the elephant in the rheum
Ever since I read In Defense of Food earlier this year, I've been trying to cut back on the grains I consume and increase the amount of leafy vegetables I consume. (Michael Pollan has his flaws, but much of what he writes makes sense to me.) Breaking old eating habits is difficult, though, so I don't know if I've made much progress.
Having bought a lot of lettuce since then, it was with interest that I read in Tristram Stuart's book Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal that lettuce will keep a lot longer if you leave it out of the refrigerator and stand it upright in a container of water (after trimming a small slice off the base). The author is British, though, and I'm wondering if what is true for the British Isles is true for a place as dry as the U.S. Southwest. I can't help but think that the open air would dry out the leaves. I guess I could give it a try. Even organic lettuce isn't terribly expensive--$1.99 a head, the last time I bought some red leaf lettuce. (If the experiment fails, it will be rather ironic that it contributed to my food waste.)
"Wow, is this really the best the GOP has to offer?" That was the question one of my friends posted on Facebook last night. I don't know if the Republican presidential hopefuls look as bad to Republicans as they do to the rest of us. I'm guessing that even Republican voters aren't terribly enamored with any of them, considering how no one has yet to have an overwhelming lead in the polls, and candidates have shifted in and out of the top spot.
In spite of this, my guess would be that the top dogs in the Republican Party (lapdogs of industry, selective watchdogs of government) are fine with the situation. It seems as if the M.O. of the Republican Party is just to trash-talk the Democrats at every opportunity possible. They try to make the Democrats look bad while lacking any self-consciousness about their own image. It's the strategy Robert McChesney described in Rich Media, Poor Democracy:It does not make sense for Coca-Cola, say, to spend a fortune merely trashing Pepsi--claiming, for example, that Pepsi workers urinate in the bottles--because it only matters to Coke ultimately if people buy Coke, not that they not buy Pepsi. It is different in politics. If candidate A can run down candidate B enough that people leaning toward candidate B opt not to vote altogether, it very much improves candidate A's chances of success. For this and other reasons, negative advertising, deployed prudently, is an indispensable weapon in the candidate's arsenal.
The Republicans don't believe in "getting out the vote" as much as deterring the wrong kind of voters. They've passed laws supposedly aimed at keeping "illegals" from voting which instead have the effect of disenfranchising citizens. What they want in the end is the ability to appeal to handful of Mormons, evangelical Christians, or some other group of idiots--a handful that, however small, is still large enough to sway an election with poor turnout and massive voter suppression.
Having bought a lot of lettuce since then, it was with interest that I read in Tristram Stuart's book Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal that lettuce will keep a lot longer if you leave it out of the refrigerator and stand it upright in a container of water (after trimming a small slice off the base). The author is British, though, and I'm wondering if what is true for the British Isles is true for a place as dry as the U.S. Southwest. I can't help but think that the open air would dry out the leaves. I guess I could give it a try. Even organic lettuce isn't terribly expensive--$1.99 a head, the last time I bought some red leaf lettuce. (If the experiment fails, it will be rather ironic that it contributed to my food waste.)
"Wow, is this really the best the GOP has to offer?" That was the question one of my friends posted on Facebook last night. I don't know if the Republican presidential hopefuls look as bad to Republicans as they do to the rest of us. I'm guessing that even Republican voters aren't terribly enamored with any of them, considering how no one has yet to have an overwhelming lead in the polls, and candidates have shifted in and out of the top spot.
In spite of this, my guess would be that the top dogs in the Republican Party (lapdogs of industry, selective watchdogs of government) are fine with the situation. It seems as if the M.O. of the Republican Party is just to trash-talk the Democrats at every opportunity possible. They try to make the Democrats look bad while lacking any self-consciousness about their own image. It's the strategy Robert McChesney described in Rich Media, Poor Democracy:It does not make sense for Coca-Cola, say, to spend a fortune merely trashing Pepsi--claiming, for example, that Pepsi workers urinate in the bottles--because it only matters to Coke ultimately if people buy Coke, not that they not buy Pepsi. It is different in politics. If candidate A can run down candidate B enough that people leaning toward candidate B opt not to vote altogether, it very much improves candidate A's chances of success. For this and other reasons, negative advertising, deployed prudently, is an indispensable weapon in the candidate's arsenal.
The Republicans don't believe in "getting out the vote" as much as deterring the wrong kind of voters. They've passed laws supposedly aimed at keeping "illegals" from voting which instead have the effect of disenfranchising citizens. What they want in the end is the ability to appeal to handful of Mormons, evangelical Christians, or some other group of idiots--a handful that, however small, is still large enough to sway an election with poor turnout and massive voter suppression.