May 29, 2011 archive

Our regular featured content-

• 6 in The Morning by mishima
• On This Day In History May 29 by TheMomCat
• Evening Edition by ek hornbeck

These weekly features-

• My Little Town 20110525: Joyce by Translator
• Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition by TheMomCat
• Rant of the Week: Rachel Maddow by TheMomCat
• Pique the Geek by Translator at 9 PM EDT

This featured article-

• Hugs by TheMomCat

And these special features-

• F1: Monaco by ek hornbeck
• 100th Anniversary Indianapolis 500 by ek hornbeck

The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is an Open Thread

In the last couple diaries I’ve written on FireDogLake, I’ve tried to create a framework for radical action.  How to Destroy the Democratic Party sets up a broad approach for taking on, if not over, the Democratic Party base organizations, and Say You Want a Revolution tries to outline the scale of organization required for serious structural change.  Ambitious indeed!

But how about tomorrow?  What’s the bridge between our small, disorganized condition now and the large tasks I’ve recently delineated?  I throw this in everyone else’s face, so it’s only fair it be thrown in mine.

I was once tutored by an old friend who had been a machinist in his younger days.  He talked about tool-making, that most of this high-precision work entailed building tools.  Tools to build other tools.  To build yet more tools.  On and on until it call came together for the tools building the myriad parts that we drive down the street or heat and cool our homes or watch bad movies and lying news shows on.

Score!  I have some Fiddleheads I picked up at the store yesterday!

Fiddleheads

Fiddleheads are a very ephemeral thing.  For 2 or 3 weeks in the spring the emerging shoots of several types of ferns are available for eating.

Now to me they resemble nothing so much as Asparagus in taste, but perhaps that’s because of my preferred method of preparation about which more shortly.  Others notice a hint of Almond, but you couldn’t prove it by me.  They’re extremely high in Vitamin A, less so in C, and otherwise have all the good nutritional characteristics you expect from a vegetable.

Personally I don’t recommend picking them wild.  I’m not Euell Gibbons and I stay away from toadstools and amateur fugu too.  Fortunately they’re available from some grocery stores in season (my local Stop & Shop carries them), you can get them over the internet (www.fiddle-heads.com), and also frozen and canned.

As read by Keith.

The unstoppable march of the tobacco giants

How the industry ruthlessly exploits the developing world – its young, poor and uneducated

By Emily Dugan Sunday, 29 May 2011

More than half a century after scientists uncovered the link between smoking and cancer – triggering a war between health campaigners and the cigarette industry – big tobacco is thriving.

Despite the known catastrophic effects on health of smoking, profits from tobacco continue to soar and sales of cigarettes have increased: they have risen from 5,000 billion sticks a year in the 1990s to 5,900 billion a year in 2009. They now kill more people annually than alcohol, Aids, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined.