July 2018 – Matt Corpos

The Subaru

July 15, 2018 Fun Travel

Today we passed the 50,000 mile mark on the Subaru (aka “The Dolphin”), which is a modest count to be sure for a Subaru or for a bay area commuter car. It started out as our first family car. We bought this 2008 Subaru Outback in September 2008, a few months before our first baby was due (I traded in my first car – a Ford ZX2 in the process). In recent years we added…

“In Defense of Food”

July 13, 2018 Books Food

I am slowly catching up on recent movements and literature about the food system. In the case of the book In Defense of Food, by the UC Berkeley professor, journalist and author Michael Pollan, I am about 10 years late. No doubt things have changed in the last decade, but I’m sure the core messages in his book remain intact. So what is the problem? Our food system has changed drastically in the past 70 years…

Gringo paper companies in 1830s Mexico

July 2, 2018 History

If you were in Mexico in the 1830s, where would you get paper from? The simple answer is that you probably wouldn’t – about 88% of people could not read or write back then (global literacy was 12% in 1820). Even if you could write I am guessing paper would also have been prohibitively expensive for the average person. But if you were in the government or the Catholic church you might get paper from a…