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

Ben Brumfield suggests the poll results I was deploring a few days back aren't quite as xenophobic as the summary made them look, per a Volokh item -- I think he means this one. Actually, though, I dunno. I still don't know what this country has come to when a sizeable bunch of its people favor treating certain of their neighbors with extra suspicion on the basis of religion. I'd like to know what percentage of all U.S. families ended up in the Americas in the first place due to religious discrimination elsewhere. It must be a fairly large percentage. Anyway big enough that we should know better.

12/25/04 12:18 a.m. (Link here)

People Unclear on the Concept Dep't.--

Says here a lawyer from some antigay group was arguing in court that gay and lesbian couples "can't perform the basic functions of marriage.".

What a marvelous comic straight line, never mind the pun. Any humorist from Erma Bombeck to Margaret Cho could come up with a pretty good riff on "basic functions of marriage" that are not related to begetting or bearing offspring. We could almost hold a contest for Best 500-Word Goof on the subject. First prize, one weekend with the in-laws. Second prize, one sinkful of dishes, etc., etc.

On a more serious note, there's something sick in the claim that marriage is exclusively or primarily about perpetuating the species. Reminds me of the frigid wife in 1984 who describes sexual relations as "our duty to the Party." Marriage is a private relationship -- the most private relationship there is. Citizens of a free country enter a marriage not to fulfill some duty to society or the state, but to formalize their dedication to each other. If they bear or accept children, so be it, but if a couple -- gay or straight -- remains childless is their marriage consequently less real? Good grief, if this lady wants to deny marriage to gay couples today, will she argue tomorrow for revoking marriages that don't bear fruit in some stated time? In her mind, are we people or pear trees?

12/24/04 12:55 p.m. (Link here)

Here's a contribution to the Friday catblogging tradition. Our Edgie, settled down for a long winter's nap.




12/23/04 10:42 p.m. (Link here)

Can't think of anything new to say about politics today, so I'll just refer you to a fine long memoir/feature by current SF Chron music critic Joel Selvin on past Chron music critic Ralph Gleason. Sounds like the guy was an interesting, interesting hip fogey.

" 'He was not a good writer,' says his widow. 'He wrote about interesting things.' "

12/22/04 1:14 p.m. (Link here)

Remember that old bumpersticker wishing the Air Force had to hold a bake sale?

Well, here's a California soldier who set out to sell his 49ers memorabilia to buy equipment to take to Iraq. Then his friends turned it into a big let's-put-on-a-show (OK, an auction) fundraiser for the whole unit. The hoopla has hit a catch, however: the Army Reserve is, it seems, "not amused" at folks creating the impression that they might be running out of anything. Per Army Reserve representative Major Barbara (no kidding!) Kuhn, "All of our soldiers get body armor."

12/21/04 6:11 p.m. (Link here)

Via William Gibson, here's a poll saying 44% of the U.S. wants to restrict Muslim Americans' civil liberties.

Yeah, save your outrage. Just do something for the Bill of Rights today.

12/20/04 10:54 p.m. (Link here)

When Ohio headed south around 1 a.m. on Election Night, my uncle called it. He said, "The anti-intellectuals have won." In case further proof is needed, here's some.

12/20/04 12:14 p.m. (Link here)

When the highway department meets Mother Nature, some wild and woolly language emerges. Which makes one wonder, if John Muir was telling the story, wouldn't it sound more poetic, less absurd, and hence more persuasive to the public?

The following CalTrans "problem statements" were spotted by Strange de Joel:

-"The Effectiveness of Off-Structure Bat Houses Meeting Attraction/Mitigation Regulatory Agency Requirements for State Highway Projects (EV6)" (It's to protect highway workers from bat bites and bat droppings.)

-"The effects of construction activities on Valley Elderberry Longhorn Beetle habitat" (It's to protect Valley Elderberry Longhorn Beetles from highway workers.)

-"Effective Methods of Excluding Nesting Cliff Swallows from Highway Structures (EV5)." (It's to improve on a net-hanging method that sometimes kills the swallows in order to save them.)

Strange de J. suggests maybe getting the bats and the beetles in touch.

12/20/04 12:09 a.m. (Link here)

I'll give you a real estate tip for free: get to know homeless people. When they're getting mistreated in a place with special aggressiveness, you know that's the next neighborhood to be "discovered" in the local real estate pages. San Francisco's southeastern waterfront is already half loftified but the push has just extended farther southward, keeping pace with the very Jetsons-looking Third Street Rail project. And the Tenderloin is getting cleared more aggressively than usual by a combination of police and Dept. of Public Works (think water trucks and garbage trucks). It means these two neighborhoods are no longer getting treated as zones of toleration for poverty. Now poverty there is getting treated as a crime the way it is everywhere else in San Francisco.

