Far South of I-10

Acidman rises like the moon in the trees and pens blogger poetry: Did you ever see a DOZEN of those hairless salamanders in the North Carolina mountains--- up there where those prehistoric and skinless LIZARDS make a noise like a stameding herd of wild hogs when they run like lemmings into your CAMPFIRE AT NIGHT???? When the fucking MOON is in the trees? When you didn't have to POKE them into the flames with your fire-stick as you screamed like a girl, and while your drunken buddies just kept snoring and left you to fend for yourself?? When those ick! ick! ick! things ran right across your farking LEG, and you pissed a stain in your pants, and the damn things KEPT RUNNING right into the fire? Where they curled up and resembled burnt popcorn? Huh? Remember how stoned you were? And how you dragged a burnt lizard on a stick out of the fire, studied it for a moment, SNIFFED IT and ATE IT???? Just to see what it TASTED LIKE??? To see if you COULD?? When you follow the moon, you c...

Glenn Reynolds links to a good article that describes the mexican economic reason for the flood of immigration and why south america is moving leftward politically. Apart from the macro-economics, croneyism and lack of education, another big driver for the northern migration is low pay and the way that people in mexico are paid. People are paid flat salaries (salario fijo) with a per month wage, and are expected to work the hours necessary to get the job done. During the 10 days I just spent in mexico, we had two company drivers who were on duty for the same number of hours as me. Working from 6 in the morning until 10 at night is pretty normal in the oilfield during drilling operations, and we get paid well for that. The drivers picked us up, drove us around all day then brought us back to the hotel, then drove back to the cheap hotel they stayed at. (not my idea) They make a flat wage for that, and the minimum wage in mexico is 50 pesos per day. One driver said his cousin is work...

I didn't get to see the speech, but I read it on instapundit, and he linked to it on video here . I liked it, it agrees fairly well with what I'd like to see and in a more rational world it might even pass congress. I think it's too soon though, he should have waited until after the mexican presidential elections in two months. Now the radical presidential candidate will be able to cherry pick items from the speech to demand mexican immigrant rights, and get votes. It's also too soon because I'm still in Mexico, he could have waited two days until I'm safely across the rio grande to give this speech. I'm sure the spit content of my food will spiral out of control in the next 48 hours. Oh well.

When I planned our recent vacation I thought that we'd stop at places where I could point out the what happened in the trajectory of history, from Rome to Venice to Florence to Paris. From Ancient Rome to the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and up to the modern age. Maybe my wife and I could learn something while vacationing. I really didn't know enough art history to know that the beginning of the Renaissance could be localized to a city, and a person. The doors in this picture were installed in the Baptistry in front of the Cathedral in Florence. They were designed after a competion between Ghiberti and Brunelleschi and several others to decide who would design the bronze doors. Ghiberti won the competition and designed and made these doors, with scenes from the old testament. The work took 20 years, and the panels change from the flat perspective of medieval art to 3d perspective of the renaissance. Ghiberti then went on to design the "gates of paradise", which ...

Here's a photo from the roof of the Sistine chapel that my wife took while the guards shouted "Silence, no photos!" I thought at the time how much it must suck to work in the most beautiful room in the western hemisphere, and your job is to say "Silence, no photos!" every 45 seconds. We made two trips through there, once with a tour group and the 2nd time by ourselselves, truly awe inspiring. Made me not want to see any more art after that day.

James Lileks o utdoes himself with a letter from the Iranian President to Bush: . . and Jack Bauer will not be able to save you this time, my friend. If there is an attack on our country we will double our aid to the Iraqi patriots, double our funding to Hezbollah and its female auxiliary wing Sisboombah, and double again our attempts to secrete through your borders weapons both chemical and biological. Ah – er, reduce everything I said in the previous paragraph by half. We will START doing those things. Yes, that is the thing that is the ticket: start. We will also use our fearsome weapons of unspeakable lethality to destroy your planes before they are even built, let alone launched. We can sink your mighty aircraft carriers by shouting in unison, so great is our national will. Yes, that thing is the ticket. Go read the whole thing.

Well, I'm still in Mexico, now in the state of Veracruz in the most difficult to pronounce city in spanish, Coatzacoalcos. Seems like a nice enough place, or the hotel is nice anyway. I haven't gone out this evening, since it seems like there's no place I could go that I wouldn't get into some kind of trouble. During my 3 hours in the car this morning I watched the countryside and the people, and it seems pretty empty. My driver was quizing me about costs in the US, and he said he wanted to go to the US to work. I hope I talked him out of it, but more likely I talked him into it. I'm no salesman. I was really struck by a billboard for mexico's team in the world cup, that said that the population of mexico is 100 million people, and they support their team. If there is 11 million illegal aliens in the US and most are mexican...that's 10% of the population of mexico is in the US. It's like a plague or a war, every person must be thinking can I do bet...

Well, we got to spend a couple of weeks vacation in Europe, and it went better than should have any right to expect, with the only partial hiccup being not being able to get a night train from paris to venice, instead burning up most of a day watching the french countryside and the alps stream by. We went from paris to venice to florence to rome. Strangely enough, I think italians are ruder than french people. The french waiters that were rude seemed like they had attended a class in rude, but now they are just trying to achieve c+, they're really not striving for that A grade anymore. The italians that were rude seemed more like they were saying 'why the heck are you coming to my country and taking my job?'. Except of course we there to buy $8 ham and cheese sandwiches. Which to me it makes the treatment that mexicans get in the US even more astonishing. They are there to literally steal our jobs, and yet there are no riots, mass lynchings, firebombings, car burnings th...