the educated serf

Reason is a magazine with a fair amount of bluster and intellectual self-importance.  There, I've ruined my chances of ever working for them or making friends with their writers and editors.   I suspect I never had a chance, having gone through only a relatively short Ayn Rand Libertarian phase when I was 17.  Since then I've definitely lacked any enthusiasm for free market philosophy or economics and personally I've not been a very successful capitalist, that's for sure. But I'll take them at their word that their goal is to provide reasoned arguments about critical topics -- and so, I approached this recent piece by Ronald Bailey with a somewhat open mind.  (It was only later that I realized this is the Ron Bailey who champions biotechnology without restraint and thinks global warming is a hoax.  I'm not sure that's a reasonable starting point for someone to consider sustainable practices, do you?).    Bailey argues that food miles are a bad way to judge...

I belong to a listserv of people who study food and this morning I posted an article that was in the New York Times about how the current nutrition obesity war climate has meant that many schools are banning bake sales as fundraisers. I just got this email from my friend Charlotte, who said: Check out the second picture in the article ...there is a woman teaching a kindergarten class about "good foods" versus "bad foods". Apparently chocolate is a bad food, and its at war with sushi, which is a good food. And ice cream is a BAD food? Who knew. I thought it was yum yum GOOD and full of healthy things like MILK. I was so distressed by the good V. bad lesson and then I realized that it's from the very same school where Saskia will probably be going ...! Here is what I wrote back to her and our other friends: Ah, California, where sushi is good but gay marriage is not. When Zoe was little (Esme was probably too small to remember it much) we used to do what ...

Pumpkins for Change My apologies for my absence.  Perhaps I can backtrack at some point and talk about the bat mitzvah, cooking for 100 people, having all the Massachusetts people, the Pennsylvania people, and the families from all over in one place, watching Zoe rock out in amazing style, and all the rest.  There are even a bunch of dog stories with philosophical underpinnings that are begging to be told.       But right now it's the culmination of living in Pennsylvania in this presidential election year that has dominated my thinking, breathing, feeling self.   Perhaps, also, it's the long term effect of having my personal political history dominated by Bushes and Reagan, of living in NH and PA and watching people vote on self interest rather than collective good, and of missing Massachusetts, where progressive is a good word. I can't describe how we felt last night, watching Obama become presidential.  I almost never speak of a "we," especially in terms of fee...