By Gene Hall

What are the greatest inventions of humankind?

Well, I’d guess the printing press and smallpox vaccination are right up there, but the TV remote control is pretty cool, too.

Automatic garage door openers have probably saved some marriages: “Honey, this monsoon has let up to just a driving rain so you can open the door now.”

I have a new candidate. The “find my iPhone app.” It is so cool. I am constantly misplacing my iPhone. Since I usually keep it in “stealth mode,” this is problematic. But the app tells it to beep anyway.

By Gene Hall

It’s a curious coalition that always creeps out of the deep woods to oppose the farm bill, which, in one form or another has ensured U.S. supplies of food and fiber since the 1930s.

It’s sort of like an episode of The Walking Dead.  One group of zombies swoops in from the deep woods of the left, believing that attacking modern agriculture in their typical Luddite fashion will produce the environmental utopia of which they dream. 

By Amanda Hill

I came across a news story this morning from NBC’s Today Show that reported a group within the meat industry is moving toward renaming some of our favorite meat cuts in order to make them “more consumer-friendly.”

The group heading up the new meat monikers is the Uniform Retail Meat Identification Standards—URMIS, for short. They claim that consumers are confused by names of meats like rump roast, pork butt and others. So, to clarify the consumer’s choice of pork and beef, URMIS has suggested new names for more than 350 cuts in your local meat case.

Seems like there’s a barbeque shack or three in every small town in the Lone Star State, and Texas Monthly (TM) has just hired a full-time editor to review them. At first glance, I thought I had lost my dream job.

Imagine the opportunity to sample the best Q on earth and get paid for it. Heaven.

But then I thought again.

For every good barbeque joint in Texas, there are 10 bad ones. What at first glance seems like nirvana could fast turn into a gastronomic nightmare.

By Erik Spain

A few weeks ago my wife Secily and I took a trip to Chicago to celebrate our anniversary and it reminded me how lucky I was to be a West Texas farm kid.

We were taken aback by the beauty and architectural magnificence of the many skyscrapers. While examining the city’s great history and beauty, we wandered in and out of shops. I noticed many kids and teenagers hanging out in a mall as if that was the cool thing to do.

And I started to think how different my life would have been if I had spent my youth engulfed by consumerism and artificial happiness.

By Mike Barnett

When I drive out in the country this time of year I think of Vegas, where the high rollers gamble their stake for a winning bet.

No bright lights, rustling crowds and the whir of slot machines in Central Texas. Instead, I see red and green tractors and a variety of farm equipment. It’s a different kind of gambling and farmers have anted up all winter, developing their game plan, preparing the land and laying down fertilizer. Now it’s time to go all-in and the rumble of high-powered machinery could be heard this weekend as farmers dropped seed into the ground.