First Looks category archive

I have moved this site to a new server. Please use the email link at the top of the page to tell me of any broken links, missing pictures, or anything else whifty. Please include a link to the specific post or page in your email so I can fix it quickly.

I have deactivated the Gatekeeper plugin in favor of Akismet.  If all goes well, no more “What color is an orange?”

I’ll muck with the theme tomorrow. Something’s not working with my Pine View Farm theme, but the database has been restored and seems to work okay on the new hosting outfit. There won’t be much posting until I finish unpacking and have the place looking more like home.

It’s been kind of nice to have a little vacation from blogging. Feeding the blogbeast can take some effort.

But I have saved up this gem, which pretty much sums up Republican Economic Theory:

Addendum, the Next Day:

Well, I’ve fixed everything but the color of the title at the top of the page. It’s starting to feel like home–like a new place with one piece of furniture that just doesn’t match and needs to be reupholstered. The upholstery has been ordered.

Down for two weeks.

Database problems. I hate databases.

Also, the modem seems to have lost its IP address. I had to reboot the modem to get the connection working again. This was exacerbated by my having been away when the Snow Gods clobbered the area, delaying my return so I could shoot the trouble.

But I’m back. For a while. I’ll be offline for a planned outage on Sunday, but, this time, I should be able to post a “Gone Fishing” notice.

Melamine, that is:

China has seized 72 tonnes of milk powder believed to be tainted with melamine and is searching for another 100 tonnes, state media has reported.

The powder is thought to be from a batch recalled after it killed six children in 2008 and made 300,000 ill.

Two dairies were shut down at the weekend after they were found to be selling products using the powder, which should have been destroyed.

More here. A nugget:

Is it already too late for America? I’m starting to think that the anti-tax, anti-government conservative movement that started in the mid-70s, elected Reagan and led to the terrible Bush Presidency may have effectively destroyed the country, leaving it bankrupt, corrupt,ungovernable, ruled by a wealthy elite — and we’re only now just starting to realize it. To cover tax cuts we stopped maintaining the infrastructure and started borrowing. To satisfy their hatred of government we increasingly stripped away rule of law, regulation, and belief in one-person-one-vote. We are seeing the consequences of all of that . . . .

Video also via Seeing the Forest.

I missed the excitement this week, being distracted by the panic up the road a piece where, apparently, the world came to an end under a blanket of snow.

But I didn’t miss much. The FDIC seems to be running out of banks to shut down; they caught only one this week:

1st American State Bank of Minnesota, Hancock, Minnesota

Dick Polman, on the teabaggers:

Some of those groups, as well as hundreds of local groups, are genuinely bottom up. But some of those groups are top down – in other words, they’re fake grassroots. They’re “AstroTurf” groups fronting for big business and the Republican Party. FreedomWorks is a Washington operation run by ex-GOP House insider Dick Armey, who is bankrolled by his corporate clients. Tea Party Express is run by a pair of veteran Republican strategists, who reportedly have steered tea-party donations into their consulting firm – thus prompting some Tea Party Patriots to assail Tea Party Express as “the AstroTurf Express.”

There is no percentage in just being agin’. Until they have something to be for, they will continue to be grist for the corporatist mill.

Rereading the Hound of the Baskervilles in William S. Baring-Gould’s The Annotated Sherlock Holmes.

‘Tis a shame Baring-Gould is out of print. Young pups will not know the joy of the footnotes.

The game is afoot.

I haven’t followed this closely, though I have read the newspaper stories and I listened to this (which, although titled “U. S. Auto Industry,” turned into a discussion of Toyota’s Pintos), but, frankly, it is easy to wonder there might be more to this than floormats and friction:

Toyota first blamed loose floor mats for instances of unintended acceleration that one analysis has linked to more than 800 crashes and 19 deaths since 1999. Last month, the company added that some of its vehicles also could speed out of control because of sticky gas pedals.

But Tuesday, U.S. officials joined outside experts in suggesting that a third factor may be to blame in some cases: a so-far-unidentified failure in the vehicles’ electronic throttle systems.

Toyota Motor Corp. and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) say they have explored that possibility and come up dry.

“We have investigated every type of possible interference with the electronic throttle controls and have found nothing – nothing with the electronics or the computers – that could lead to unintended acceleration,” said Toyota spokeswoman Cindy Knight. . . .

But outside experts on automobiles, computers, and electronics welcomed a renewed focus on the possibility that something other than errant floor mats and sticky pedals could be at work.

Here.

What makes it Grade A is the truth embodied therein.

From ye olde country.

On Pennsylvania’s on favorite promoter of gambling halls.

I wonder how much of Ed Rendell’s support for casino gambling comes from his notion that it is a painless cure for ailing tax revenues (it’s not–think how much money gamblers have to lose so that casinos and racetracks can pay those taxes governments want so much) and how much comes from his love of a bet?

Very pretty swimming round . . .

Well, geese, actually.

For contrast, here’s picture taken from about the same position about three days ago.

And a detail from today:

in which he espouses an excellent idea.

If Ed Rendell must force casinos down Philadelphia’s throat, put one in the S. S. United States.

Afterthought: Apparently the favorable reception surprised him.

Great balls of fire:

“That building went up so quickly that we knew it had to be an accelerant in there,” Loyle, 82, said yesterday in front of the charred Loyle Lanes Bowling Center, a local landmark that would have celebrated its 50th anniversary Feb. 10.

Investigators yesterday confirmed Loyle’s suspicions about the Jan. 11 blaze and shocked the community with news that a business rival, the owner of the only other bowling alley in Cumberland County, had been charged with arson.

A geologists explains the Haiti Quake at Scientific Blogging.