First Looks category archive

Don’t believe what you see on teevee.

Crime laboratories around the country are grossly underfunded, lack a scientific foundation and are compromised by critical delays in analyzing physical evidence, according to a broad study of forensic techniques published Wednesday by the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s premier scientific body.

Among its many criticisms, the study counted a backlog of 359,000 requests for forensic analysis in 2005, a 24 percent increase in delays since 2002. A survey of crime laboratories found 80 percent of them to be understaffed.

Sales pitchers retired from the mound:

A record 881 U.S. auto dealerships closed in 2008, with Detroit’s three struggling automakers representing 80 percent of the decline, according to data released on Thursday.

In the face of tight credit and a plunge in sales of cars and trucks, about 4.2 percent of the country’s 20,084 auto dealerships shut their doors, according to data firm Urban Science.

More vanishing retail: While I was in Concord Mall today buying socks, I noticed that the Burger King and three stores were gone and vacant and the Spencer’s Gifts had turned into a plush looking hearing aid place.

The Burger King and Spencer’s had been there since before I moved to these parts, through all the iterations of the Mall. I can’t remember what the other stores were, which leads me to think they were women’s wear stores of some description.

The camera shop is long gone, a victim of digital photography.

Go to Balloon Juice. Read the post. Play the video.

Do not drink anything while playing the video.

You will not regret it.

Shorter Peter Cappelli interview: In the long run, they don’t help companies. They help the stock price because “Wall Street analysts,” rulers of all things financial, think that layoffs help companies.

A description of the interview from the Radio Times website:

As the nation continues to shed jobs, some employers are searching for alternatives to layoffs like reducing salaries and work hours or asking employees to take voluntary unpaid vacations. We talk with Wharton professor PETER CAPPELLI about the effectiveness of such strategies vs. laying off workers.

Follow the link to the website and search the archives for February 18, 2009, or listen here (MP3).

I bought a pack of four pairs of socks today.

Couldn’t afford two packs for eight pairs.

See it here.

The U.S. economy was weakening further in January, and a gradual recovery wasn’t likely until the second half of the year, members of the Federal Open Market Committee agreed, according to minutes of the Jan. 27 and 28 meeting released Wednesday.

All together now,

Down, down, down in the gloom, gloom, gloom.

Distilled by Skippy.

Off to drink liberally.

A picture book by Bill Watterson.

Via Gene Weingarten.

A rose by any other name . . . . (might be a turnip, but that’s a different issue).

You’re out of work or your company is teetering on Chapter 11.

You work for a bank and nobody likes you anymore.

You still have a job but the folks on either side of you? Oh. Well.

What else is there to do? Good friends, good food, good times.

Triumph Brewing Company, 1 1/2 blocks from Front on Chestnut, Philadelphia, Pa., 6 p., every Tuesday.

Nothing in the weather forecast about “wintry mixes” or car crashes all over the highways.

If my cold doesn’t come back on me tomorrow, I might actually make it for the first time in what seems like a month of Sundays.

’nuff said:

Because of the increasing demand on unemployment benefits, the (Nevada–ed.) state’s unemployment call center will be open from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m Monday, Feb. 16, although it is Presidents Day, a federal holiday.

This is in addition to the center’s recently expanded Saturday hours, also open 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.

DougJ’s post at Balloon Juice considers the implications.

It includes part of a lengthy email from a senior manager at a hedge fund. That itself is worth your while.

Not for this guy. He dug his own hole.

The Army Corps of Engineers:

The Army Corps of Engineers that constructed a new river levee system through Alamosa (Colo.) a decade ago is now telling the City of Alamosa the levee may be flawed – and the city might have to pay to fix it.

Alamosa City Manager Nathan Cherpeski brought the situation to the city council’s attention during his weekly Friday update and commented further about it on Monday. He said although the Corps designed the current levee, and it was built according to the Corps’ design, the Corps is now telling the city the levee was constructed incorrectly.

The big problem with the levee is the tree growth on the land side of the levee, Cherpeski said. He pointed out that the Corps left many large trees in place when it constructed the new levee in 1997 but is now apparently blaming the city for the potential structural problems the trees could cause to the levee.

You remember the Corps. That’s the outfit that built the levees in New Orleans.

Yeah, those levees. The ones that fell over.

Via Harry Shearer.

Does anyone actually read Maureen Dowd? I can never get past the headlines.

The fish don’t seem to see the wider world around them. Or, if they do, it is distorted by the water.

Atrios poses the question.

(Aside: Many Washington insiders, like some of my friends, seem to think that today’s Republican Party bears some resemblance to the Republican Party that they grew up with 40 or 50 years ago, a party that included good, decent, sensible persons, such as President Jerry Ford, persons with whom one could disagree, yet still respect.

It does not.)

Transcrupt here.