First Looks category archive

Albert Hunt at Bloomberg rounds up two-party weirdness. The article is worth your while for a little perspective. A nugget:

It took Republican Senator John Ensign, though, to put Nevada in serious contention with South Carolina. While living in a self-styled Christian group house on Capitol Hill, he had an affair with the wife of a top aide and allegedly sought to cover it up. His parents gave $96,000 to the ex-employee, his wife and two kids; Ensign called it severance pay, others hush money. The figure seemed odd until it was disclosed that both of Ensign’s parents gave $12,000 to each of the four members of the aide’s family, the maximum allowed without having to file a gift tax return with the Internal Revenue Service. Ensign is under investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee.

Illinois gets honorable mention and Louisiana is included for historical perspective.

Not enough good news. The best news would be to ban it.

From Facing South:

In a decision being hailed by environmental advocates, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has suspended a program that streamlined the permitting process for mountaintop removal coal mining across Appalachia.The suspension of the Nationwide Permit 21 program is effective immediately and applies to Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

More at the link.

The Boston Globe on the moratorium on lobstering off Cape Cod:

As climate change warms the waters, lobsters have grown more susceptible to disease, and their numbers have dwindled significantly. Shrinking lobster populations affect local economies; moratorium or no, it’s the fishermen who will take it on the chin.

What’s happening to Cape Cod’s lobstermen is a strong indicator of what to expect over the next decades, as the changing climate cripples indigenous ecosystems in unpredictable ways.

I can get behind this:

Gov. Bob McDonnell’s administration is exploring new ways to get Virginia at least partially out of the liquor business.

Virginia should get completely out of the liquor business, except for licensing and regulation. Some things are best suited for private enterprise; some things only the government can do.

Regulating pollution is a government thing.

Retail sales is a private enterprise thing.

I have lived in Northern Virginia, where I patronized privately-owned liquor stores in Washington, D. C., because there was price competition, though I did buy wine at my local Virginia Safeway, where there was also price competition.

I have lived in Delaware and worked in New Jersey, both of which have private liquor stores and price competition.

I have also lived in Pennsylvania, whose alcohol sales regulations are absolutely and completely insane. You buy spirits and wine at state stores, except that wineries can operate their own stores, but sell only their own vintages. You buy beer at beer distributors, but only in case lots. If you want a six pack, you can buy one at certain bars, but you pay bar prices–in other words, a six pack can cost anything from $3.00 to $ 6.00 a container, or $18.00 to $36.00. Or more. (Needless to say, the largest lobby against reforming Pennsylvania liquor laws is the beer distributors association, closely followed by the Pa. Liquor Control Board.) You can buy a Coca-Cola at the local Safeway.

I have visited Indiana and other states where, apparently, almost anyone can sell spirits. I remember my surprise on entering a pharmacy in Beech Grove, Indiana, where my employer at the time had a major facility, and seeing a wall of spirits on display.

Virginia’s ABC system is a holdover from Prohibition. It was designed upon repeal to protect the citizenry from Demon Rum by attaching a stigma to buying it. It was likely designed by a legislature that was half shot on moonshine at the time, but that’s a different story.

I remember, when I was a young ‘un, looking into the ABC store next to the barbershop where my father tormented me with my biweekly haircut. The clerks wore uniforms. You could not browse the shelves; the stock was all behind the counter. The idea was to keep you away from Demon Rum or, at least, to make purchasing it an unpleasant and intimidating experience. (No one talked publicly of the still in the woods behind the county seat.)

Heck, I can remember when you couldn’t order scotch-rocks-water-on-the-side in a Virgina restaurant. Liquor by the drink was a big deal when it came along 40 years ago.

Aside:

I must say that, upon my return to Virginia, I was mildly surprised that ABC stores are now quite pleasant, with open shelves and clerks dressed in civies. The staff at my local ABC store is friendly, pleasant, and competent.

“The one primary roll for government is to protect people who are being taken advantage of . . . .”

The Republican Party, now, as then, the Party of Privilege.

Via Left of the Hill.

. . . but still a step:

The state is giving $800,000 in federal stimulus money to James Madison University for the development of a small wind training and testing facility in Harrisonburg.

Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, Virginia’s chief jobs creation officer, announced the money during an appearance today at the State Wind Energy Symposium hosted by the Virginia Wind Energy Collaborative and held at JMU.

Thoreau considers how to treat buccaneers.

