First Looks category archive

Secrets of the Stones: Decoding Ireland’s Lost Past, a look at the archeology of Ireland’s from its earliest past through the early Christian era. Plus, the photography is stunning. I would recommend having Google Maps satellite view open as you watch it.

I saw it on Tubi, but I gather it’s available on other streaming services as well.

I don’t know exactly what happened yesterday. (My hosting provider’s most excellent tech support told me it wasn’t anything I did.)

But things seem to be working again.

Canals: The Making of a Nation, about how Britain’s canals, mostly created in the late 1700s and early 1800s, affected British economy and society.

I find it a fascinating watch.

You can find it on Tubi (tubitv.com) and likely elsewhere.

“Medicare Advantage” is little more than a Republican con to let insurance companies get their paws on money that belonged to the citizenry.

Ask me nicely, I’ll tell you what I really think.

(Syntax error fixed.)

The Rude One applied for a job in the next Trump administration.

Check out his application.

As far as I can see, this is a distinction without a difference; follow the link for more (emphasis added).

Among the points backing Donald Trump’s argument that the 14th Amendment doesn’t disqualify him from office is one that, at first glance, is a mix of laughable and disturbing: He never took an oath to “support” the Constitution.

Why would the former president emphasize such a thing? That’s because Section 3 of the amendment disqualifies insurrectionists who have “previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution.” Thus, the argument goes in his Colorado Supreme Court appeal, he’s eligible for the presidency again in 2024 because he swore to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution, not support it.

Via Juanita Jean.

A possibility of sporadic bloggery for the next few days.

The Time-Life series, Lost Civilizations, narrated by Sam Waterston.

It’s available at tubitv.com (and possibly elsewhere for all I know).

Via All Things Amazing, an image site (some images NSFW).

He will be remembered, and he will be missed.

If you have Netflix, check out Still Game.

It is an absolute hoot.

. . . but don’t ask for a window seat.

Off to drink liberally.

When I was a young ‘un, back in the olden days, and my previously all-white high school started to integrate, suddenly two private all-white schools sprang up in my rural community (I think one of them still exists). To be blunt, they enrolled kids of white parents who were afraid of black folks.

That’s why we called them “seg academies.”

Those of us who stayed in the public schools and got to know and study and play sports with the black kids (who I am certain were carefully screened and chosen to be the early integrators of the previously all-white schools in those early days of integration) looked on those schools–well–somewhat contemptuously. We were in school with the black kids, we got to know them at least a bit, and we realized that they were people like us. True, we may not have gotten to know them all that well, but we got to know them enough to realize that they were human beings like us.

Later on, when I was well out of school, my mother, who was a math teacher, taught for many years in my county’s now-integrated school system. More than once, she told me that they had more problems from (oh what the heck, white) parents than they ever had from students. She was born and raised in South Carolina, but she was able to rise above prejudice to see persons.

And now comes Thom to point out that the proponents of seg academies are still around and still trying to pervert public education to promote racial prejudice.

Grung_e_Gene considers the carnage in car nation.

My hosting provider tells me that this site is scheduled for maintenance on November 8. They promise that disruption should be minimal, but the site may be unavailable for a bit.

Michael in Norfolk wonders why the right-wing increasingly acts like it hates America.

He theorizes that it may be because the American ideal–one never reached but often enunciated–of freedom and liberty for all may have become a little too close to being more than a mirage on the horizon. They want to put someone in charge to turn the clock back, if not to the 1850s, at least to the 1950s.. Here’s a bit of his piece:

. . . perhaps the main complaint of those on the right is increasingly they find opposition to their infliction of their antiquated and grievance driven beliefs on the whole of society. Hence, their support of authoritarian rule where they believe others will be made subordinate to they power and control.