First Looks category archive

at Triumph Brewing Company, 2nd and Chestnut, Philadelphia, Pa., USA, Tuesday, 6. p.

Triumph has a tasty and creative menu and there is ample parking at the meters on Front (three hour parking at $2.00 per hour). If you drive, take the Callowhill exit off I-95, turn left on 4th, then left on Market, then right on 2nd. When you get to Society HIll Towers, turn left, then left on Front. That will put you near the metered parking without having to make a U-ie.

Glomarization has public transit directions if you’re close enough to take a SEPTA tank.

I don’t think I’ll be there. I have a lot to do this week and I still haven’t found my diligence.

Fill in for me. That’s “Scotch, rocks, water on the side” and, most often, the hummus platter.

. . . oh, yeah, and live charitably.

From time to time, I tinker with my sidebar. That thing over there

Usually the tinkering takes the form of adding or removing a plugin (like that “Deep Tho’ts from John Handey” thingee that every once in a while rolls over and plays dead) or changing the order of stuff (as when I moved the “Search” window higher, which I did because I use it frequently to make sure I’m not repeating myself or to remind myself of exactly what I might have driveled on about in the past).

Some while ago, I gave the blogroll a major trim and restyling, reflecting more my changing interests since I first set it up than anything about who might have been removed from it. I tried to do two things: cut it down to a manageable length and reduce the number of big, well-known sites that most folks are likely to have bookmarked anyway, unless they were sites that I regularly visit myself.

Today I added a new link to the Blogroll. I wouldn’t usually mention that, except that this blog is particularly creative.

I’d suggest starting with this post.

Afterthought:

He calls himself a libertarian. He seems saner than most libertarians I’ve known personally, most of whom could give how-to lessons on dogmatism to Jesuits.

Ain’t no more:

Bradford Bank, Baltimore, Maryland

The countdown continues.

Mainstreet Bank, Forest Lake, Minnesota

Affinity Bank, Ventura, California

It’s a little rambling, but it’s worth the five minutes.

. . . it does.

Chris Broughton, the man who brought an assault rifle and a handgun to the Obama event in Arizona last week, attended a fiery anti-Obama sermon the day before the event, in which Pastor Steven Anderson said he was going to “pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell”, Anderson confirmed to TPMmuckraker today.

I’ve never read the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek, just in English.

But I don’t think Jesus Christ would buy into this approach. Sounds more like the gospel according to Jereboam to me.

Dominick Dunne passes.

His interest in crime, which led to his show, Power, Privilege, and Justice, on CourtTruTV, grew out of the murder of his daughter.

Power, Privilege, and Justice was one of the few shows on commercial television which spoke to, rather than down to, the viewer (well, these days, a lot shows actually speak up to the viewer–one does hope the viewer is smarter than the shows; the alternative is despair).

The last scheduled new episode, about Hans Reiser, creator of the ReiserFS (Reiser File System) for Linux and Unix and wife killer, is slated for this Friday.

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Four years and lots of electrons and changes ago today . . . .

When my father died, he became the go-to guy for taking care of Pine View Farm.

His word was all I needed.

If he recommended someone, the person he recommended could be trusted implicitly, as could he.

I was never a big fan of his, but he certainly redeemed himself from his early mistakes and, after them, lived a life of integrity.

I do not know anyone who hasn’t made mistakes.

I know lots of persons in both public and private life who haven’t lived lives of integrity.

Addendum, the Next Morning:

Kiko’s House has more.

Captain First Son, USA, is once more in Afghanistan.

Off to drink liberally.

Tomorrow, Triumph Brewing Company, 2nd and Chestnut, Philadelphia, Pa., USA, 6 p.

I may actually be there for the first time in a month, though my days in this part of the world are numbered.

I just don’t know what the number is.

All seriousness aside, Pine View Farm World Headquarters will be relocating in the fall. Details will follow.

Via Susie.

Related to my post yesterday, I also believe the Obama administration was unprepared for all the lies.

Though, Lord knows, the last eight years should have tipped them off.

On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace repeatedly cropped quotes from a Veterans Health Administration (VHA) document to falsely suggest that the Obama administration is pressuring veterans to end their lives prematurely . . . .

Follow the link for videos and transcripts.

Via Atrios.

See the full-sized image

From today’s Philadephia Shrinquirer:

Its owner, Star Cruises of Hong Kong, has put the vessel up for sale. Though the United States was the world’s fastest, and arguably most luxurious, cruise ship when it made its maiden voyage in 1952, career prospects for middle-age ocean liners aren’t particularly bright these days. “Scrap” gets mentioned a lot.

That hasn’t stopped a boatload of romantics from sending out a major SOS. An advocacy group called the SS United States Conservancy believes the ship, which arrived here by happenstance in 1996, carries too much history to be discarded so casually. So it’s mounting a campaign to save the vessel, starting Wednesday with a free screening of a documentary at the Independence Seaport Museum.

It’s happened only 15 times in the history of major league baseball. In contrast, there have been 18 perfect games pitched.

Story and video here.

Video (I found one last night and MLB had it pulled down:

Plus, the good guys won.

Afterthought: The stars have to aligned just right for a player to have a chance for one of these.

Video via Glomarization.

He’ll probably do a better job than most members of bank boards of directors:

A train-mad youngster has landed his dream job as “director of fun” at the National Railway Museum in York.

Six-year-old Sam Pointon from Leicester wrote to the museum and applied to replace retiring director Andrew Scott.

The Guardian reviews the history (herstory?) of Rigby & Peller, a British fashion institution. A nugget:

The tides of fashion may have ebbed and flowed, but one movement has been constant: Kenton has seen the British bust grow and grow. “In my mother’s day, there was nothing bigger than a C cup. If you were bigger than a C, you’d have to have something made for you. When Harold and I first got D and DD in 1970, we were over the moon. We had to buy them from America. Now women are much fuller in the cup and narrower around the back.” The average woman is 36C, and Rigby & Peller stocks bras up to a J.