How to Organize a Small Workshop

November 3, 2017

Design

...space for creativity. I even hosted a cocktail party in the workshop on Halloween. And to the dolt who recently suggested closing libraries, let me note that the inspiration for the layout of my workshop came from a book I stumbled on while browsing the stacks of the library, Great Workshops From Fine Woodworking. When it comes to home repair and woodworking information I seek out Taunton Press books when at the library....

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Shakerato (Why don’t you come to your senses?)

Mr. Homegrown

July 6, 2015

Food

10 Comments

...d-down version of the one I found in obsessive cocktail guru Dave Arnold’s book Liquid Intelligence: The Art and Science of the Perfect Cocktail. So far I’ve only allowed myself to check Liquid Science out of the library. I fear that if I owned it I would fall down a deep mid-life crisis cocktail hobby hole involving some of the gadgets and ingredients Arnold details in the book: $8,000 centrifuges, canisters of liquid nitrogen and potentially haz...

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The Practical Side of Philosophy

Mr. Homegrown

August 1, 2016

Thoughtstylings

11 Comments

...ol. But as to how to get that self-study program going, I recently found a book that covers the history of philosophy in a clear and entertaining format: Oxford professor Anthony Kenny’s A Brief History of Western Philosophy. I also struggled through Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, a difficult but worthwhile tome that completely changed my view of history. You can listen to a five part interview with Taylor via the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s...

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I Deleted my Facebook Account

Mr. Homegrown

April 23, 2018

Thoughtstylings

44 Comments

...my Instagram account, I found that I would have to log back into Facebook to do so and that would sign me back up for Facebook. Should you not want to delete your Facebook you can also deactivate it temporarily to see how things work out. I haven’t missed Facebook one bit. As for book and blog promotion I’m planning on starting a sporadic newsletter that you can sign up for that will also list events and some fun off-topic stuff that I think you m...

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The Monkey Rope

Mr. Homegrown

February 14, 2018

Thoughtstylings

2 Comments

...ck you should. I just finished reading it and, next to the Bible, no other book comes close to Moby Dick’s sprawling, hallucinatory weirdness. It reads like a long prose poem, a philosophical horror novel, a meditation on our relationship with the natural world and, well, who knows what else. I’m haunted by one chapter in particular, “The Money Rope.” In this chapter Melville describes the narrator, Ishmael, tied by a line to Queequeg, who is assi...

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