I could really wish someone, sometime could think of "urban renewal" as renewal on behalf of the existing residents, as opposed to the renewal of buildings by removing one disfavored collection of human beings and replacing them with another. Isn't there a better way to improve a city than through cleansing and colonization?

12/15/04 7:02 p.m. (Link here)

Another bunch of tree-huggers against global warming: large reinsurance companies. It seems they don't enjoy paying the damage claims for all these hurricanes.

12/13/04 8:53 p.m. (Link here)

Take a look at this image from an architecture column in the SF Chronicle. How long do you have to look to decide if it's an architect's model or real full-scale suburbia?

12/12/04 9:50 p.m. (Link here)

On Craigslist:

"Only fun, happy, honest, creative, talented and well-adjusted people should apply. Does this describe you? If so, please submit your resume..."

What genuinely honest jobseeker would answer this ad?

12/11/04 1:00 p.m. (Link here)

Alan A. at Horizon is being funnier than I could manage about Kerik today. My own feeling is mainly annoyance. The man makes millions off Tasers, which are basically instruments of torture, and nobody bats an eye. He hires some poor woman to take care of his kids -- which if anything is proof of his having a human side -- and that loses him the nomination. Yeah, I know, I know, there were probably other reasons for dropping the nomination -- but why have we gotten to a point where the formal justification for rejecting this guy has to be based on the most innocuous fact we've yet learned about him?

12/10/04 12:04 p.m. (Link here)

The SF Chron fell for the false evenhandedness ploy today. The top three-quarters of the opinion page is captioned: "Open Forum: Controversy over life's origins." On the left, in favor of the evolution of species during our planet's millenia, we have a Stanford professor of neurology. On the right, for the theory that the Man Upstairs is just playing Sim City with us, are two "senior fellows" of something called the Discovery Institute, one of whom has a philosophy of science Ph.D. but no stated current profession, and one of whom teaches communications at the University of Memphis. In favor of "open-mindedness" to the closed-minded notion that the deity of one faith among the many decided to plop hominids and lamellibranchs and kittycats on our planet just for the sheer, um, heaven of it.

Wot's next? "The Earth: round or flat?" On the left, Galileo and an airline pilot. On the right, Pope Urban VIII and a bicyclist from Kansas. Keep an open mind, now, folks.

12/9/04 6:35 p.m. (Link here)

Atrios has an item about a South Carolina Christian school asking its students to read an apologia for slavery. Apart from being disgusting, it's an interesting example of false "evenhandedness" as a way of legitimizing outright bigotry by presenting it as just one more view among many: "you may disagree with x position but you should accept its adherents as part of civilized debate." It's one of the hardest challenges pluralism faces, this appeal to tolerance on behalf of intolerance. And it's a maneuver that seems far too popular lately.

12/8/04 10:31 p.m. (Link here)

Couple weeks back we had an alleged outbreak of lesbianism in southeastern Oklahoma. Now there is, it seems, a felt need to protect the people of Alabama from the menace of homosexuality. Funny how these here outbreaks strike in the darnedest places. What horror could be next -- Unitarians in Boise? Vegans in Peoria? Red-haired left-handers in Wichita?

Funny, anyhow: I'd always though it was the poor dear homosexuals of Alabama who needed sanctuary. Thought that was one reason so many gay Southerners moved to San Francisco. Thought it might have something to do with folks here on occasion doing drag impersonations of Alabama state troopers. Nah, can't be some kind of sublimated trauma stuff. Must be those danged homosexuals just want to viciously advocate love, and tolerance, and the equal dignity of the citizen, and, you know, all those other danged limp-wristed un-American virtues.

Shit. What kind of antediluvian joiks we got running this country anyhow?

12/8/04 9:56 p.m. (Link here)

If you need reminding why the Bernard Kerik connection to the Taser company is a Bad Thing, read this from the Nashville Tennesseean. Key quote:

That all seven of those stunned with Tasers were black men was a coincidence, Metro police officials said.

12/8/04 9:18 p.m. (Link here)

This thing about soldiers in Iraq complaining they have to dig through landfills to find metal plates to armor their vehicles -- am just imagining the look of the resulting vehicles & realizing it confirms the whole "Mad Max" aesthetic of the current war: we're a gang shoving its way across the desert in search of more gasoline with which to keep shoving its way across the desert in search of... etc. (Which is not btw to imply any endorsement of any Mel Gibson flick, past, recent or future. In fact very much the reverse.)

