First Looks category archive
Oh, My 0
I thought this was settled 30 years ago.
Greater Wingnuttery XLIII 0
Field has the recap.
Baseball as It Should Be 0
Played by men of iron with bats of wood.
Secretariat 1
My father thought he should be named Male Athlete of the Year in 1973.
Gun Nuttery 4
Over at Brendan’s place.
Guns are nasty, smelly, dangerous things that must be treated with respect. There is irony in that many of those most vocal about bearing arms are among the least respectful of the power of firearms.
They’ve seen too many cowboy movies.
It’s Assault 2
Oh, my.
According to testimony in a special court-martial at Norfolk Naval Station, both women chose to have unprotected sex with Franklin after learning he had HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Their consent did not let Franklin off the hook. The 37-year-old aviation electronics technician was sentenced to three months’ confinement and a bad-conduct discharge after pleading guilty to two counts of aggravated assault as well as disobeying an order.
We Need Single Payer 0
Dick Polman demolishes Senator Flying My Ensign’s in the Wrong Place sophistries:
Wow. Where to begin…
1. “Taking out” the car and gun-related deaths in order to improve the death stats is akin to saying that the New York Mets would be winning the National League East if we simply take out the losses.
2. Ensign’s sophistry is irrelevent, because the international statistics don’t even deal with cars and guns. Instead, they compare apples to apples. In a 2008 study, the Commonwealth Fund focused solely on serious physical illnesses “such as treatable cancers, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases…deaths from certain causes before age 75 that are potentially preventable with timely and effective health care.” The Fund looked at 19 industrialized nations (14 in western Europe, plus Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and America), for the years 2002 and 2003…and, of all 19, America had the worst preventable death rate.
3. The OECD has written that, even if you factor in America’s high death rate from all accidents and injuries, America improves its life-expectancy ranking by only two notches, from 19th of 29 member nations to 17th of 29.
4. Ensign was inadvertently suggesting that America would suffer far fewer premature deaths if we didn’t love our cars so much, or love our guns so much. But Hades would freeze over before a conservative Republican would follow his own logic and conclude that we’d suffer far fewer preventable deaths by enhancing public transportation and curbing the love affair with guns. Naturally, Ensign said neither.
5. Forget the gun and car deaths for a moment. There are also three million car accident injuries each year in America, as well as 70,000 annual gun injuries. It’s fair to assume that a hefty number of those injured people don’t have access to any health insurance. Care to guess who picks up the tab?
The Republican Party.
Since 1876 the Party of Privilege and since 1980 (at least) the Party of Facts Don’t Matter.
Caveat Click-or 0
Vet the vendors when buying from the classifieds, either on line or in print..
He was one of several. The mopes were juvies.
I did recently have my first and first successful encounter with Craig’s List–finding a new owner (I found out it’s now called “re-homing”) for one of my dogs.
Drink Liberally 0
Triumph Brewing Company, 2nd and Chestnut, Philadelphia, 6 p. Tuesday.
Whether or not I make it depends on whether or not I get the family room painted.
Live charitably.
Twits on Twitter 2
It seems to me that this arrest is a little over the top.
The pair were found sitting in front of a bank of laptops and emergency frequency radio scanners. They were wearing headphones and microphones and had many maps and contact numbers in the room.
Official police documents allege the two men used Twitter messages to contact protesters at the summit “and to inform the protesters and groups of the movements and actions of law enforcement”.
Behind the Olive Green Door 0
Stuff goes on that we don’t want to know about.
Secrecy is the enemy. The plain light of day is the friend.
Sauce for the Goose 0
Sauce for the gander. Elizabeth Day at the Guardian:
It came courtesy of an Institute of Child Health study of more than 12,500 five-year-olds that suggested the children of working women are less active and more likely to eat unhealthy food.
The subsequent reaction was rather predictable.
There was the usual thrown-together media debate between muffin-baking housewives and BlackBerry-wielding career women and the stripped pine kitchens of middle England reverberated with the sound of rustling crisp packets as harassed nannies rapidly emptied the cupboards of junk food
But amid all the fuss there was a conspicuous silence from the nation’s men. Interesting though the findings were, it was striking that there was no comparative evaluation of what impact a working father might have on his children. In fact, the role of the male parent had been quite deliberately ignored: according to Professor Catherine Law, who led the study, there was no need to include them because fathers’ employment levels had not substantially changed whereas the numbers of working mothers had increased dramatically in the last few years.
Light Bloggery the Rest of the Week 2
I’m painting rooms. If you like to paint so I can annoy persons via the innertubes, apply within.
Fresh Air and No Water 0
Keeping the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel full of clean air and empty of water. Follow the link to read the whole thing and see the slideshow:
Quiet and spare, the only clue that they control a major transportation facility is the view out of a window of cars and trucks zipping by below at 55 mph.
From these rooms, operators monitor all aspects of the tunnel with 10 cameras at each tunnel, three computers, and a control panel of buttons, lights and alarms.
When water starts collecting somewhere and pumps start running, a light and alarm are activated and stays on until the controller walks around the desk, stands before the panel and turns it off.
As I pass through the tunnels today, I shall do so with different eyes.
Electric Limbo 0
So you think electrical service is a no-brainer, huh? They build their dream house, then found out that it was in no-man’s land:
From that point on, the onus was on Community Electric, Penn said.
The problem was discovered seven months ago. Neighbors indicate that they have been willing to provide the required easements from the git-go.
They’ve been living in an RV since June 1 (at which time they had expected to be in their new home).
Supposedly the power was to be turned on by today.
Your non-government bureaucrats at work.
Docking the Ike 0
Read about it here.
There’s a neat, non-embeddable video that shows what it takes to get a ginormous aircraft carrier into a slip.