My good friend Chad has a review of the great documentary King Corn up on his blog right now. Check out the review, and I also recommend watching the movie if you get a chance. For those of you with Netflix, you can watch it online with their watch it now feature.
Posted by: jackslife | July 9, 2009
Corn is King!
Posted in agriculture | Tags: agriculture, food, health, king corn, netflix
Posted by: jackslife | July 9, 2009
The Place of Away We Go
Susan McWilliams has a great post up on FPR about the movie Away We Go, and the commentary on American placelessness that can be found in the film. Beth and I went to watch Away We Go a couple of weeks ago, and I think it was the best movie I’ve seen this year. Susan’s commentary on the movie is spot on, as is her warning for those who are easily offended. This was the funniest movie I have seen in a long time, and the situation that the couple finds themselves in is all too familiar (except for the parents running off to Belgium).
Beth and I have talked about trying to decide where we will settle down and try to start a place for the family, but I can’t help but wonder if the exact same process will just start all over again with my children someday. It’s depressing to think about.
Posted in art | Tags: away we go, front porch republic, place
Posted by: jackslife | July 7, 2009
Vote for Ian!
It’s time to right the wrong that was Ian’s exclusion from the All-Star team in the AL!
Posted in Sports, Uncategorized | Tags: all-star game, baseball, ian kinsler, texas rangers
Posted by: jackslife | July 7, 2009
Picken’s Plan Stalled
Thanks to my lovely wife for sending me the link to this story on Good Magazine about the halt in T. Boone Pickens’ plan to built the world’s largest wind farm. I completely agree with Good’s take on this. Smaller, local solutions are a far better option in this case, as in most others.
Posted in Technology | Tags: good magazine, t. boone pickens, energy, green, wind power
Posted by: jackslife | July 7, 2009
My Chicken Shops at IKEA
Rod linked to a post on the IKEA Hacker website that shows how one clever person created a chicken coop out of leftover IKEA parts. Pretty ingenious.
Posted in agriculture | Tags: chickens, crunchy cons, ikea, rod dreher, urban agriculture
Posted by: jackslife | July 6, 2009
Organic Label Not Worth the Paper it’s Printed On
Rod posts about a WaPo piece on the joke that is the USDA Certified Organic label. People are paying a premium for “organic” products that are not organic at all. This just reinforces the need to localize the food system so that people can actually know the people producing their food. You might still get something that you aren’t expecting, but I like my chances of getting quality food that is what I’m expecting from the local farmer a lot better than from some industrial supplier with an “Organic” label.
Posted in agriculture | Tags: agriculture, crunchy cons, food, organic, rod dreher, usda, washington post
Posted by: jackslife | July 2, 2009
Shop Class, Omnivore’s, Crunchy Cons
Rod has a post responding to a book review in the Atlantic. The review is mostly about Shop Class as Soul Craft, but it also references Crunchy Cons, and the Omnivore’s Dilemma. Good stuff.
Posted in Literature | Tags: crunchy cons, matthew crawford, michael pollan, omnivore's dilemma, rod dreher, shop class as soulcraft
Posted by: jackslife | June 29, 2009
Chores and More
Sharon Astyk drops some wisdom on us from her blog. Even though I don’t yet have children, I have been thinking about this type of thing for a while now. I like her system of some chores being done, just because you are a part of this family, and some being remunerative. This is something that I had already been thinking about doing with my kids. I think it balances the fact that the family must all contribute to the work at home, but also showing that a worker must be worthy of his/her wages.
Posted in Parenting | Tags: chores, Parenting, sharon astyk, work
Posted by: jackslife | June 29, 2009
Brave New World
There is a great post up on the Crunchy Con blog about one of my personal favorite dystopian novels, Brave New World. His take on it is fairly similar to mine. I’ve always found Huxley’s version of totalitarianism more likely than Orwell’s, at least here in America. Huxley puts forward a dystopia of our own making, one that we willingly accept for the sake of our own comfort and satisfaction. The hedonistic world that Huxley creates seems far more likely in America than the one that Orwell proposes in 1984.
Posted in Literature | Tags: aldus huxley, books, brave new world, dystopian, Literature
Posted by: jackslife | June 25, 2009
Matthew Crawford on Colbert Report
Matthew Crawford, who wrote a great book that I read recently called, Shop Class as Soulcraft, recently appeared on the Colbert Report. Check out the video here.
Posted in Culture | Tags: books, colbert report, matthew crawford, shop class as soulcraft
