The faithful Christian looks around the table, sees who is sitting with him, and he loves them. The fellowship and thanksgiving sanctify whatever is on the table — and pretty much anything can be on the table. If we can get it down, there is not much that gratitude can’t sanctify (1 Tim. 4:4). The …
Underlying Assumptions About God’s Grouchiness
Let me simply note that the American people have a deep faith in certain things that actual science cannot touch. We can measure this faith by looking at the areas in which our politicians and regulators are allowed to hassle us, and the areas where we will not allow them to speak reassurance to us. …
Sex Doll Android Upgrades
Let us imagine a particular woman, residing in Beverly Hills, and she is quite attractive in that prefab way that some women have. But her remarkable tan is fake bake, and her hair is a species of blonde not found in nature. Thirty percent of her chest area comes to us courtesy of chemical researchers …
Surly Almost
Back in the 1920s, everybody knew that fillintheblank was bad for you. In the 1950s, they knew the opposite thing, that something else was good for you, say, fillinanotherblank. In some instances, we still think the same thing as they did, and in others we think something completely different. Gone are the days when a …
Farms With Their Own Zip Code
In chapter 8, “All Flesh Is Grass,” Michael Pollan introduces us to Joel Salatin, a “Christian-conservative-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic farmer” (p. 125). When all is said and done, Salatin sounds like a fun guy, like someone who has made his small farm productive in multiple ways, on multiple levels. So three cheers for him, in the most neighborly …
We Are All Vegans Now
I am finally resuming my hiatus-ridden review of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Let’s all hope that I quit getting distracted. Chapter Seven is on the “Fast Food Meal,” in which Pollan demonstrates that he is a fine writer, fluid with prose that is easy on the eyes. I often think he is just crazy nuts, but …
An Epidemic of Hot Water in the Morning
I had been working my way through Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma when I was, as I put it, overtooken by events. Having hacked my way through those events, I am now prepared to return to the pleasant task of enjoying Pollan’s prose and personality, and the less pleasant task of pointing out his wowserism. …
No Profit
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Food and Drink #9 “Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein” (Heb. 13:9). The author …
Nothing Wrong with Little Bugles
This is not writer’s block, but I don’t have a lot to say about Michael Pollan’s next chapter either. In this case, it is because the kind of stuff that others find scary I find pretty mundane. Either that or pretty cool. In this chapter Pollan describes the processes that cause food to be called …
Let Us Not Inquire About the Chitlins
In his next chapter, Pollan does yeoman’s work in putting us off our feed. He does this by taking us to a feedlot in Kansas, an animal city where multitudes of cows are fed corn until the day of slaughter. In the olden days, it took 4-5 years before a cow was slaughtered. Now we …