… then grow it yourself. From scratch. That’s the modest proposal Meghan Laslocky makes here. As yet there is no sign of outrage. What’s wrong? Have all the tone-deaf people abandoned the Internet at once? So cute I could just … Continue reading →

Okay this is off topic, but my profile of San Francisco politician/police commissioner/future icon Theresa Sparks just came out in San Francisco Magazine. I suppose it is on topic if you stretch to consider how people use the term natural … Continue reading →

An interesting paper came out last week in that delightful wellspring of whimsy – The Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (not actually one of the many periodicals I follow). It made a splash because the authors were … Continue reading →

If anyone is feeling confused about health care it’s probably because you haven’t listened to the This American Life episodes on the topic. They did a great job. And I say that as a reporter who is doing work on … Continue reading →

A fun essay by Dennis Overbye. I love it when science finds itself forced to confront first principles, it happens all too rarely. Often, scientists are like these lonely dwarfs, chipping away at the end of some tunnel that has … Continue reading →

painting/Robert Shetterly I’m reading Wendell Barry’s “The Unsettling of America.” He writes: “The modern mind longs for the future as the medieval mind longed for Heaven.” These are the sort of profundities that he’s able to jot off (with ostensible … Continue reading →

One of the great things about living in San Francisco is that every once and a while I’ll come across a prospect that just lifts me a bit, as if I’d achieved aerodynamic properties for a fraction of a second. … Continue reading →