Flaking, letters and culture talk
Sorry for flaking in my previous post. My first instinct when I start to feel overwhelmed is to cut loose all excess responsibility. In the future, when I feel that way, I’m just going to take some time off from the blog, without a big announcement.
My daughter will begin the year in a half day program, which won’t give me enough time to go to Hartford, demonstrate and come back. When she’s transitioned to the full day program, at a yet to be determined date, I should be able to return to protesting.
Anyway, my last letter got published in a bunch of places, including The Chicago Tribune. My next letter will probably highlight Norway allocating €10 million over five years to develop cultivated meat and precision fermentation. If you’re interested in writing your own letters, give this a read:
Here’s the most recent (Cell) Culture Talk, in which I discuss some of the things I’ve seen and read.
Movie: The Nice Guys. Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe play a private eye and an enforcer looking for a missing woman in 1970s Los Angeles. That plot description sounds pretty serious, but this is actually a comedy. It’s quite funny. Unfortunately, the film disappointed at the box office, so there are no plans for a sequel.
Book: The Lost Religion of Jesus by Keith Akers. Basically, the argument is early Jewish Christianity was vegetarian, and it was Pauline, Gentile Christianity which wasn’t. Pauline, Gentile Christianity was the winning faction which assembled the New Testament, but as a Jew, Jesus’ actual teachings were most likely closer to those of the early Jewish Christians.
I don’t know nearly enough to have an informed opinion on the matter, but I found the book fascinating and much more persuasive than I thought it would be. From what I’ve read, the historical Jesus seems unknowable due to a lack of contemporary records. Still, I kind of want to write a Da Vinci Code knock-off in which the protagonist searches for the lost Ebionite Gospels. It could be fun!