First Looks category archive

At Comically Vintage.

Offered without comment:

A small, private Floyd County (Va.) school has closed for the week after more than half its students became ill with whooping cough.

At least 30 people associated with Blue Mountain School have been diagnosed with the highly contagious disease, also called pertussis, including 23 of its 45 students, said Shelly Emmett, the alternative school’s director.

(snip)

The outbreak was caused by not properly vaccinating people against the disease, O’Dell (Dr. Molly O’Dell, director of the New River Health District–ed.) said, noting that a subset of the population does not follow vaccination recommendations.

Stephanie Wraith, Contra Costa Teen Correspondent for the San Jose Mercury News, considers prom fashions and asks, “When did hooker chic become in style for prom?”

She suggests some remedies. Here’s one:

Mandate that all chaperones purchase their dresses for the evening from the local prom retailer, too. One glimpse of that history teacher in a strapless minidress should have most girls swearing off such attire for life.

See the rest at the link.

The end of the interminable, pointless, and corrupt college basketball season.

Every since Operation “Odyssey Dawn” started, this song has been stuck in my head.

John Timpane, writing at Philly dot com, considers the influence of the King James Version of the Bible in a fascinating little column. I didn’t know, for example, that, despite its introduction, it was never actually “authorized” by King James, though he “commissioned” the project.

A nugget:

We human beings often use our most beautiful things to poison our world. I hope we are not doing that now. Think of the KJV, created as a compromise between tradition and the needs of a young faith. Its creators, wary and weary of sectarian strife, hoped it could bring peace, lead the faithful to the God they sought.

It has done that in millions of lives – and in some of the most sublime English ever written. But a particular way of reading it has been made into ground zero by those who can’t stand others not belonging to their church. Or party.

Dick Polman shines the light (sorry, couldn’t resist) on Michelle Backmann’s crusade against CFLs* (follow the link for the complete article):

Michele Bachmann, who is basically Sarah Palin with better articulation, appears to be mapping a 2012 Republican presidential bid. Swell. This means we’ll be hearing a lot more about how the socialists are coming to take away our incandescent lightbulbs.

Seriously, this is one of Bachmann’s big causes. She happens to be flat wrong on the facts, but people who pay attention to facts probably wouldn’t vote for her anyway. Besides, she’s interested in being visceral, not empirical, and the lightbulb shtick is a wonderful way to quicken tea party pulses.

The last sentence of the excerpt above does not go far enough.

Bachmann, Palin, and, indeed much of the Republican Party don’t care for or about facts–consider Newt the Gingrinch’s flippity flops on intervention in Libya.

They say today whatever they think will get attention, feed the base, and fool the middle, then say the opposite tomorrow, if they think it will get attention, feed the base, and fool the middle.

Republicans don’t have positions.

They have press releases.
_________________

*The bill requiring more efficient light bulbs was passed under George Bush with support from his administration.

Facebook, cells, and cells:

Via MarketWatch.

This headline makes me think of Dune:

Police seize spice in Newport News

Drinking liberally.

Struggling start-up needs your help.

When: Thursday, March 24, 6 p

Where:
Kelly’s Tavern
1936 Laskin Rd, # 201
Virginia Beach, Va. (Map)

The moon sure was pretty last night. For once, when an astronomical show was scheduled, we did not get rain.

The term “supermoon” dates to the 1970s, when it was coined by an astrologer. So what, one may ask?

The “what” is the astrological sales pitch.

Read more »

In Viet Nam, they were inflated.

Now, it might be the other way around. Asia Times reports:

The number of civilians killed in United States Special Operations Forces (SOF) raids last year was probably several times higher than the figure of 80 people cited in the United Nations report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan published last week, an Inter Press Service (IPS) investigation has revealed.

The report also failed to apply the same humanitarian law standard for defining a civilian to its reporting on SOF raids that it applied to its accounting for Taliban assassinations.

Two minutes. Watch it.

Via the ACLU.

Real bear-ish.

Kevin Wright, a longtime officer in the Aspen area for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, urged residents to get back into their bear-friendly habits now rather than waiting until later in the season, when bears typically emerge. Bears usually stir in April, he said, but this year one yearling was spotted by a property manager Monday and a bear was hit and killed by a vehicle recently in the Eagle Valley, Wright said.

Sure, the players are paid a lot of money–well, a few of them are (most of them aren’t in terms to the toll the game takes on them when the average career is less than four years).

It is difficult to support the owners, who are all have-cake-eat-too.

Not enough money? Since the NFL gets its money from taxpayers and fans, that means they don’t get enough money from us. Don’t you feel cheap? Well, you should.

When the owners asked taxpayers around the country for hundreds of millions of dollars for new stadiums, some of you objected, and some owners had to pick up some of the cost. That has left them nearly broke and able to pay the average quarterback only $10 million a season.

At least we think they’re nearly broke. The owners refused to show their finances to the players, just as they refused to share them with taxpayers. They are, after all, private businesses. Except when they aren’t, like when they demand tax subsidies disguised as “public-private partnerships.”

If you consider yourself a pro football fan and give a darn about the lock-out. follow the link.

Warning: Mild Language (but it’s worth it).