In Vitro Meat

When Winston Churchill, in the 1932 essay “Fifty Years Hence,” mused that “we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium,” he may have been more prescient than credited. Alexis Carrel had already been keeping a cultured chunk of chicken heart “alive” in a Pyrex flask for the past twenty years by feeding it nutrients (though Carrel was only interested in whether cell death was inevitable, not whether meat could be grown in a lab for human consumption). Sci-fi author Frederik Pohl was one man who took the idea of in vitro meat seriously enough to write about it – in the novel The Space Merchants, where cultured meat is the primary source of protein. That was science fiction, sure, but most good sci-fi is borne of the author’s honest opinion of what the future might hold and it’s usually inspired by the scientific advancements of the day. And sometimes, science fiction comes true. Like this time.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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Diet as Dogma

People are dogmatic. We’re territorial, stubborn, obstinate, and we cling to our ideologies even as accumulating evidence invalidates them. I sometimes wonder whether there’s evolutionary precedent for this apparent character flaw – did stubborn dogmatism confer some benefit to our ancestors? Did our tendency to cling to one another, to shy away from that which opposes or clashes with our current paradigm (whether it be a new tribe with different practices encroaching on your land, or a guy you meet at a cocktail party with completely different political views) make us safer? To a point, yes. Being wary of anything new promotes better survival than a tendency to rush headlong into foolhardy pursuits. There’s certainly that human legacy of fear of the unknown, and it normally manifests as dogmatic belief and cognitive dissonance. That much is obvious to anyone who watches the news or picks up a history book.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

93

Dear Mark: Insurance and Alternative Therapies

One benefit of the national debate over health insurance is the spotlight on health care itself. I don’t pretend to have the answer to the political quagmires, but I have to say I’ve enjoyed the deliberation (most of it anyway). Most of all, I appreciate seeing health care issues hashed out in a wide public forum. (I’m holding out hope that it will lead to a real discussion of genuine health itself. A few public figures have tried to steer it that way to little avail so far.) While politicians and talking heads bicker and vent, I tend to take more interest in the stories of independent-minded people who’ve learned to steer the system in their favor, those who’ve fought it tooth and nail and those who’ve checked out of it altogether to go their own route. (Gee, no one fitting that description here … wink). In the last year I’ve gotten a good number of emails from folks trying to do just that – navigating the health care system and their insurance companies as they take charge of their health and buck CW in favor of what they consider more effective interventions that complement their Primal journeys. Here’s one such message…

Posted By: Mark Sisson

62

Diggin’ a Hole to Install a Ladder to Wash the Basement Windows

Picture a house with absolutely filthy exterior basement windows, the kind that just barely peek out above ground level. The owner can’t see through the things, and they need a thorough washing. He could grab the bucket and a rag and squat or kneel down to commence cleaning. He could make it easy on himself, but for some bizarre reason, he doesn’t.

Instead, he spends the entire day slaving away with a shovel and a pick axe, hacking at the earth to loosen it and shoveling the loose dirt out. A deep hole appears, about eight feet in depth and wide enough to accommodate him and a ladder.  In goes the ladder, and he follows with the wash bucket and rag. Dirty, grimy, sweaty, and disheveled, he ascends the ladder to finally reach the basement windows. He manages to clean them, but his alternate self in a parallel universe – that guy who decided to just kneel down to wash the windows – has clean windows, a killer tan from spending hours at the beach doing pushups and sprints, a couple racks of ribs on the barbecue, and a nice glass of Cab paired with a wedge of French brie. He enjoyed his day, while the ladder enthusiast had to work for hours just to arrive at the same point.

At the end of the day, the windows are clean in both instances. But which method made the most sense? Which method featured a whole lot of redundant BS, and which method allowed for plenty of free time?

Posted By: Mark Sisson

39

Is the Primal Blueprint a Type of Asceticism?

Last week, MDA member Bobbylight posed a pretty poignant question in the forum: is the Primal Blueprint an ascetic lifestyle? As you’ll see from the actual post, he basically answered his own question (he agrees that the PB, by definition, is not asceticism, but his particular brand of the PB has gradually morphed into a kind of personal journey away from material pleasures; a “food as fuel” mode of asceticism), but the concept of asceticism gives me a jumping off point for a larger issue that needs addressing.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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