First Looks category archive

Funny or Die shows what BP executives might say if the PR department didn’t keep them under wraps.

Meanwhile, Andy Borowitz thinks that the “junk shot” can be improved:

“We’ve tried containment domes, rubber tires, and even golf balls,” said William Cathermeyer of the National Oil Leakage Institute, a leading consultancy in the field of oil leaks. “Now it’s time to shove some BP executives down there and hope for the best.”

They won’t do it, but charges of criminal negligence would be in order.

The President announces that the independent commission he created for the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling will be chaired by former Florida Governor and Senator Bob Graham and former EPA Administrator Bill Reilly. He promises accountability not just for BP, but for those in government who bore responsibility.

Transcript here.

Oil is forever:

It’s been more than 40 years since the oil barge Florida ran aground on a foggy night in Buzzards Bay, spilling close to 200,000 gallons of fuel. Some of it is still there.

At the time of the 1969 spill, lobsters, clams, and fish died by the thousands, but most people thought the harm would be temporary, reflecting what was then the conventional wisdom.

Now, as the first tendrils of heavy oil from the leaking BP well begin to suffocate Louisiana marshes, Wild Harbor’s muck shows that damage can persist for decades in fragile marshes.

Travel weekend. Elder daughter has earned her Masters degree.

I also plan to meet Shaun Mullen on the way back.

In 1981, Eddie Joubert was hacked to death in the cellar of his bar, The Bottom of the Fox, in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania.

Delaware Water Gap is both a village and a place.

The place is where the Delaware River cuts through the Appalachian Mountains, which, in Pennsylvania, form series of long, unbroken ridges, rather than the irregular bumps and valleys and gaps farther south in Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas.

The village is a town that has suffered ups and downs–mostly downs–over the years. It is located on the northeastern edge of the area loosely known as “The Poconos,” though Mt. Pocono itself is to the southwest. Though a relatively short distance from New York City, Delaware Water Gap was then far, far away from urban centers.

In The Bottom of the Fox, Shaun Mullen traces the multiple influences which, in his view, led to that and to other murders occurring during the 70s (and 1981 is close enough to the 70s to be included in that decade, while the persons involved were definitely of the 70s); he sees a common influence in a number of deaths. He also portrays how a relatively isolated and depressed area can become culturally inbred and corrupt–not corrupt in the common political sense of bribery and kick-backs, but corrupt on a much deeper and more dangerous level.

The first chapter describes the murder.

Successive chapters look at the various threads–the development of resorts in the Poconos, the coming of Interstate 80, the repeated efforts to dam the Delaware, and others–that the author sees as leading to the first chapter.

About two-thirds of the way through the book, I was wondering whether the author would be able to pull the threads together into a coherent and satisfying conclusion.

He does.

It is not a pretty story. My friend was unable to finish it because it was too depressing.

The book betrays Mr. Mullen’s long career as a journalist. It is readable and direct. The language is plain-spoken and blunt, facts not theory, but with creative turns of phrase that had me saying from time to time to my friend, who is an editor by trade, “Listen to this.” It even sent me looking up a word.

Buy the book.

Mullen, Shaun D., The Bottom of the Fox, (Charleston, SC: Fishy Business Press, April 2010, ISBN 1-4515-2361-0) 125 pp.

Many years ago, I listened to KYW–I caught it on the skip–on my Christmas transistor radio–transitor radios were an amazing new invention–while lifting my Christmas gift Sears Ted Williams weights (which I still have) on my home-made weight bench as a 98-pound weakling 10th grader.

KYW had recently moved from Cleveland to Philadelphia and remade itself as the first all-news AM station the country.

(When it was in Cleveland, I also listened to it on the skip; my favorite show was the Harv Morgan Show, which I would listen to while under the covers so my parents wouldn’t catch me. I’m sure they knew and with the wisdom of good parents just let it go. RIP Harv Morgan.)

Back then, Arlen Specter was the up-and-coming young crusading district attorney of Philadelphia.

Since them, Arlen has been a Democrat, a Republican, and a Democrat again. But first and foremost he has been an Arlenocratican with one overriding cause: the full employment of Arlen Specter.

He is no longer young and he long ago stopped crusading.

Enjoy your retirement Arlen.

If you enjoy it half as much as the rest of us do, you will be happy in your twilight years.

Good-bye and good night.

Whatever Sestak may be, he can’t possibly be more craven, more manipulative, more self-absorbed. If he’s even just a little bit better, he’s progress.

Aside:

I do not criticize Obama for endorsing Arlen. Arlen switched ranks and provided a vote when a vote was needed. Honorable politics–honorable life–ultimately boils down to personal relationships and honorable politicians honor their debts. That’s how the game is played.

As long as it’s above-board, it’s okay.

Idealistic purity is great in a vacuum. (Many of my leftie friends want to live in that idealistically pure vacuum land. I honor and mourn their idealism at the same time.)

It’s not how real life works, because real life is not lived in a vacuum.

Real life is not lived in a vacuum in your day-to-day dealings and it’s not lived in a vacuum in their day-to-day dealings.

Real life is goals and bargains and debts and trade-offs and concessions and two steps forward and one step back and sometimes one step forward and two steps back but by God keep trying to push in the right direction and that’s all you can do.

You get and give to get what you can and hope that the next time you can make a giant step instead of a baby step. And life goes on.

Live with it.

From the BBC:

The Methodist Church has become the first major denomination in Britain to launch its own application for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Detailed description and picture at the link.

James Carroll, a one-time seminarian, had a long and thoughtful meditation on celibacy and the priesthood in the Roman Catholic church. It ranges from the institution of the celibate priesthood in the 12th century to the relationship amongst the doctrines of celibacy and the Roman Catholic Church’s hostility to birth control and abortion. He sees a common thread in all three positions: maintaining power.

