Montana is awesome.  So awesome, in fact, that I have posted the first new set of pictures in two years.  Yes, you read correctly - so awesome that its beauty and majesty overcame even my slothfulness.  I will try to blog more about the actual vacation, with a strong focus on Mzia's fear of being eaten by bears, this weekend.

Two links today, both poached from Lou Minetti's excellent blog: (I am also stealing his sobriquette of Melonhead - click here for proof!)

 

1)  In his pathetically transparent drive to foment some sort of pan-Latinamerican sentiment that will turn his fantasies of being a modern-day combination of Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin into reality, he has now angrily denounced the British and promised to get revenge on them for the Falklands war.   By invoking the sacred meme of the General Belgrano, and using vitriolic rhetoric in promising to avenge Argentina specifically but Latin America in a greater sense, he hopes to make the illusory world of his demented imaginings come to pass.  Hey - pretending that the political situations you wish existed really do - I see that clever thing you did there, Hugo!  The scary thing is that it plays quite nicely with the realismo magico sect, which is more pervasive than you might think.

 

2) This ones a little funnier:  his inept management has gotten so bad that the Venezuelan equivilent of the LIBOR has risen as high as 120%, averaging 30%.  Like Mr. Minetti said, it takes someone truly special to destory an economy flush with petrodollars.  And as I've said before, the only sad thing here is the average Jose on the streets of Caracas and all those who depend on him.  Otherwise, it will be entertaining to watch as everything collapses around him.  My only real concern is whether he will attempt to scare up a military conflict in order to prevent his own demise, just as the military triumvirate did in the Falklands.  Or would that be giving the Gods of Irony too much credit?

A man to make you believe in God has left us.  Arrivaderci, Maestissimo! 

Brilliant. I love the first sentence in the article. This may very well be the first strucural failure in the stack of cards that is the Venezuelan economy, and it is such a shame the Venezuelan people have to suffer because of this idiot.  He reminds me of Ayn Rand’s caricatures of government officials in Atlas Shrugged, a must-read book for every believer in free market economies.

 

I heard this on the radio this morning, read in the incomparable voice of Garrison Keillor, and had to post it here. 

 

 

For My Daughter

David Ignatow

When I die choose a star
and name it after me
that you may know
I have not abandoned
or forgotten you.
You were such a star to me,
following you through birth
and childhood, my hand
in your hand.

When I die
choose a star and name it
after me so that I may shine
down on you, until you join
me in darkness and silence
together.

Such an enormous idiot.  No wonder he is one of the few world leaders with approval ratings half those of Bush. 

It's hard to bet against Hillary Clinton without questioning your sanity.  After all, if logic and justice played any part in fate, she would be slowly roasting over the gates to someplace unpleasant.  I think she is a bitter, power-hungry, shrewish woman.  But the more I look at the race for the Democrat nominee, the more I think it will go to John Edwards.  She represents the a return to the past.  He represents bold new ideas and actual endorsements from entities that traditionally matter in the race for the nomination.  Mind you, I don't agree with his ideas, I simply note that he is not breathing out the same old heavily-used air that Hillary and the rest of the Democrat candidates are.   

My good and amazing friend Vanessa Acker, one of my favorite people, just returned from Georgia.  She wrote a short blog post that pretty much reflects my every thought, from the amazement at the progress to the concern about the perhaps unsustainable pace of reforms and the sacrificing of valuable tradition.  You can read it here.

Every now and again I read a story like this one promising a paradigm shift in how energy is stored.  I hope that sometime before I die one of these stories is true.  My gut feel is that this is probably a significant step in technological advancement, but probably not all that is being suggested.