First Looks category archive

Susan Krauss Whitbourne tries to figure out why they do it. A nugget:

In their article entitled “What Were They Thinking?,” Peluchette and Karl explored the reasons for what they deemed this reckless activity, coming up with rather surprising results. People who post the most extreme tell-all Facebook photos and updates actually do so on purpose. It’s not as if they forget to change their security settings or even have their photos updated by other people. They actually think they will look more popular, cool, and attractive if they reveal their wild, partying sides. And it’s not just women, as men too were likely to include their share of Animal House images. Facebook users varied, however, in the images they wanted to portray as revealed in this study; plenty of the students that responded to the survey wanted to project a clean and wholesome persona to the outside world.

I was trying to text the word “tomorrow” on the old cell phone, botched it, and spellcheck said

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Harsh.

Family matters.

Off to drink liberally.

Alexandra Petri laments the passing of whom.

Who?

No, whom.

The Whos down in Whoville are perfectly safe. But the Whoms, down in Whomville, having staid, WASPy dinners of roast beast and refusing to pass Little Susie Lou Whom a slice unless she uses the subjunctive correctly in her request: They are in grave danger. Whom is struggling. After all, whom is, as numerous writers have noted, the literary equivalent of waving an enormous flag that proclaims you a Stuffy Old Twerp, a Bombastic Blowhard Who Thinks He’s In England, or In 1800, or Possibly Both. You might as well invite people to go fox hunting later and murmur sexist things into a tea service for all the goodwill it will earn you.

This notion that some folks have that, at some dim dark time in the past, everyone used precisely correct grammar, is a favorite fantasy of the Miss Grundies of this world.

Persons don grammar like clothing–they suit it to their environment.

One does not wear white tie and tails to the old fishing hole.

Of course, these days, some people wear jeans to weddings and don’t take off their baseball caps at funerals, so maybe she has a point.

Her days are numbered, and the number is low.

The conservancy working to secure a home and purpose for the 990-foot-long ship tells The Associated Press that it could be sold for scrap within two months unless they can raise $500,000 immediately so they can continue negotiations with several parties.

I have some pictures of her at berth on my boating page; scroll down to see them.

Q. What do you use to send a sad telegram?

H/T Susan.

Via Classic Arts Showcase.

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

When: Thursday, March 28th, 6 p.

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

More here.

A reporter from my local rag hitches a ride on a tug boat shoving a barge into port.

Read it. Learn what life is like under the drawbridge.

Bill Maxwell is not impressed with colleges’ moving to the on-line model:

I wanted to hear from someone whose opinions I trust on such matters, so I spoke with Donald Eastman, president of Eckerd College, a private school in St. Petersburg. He said that online courses have a useful place in higher education. So far, that place has been in courses for adults who, for various reasons, have limited options to attend regular classes.

“Much more importantly, a string of courses — online or not — does not add up to a real college experience, even if these courses do add up, at some places, to a degree,” he said. “As the Wizard of Oz says to the scarecrow, ‘I cannot give you a brain, but I can give you a diploma.’ “

“Wind turbine syndrone,” that is. Miles Grant reports:

The biggest factor in whether you say wind turbines make you sick is someone telling you wind turbines will make you sick. That’s the result of two new studies on so-called “wind turbine syndrome,” reports DeSmogBlog’s Graham Readfern.

Details and citations at the link.

Now that you are hearing rap music–watered down, corporate rap, to be sure–in commercials on mainstream television, it’s safe to say that rap is here to stay.

With a few exceptions, all I know about rap music is that it’s too loud and I can’t understand most of the lyrics. (That’s also all I know about “death metal.”)

Oddly enough, that’s what my parents knew about rock . . . .

If that’s all you know about rap, listen to this episode of Hear Say, the local NPR station’s news and information show:

Segment A: The Politics of Hip-Hop

Virginia Wesleyan professor Dr. Murrell Brooks began researching his current curriculum over two decades ago, but he might not have realized it at the time. In 1980’s L.A., Murrell was a founding member of hip-hop group Double Trouble. He’s taken those experiences and applied them to his “Politics of Hip-Hop” course. He joins Cathy Lewis to share how he’s using the genre’s trajectory as the road map for teaching the societal circumstances that have shaped the art form since the 60s.

Off to drink liberally.

Drinking Liberally is a gathering place for liberals. Socialize and laugh in a friendly atmosphere.

When: 6 p., Thursday, March 14.

Where:
Lola’s Caribbean Restaurant
328 W 20th St (map)

Details here. Meetup page here.

Let Thoreau explain the genealogy.

This is fascinating.

In a paper published earlier this week, a Franco-British group argued that the Alderney Crystal — a chunk of Icelandic calcite found amid a 16th century wreck at the bottom of the English Channel — worked as a kind of solar compass, allowing sailors to determine the position of the sun even when it was hidden by heavy cloud, masked by fog, or below the horizon.

That’s because of a property known as birefringence, which splits light beams in a way that can reveal the direction of their source with a high degree of accuracy. Vikings may not have grasped the physics behind the phenomenon, but that wouldn’t present a problem.

“You don’t have to understand how it works,” said Albert Le Floch, of the University in Rennes in western France. “Using it is basically easy.”

Some persons are skeptical, with reason, given that the Vikings left little evidence of how they managed to navigate across wide stretches of the Atlantic.

Read the rest.

No, not the ones that Wall Street sells.

Real bags of real air.

Investigators say thieves seem to be targeting Honda cars.

Police say in most of the cases happen overnight.

Thieves are busting in passenger side windows and taking the driver’s side airbag.

We have all seen them.

Planes dragging banners with marriage proposals over sports palaces, elaborate invitations on AFV, and the like.

I probably would not have realized this, having been on the other side of the asking-girls-out divide, but Emily Hoeven raises an excellent point–there is a sadistic, manipulative element in the showiness. She writes of prom dates:

Sometimes huge crowds form a circle around a couple, cheering the boy on as he asks his special girl to the dance. While this group effort is encouraging, it also puts the couple in a very difficult position. Should the girl want to refuse the boy’s offer, she would have to do so in front of a large group of people.

This is nothing but public humiliation in its purest form, and it leaves the girl with few options: say yes or be viewed as coldhearted. That is not really fair, because the girl should have the option to say no. The boy should have the right to be turned down without a crowd as a witness. And both of them should be able to go to a dance with someone who really wants to be with them instead of someone who said yes under pressure.

Many years ago, Second Son acted in community theatre. After the last performance of one of his plays, the director ostentatiously proposed to one of the actors, on stage, before the audience, after the curtain calls.

She accepted on stage.

Second Son told me that afterwards, in the green room, she ripped her now-ex fiance a new one.

They did, eventually, get married, but it took him six months to recover the ground that he lost with that one ostentatious gesture.