A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Beer

  • Friday Links

    –Marvin on the Presbyterian Church’s decision to allow congregations to call non-celibate gay and lesbian pastors. –Libraries are part of the social safety net. –“I hated vegans too, but now I am one.” –On anti-Semites and philo-Semites. –Mark Bittman asks, “Why bother with meat?” –Jesus and eco-theology. –Jeremy discusses Herbert McCabe and Gerhard Forde on Read more

  • Drinking liberally

    I stopped by my local liquor store this evening in the hopes of getting my hands on a six-pack of the recently launched local beer DC Brau. Unfortunately, they were all sold out and didn’t expect to have any more in stock for a few weeks. (From what I gather, it’s been quite popular.) Of Read more

  • Intelligent dissent on the food movement

    I’m obviously sympathetic to a lot of the proposals of Michael Pollan, et al., but some of what passes for criticism of our system of food production can come across as simplistic, naive, or nostalgic. That’s why I was happy to discover the blog of historian and author Maureen Ogle who, among other things, subjects Read more

  • Green beer – and it’s not even St. Paddy’s day

    Top 8 Green U.S. Breweries I haven’t even tried most of these, though I am a fan of Brooklyn Brewery. (link via my buddy Chris) Read more

  • Sometimes a beer is just a beer

    I agree that Christians should drink beer (I mean, if they want to). But I’m not sure they need to put this much thought into it. Surely what the world needs now is not legions of hipster Christian beer snobs. Read more

  • Extremism in the defense of beer

    Great story about the rise of craft brewing in the US, focusing especially on Dogfish Head Brewery in Delaware, maker of various “extreme” beers (really hoppy ales, beers with offbeat ingredients, etc.). For my birthday I treated myself to a 4-pack of their 90 minute IPA. Yummy stuff. The article, though, becomes a kind of Read more

  • What’s in your booze?

    The vegan booze list. I’m kicking back with a vegan-friendly Miller High Life (aka the Champagne of Beers, suckas!) as we speak. Read more

  • Yuengling vs. the union

    This story, if accurate, is a bummer. The writer is absolutely correct about its ubiquity in the greater Philadelphia area. And now that we’re back in the world of Yuengling distribution it’s been my go to beer. Which makes this all the more unfortunate: Earlier this year, the employees at Yuengling’s Pottsville brewery decertified — Read more

  • The triumph of the wine

    This Slate article makes some speculations about why the popularity of wine in the US is skyrocketing while that of beer seems to be remaining, um, flat. The author argues that it has to do with selling a certain lifestyle, and beer isn’t keeping up. He says that wine, which used to be perceived as Read more

  • Against beer snobbery

    I largely agree with this. Also, not only are Bud and Miller union-made brews (as Matthew Yglesias points out), “macro” brews are often more likely to be vegetarian/vegan than many microbrews. Now, look: I enjoy microbrews, but for an everyday drinkin’ beer I’d just as soon crack open a Bud or a High Life as Read more