First Looks category archive

From the Department of Redundant Department:

In one of the dumbest tweets of the last few weeks, Ben Shapiro lamented that no NYC mayoral candidate suggested banning crime. If only we’d thought to make crime illegal before!

More stupid at the link.

Jill Ebstein bemoans our inability to pay attention. A snippet:

Consider this: The average human attention span is now shorter than a goldfish’s. A recent study found that the average human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight seconds today. It is reported that goldfish have a 9-second attention span.

Follow the link for her thoughts on our inability to be intent.

Now’s your chance.

They are fiendlier than ever before.

Politeness once again is child’s play.

In this case, the child was two-years-old.

And thus passeth another life in NRA Paradise.

The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry, by Mary Roberts Rinehart.

This book is an absolute hoot! When I look at the picture of Rinehart in the Wikipedia article, a very properly encorseted lady of the early 20th century, I would not imagine her capable of penning such a delightfully farcical and irreverent mystery story.

But I am a victim of my own preconceptions.

She was, and she did.

A former Republican–one who once held a leadership position in his local committee–looks with dismay at what has happened to his party. A nugget; follow the link for his evidence.

. . . the party that once honored knowledge, required people to have legitimate credentials, respected science and reason began its descent into insanity. Trump was merely the end piece of what and started over a decade earlier. Now, the bigger lunatic and liar one is, the better one’s chances for rising within the GOP, a party that now clings to every insane conspiracy theory no matter how far fetched.

A quibble: I think the change started several decades earlier than he suggests. It took time for the rot to take root and spread before its fruit fully ripened and burst into view.

Follow the link for the question.

Kimberley A. Johnson’s interview with Jared Yates Sexton.

Be forewarned. It is not quieting.

At the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Steven Backus explains what critical thinking is, and what it isn’t.

Critical thinking simply means drawing an objective conclusion from a set of facts. Doesn’t sound too difficult, yet human beings are not naturally critical thinkers.

He goes on to identify the three factors which he considers the biggest roadblocks to critical thinking in our society. The piece is worth the three minutes it will take to read it.

Off to drink liberally.

Read more »

Aside:

We’re almost there.

Afterthought:

It’s an uncomfortable thought, but it must be voiced.

The Republican Party has become the party of sedition.

R. Holmes and Company by John Kendrick Bangs.

If you are a Sherlock Holmes devotee, as am I, you will get a big kick out of this pastiche. Raffles Holmes is the son of the marriage of Sherlock Holmes and the daughter of the legendary thief and cracksman, Raffles.* His Raffles side and his Holmes side continually struggle (though the Holmes side usually wins). The adventures are marvelously tongue-in-cheek and quite good fun.

_________________

*This, of course, is absolute bosh.

Thanks to William S. Barring-Gould’s biography of Nero Wolfe, we all know that, while wandering in Asia after the affair at Reichenbach Falls, Holmes came across Irene Adler, whom Holmes always referred to as “The Woman,” and the result of their meeting was Nero Wolfe. There is no question that Irene Adler was the only woman in Holmes’s life.

Deep Lake Mystery, by Carolyn Wells.

It’s not a great mystery, but it’s a good mystery well told.

. . . for they are getting fiendlier every day.

Drive with politeness.

Guns and stupid, guns and stupid.
They go together like love and Cupid.
Let me tell you brother,
You can’t have one without the other.

Scatter politeness where ye may,
Tho’ little children may be at play.

After a cleaning service found a loaded pistol in the room of an Outer Banks beach house where children typically stay, police are urging vacationers to keep track of their guns and safely lock them when they’re not being used.

(snip)

The gun that Lancaster turned in was the third one left at a beach rental that week, according to Kill Devil Hills police. The cleaning service owner said she has heard of other house cleaners finding guns that were left behind.

Afterthought:

I must say I find this rather surprising. One would expect fetishists to keep better track of the objects of their affection.