Who is This?

Jon Carroll is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, beginning in 1982. He is featured on the back page of the Datebook (the newspaper's entertainment section) on weekdays. Locally, he is best known for his moderate-to-liberal politics and his cat columns. On the internet, he is known for starting the Unitarian Jihad movement.

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"I have never believed that everything happens for a reason. But I do feel very...

Ah, such wisdom. I am often baffled when I can't get an idea for a column, because so much is happening all around me, in the news and on the streets and in my home and in my brain. I'd like to say something about Afghanistan, but I have nothing to say ...

From JON CARROLL, San Francisco Chronicle,  22 Nov 2009

Related Topics: John McCain,  Sarah Palin,  Vincent D'Onofrio,  Kathryn Erbe,  Eric Bogosian

I blame Aunt Estelle. I don't actually have an Aunt Estelle, and neither do...

And because times are tight, really absurdly tight, and you have already bought presents for your near and dear - modest presents, street-fair gifts, flea-market specials - you really aren't sure where you're going to find the extra dough unless by ...

From JON CARROLL, San Francisco Chronicle,  19 Nov 2009

Related Topics: PG&E

Got some wonderful mail over the past week about various columns. The first,...

"Your recollection about being asked for baseball scores near the front lines to supplement security was very true indeed. During the Battle of the Bulge, I was attached to the 7th Armored Division, in the thick of it. "One foggy morning, while ...

From JON CARROLL, San Francisco Chronicle,  18 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Hanukkah,  Michael Chabon

This is a story of heartbreak, and appropriately it begins in a graveyard. Some...

Naturally, it needed a cemetery - coal mining, then as now, is a dangerous occupation - and the townspeople erected theirs on Rose Hill, a lovely location overlooking Somerville, the largest of the towns. There are cypress trees imported from Italy and ...

From JON CARROLL, San Francisco Chronicle,  17 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Tom Brady,  Peyton Manning,  Bill Belichick,  Tony Dungy

I was reading the New York Review of Books the other day, and I came across an...

That's part of the problem, of course. Although most of us are aware of the shocking numbers of people incarcerated in America, and the dubious sentencing procedures that are mandated by state and federal laws, and the failure of prisons to do anything ...

From JON CARROLL, San Francisco Chronicle,  16 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Georgetown University,  Ronald Reagan

I have been reading Michael Chabon's collection of essays, "Manhood for...

I have been reading Michael Chabon's collection of essays, "Manhood for Amateurs," and I've been enjoying it a lot, even though his childhood, which he spends a lot of time on, was different from mine in many ways, including a difference that people ...

From JON CARROLL, San Francisco Chronicle,  15 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Michael Chabon,  Hanukkah

I heard this story a lot growing up, and yet when I tried to figure out whether...

"Who won the World Series?" the guy asks, or "How many home runs did Babe Ruth hit?" The idea, of course, is that only a true-blue American would know the answer to those questions. And if the other soldier hesitated, he was fired upon or at least ...

From JON CARROLL, San Francisco Chronicle,  13 Nov 2009

Related Topics: U.S. Congress,  Babe Ruth,  Ben Bernanke,  Goldman Sachs,  Barry Bonds

Well, damn, here I am social networking to within an inch of my life, and I'm...

I joined my first social network, the Well, in 1987. That was before the invention of the Web and before the invention of the term "social networking." There were a lot of smart and funny people on there, all typing their thoughts through phone lines ...

From JON CARROLL, San Francisco Chronicle,  12 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Facebook Inc.,  Twitter Inc

I've been thinking about thinking. I've been thinking about having opinions,...

We like to think of ourselves as rational, but most of what we know we know because someone told us it was so. I did not "think" that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two other sides. I actually don't care what the ...

From JON CARROLL, San Francisco Chronicle,  10 Nov 2009

Related Topics: U.S. House of Representatives

Recently I have written several columns about the bad manners of bicycle...

I have received letters from bicycle riders saying (and here I quote from one), "Why don't you write something nasty about cars? Cars kill people; bicycles don't." First of all, bicyclists do kill or injure themselves because bicyclists are no match ...

From JON CARROLL, San Francisco Chronicle,  9 Nov 2009

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