David Mills

Rod Dreher links to an  El Pais story about an admirable athlete, the Un-Lance Armstrong . In second place but way behind the leader in a 3,000-meter steeple-chase, Iván Fernández Anaya pulled up when he realized his opponent had thought he’d finished and stopped before . . . . Continue Reading »

I don’t know the details of the Manti Te’o story and am not going to find them, but this exchange between Malcolm Gladwell and Chuck Klosterman  interested me for their reflections on why people believed the story. Gladwell analyzes “the singular genius of the hoax . . . . Continue Reading »

“They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25,” Christopher Tolkien says, explaining why the family declined to meet Peter Jackson. In what’s said to be his first interview , published in  Le Monde , the 87-year-old executor of the . . . . Continue Reading »

“When I consider the hostility of political churches to homosexuality and homosexual marriage, I do so remembering the history of Christian war, torture, terror, slavery and annihilation against Jews, Muslims, black Africans, American Indians and others.” So says Wendell Berry , speaking to . . . . Continue Reading »

William F. Buckley appears on Woody Allen’s tv show to discuss 1967 and other matters . The nine minute exchange is very funny and a fascinating cultural artifact — just look, for example, at how the young people who ask questions are dressed. Thanks to Shmuel Ben-Gad for the link. . . . . Continue Reading »

A small testimony to the universal desire for freedom: “He just got out somehow,” said his friend, who inherited his care from his parents, and who put up “Wanted” flyers all over  his neighborhood, hoping his friend would be found by April by some kind person . . . . Continue Reading »

Rod Dreher reflects on the confession of the sad and pitiable Elizabeth Wurtzel, who described her One-Night Stand of a Life in the January 14th issue of  New York magazine. She begins, as Rod notes, writing what seems to be a confession but ends with (unless she’s being very subtly . . . . Continue Reading »

Funnier to those of us who do this kind of work than to the rest of you, but still worth commending: 4 Copy Editors Killed In Ongoing AP Style, Chicago Manual Gang Violence . . . . . Continue Reading »

A few years ago I picked up at a yard sale held at a local church a copy of  Archy and Mehitabel  by Don Marquis. As I wrote somewhere else at the time, the book contains the amusing letters, published in the teens and early twenties, of a cockroach named Archy who typed them by diving . . . . Continue Reading »

A friend sends the links to three compositions ,  Veni Sancte Spiritus , Christor Redemptor Omnium , and  Creator alme Siderum , by a twenty-two-year-old English composer named Lawrence Whitehead. The composer discusses his writing of the first and latest composition here : My process for . . . . Continue Reading »