12/8/04 8:45 p.m. (Link here)

J's headline on the Treasury Secretary: "Snow Job Continues."

12/8/04 5:10 p.m. (Link here)

Schwarzenegger calls the California Nurses' Association "special interests," and at a women's conference of all places. His own contributors accordingly being what -- general interests?

12/8/04 10:48 a.m. (Link here)

This just in from the UK Guardian: a course for technicians on properly sensitive and moral car booting. Um, except they call it "clamping," because "boot" means something else.... (eggh, separated by a common language as usual). Seems pretty bassackwards: why bother teaching people to behave nicely while doing a basically heartless thing? I mean, California already has meter maids who stick the ticket on your windshield and say "have a nice day," but I was kinda hoping we could keep those in California & not visit them on the rest of the world.

[UPDATE: More similar today from Harry at Harry's Place, this time about a bunch of wordy Cool Britannia blah used to pseudo-cushion massive layoffs and job moves at the BBC. Sometimes I think the Brits have embraced every American bureaucratic excess as the latest thing in management and overdone it about half again as much. Oh well, I suppose it's our revenge on them for the Less Eligibility Principle, which we've continued to cherish although they long ago gave it up.]

12/7/04 1:37 p.m. (Link here)

Bobby Farouk, Corporate Slacker -- Gotta go read the latest from Bobby Farouk, the newest poster on Horizon, where the conversation has been bubbling nicely this week. BTW "Bobby Farouk" is a pseudonym. As he's a Billy Bragg fan, I think it has to do with this song.

[UPDATE: Bobby just wrote and said "Nice theory" about the name. Guess that means I'm wrong. So much for a guess that had nearly aged into a fact in my brain. Oh, well...]

12/6/04 5:47 p.m. (Link here)

Look at this job ad from KGO-TV, the San Francisco Bay Area's local ABC affiliate. They want a "Web Producer/Writer" for their online news portal, which is perfectly OK in itself, except the ad goes on to say: "...Ideal candidate will also work to design, and execute revenue initiatives in conjunction with and in direct contact with sales department."

Whoa nelly. In other words, "Ideal candidate will have no qualms about the separation of advertising and news, nor memory of journalistic principles that once held these as distinct as church and state." Urrrgh.

12/6/04 4:55 p.m. (Link here)

Strange and interesting quote over at American Digest from a Republican's musings on his personal philosophy. The guy is basically admitting that people become Republicans when they run out of empathy. Funny, that's not the Republican party we used to have. Would Eisenhower recognize it, let alone Lincoln?

12/6/04 12:55 p.m. (Link here)

A little good news on the Google Groups front: you can browse archived posts by month via the "About" page for each group. Here's the "About" page for the currently moribund alt.books.george-orwell group. So it turns out we do still have practical access to the archive. That's a relief.

12/6/04 11:12 a.m. (Link here)

Alas for the rare Po'o-uli bird, a near-extinct Hawaiian honeycreeper. One has just died in captivity. Only two more are believed to exist at all. We have a family connection to one of the scientists involved, hence this item, but it's not special pleading to call this a tragedy.

12/5/04 10:20 p.m. (Link here)

Been reading this stuff about steroid scandals. Maybe they helped Barry Bonds hit those homers. They helped an Olympic runner grow legs and shoulders like a man's to win a women's gold medal. Now maybe a bunch of folks are gonna have to give back honors they got using steroids. Pity about Bonds, it really is.

Wish a certain California governor's seat had to be handed back too. I'd say "governor's mansion" but there isn't one. Talk about emptiness at the core, California hasn't had a proper governor's mansion since Jerry Brown refused to live in the one Nancy Reagan had commissioned. Last I heard, Arnie and Maria were still living in the Hyatt across from the Capitol..... Oh, and in case you're hard up for ipecac, I see Arnie's official site is calling him "the people's Governor."... As opposed to who? The other rich guys elected with other insider big money who didn't roll out such nifty astroturf?

But where was I? Oh yes, steroids.

See, we got us a cat on steroids. Kitty has bad asthma and takes prednisone for these godawful coughing fits. But this does not result in kitty having large muscles, stentorian voice, or Austrian accent, let alone hitting home runs, twitting John Burton, or promoting excessive reliance on state bond issues in place of tax revenue. All it does is make her hungry, thirsty, and puffy, and it might have to do with her madly clawing the bedspread sometimes or maybe that's just from being a cat. What I want to know is, as long as this stuff is gunking up her liver why won't it help her run for governor? Or hit home runs? Or win hundred-yard dashes? Or acquire the speed, reflexes and grace of Julie Newmar? Must be the wrong kind of steroid.

