First Looks category archive

H/T Susan for the pic.

See the full-sized image

. . . an anonymous donor just buoyed it (the S. S. United States–ed.) with $250,000.

“We’re singing from the rooftops – or whatever a maritime version of that would be,” Susan Gibbs, executive director of the SS United States Conservancy, said yesterday.

The massive ship (it’s as long as the Comcast Center is tall) remains docked at Pier 82 on the Delaware River. The owners constantly stave off the threat of the ship being scrapped. The monthly maintenance costs stand around $80,000.

Gibbs believes that donations like this could spur more of the same.

Via Sampler, an image site (some images NSFW).

Via Job’s Anger.

Fun and fellowship for liberals. Join us and talk about anything in a relaxed atmosphere.

When: Thursday, February 5, 6 p.

Where:
Croc’s 19 Street Bistro
620 19th Street (Map)

More here.

A will-ful twit.

You can find him here.

Contrary to what you might think, there are only three Star Wars movies. Any others are counterfeit.

Family matters.

My local rag’s David Hall writes of the funeral of Carl Long, a man of many firsts (“he helped break the color barrier in the Carolina League in 1956 . . . .became Kinston’s first black Trailways bus driver, its first black deputy and its first black detective”). The column is worth a read, but this bit leapt out at me.

Long remembered, clear as day, riding on a team bus over the segregated South’s back roads and seeing black men hanging from trees, their lives taken in the name of an accepted hatred.

One more time: When next you hear someone romanticizing “the Lost Cause,” ask him or her to specify out loud for all to hear just precisely what cause was lost.

Every year, there is a spate of stories about words added to various dictionaries.

In my local rag, Bernadette Kinlaw points out that, every year, words are also dropped from dictionaries. Here are a few of this year’s casualties:

Cyclogiro

This is an aircraft that flies because of its rotating blades.

Deliciate

When you deliciate, you indulge in feasting. I’m going to use that word starting today.

Frigorific

A frigorific thing causes or creates cold. The polar vortex is like that.

Read her list. Several of them are words I’ve actually heard of (alienist, for one). I have heard somewhere gyrocopter, but not cyclogiro.

Via Classic Arts Showcase.

Read more here.

Bernadette Kinlaw slings some slang at my local rag.

One of the saddest sights in the American political landscape is a Republican of good will who tries to pretend that a vestige remains of his fantasy “traditional” Republicanism. One such is Wisconsin’s Austin Given, who laments in part

If only the RNC had not implemented the Southern Strategy, Republicans might still be the party of civil rights. If state’s rights conservatives had not infected the party founded to stop them, Republicans would be fighting for minority rights, not majority comfort and supremacy.

Real Republicans recognize the party’s cancer. The growing state’s rights conservative movement has mutated the Republican message from empowering individuals to overpowering them.

Do read the rest. His faith in the existence of “real Republicans” somehow separate and apart from the actions of the Republican Party is touching and sweet in a sad puppy dog way.

“Unliked” by the Gray Lady.

Chris Honore looks back:

Already a distant memory: The Olympic Winter Games held in Sochi, Russia, where V. Putin medaled in all events – shirtless. And speaking of Vladimir, who can forget Rudy Giuliani’s bromance with Vlad, Rudy waxing poetic, so impressed by the Russian’s decisiveness and lack of concern for public opinion (like, say, the electorate). This is a man ready to charge ahead and get stuff done. You know, like quasi-dictators can do. Rudy was breathless in his praise.