HOW A THRILL BECOMES A LAW: Something I drafted and then rejected for the Cato Institute symposium on traditionalism. Beneath this post you’ll find a review of an unnecessarily good horror movie, and some very small kitchen adventures. I want to know what love is. I want you to show me.–Julie Ruin, “I Wanna Know What Love Is” The most important fact to know about the law is this: Law proceeds by analogy. Common law allows us to see this... Read more

THE WORLD IS A FROST GIANT’S CORPSE: I Netflix’d Frozen because of Kindertrauma’s glowing review, and I was not disappointed. This movie is so much smarter than it has to be, you guys. It’s a horror flick about three college students (I think? twentynothings at the most) who get stuck on a broken ski lift, abandoned and freezing and alone, with no help in sight for days. Both Kindertrauma and I expected popcorn, disposable entertainment; both of us got something... Read more

KITCHENETTE ADVENTURETTES: Two quick snacks. Chocolate-covered pears. Procedure: Chocolate-covered strawberries, only a) with sliced (but not peeled) Bosc pears instead of strawberries and b) you don’t have to refrigerate them for more than the time it takes to cool to get best results. results: THE OM NOM NOMMIEST. I scarfed these down. Spinach chips. Procedure: This recipe, only a) I covered my baking tray with parchment paper, and I suggest you do the same; b) it took me longer because... Read more

“THE TWO ROADS TO COURAGE.” Via DLB. Read more

“It makes D.C. sense.”–a friend’s cabbie, in response to a complaint that the quadrant system doesn’t make sense Read more

THE WANTS OF THE RAMONES VS. THE WANTS OF THE MISFITS. Via DLB. Read more

CATO BOUND. My essay on traditionalism is up now. Read more

The brothers praised a monk before Abba Anthony. When the monk came to see him, Anthony wanted to know how he would bear insults; and seeing that he could not bear them at all, he said to him, “You are like a village magnificently decorated on the outside, but destroyed from within by robbers.”—The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, tr. Benedicta Ward SLG Read more

TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY: This month’s Cato Unbound symposium is on “Traditionalism in a Futuristic World.” Russell Arben Fox kicks it off here, and my response should be posted sometime today. James Poulos and John Fea will also respond, and then we’ll blog and argue with one another (and with you all, I expect) over the next week or so. Warning you in advance that I stole the opening quote from Sublimity Now. Read more

FASCINATING NEW BOOK FROM ETHAN LEIB! Friendship is one of our most important social institutions. It is the not only the salve for personal loneliness and isolation; it is the glue that binds society together. Yet for a host of reasons–longer hours at work, the Internet, suburban sprawl–many have argued that friendship is on the decline in contemporary America. In social surveys, researchers have found that Americans on average have fewer friends today than in times past. In Friend v.... Read more