I commend it to your attention. A nugget:

WHY HAD celibacy come to matter so much to those in charge of the church? The answer is familiar because celibacy, like other issues having to do with gender, reproduction, and sexual identity, is not really about sex — but power. The hierarchy found in the imposition of sexual abstinence a mode of control over the interior lives of clergy, since submission in radical abstinence required an extraordinary abandonment of the will. In theory, the abandonment was to God; in practice, it was to the “superior,’’ who always thought he was. The stakes were infinite, since sexual desire marked the threshold of hell. “Gravely sinful’’ defined every priestly deviance, including the minor and intensely personal matter of erotic fantasy. The normally human was, for priests, the occasion of bad faith.

Spring fever.

Addendum:

A great day for spring fever.

Sunny, clear skies, 71 Fahrenheits high temperature, soft breeze, long walk, blossoming flowers, and a Phillies game on the telly vision (Good Guys 4, Bad Guys 2, Phillies four games up).

Don’t get much Phillies here, so I take what I can get.

The local rag’s baseball horizon stops with Washington and Baltimore and the sports section is full of NASCAR and Redskins. It is NASCAR season, but it’s hardly Redskins season.

All the NASCAR makes me miss the Inky, where NASCAR was a thing for pages six and seven. Even back when my idea of a good time was driving fast and I subscribed to Motor Trend and Sports Car Graphic (SCG is long deceased and Motor Trend has become a tool of the auto industry), I never cared for races which involved only left turns–seems kind of one-dimensional to me.

Many years ago, I rooted for the Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Redskins, back when when men were men and ships were wood, when Earl Weaver was the manager of the Orioles and the owner of the Redskins (R. I. P. Jack Kent Cooke–you were a class act) knew something about football.

Normal abnormality resumes tomorrow.

Not necessarily very bright, but polite:

Mary Beth Harshbarger says she mistook her husband for an approaching bear and shot him during a hunting trip near Buchans Junction, Newfoundland.

Canadian officials charged Harshbarger because they say it was too dark for her to fire a gun safely.

BP and Transocean:

The device meant to stop oil leaking from a Gulf of Mexico well after last month’s rig explosion was faulty, US Congressional investigators have said.

The blowout preventer (BOP), a set of huge valves, had a hydraulic leak and a failed battery, they said after studying documents from BP and others.

Oil industry chiefs say it is too early to conclude what caused the disaster.

It may indeed be too early “to conclude what caused the disaster,” if, by “caused,” one means tracking the physical history of the blowout.

On a meta level, though, it’s not too early to conclude that managerial and technological incompetence, greed, and penny-pinching were significant factors, abetted by the Bushie take-down of the United States regulatory apparatus.

Video via Bob Cesca.

Listen here.

Radio Times looks at what BP’s wild well is doing to the “blue that gives us life.” From the website:

Dr. SYLVIA EARLE is one of the most famous ocean explorers – and explainers – of all time. The oceanographer was the former chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and is one of the world’s leading advocates for marine conservation. Lately she’s been speaking up about the environmental toll of marine catastrophes like the Gulf oil spill, acidification caused by the buildup of carbon in the atmosphere and oceans, overfishing and more. She’s in town to give a lecture tonight at the Academy of Natural Sciences, and she’s guest host TRACEY MATISAK’s guest on today’s Radio Times.

The damage done to the sea is not easily videotaped and does not pictures for television. Hear a detailed analysis of how much damage BP is doing to the sea and why the greatest damage is that done away to the sea from the camera.

Follow the link of click here to listen (mp3).

Not for the faint of heart.

The Virginia Beach Correctional Center starts a garden. Someone actually gave the jail a greenhouse:

“It’s just a win-win,” he (the sheriff–ed.) said. “The citizens of Virginia Beach will save some money and the inmates will get some vegetables.”

It costs the city about $4,000 a day to feed the jail’s roughly 1,300 inmates. Stolle, who took office Jan. 1, thinks he can do better. If the garden experiment works, he said he plans to expand the project to 2 acres. He’s also got land-use rights for 90 acres in Princess Anne, which could be used to grow even more food, like corn, beans and squash, he said.

And the inmates quoted in the story like getting out into the open air.

A threat to the air also:

The findings show that levels of airborne chemicals have far exceeded state standards and what’s considered safe for human exposure.

For instance, hydrogen sulfide has been detected at concentrations more than 100 times greater than the level known to cause physical reactions in people. Among the health effects of hydrogen sulfide exposure are eye and respiratory irritation as well as nausea, dizziness, confusion and headache.

The concentration threshold for people to experience physical symptoms from hydrogen sulfide is about 5 to 10 parts per billion. But as recently as last Thursday, the EPA measured levels at 1,000 ppb. The highest levels of airborne hydrogen sulfide measured so far were on May 3, at 1,192 ppb.

Follow the link for more.

BP = Bad Pollution.

Details here.

Now, why can’t you and the kids get along the rest of the year?

The Rugbyologist has a theory. Follow the link for the explication:

The source of this conflict is in your genes. As a parent, your fitness is primarily wrapped up in the success of your offspring, with whom you share half of your genes. Your child, however, only shares a quarter of its genes with each of its siblings. This means that your (child–sic) benefits much less from you giving your resources to its siblings than you do.

So, how do we resolve parent-offspring conflict? Canaries. That’s right. Canaries.

To quote Harry Shearer:

Radioactive water that leaked from the nation’s oldest nuclear power plant has reached an aquifer that supplies drinking water to much of southern New Jersey, the state’s environmental chief said Friday.

Bumbling Phools.

Via Eschaton.

Read this.