Sorry for the low-tech rerouting, but: 

If you reached this page because of a link to a numbered item that is no longer on my main page, you can get to it by adding "#" and the number -- e.g. "#1105" -- to the end of the URL above.

Yes, it's more catblogging:

2/25/06, 10:01 p.m. (Link here)

Catblogging:

2/24/06, 8:22 p.m. (Link here)

From more of watching the Olympics & related advertising: why don't the anti-flag-burning zealots get to work preventing the use of the flag and National Anthem to sell products?

2/24/06, 8:20 p.m. (Link here)

The SF Chron's Don Asmussen explains the ports scandal.

2/23/06, 8:40 p.m. (Link here)

Worth rereading, eleven years later: Umberto Eco's "Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt." Some of this makes more sense to me now than it used to.

What reminded me of it was Eco's phrase, "everybody is educated to become a hero," by way of an advertisement frequently repeated during NBC's broadcast of the Olympics. In the ad a child recites the characteristics of "a Superhero." For example, "A Superhero never gives up." Nonsense. What a child should be taught is that there are no perfect Superheroes, only, sometimes, real flawed people in a difficult world who manage to do heroic things. "Superheroes" are for Nietzsche and the comic books. A real heroic act is achieved by a human being who is frequently scared and sometimes discouraged and sometimes defeated but who, at some point, early or late, steps forward and acts despite being afraid. A real person can do something brave despite fear. It doesn't take a glittery faraway impossible figure on television.

2/21/06, 5:59 p.m. (Link here)

Yet another news story today about a schoolteacher staging a rather radical political protest. Here, the guy's chaining himself to a park bench and fasting to protest the war. Stands to reason when you think about it that a fair number of schoolteachers would be radicals at present. Teaching is hard work for people who have education enough to do softer work. By underpaying schoolteachers, we make it more likely that new college graduates will join the profession out of moral or political convictions strong enough to override the profit motive. Naturally some folks who hold such beliefs will turn out to be political radicals. In other words, if you don't like having your children taught by activists, you should be out there campaigning to raise schoolteachers' salaries.

2/19/06, 10:10 p.m. (Link here)

Spring is still spring... Orchards blooming already in the upper Central Valley of California.

2/19/06, 10:05 p.m. (Link here)

Catblogging:

2/19/06, 12:07 a.m. (Link here)

You think the old nonsense is over and it never is: women aren't allowed to be Olympic ski-jumpers for a combination of reasons that include supposed concern for the health of their wombs. What crap. Wouldn't have believed it. Read it on Echidne' blog, still only half-believed it, looked it up, and, yes, it's solicitude for their womanly parts that bars brave fit nineteen-year-olds from competing in what just happens to be the most iconically courage-testing event of the Games. I begin to think the fear is that, if it were admitted that women also have such courage, the men's courage would lose some of its brilliance in some eyes.

2/18/06, 5:34 p.m. (Link here)

Hillary Clinton and Silvio Berlusconi have the same campaign pollster. This surprises me less than it ought to.

2/17/06, 9:24 p.m. (Link here)

A group of people in San Francisco have agreed to avoid buying new possessions in 2006, apart from "food, health and safety items and underwear." A little eccentric but no big deal, you'd think. So what? So people all over the world are yelling about them, both for and against. Why? What does it take to know when something like this will strike a nerve?

2/17/06, 7:11 p.m. (Link here)

They've fired the Stanford Tree for drinking... but... but... isn't drinking part of the job?

Strange de J: "Ooh, somebody got sent to the woodshed."

2/17/06, 4:46 p.m. (Link here)

Helen Thomas is a national treasure.

2/17/06, 2:50 p.m. (Link here)

I hadn't previously heard of Skyline Public Works, but it must be doing some good considering how badly it scares Matt Smith. [EDIT: Erm, I said some rude things about Smith's article here that I may as well delete.]

Looks like the best description of things Skyline folks do is in this outdated job advertisement. Looks interesting.

2/16/06, 8:04 p.m. (Link here)

Strange de J. again: "Jimmy Carter only attacked a mad rabbit with a boat paddle."

2/15/06, 11:30 p.m. (Link here)

Further wrt things Nixonian: J asks, "Eighteen hours of silence?"

2/14/06, 11:47 a.m. (Link here)

So we didn't blog "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight" (61 results on Google News already). Nor the Elmer Fudd cartoon in the SF Chron though the resemblance is so obvious once pointed out. (Except Elmer Fudd, as drawn, has a gentler mouth.)

But then Strange de Joel got on a roll. Two of his latest: "The Saturday Afternoon Massacre," and "First thing we do, we shoot all the lawyers." Fortunately or otherwise, he probably has more of these on the way. My gut aches in anticipation.

[MORE: I came back to post the Chron Letters to the Editor jokes, especially the suggestion that it's just as well Cheney didn't serve in Vietnam... but now it seems Mr. Whittington has birdshot in his heart. Maybe this is getting beyond a joke.]

2/12/06, 12:58 a.m. (Link here)

As the Bush-Nixon comparisons become more frequent, they're highlighting the contrast between the many things we knew about Mr. Nixon's personality and the very little we now know about Mr. Bush. The voting public heard all about Nixon's resentments, his bigotries, his dislike of the press, his obsessive ambition to make the beautiful people stop snubbing him and take notice -- and, of course, the vindictively personal nature of his abuses of governmental power. Nixon was, for better or worse, self-made, and to his own mixed betterment and detriment he wore his heart on his sleeve.

Bush... well, we know very little by comparison about what makes him get up in the morning. We hardly know many at all of his personal opinions or tastes. He's not dumb -- quite the reverse -- but when you compare him to Nixon, you realize he's willing to efface his individuality, at least when appearing in public, in order to serve as a spokesman for his political party organization. J. says, "He's a lens."

2/11/06, 4:40 p.m. (Link here)

Catblogging:

2/06/06, 11:51 p.m. (Link here)

Last time we took a walk down Fourteenth Street we found a lost parakeet. This time we found a lost birdcage, just a block away. Somebody up there is messing with our heads.

2/05/06, 11:23 p.m. (Link here)

"The British government will today publicly defy the United States by giving money for safe abortion services in developing countries to organisations that have been cut off from American funding..."

So confused, I'm so confused. I thought we were the beacon unto the nations of, among other things, women's rights?

2/03/06, 1:37 p.m. (Link here)

Yes, Friday catblogging is back. (Why mess with a hit?)

Ready or not, here comes Edgie.

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