Merry Christmas from Turnabout!

A Very Merry Christmas!

Those in the NYC area interested in Catholicism should know about John Rao’s lectures on Church history. He’s thoughtful and knowledgeable, and it’s the second time he’s given the series (last time the complete cycle was 12 years, this time it’ll be longer), so there’s some substance there. Also, you get really good cheese … More ...

Homage to the worst movie I’ve ever seen, combined with a history of the Vatican space program. How can you go wrong?

Here’s a poem I’ve always been fond of that’s not my favorite but I was thinking about it today:

An Immorality (Ezra Pound)

Sing we for love and idleness,
Naught else is worth the having.
Though I have been in many a land,
There is naught else in living.
And I would rather have my

According to Steve Sailer, Wite-out was invented by the mother of Michael Nesmith of the Monkees. (Is this the place to mention that F. A. Hayek was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s cousin? I’m not sure whether it was first cousin or what. And I once had a teacher who was some sort of cousin of Gertrude … More ...

Little known to me, anyway: it turns out that Anna Leonowens of King and I fame was Boris Karloff’s great aunt.… More ...

A fascinating story: someone is said to have sprouted a date seed unearthed at Masada, from a date eaten during the siege there almost 2,000 years ago. It appears that 500-year-old seeds had been sprouted in England, and 1200-year old seeds in China, but this would be the first 2,000-year-old seed.

The dates of ancient … More ...

Random findings of tangential culture-war relevance: the Aztecs really did engage in torture, human sacrifice and cannibalism, just like the Spaniards said, and carbon-14 tests did not show the Shroud of Turin is a Medieval fake (the tests were botched, and it now appears the Shroud is between 1300 and 3000 years old.) The … More ...

Things run into here and there:

• David Burge, the Iowahawk, has an amusing bit on the Rathergate report that takes off on ’40s crime fiction. (You can also look at his Dan Rather/Wile E. Coyote piece if you’re familiar with the cartoon series.)
• On the Rathergate report itself, PowerLine has a discussion that brings out