First Looks category archive

Act quickly or you’ll miss your chance:

Pennsylvania’s online auction of items confiscated at airports ends Monday morning.

(snip)

“We have sunglasses, corkscrews, the metal knives, Swiss army knives. Scissors, belts, hand tools. Just a lot of items,” he said. “Frying pans, kitchen items.”

Via PoliticalProf.

Back in Philly, an official of the Catholic Arch-Diocese of Philadelphia is on trial for covering up priestly abuse of children. The trial is happening because, unlike most of the other cases that have come out, this one was still within the Statute of Limitations.

Since I follow Philly news, having lived in that part of the world for three decades, I cannot escape news stories of this case. Here’s today’s Monica Yant Kinney column.

The more I read, the more I am convinced that, if this case did not involve a 2,000 year old religious institution with scads of dollars, a claim to be on a mission from God, and lots of fancy duds for its officials, this trial would have been superseded by a Federal RICO prosecution.

Things to do.

Fun and fellowship for liberals. Join us.

When: Tuesday, March 27st, 6 p

Where:
Lubo Wine Tasting Room
1658 Pleasure House Road (Map)

More here.

Via Contradict Me.

Setting out window boxes on the deck.

They monger fear because fear is the enemy of thought.

Via Contradict Me.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out:

A new Israeli law is trying to fight the spread of eating disorders by banning underweight models from local advertising and requiring publications to disclose when they use altered images to make women and men appear thinner.

The punditocracy is fond of calling for compromise candidates in the wishful, but deluded, belief that today’s Republican Party is capable of compromise.

Perhaps this candidate can fill that bill.

I’ve added a new Old Time Radio Link to the sidebar, over there, on the right, about halfway down:

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Thanks to CBSRMT for bringing it to my attention.

Last night I tried installing a plugin that did not work and play well with others.

Attempts to undo the damage to my database were fruitless, so I have dropped back to the my last known-good backup.

I’ve lost a few days of drivel (I don’t kid myself that my daily ramblings are deathless).

When I feel like another visit to MySQL hell, I might try to restore them, but, for now, I’m going to go do a crossword puzzle.

Normal blogging will resume sometime or other.

I have nothing but compliments for the tech support rep at GoDaddy who assisted me. In addition to pointing me to the right process for restoring the database, he took extra time to look up the possible cause of the error that was keeping the site from working properly.

Update:

I just finished testing the corrupt database from last night. If it were any more messed up and useless, it could join a Republican primary.

If you wonder where the money goes . . . .

The Pentagon estimates that it will still cost about $1 trillion to operate a fleet of 2,443 F-35 fighter jets over the next 50 years, but is continuing to analyze how to drive that staggering sum down, a top U.S. Marine Corps official told Reuters.

More at the link.

Via Raw Story.

Scrapple News, good news edition:

Fun and fellowship for liberals. Join us.

When: Tuesday, February 21st, 6 p

Where:
Lubo Wine Tasting Room
1658 Pleasure House Road (Map)

More here.

As of today, the pace of blogging here will likely decrease, as I will no longer be self-(not very gainfully)employed, but will merely be employed.

It also marks a step along a path I set for myself about a year ago, when I purchased a book, designed a self-study program, and set up computers (one physical machine and two virtual machines) running CentOS: to start a technical career working in a Linux operating system environment.

There will be no decrease in the outrage here on the Farm, merely a decrease in the frequency with which it is expressed.

Echoing Tom Levenson, I just took the Pew News quiz and aced it.

Give it a whirl.

Aside:

It is certainly safe to assume that the persons who stumble across this quiz are not a representative sample of the populace. In view of that, I find the breakdown of scores to be rather chilling.

And many happy returns.

At the Guardian, Deborah Orr posits that the idea of race is a creation of racism, not, as racists like to believe, the reverse. She tries to put the horse back before the cart. A snippet:

All this monitoring of “race” is predicated not on some essential and basic genetic division between humans, but on the existence of racism, which tries to promulgate the idea that essential and basic genetic differences between humans exist, when they don’t. And racists succeed very well in promoting this empty agenda.

(snip)

The most insidious thing about racism is that it is creepily self-sustaining. The more that race rather than cultural background is monitored, the more opportunity there is to pass off cultural disadvantages as racial disadvantages.