First Looks category archive

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.

Read it here.

Via Bartcop.

Outside, it’s still 98 Fahrenheits and sunny.

They also rearranged all their shelves and it took me ten minutes to find the crackers I like.

Criswell predicts that we’ll see Christmas decorations start to appear by the end of September.

And it’s not a Match dot com commercial:

Marine reservist Jeremy Piasecki went to Afghanistan to teach Afghan officers how to handle personnel tasks. He came back with a very different mission: coach of the newly created Afghanistan Olympic water polo team.

More oddities from the highways. Or, in this first case, the lowways; the highway is under the ship:

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I left my coffee grinder at a friend’s house (long story).

Fortunately, I have this, which I picked up at a resale shop for a couple of bucks several years ago; it filled a hole on my knickknack shelf.

It’s not as fast as electric, but I can use any exercise I can get.

(The pliers are for the adjustment ring under the wingnut. At last, a wingnut that works with the people, not against them.)

Via Cookie Jill.

Bee Lavender writes at the Guardian:

Five years ago a friend called me in a panic, desperate to borrow an inhaler because she could not afford to go to the emergency room with an asthma attack. That night, I decided to emigrate to a country where everyone has access to basic medical care. Moving to England was worth it. My experiences with the NHS have not been perfect, but they have been superior to the services received in the first 33 years of my life.

In the US I devoted a huge amount of time to chasing appointments, finding specialists, fighting with insurance companies. With the National Health Service I have never had any trouble getting referrals, nor have I ever had criticism of the services rendered. If anything, I have felt spoiled – especially at the start of the recent flu crisis, when men in hazmat suits showed up in the middle of the night to take my temperature. In fact, though I have private top-up insurance here in the UK, I’ve never had cause to invoke it.

Best healthcare in the world.

Except for almost everywhere else west of the Urals.

But easily the richest health insurance CEOs in the world. And they aim to keep it that way.

A. C. Graying at the Guardian. Read it. A nugget:

On one side are those who inquire, examine, experiment, research, propose ideas and subject them to scrutiny, change their minds when shown to be wrong and live with uncertainty while placing reliance on the collective, self-critical, responsible and rigorous use of reason and observation to further the quest for knowledge.

On the other side are those who espouse a belief system or ideology which pre-packages all the answers, who have faith in it, who trust the authorities, priests and prophets, and who either think that the hows and whys of the universe are explained to satisfaction by their faith, or smugly embrace ignorance. Note that although the historical majority of these latter are the epigones of one or another religion, they also include the followers of such ideologies as Marxism and Stalinism – which are also all-embracing monolithic ownerships of the Great Truth to which everyone must sign up on pain of punishment, and on whose behalf their zealots are prepared to kill and die.

Thinking outside of the box inside the squared circle:

Women boxers will have the chance to fight for gold at the 2012 Olympics.

International Olympic Committee chiefs voted on Thursday to lift the barrier to the last all-male summer sport.

Will this be the next Mary Celeste? The BBC reports on the Arctic Sea.

A cargo ship carrying timber worth $1.8m (£1m) from Finland to Algeria is apparently briefly hijacked off the coast of Sweden before continuing its journey through the English Channel – and then disappears.

Nothing has been heard from the Maltese-flagged Arctic Sea since its last recorded sighting on 30 July, and officials appear to have no idea where it could be.

If this event had occurred in the seas off east Africa, the finger would immediately have been pointed at Somalia’s notorious pirates.

But the Arctic Sea disappeared while rounding the west coast of France, in what are considered to be the pirate-free shipping lanes of Europe.

Addendum:

Possibly found.

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I’m taking the day off.