There are quite a few podcasts that I keep an eye on but do not actually subscribe to. One of those is Econtalk, and recently I spotted a couple of things there that looked interesting enough to mark for listening. Rachel Laudan talked to Russ Roberts about the ideas in her book Cuisine and Empire, and as she's an old cyber-friend and previous guest on my own podcast, I was keen to hear what she had to say.
It is with profound regret that we report the final sad demise of Artisan, a noun recently pressed into service well beyond its capabilities. As a young person, Artisan was to be seen practising its trade, making a variety of products in limited quantities, often using methods learned from its forbears Craftsperson and Handworker. More recently, alas, Artisan succumbed to blandishments of the men in shiny suits and lent its imprimatur to several tawdry enterprises as far flung as mousepads and kitchen mixers.
Artisan, absorbed in hookers and blow, was at no time aware of how its hard-won reputation as a mark of singular quality had been undermined by its unthinking endorsement of these activities. Even at the end, it was to be heard defending the right of all products everywhere to consider themselves handmade, no matter how unlikely that was. Individuality, Artisan was heard to mutter in its cups, was no great shakes anyway.
The end, when it came, came with a whimper: the simple phrase "artisan baked bread" attached to a sandwich package that very obviously contained nothing of the sort.
Artisan is survived -- barely -- by heirloom, homemade and authentic.
When it comes to publishing stuff online, especially when you're not doing it for money, some people seem to think that you should create only the things you want to create, that the work you do you do for yourself. And while that's true, at least to some extent, if it were entirely true, why publish at all? Why not just keep it to yourself, and please only yourself? Because having other people enjoy what you have made, and have it sufficiently valuable to devote some attention to it, is immensely rewarding and validating.
Measuring agricultural productivity is easy, right? Kilogrammes per hectare and you're done. But that's almost the least interesting thing the land is producing, or so I thought. Then a tweet passed my way yesterday.
Calories per acre - the new metric to follow.
I saw that because someone I...
In the latest Eat This Podcast, Victoria Young talks about living with, and indeed enjoying, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet™. For those of you who don't know it, this is a very restrictive diet that people claim can reduce the symptoms of ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease and, with time, perh...