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. "#1037" -- to the end of the URL above.

The Post is out. Good for them.

8/15/05, 11:10 p.m. (Link here)

About the Washington Post's sponsorship of the announced military-sponsored pro-military mass march: the staff union at the paper is objecting. Strenuously. And their objection is getting noticed in some of the right places.

(J., aghast that the Post is having any part of the event: "They should call it the Pentagon Paper.")

8/15/05, 2:28 p.m. (Link here)

New from TSA: infants suspected of terrorism. Someone over there must watch too many Family Guy reruns.

8/14/05, 1:01 p.m. (Link here)

Via Echidne, some beautifully loonified civil preparedness advice.

8/12/05, 5:25 p.m. (Link here)

I think this is how she must look to a mouse.

8/10/05, 12:14 p.m. (Link here)

Just saw this page via Atrios. It's for a mass march and country music concert in favor of our armed forces organized by our armed forces. The historical resonances are not pretty.

[UPDATE: News coverage of same.]

8/9/05, 3:59 p.m. (Link here)

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

It is for this reason that I’m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools...

Every day, in every way, we are getting better and better and... oops, what's this? "Conservatives" pushing to drop sections of the Voting Rights Act?

It's really not relevant how southern Republicans in Congress feel about civil rights in their private hearts. Lyndon Johnson and Hugo Black did all kinds of good, and neither of their hearts would have stood much examination. But opposing the Voting Rights Act right out in front of God and everybody? Aren't they embarrassed at how it looks?

[UPDATE: Mr. Allport says "It's actually a lot more complicated than that," citing this article. So, yes, it's complicated, but I don't see any reason to change my opinion. Here's a more legalistic case for the reauthorization, here's more from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and here's a a local view of the subject.]

[UPDATE 2: So I ask Mr. Allport, "These reformers -- do you think they are trustworthy? More trustworthy than the NAACP?" And he writes back, "Good question. Isn't that *exactly* the kind of question that blogs are for, rather than just rehashing the same old Manichean caricatures?" So maybe he's got a point but neither of us apparently has time to go into it. Until further notice I'm inclined to trust the NAACP.]

8/5/05, 11:09 p.m. (Link here)

It's Friday, besides which she caught another rat. Poor dear, she brought it in as her contribution to the pot but, silly humans, instead of eating the nice fresh rat we put it in the kitchen garbage using disposable chopsticks and took rat, chopsticks and all straight out to the trash bins. Cat consequently disconsolate. We have to make it up to her some way. Not sure she'll appreciate being catblogged but whether she's watching or not, this is by way of thanks.

8/5/05, 3:27 p.m. (Link here)

Strange: I heard about the deaths of migrant workers in this summer's exceptional Central Valley heat from two sources: a neighbor who happens to have a friend who does Central Valley social work, and the UK Guardian. Looks like the SF Chron did cover it but it can't have been prominently; at least I *think* I read through Wednesday's paper pretty well.

8/2/05, 9:37 a.m. (Link here)

Local tourism boosters in Motihari, Bihar, India have a project in mind. They want to build a statue, a museum and an indoor stadium in honor of George Orwell. He was after all born there in 1903 as Eric Blair, son of the local Sub-Deputy Opium Agent, Fourth Class. Strangely enough, this isn't even the first time the tourism industry has made a draw out of dour, scroungy, unfashionably egalitarian George Orwell. Northern England already has the (tripe-free) Wigan Pier Experience.

Somewhere a wheezy old ghost is quietly laughing his head off.

8/1/05, 11:22 a.m. (Link here)

Thoughts on "the hapless toad" --

First of all, read Bob Egelko's column on the Roberts nomination and environmental regulation.

Next, consider the view from, for example, the Klamath Basin: in the inland West there are many thousands if not millions of people who blame the Endangered Species Act in particular, and environmental regulation generally, for all the hardships they have faced in exceedingly hard lives. These places are losing possibilities for dignified, well-paid work in the farming, ranching, timber, and mining industries. The political commentators and officials who pay closest attention to these places' losses, who demonstrate warm sympathy, and who offer coherent-sounding explanations are conservative property-rights activists. So when rural people find they are unable to live the kinds of lives they grew up expecting, it is natural for them to direct their disappointed fury against federal environmental regulation. Democrats, of course, might point out other candidates for blame, but Democrats have to a surprising degree abandoned political participation in these places.

In the context of this nomination debate or otherwise, Democrats should not underestimate the conservative environmental-issues card. I don't think even an issue like abortion raises Western rural anger anywhere near as effectively as environmental regulation.

7/21/05, 8:29 a.m. (Link here)

Longtime reader "Buck" reads my mind and forwards the Washington Post's version of the story about the many homeless people dying of heat in Phoenix, Arizona. Yes, indeed, there are grim consequences to running a society on the basis of Restrooms for Customers Only. J. further notes that the lack of sidewalks implies a lack of the old public amenities such as drinking fountains & accelerates yer basic social Darwinism.

He and I had a classmate in college who was widely known as "Erik the Nazi." This fellow was famous for having announced to his bemused freshman roommate, "The strong should live and the weak should die. That's how we get progress." I don't think that's how we get progress. But maybe that's how we get Phoenix.

7/8/05, 5:02 p.m. (Link here)

Posting is going to be spotty here for a while because I need to concentrate on a project. Go read Horizon or something, OK?

7/7/05, 11:20 a.m. (Link here)

Friday Catblogging here. Wishing everyone peace and quiet and coziness.

[Oops, as Bobby points out, it's Thursday Catblogging. Sorry.]

7/2/05, 7:30 p.m. (Link here)

Notes from a recently recalled reservist: "...there's a problem with the idea that American military power is the right tool for a pedagogy of liberation."

7/1/05, 12:14 p.m. (Link here)

Oh, and show this to the next person who pretends that "diversity" requires being nice to bigots.

7/1/05, 11:31 a.m. (Link here)

"King of the Road" haunts me whenever I have to help someone find housing.

...two hours of pushin' broom
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room...

We did not have so many homeless people in 1965. That is not because of any decline in the national character or level of industriousness. That is because of the present-day shortage of low-cost housing.

I have just been on the phone with the manager of the Mosser Hotel on Clay Street in San Francisco. He informs me that a residential hotel room measuring eight feet by ten feet currently rents for $155 per week plus key deposit, or $620 monthly, and the cheapest room in the place, currently not available, would rent for $600 per month.

In two days of calling around, the cheapest unsubsidized weekly room rent I have had definitely quoted to me is $145 and the cheapest unsubsidized hypothetical weekly room rent I have heard of is $125.

A hotel I won't name that seemed to house mostly obvious third-rate hookers and glitter-eyed skin-and-bone pipe monsters quoted $50 per day or $150 per week and flatly refused to rent monthly.

The cost of housing for poor people is in other words a grossly distorted bleeding tragedy.

7/1/05, 11:01 a.m. (Link here)

Anyone who thinks racism is over, kindly take a look at this map.

[UPDATE: Been debating privately with Mr. Allport, who suggests that the burden's on me to show that it's race, not poverty, causing the problem. There are a few long answers to his objections, especially considering that he's comparing to 1940s England, where class was really more like caste -- but the short answer is that, OK, fine, anyone who thinks injustice is a thing of the past should kindly look at this map.]

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