I’ve recently been rereading “The Trail of Gold and Silver: Mining in Colorado, 1859-2009”. I feel like I should remember this, but I’m struck by how much fraud went into the early Colorado Gold Rush. We talk a lot about fake news and propaganda in the media today, but this has existed for a long […]
Category: Culture
Forming Political Opinions in the Church
Not too long ago, my pastor said something to the effect of “You should really support Israel”. This is my own paraphrase, and it doesn’t do justice to his more gentle demeanor, but it still caught me off guard, as I immediately found myself wondering, “What does that even mean?” Do I support the decisions […]
Specialization and the Exploitation of Skills
We all have limited time on this Earth, and consequently, we all have limits to the skills we can develop. This is not to discourage us from learning in general, or to suggest that we can never be competent at or knowledgeable of a number of things, but it is to acknowledge that life requires […]
Diet Religions, Part 6: Reflections on Heresy
I’m going to make up a series of fictional health claims which I will put in quotes below to begin a discussion on pseudoscience. “Smoking is actually good for you. Doctors used to recommend it, until the government realized that demonizing tobacco would allow them to charge exorbitant taxes on cigarettes. It is a well-known […]
Books on Global Issues
Several weeks ago, the book “Cobalt Red” came to my attention. It apparently details the slave-labor conditions that once again exist in the Congo, a chain reaction to the global surge in demand for lithium batteries, which employ components of cobalt. My gut reaction was to go out and buy it, but as I’ve mentioned […]
Good Success vs Bad Success: Competition, Self-Esteem, and Purpose
It might seem odd to label success as either good or bad, but I think there’s some value in recognizing the difference. But first off, some background. Lately, I’ve been thinking more about a question I had some time ago: how can you choose to reject something and not also condemn it? This is easy […]
Buying “Healthier” Foods
For the past few months, I’ve been buying the expensive “pasture-raised” eggs from the grocery store. I had heard that they generally contain more nutrition, since the diet of the chickens is more varied and natural, and the eggs themselves are therefore greater sources of omega-3s, etc. I also learned to watch out for green-washing […]
Philosophies of Food and Health
Everybody has a philosophy of food. People who say they don’t simply don’t know that they do. Here in the modern world, we are all born, at some point or another, into a political climate that espouses one food philosophy or another, and we are all raised with a food philosophy by our parents; both […]
The Bread is a Lie
When I returned from my first trip to Nepal, I tried to replicate some of the foods I had eaten while I was there. My experiments with chapati failed miserably, but the tea houses in the Manang region had served buckwheat pancakes that I really liked, and to my surprise, buckwheat flour is fairly common […]
Lonely People and Content Creators
Lately, there’s been an annoying trend of YouTube channels producing podcast-style content in the form of “after-show” thoughts and discussions. One of my favorite movie critics now regularly publishes snippets of conversation from hours-long “discussion” podcasts, and produces these far more frequently than he does actual movie reviews. They are sometimes tolerable in such small […]