Bloomberg reports that the lawsuits against Buccaneer Petroleum are starting. I must admit that suing the board of directors under civil racketeering statutes is a creative touch (emphasis added):

In addition to scores of claims brought in five states along the Gulf shore, coastal businesses and property owners in Georgia and South Carolina have sued for damages from the drifting oil, which has yet to round the southern tip of Florida and enter the Atlantic Ocean.

Investors in three states, including Louisiana and Alaska, have sued BP’s board of directors for allegedly causing more than $50 billion in shareholder losses by failing to implement safety policies that would have prevented the spill. In a separate class-action lawsuit in Florida, the company is accused of “a pattern” of criminal acts including fraud. That suit seeks triple damages under federal civil racketeering law.

(Counting down.)

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette looks at the bottled water scam (to quote from the title of the article). A nugget:

In fact, tap water may actually be cleaner. Last month, researchers found that some bottled water contains more bacteria than tap water. More than 70 percent of the popular brands tested in this new study failed to meet bacterial standards set by the United States Pharmacopeia, a nongovernment agency that sets safety standards for medications and health-care products, according to the Montreal Gazette.

In comparison, tap water is usually so pure, bottled water companies can simply bottle it and sell it to you. For example, Coca Cola-owned Dasani bottled water often comes from local water utilities. Visit its website and you can follow the eight-step Dasani treatment process, but never once read which contaminants are so terrifying that the company needs to disinfect the water all over again. If it’s taste you’re after, you can spend up to $5.50 a gallon on the bottled stuff, or as low as $0.15 per gallon for tap water with a home filter.

From the BBC:

US scientists have created working liver grafts in the lab, and say the research could one day allow the growth of livers for transplant.

There is a shortage of liver donors, but so far it has been difficult to grow replacement organs.

In the work, published in Nature Medicine, a team from Massachusetts General Hospital, created successful grafts using rat cells.

Beaching it.

When all is said and done, it is still British Petroleum.

From the BBC:

Japanese scientists are celebrating the successful deployment of their solar sail, Ikaros.

The 200-sq-m (2,100-sq-ft) membrane is attached to a small disc-shaped spacecraft that was put in orbit last month by an H-IIA rocket.

Ikaros will demonstrate the principle of using sunlight as a simple and efficient means of propulsion.

The technique has long been touted as a way of moving spacecraft around the Solar System using no chemical fuels.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I remember that the trainer of Flipper ultimately regretted his role and began to campaign on behalf of dolphins.

The Navy trains dolphins to look for mines:

They know to look for a couple of specific things: man-made, metal objects that are a few feet long, things with wires or explosives. If there’s a television set or a washing machine in the water, a trained dolphin will indicate that as a possible mine, he said.

Using echo-location, bottlenose dolphins can detect those types of objects from about 150 yards away. After a dolphin has been commanded to look for an object, it will scan the area and swim back to the boat. If it believes it’s found something, it touches a tennis ball or plastic disk at the front of the boat.

Then the handler will give the dolphin a marking device and signal it to drop the marker a certain distance away from the suspected mine. A Navy diver will take to the water for a detailed inspection and decide whether to disarm or detonate the mine.

Tuesday, during the vigil, the spoils pipe of at the Rudee Inlet dredge had separated.

In this sequence, you can see

• the separated pipe, then
• the crew tie up to the two pieces of pipe, then
• manoeuver them into a position where they could work with them, then
• reconnect them.

The last picture shows the reconnected joint, which is still leaking. Other joints were leaking too, so I reckon losing some water isn’t that big an issue so long as the spoils are disposed of.

Read more »

Some pictures from yesterday’s vigil marking the 50th day of BP’s wild well.

It was a quiet and respectful gathering.

Flyover:

Read more »

Addendum:

The Rude One speaks (warning: language at the link):

Could BP (or everyone else) stop pretending like there is any way to “make this right.”

(snip)

There’s uncorrectable wrongs in this life. Make it better? Maybe. Right? You’re delusional.

That’s the beginning and the end. For the middle, follow the link (once again, warning: language).

This almost makes me wish I were back in Delaware for a day:

Aboard a 95-foot-long trailer specially constructed by an Ohio company will be a full-size mockup of the first stage of Orbital Sciences’ Taurus II rocket being towed roughly 150 miles across portions of three states — from the Port of Wilmington to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island.

A local newspaper columnist had a couple of columns on “religious predators.” I cannot find them on line (the local rag does not place all its content on line).

They reminded me of this.