First Looks category archive

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).

Bing! Bang! Busted!

Amidst the inanity of most social networking comes glimpses of real pain.

Reuters:

When news spread on Saturday of a radiation leak at a nuclear power plant run by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), after an explosion at the facility, many messages on social networking sites were panic-stricken.

“Came back home at 8 in the morning after the depressing night…Now, the nuclear power plant has exploded and we might already be exposed to radioactivity,” said a 23-year-old female office worker from Tokyo on a Facebook page.

“I just don’t know what to do, what’s coming next, and will I be alive tomorrow?” she asked.

Read more »

Fog over the beachfront, yesterday, mid-afternoon.

The Atlantic is out there somewhere . . . .

H/T Susan for the pic.

Bergman and Ossman have a podcast.

Glomarization wrote it up so I don’t have to.

It is not unreasonable to call tea partiers “scary.”

Follow the link for her reasoning.

The internet is a public place. The principles of civil discourse apply (if you can afford the lawyer).

The singer (Courtney Love–ed.) has agreed to pay Dawn Simorangkir $430,000, plus interest, to settle a lawsuit the designer filed in March 2009 over comments Love made on Twitter and her MySpace blog.

While the case didn’t go to a jury, First Amendment experts say it highlights the need for celebrities and average people to watch what they say online.

(snip)

“The laws controlling what is and isn’t libelous are the same regardless of the medium in which the statements appear,” (First Amendment Attorney Doug Mirell) said.

In a parallel vein, the local rag has banned anonymous comments on opinion pieces (not on news stories) and considers the experiment a success. From the editor of the editorial page:

Before the switch to verified commenting, we would regularly find it necessary to delete trollish or racist or otherwise inappropriate comments. Since the switch, we’ve had to do almost none of that. That’s all the more impressive because comments at the Opinion channel are posted automatically and are longer than on the rest of PilotOnline.com.

The content of the comments on letters, editorials and columns has been so uniformly better, in fact, that we’ve been running them regularly in our letters column.

There is a difference between being intense and being insulting.