PicoBlog

Friends, Today we have a special guest to help us understand why food prices continue to go through the roof: Michael Pollan. Pollan is author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, How to Change Your Mind, The Botany of Desire, and other books. He and Eric Schlosser (whose new piece in The Atlantic, “Do We Really Want a Food Cartel?” is also a must-read), are just out with a new documentary available for streaming now, “Food Inc.

The marriage that Frank and Sue share has been on rocky roads for a while. Frank’s facing some financial trouble which has made cash hard to come by. His wife, Sue, has been trying to make the best of what they are earning together but it never seems enough. The two get into regular arguments and fights that scare little Maureen, their youngest child, next door. One day Sue suggests visiting a priest for some marriage counselling but is immediately told off by Frank.

Hi friends- Before we dive into the mess in Houston, we have some housekeeping: Our book club Zoom discussion for Jane Leavy’s outstanding The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood will take place on May 6, from 5:30 to 6:30 PM PT. Our Long Game book club is for paid subscribers, and I will record the Zoom for those who can’t make it. If anyone would like to buy a signed and personalized copy of my book,The Best Team Money Can Buy,just respond to this email and let me know.

There is one class of machine that once had a vital role in the evolution of computing. Companies grew large and profitable building them. But now they’ve vanished, notable only for their absence, and for the legacy of the software that was originally developed on them. It’s the ‘minicomputer’. A class of general purpose computer that was popular over the period from the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s, a sector where, according to Wikipedia, “almost 100 companies formed and only a half dozen remained.

This is the fifth part of our series examining the image of water in the Bible. Over the next months, we’ll be looking at these verses to follow the image of water as it flows from Genesis to Revelation. This time we’re looking into the depths… at the “that’s no whale” sea monsters that swarm in the abyss. Careful readers of Genesis 1 will notice God makes two kinds of things in the sea on the fifth day: “giant sea creatures” (as the ESV, NIV, and NASB put it) and everything else.

The idea for this post has been knocking around my head for the past month - why do we buy clothes for lives we don’t have? Why do I buy clothes for a life that I don’t have?! We all do it right?! Another sharp blazer purchase when for the majority of the time we work from home. A pair of heeled sandals when we wear them two times max a year when we’re a guest at wedding.

It’s the time of year when our kids are heading back to school, which always has me thinking about our young ones.  So many children in this country are suffering from hunger as well as poor nutrition, which is leading to big health problems … cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and cancer. I am not a doctor or a policy maker, but the National Institutes of Health say that by 2030, nearly 1 in 2 adults in the United States will be obese, and nearly 1 in 4 will be severely obese.

What you’re looking at above is in the top 5 of my most-liked posts on Instagram in the past year. It’s a bit surprising, maybe? There’s no interesting lighting, no “story” as such, no practical effects—there’s nothing of my photography style there at all. What does shout “Four Bricks Tall made this” are the custom medieval fantasy characters that I’m known for in the community (I’ve made over 80 by now).

Beautiful. I can’t say I remember when I first listened to her songs, but I can definitely remember when a song spoke to a moment in my life. Running to red after a tough breakup, feeling enchanted after a quick make out with a cute boy on a cruise that I never saw again, dealing with depression and insomnia with the whole of folklore. When I saw her in Philly last may, I felt such awe and joy there was no way I couldn’t cry.