Talkin' 'bout you and me

I just got my copy of the Spirit of the Century and went squee a little in my mouth. It also came with my very own membership card!
I was going to link to the page, but I'm having troubles getting to http://www.evilhat.com right now.

On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?

Because it's Friday. Don't be shy. Step up to the microphone. Yes, it's on. Go ahead. Ask me.

She can't be wounded 'cause she's got no heart

Food report:
I had a bag of squash that I needed to use before it went over. So I threw it in a saucepan with a tin of condensed tomato soup, some curry and powdered ginger and let it stew for an hour. Then it went in the fridge overnight, and out again this morning. Once the squash started to soften up I tasted it and decided that the tomato taste was still a bit bright and flat. So in with a tablespoon of butter and a little bit of that really smoky spicy barbeque sauce. Which was, apparently, exactly what it needed to take that edge off. House smells good. House tastes good.

Quite a long way from Cairo

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/11/09/international/i083816S47.DTL&hw=norwegian&sn=002&sc=527

Norwegian aid minister tells country to stop whining after U.N. names it world's best place to live.

Excavating for a mine

And while I'm reading the paper, which is alternately full of stories about Nancy Pelosi and the 49ers, can somebody tell me why San Francisco should be desperate to hold onto a professional sports team?
It is my impression that (whatever it might have been like forty years ago) now a city makes millions or billions of dollars in concessions--through building new stadia or forfeiture of property taxes or any number of other toothsome bonuses--to a sport club or some other city makes those offers, and then the citizens end up footing a huge bill for what does not seem to me to be a good financial return.
Is it just the prestige of being able to say 'We host a professional sports team'? Or is there some hidden benefit that I'm not seeing here?

(As an aside, I am ambivalent. If the 49ers move to Santa Clara then we inherit all the traffic and chaos and stupid which I expect will bloat geometrically with the Great America traffic and chaos and stupid. If the 49ers stay in San Francisco then there's a chance we'll end up with the 2016 Olympics, and the traffic and the chaos and the stupid.)