And I thought that only I thought of doing that.



There's a certain logic to linking to the future, but I always assumed that it was my sort of logic, meaning that it wasn't necessarily the most logical.

I've said it all before, so no need to go over it again, but perhaps I should admit that for me there was something playful, almost a joke, about it. Linking to something that didn't yet exist was certainly a way of making a commitment - to myself and my limited public. I didn't really think that anyone would hold me to it.

And then, when searching for something which I really did want to find, I found a link on the web site of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs web site. And there I was, only a click away from the desired information. But what did I find? The following notice:

The web page you requested doesn't yet exist. (see for yourselves)
I suppose it's a terrible paraphrase on Marx, but perhaps we can say that on the internet pages repeat themselves: the first time as parody, the second with disappointing seriousness.

Just why the foreign ministry chose to link to a still non-existent page is a bit of a mystery. My guess is that they thought it would be easier to simply post the page when its ready without having to make any changes on the linking page. Makes sense. But I bet that by the time they get around to preparing the page the little note that somebody has stuck to his/her monitor telling him or her the proper URL for that page will have been irretrievably misplaced, and someone will have to search through the entire site to find the linking page in order to find the proper URL. Sounds like fun.

In the meantime perhaps the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs could translate its site into Hebrew. There's lots of good information there, even without the not yet posted page(s), and I don't know why making this information available to the English reading public is more important than making it available to native Hebrew speakers.


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