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Monthly Archives: July 2023

The devil now polls 58 percent in America

Monday, July 31, 2023

But which one is the devil? “The Devil presenting St Augustin with the Book of Vices,” Michael Pacher, 1435-1498 There probably is a way to do the math, but my back-of-a-napkin estimate is that, at the current rate, the Enlightenment will have arrived in America in about 942 more years. The Washington Post has an […]

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Outsourcing is now an option

Sunday, July 30, 2023

I grew the tomatoes on the upper shelf. The tomatoes on the lower shelf were part of my weekly vegetable pickup. Technically, where I live is a food desert. The nearest grocery stores are about twelve miles away. A shocking number of rural people get most of their food these days from dollar stores such […]

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Feasting your inner pet

Monday, July 24, 2023

Lentil-barley burger with fixin’s Just in the last ten to twenty years, we’ve gotten a whole new insight into how to use food to keep ourselves healthy. That new insight has to do with our microbiome. For much longer than that, we’ve known that antibiotics will do serious harm to our digestive systems. Even so, […]

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Vigil

Sunday, July 23, 2023

After watching all nine seasons of “Masterpiece Endeavour,” I found myself in a serious state of Endeavour withdrawal and was desperate for something just as good to watch next. I considered the 1980s series “Inspector Morse,” but it seemed a little too dated (though I love the red Jaguar). I checked Shaun Evans’ filmography and […]

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Why so much chatter about UFOs of late?

Monday, July 17, 2023

Source: Syracuse NewTimes, 2015 There has been so much media buzz about UFOs lately that even conservative pundits such as the New York Times’ Ross Douthat have written columns such as “Does the U.S. Government Want You to Believe in U.F.O.’s?” Ezra Klein, also at the New York Times, recently had a podcast with the […]

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Must we rethink alcohol?

Sunday, July 16, 2023

From “Masterpiece Endeavour,” Season 2: Morse in a pub Only a few years ago, the “experts” told us that a certain amount of alcohol actually was good for us — say, two glasses of wine a day. In the last year or so, that has reversed, and now we encounter article after article saying that […]

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Into the woods, and more each year

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Click here for high resolution version Fifteen years ago, after I cleared an acre of elderly pine trees for the house, the landscape looked like a huge red gash in the earth. I moved as fast as I could to restore ground cover and to start planting. Growth takes time, but nature moves fast. Though […]

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Much to think about

Sunday, July 9, 2023

End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration. Peter Turchin, Penguin, June 2023. 352 pages. It seems to me that most publications, and most of our useless and accursèd pundit class, are doing their best to ignore this book. I think I can see why. The political punditry don’t like to bother with […]

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The upside of summer

Thursday, July 6, 2023

Dandelion pesto, made with Gorgonzola cheese Summer pesto: One of the best ideas I know for making the best of summer is: Eat more pesto. Already this season I’ve had pestos made of basil, kale, dandelions, and mixtures including parsley, dill, cilantro, and thyme. I was afraid that the dandelion pesto would be bitter, but […]

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