Mistakes will be made

Pressure cookers can save time with certain foods but after reading a bit more about them I think they are best suited for commercial uses, like restaurants, or at high altitudes where the boiling point of water is greatly reduced.  The best takeaway from the Wikipedia article was an observation by Charles Darwin where he found it impossible to cook potatoes when he was in a mountain region.  No matter how long they were boiling away they never cooked properly.  I guess he forgot his skillet; the spuds would have fried up nicely regardless of the altitude.

I used to have a microwave, but no longer due to space and outlet limitations.  It is not missed, as I think it is more useful for heating food than actually cooking it.  What say you, gents?   Do you use the 'wave for cooking or just heating stuff up?

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Speaking of potatoes, here's a good article title: The global dominance of white people is thanks to the potato.  An interesting read to be sure, and the spud is credited with giving Europe a much needed nutritional boost spurring migration to cities and colonial expansion.  More people could be fed with less arable land and the population exploded, relatively speaking, after the Black Plague.  Maybe it's the perfect food; easy to grow, transport, and store and if you can believe the film The Martian it's all you need to eat to survive.  I'm not so sure about that, though.  But the potato was in the right place at the right time, and you can read the article here: https://quartzy.qz.com/1148452/potato2/

Some of the arguments are weak but it's an interesting theory, one that I haven't seen before.

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Temptation is a subtle concept, "a desire to do something, especially something wrong or unwise."  If you are tempted you probably shouldn't do it but if you want to do something but aren't tempted, well, that's fine, go ahead.  I'm missing something here but I don't know what it is and I don't think all temptations are harmful, wrong, or mistakes in themselves.  Would modern commerce collapse without the temptations provided by advertising?  A part of life, it seems to me, is a continuous process of rejecting and succumbing to temptation, hopefully to become wiser old men or women.