THAT'S WHAT BETTER BLOGS ARE FOR: How did I miss this? WampumBlog links to the latest news on Lillygate: Eli Lilly & Co. lost the litigation protection for thimerosal that mysteriously appeared in last year's Homeland Security Act, this latest news explaining all the Lilly lurkers visiting WampumBlog in the recent days.

THE CITY OF BLOGGERLY LOVE: I see blogger Tim Dunlop of the Road to Surfdom was in Philadelphia yesterday. Dunlop reports the approaching winter storm kept him from paying a visit to Rittenhouse Square, which is a shame. We hadn't made plans to meet, but he was headed a bit too far west anyway.

I'm over in "hot" and "hip" Chestnut East, which is a tad west of Wash (short for Wahington Square) West, and "less elitist" than Rittenhouse Square, another popular blogger hang-out in Philadelphia.

THE NEW NEW LEFT: Brian Linse of AintNoBadDude has updated the Lefty Directory with a slew of excellent blogs. (By the way, what's wrong with the word "slew"? I kind of like it, but never in my life have I been able to push it past a good editor.)

IT TAKES REAL MONEY: Craig Cheslog of Political Parrhesia reminds us why a simplistic color-coded flash-card warning system is thoroughly useless when the federal government is doing little to nothing to help state and local authorities cope with real and perceived threats to our security.

"What will it take to get our federal government to take homeland security seriously?" he asks. "Is it going to take . . . a second catastrophic attack to get our national focus back?"

Frankly, I doubt it. Perhaps by the seventh or eighth such attack, the timing ultimately dependent upon whether Congress has enacted enough tax cuts on investment income and capital gains to get its core contributors to think of people other than themselves.

Welcome, Mr. Cheslog, to the Age of Unseriousness.

LOSING IT: The Liquid List has snapped:

We've been sent to the Home Depot for tape, told not to bother with the tape, told we'll suffocate if we use the tape, told we should probably still use it anyhow, and made fun of for buying tape and now we're fed up.

What exactly is duct tape, anyway? I know I'm the wrong person to ask.

MY PET PEEVE: Peevish, maintained by a blogger who, as best I can tell, is identified only as Anne, has become one of the blogs I visit most often. She's doing a terrific job of publishing quick takes on the kind of news you want to read but might otherwise miss.

[Post-publication addendum (February 22): I stand corrected. Actually, I'm sitting, so I guess I sit corrected. Anne of Peevish is not as coy about her identity as I had assumed. No air of mystery there. Just Anne Zook running one helluva blog. Sorry about that!]

TUCKER CARLSON: FASHION PLATE: Pink oxford shirts are making a comeback, at least in San Francisco's financial district, reports Janet Petrik of Beyond Corporate.

SOMETHING ELSE FOR ME TO PROCRASTINATE ABOUT: I like the way Kip Manley of Long story; short pier attaches additional commentary to his links. Go, try it. Hover over the link for a second or two and you'll see them. There are quite a few pithy and snarky one-liners embedded there. Very cool.

(Note to self: Look into this. At some point.)

VELCRO OR DUCT TAPE?: Economist Brad DeLong of Semi-Daily Journal suggests the phenomenal success known as Google is held together by Velcro tape. (Not duct tape? Subversives!)

Interesting on its own, but DeLong's post reminded me of a company I worked for in the past whose entire production system relied on a bootleg copy of some piece of software that one of the techies bought at a sidewalk vendor's table.

AND DON'T MISS: Yuval Rubinstein of GroupThink Central on neoconservative fantasies of some bizarre sort of reverse domino effect . . . Mighty Reason Man of Very Very Happy on why he hates Andrew Sullivan . . . [S]kippy on the front lines in Los Angeles . . . The Goblin Queen goes marching in New York. (Oops, sorry! Not marching. Marching not allowed.) . . . Where she was joined by The Talking Dog . . . Fred Clark of the Slacktivist reporting from Philadelphia (This guy's a neighbor? Why didn't I know that?) . . . Gary Sauer-Thompson of Public Opinion, with "Some Call it Treason." . . . Steve Smith of Smythe's World, branching out at Off Wing Opinion . . . Roger Ailes (Yes, I know his second cite in this post. "No fair!" Deal.) on National Review's resident tough guy, Rod Dreher. . . . Take Back the Media! on the Boycott Rush Limbaugh campaign -- It's working!