First Looks category archive

Off to drink liberally.

Emma talks with Henry Grabar about how the fixation on providing room for automobiles distracts from providing room for persons. An excerpt:

You’re not thinking about room for people. You’re thinking about room for cars.

_________________

*With apologies to Joni Mitchell.

Michael in Norfolk takes exception (emphasis added):

We endlessly hear politicians of both parties, but especially Republicans bloviating about “American exceptionalism” even as objective measures such as off the charts gun deaths, a declining life expectancy and other criteria suggest that to the extent America is exceptional it is often in a negative sense.

Follow the link for the numbers.

Virginia Woolf:

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

This poem by Alastair Reid served as the introduction to a small book on genetics that I read in high school. For some reason, it’s stuck in my mind for all these years.

Curiosity

may have killed the cat, more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die –
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.

Jeffrey Kluger:

It’s not mere extremism that makes folks at the fringes so troubling; it’s extremism wedded to false beliefs.

Lewis Carroll, in the voice of Humpty Dumpty:

When I use a word . . . it means just what I choose it to mean.

He spoke truth. For example.

Off to drink liberally.

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall.

It’s a short read, but a valuable one. It’s historical American realpolitik. I read it many years ago for one of my classes when I was training as an historian.

Learn more about George Washington Plunkitt at Wikipedia.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Mark Travers looks at the effects of false–I would use the term “toxic”–positivity. He sees three negatives; follow the link for a discussion of each one.

1. It bottles up real emotions.
2. It leads to unrealistic beliefs.
3. It gives an untrue impression.

Afterthought:

I have nothing against trying to maintain a positive attitude in times of trouble, but, when doing so reaches the point of self-delusion, it becomes destructive to oneself and others.

Robert Reich cites the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, which states, in part,

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.

and suggests that Republicans’ efforts to force the nation to default on its debts constitutes such questioning and may well be in violation of the Constitution. Here’s a bit from his article:

. . . if House Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling, you (President Biden–ed.) are obligated by the U.S. Constitution and your oath of office to ignore the debt ceiling and continue to pay the debts of the United States.

He goes on to argue that “Constitutional originalists” would be hard-pressed to find such an action unconstitutional.

(Of course, the flaw in that argument is that “originalists” are only “originalists” when it suits their agenda, but that’s a topic for another day.)

At Above the Law, Liz Dye has the latest on the legal maneuvering.

Via Le Show.

I must say, I find this analogy to be quite en pointe.

Via Job’s Anger.

Chuck Hagel:

I took an oath of office to the Constitution, I didn’t take an oath of office to my party or my president.

Off to drink liberally.

Jessica Martinez and Marcy Goldstein-Gelb look at the push to return to the days of Charles Dickens in this, the New Gilded Age. A couple of excerpts from their article:

There’s a reason employer are hiring children in increasing numbers. With less information, less power and fewer options, they are easier to exploit.

(snip)

Since 2021, legislators in 10 states have introduced bills, backed by industry, that would loosen child labor laws.