Which might be just as well. Scary to imagine having a Kittynator in the house. "Excuse me, please, could you watch our kittycat for the weekend? It's no trouble at all, just wear this leather apron and helmet when you change the litterbox, should be fine as long as you keep the face shield down...There's fifty pounds of horsemeat in the fridge. Um, better just open the door and stand back... She's very sweet, likes to play, doesn't mean any harm...but don't let her near the carving knives..."

Damn, though. joking aside, steroids are scary. Our poor sweet cat: the prednisone may have saved her life but may also be shortening it. And poor Barry Bonds who never did have to take medicine at all but who's now going to be under an asterisk forever whether he's officially vindicated or not. Sad old world. Ya laugh or ya cry.

[UPDATE: erm, with apologies to Fafblog, which got me into the folksy steroid-amplified fuzzy animals groove.]

12/5/04 7:06 p.m. (Link here)

Life in these United States:

SF Chron print edition on the breakfast table says "Ex-Iraq Prisons Chief To Testify." Ho, hum. "Theirs or ours?... oh, ours..."

Yes, Karpinski has to appear, though only as a witness, in a trial over the Abu Ghraib atrocities.

Yawn...comics...front page...torture...complicity....coffee...butter...toast.... and somewhere Thomas Jefferson is spinning but here it's just ordinary Sunday morning breakfast. What's happened to us?

12/5/04 3:29 p.m. (Link here)

Of interest to sci-fi buffs: Ursula LeGuin is quietly throwing a fit at the screen version of Earthsea. A pity. Earthsea would have been a great story to dramatize if done right.

12/5/04 2:18 p.m. (Link here)

Of possible interest to San Franciscans: Canada is apparently short of strippers, or at least is willing to grant work permits to foreign exotic dancers. (Well, now, if they were local they wouldn't be "exotic," now, would they?) Worth keeping in mind in case the Talibaptists get this far. (Joke.)

12/4/04 8:25 p.m. (Link here)

...and, erm, I forgot to do this nearer Thanksgiving but better late than never, so here are all the words to "Alice's Restaurant." Yes, I think I've posted them before. That's OK. "I'm not proud... or tired..."

Wonder how long before we hear the "Alice" ditty also played out of context on Lite Classic Rock stations. grrr.

12/4/04 8:14 p.m. (Link here)

About things like this more recently discovered collection of prisoner abuse photos -- it keeps bringing up Chris Hedges' testimony that all wars turn people into monsters. "Good wars" included. Of course, some safely butt-based belligerents will try and invert an observation like that into an omelet/egg defense of the current war as being no worse than more justifiable "good wars" past. That's sick. Rather than roll over and treat war pathology as inevitable, why not damn well ask why are we still doing these things to people?

12/4/04 2:16 p.m. (Link here)

I just want to know: why are liberals attacked just about equally for excessive self-righteous purity and for supposedly lacking moral values? Which is it supposed to be -- too moral or not moral enough?

12/3/04 10:54 p.m. (Link here)

Restaurant last night had on a radio station playing nonstop soupy Christmas music. Including a version of John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" leaving out the "War Is Over" part. Someone's bright idea to salvage two minutes of salable modern entertainment from a dated topical message. Yes, folks, it's true: Americans Don't Do Irony.

12/2/04 10:29 p.m. (Link here)

Much more serious report of a problem with Google -- Slashdot reports that, under the heading of "improvement," Google is gimping the search functions of the only existing index to the only large Usenet archive. I've just had a look at "Advanced Search" on the new Google Groups beta site and, yes, it looks like the Slashdot people are right that you can't search by date of post, and you can't link to one post by itself either -- you have to link to a whole thread at a time (though you can tag a particular post within the thread) and even without tagging, the link is impossibly long. Goddammit. I want, for example, to be able to go back to the threads with which the alt.books.george-orwell community -- which was a decent place then -- exchanged consolations on Sept. 11, 2001. It's still possible, in fact, to get those posts using the beta search, but only if you know that the most memorable threads were captioned "To all that we love and cherish in America" and "Clinging to our average day." If I didn't remember that I'd be unable to reread them at all. Dammit, Google is in the business of preserving memory, not defeating it, right?

12/2/04 8:48 p.m. (Link here)

Says here Google wants to hire a transcriber "proficient in grammer and spelling" (sic). Looks like they need one all right.

12/1/04 11:02 a.m. (Link here)

This is not the worst story from Israel but it makes me very sad.

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