First Looks category archive

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.

A well-turned phrase, from The Eye of Osiris, by R. Austin Freeman:

. . . wiping his hands off, with an air of finality, on the posterior aspect of his trousers.

Badtux has a theory why, after many persons have been productively working from home for the past year, corporate managements are pushing for a return to the office (for example). He suggests that much of middle management fears being revealed as–er–less than relevant.

Having spent my career in corporate America, methinks he may be onto something.

Hal Crother struggles to understand the recent surge in violence against persons of Asian descent.

And cannot.

Here’s a bit from his article:

What in hell were they (the persons doing the violence–ed.) thinking? Once again we encounter a wall of stupidity that’s much too high to scale. And we experience the same panic that seized us on Jan. 6. They CAN’T think! They are cognitively disconnected. Reality, for them, is like a distant star on a cloudy night, a light that never enters their field of vision. Yet they vote, they poke at their cellphones—-they reproduce, God help us. And one major political party not only embraces and encourages them, but depends on them, shapes its rhetoric to suit them, and shrinks to an electorally impotent size without them.

I’m listening to The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart, sometimes referred to as “America’s Agatha Christie,” though, truly, she predated Christie by a generation.

I got the audiobook from Librivox.org, one of the two most worthwhile projects on the interwebs (the other is Project Gutenberg). Librivox audiobooks are read by volunteers (some of whom read better than others; indeed there is one I cannot bear to listen to).

For the person who is reading my current chapter of The Circular Staircase, English is clearly a second language. I can’t quite figure out from her accent what her primary language may be, but my guess would be French.

Oh, her English is quite good, but there are tiny little giveaways. For example, the last name of the heroine (and amateur detective and narrator) is “Innes,” which said reader pronounces as “Ins.”

It’s actually rather charming.

Bob Molinaro is somewhat taken aback.

Nervous Nellies: First it was people hoarding toilet paper. Now gas. It’s embarrassing how panicky Americans can be.

I inadvertently scheduled two QOTDs for today, so I rescheduled one of them.

(This happens from time to time, but I usually catch it before embarrassing myself in public.)