial parody.

I'm watching less professional football these days. I'm simply tired of the pink. I've always detested it, but now, after a few years, it has grown tiresome, too. When on the fence of whether to watch, I do something else. Give your feel-goodism a