Fantastic writing, interesting antecdotes, definitely recommended. Has me wanting to explore all of baja.

I really enjoyed thumbing through this one before falling asleep. All those important documents you’ve heard of, but haven’t actually read. A must read for anyone interested in the history/heritage of the US

Really good collection of pieces examining mexico – especially Mexico’s economy – over the past four years.

Here’s the first two paragraphs:

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.

In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory. I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis. I shall not consider the rhetorical uses and misuses of bullshit. My aim is simply to give a rough account of what bullshit is and how it differs from what it is not—or (putting it somewhat differently) to articulate, more or less sketchily, the structure of its concept.

I read this in about 30 minutes while waiting for a friend to finish shopping at Urban Outfitters. I felt like an idiot when I started laughing out loud by myself in the middle of a clothing store, but whatever.

Needed a short break from The Brothers Karamazov. Really enjoying this so far. Never realized that blogs can make such great books. More when I finish.

This past Christmas my grandmother gave me the book The Brothers K by David James Duncan. I haven’t written about it on here yet, but were it not for Tom Robbins and his lovable characters in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, I am pretty sure The Brothers K would have been my favorite book of 2005.

In particular, there is one scene that I can’t seem to shake. The father of the family – a former up and coming minor league baseball player until a work-related accident forced his premature retirement – was explaining to his son about strike zones. Actually, he was showing his son, Kade, how to paint a strike zone on an old matress to serve as a practice target for a pitching mound he constructed behind the house.

Kade was surprised when his father – rather than painting a carefully measured geometric shape – began slapping paint haphazardly on the mattress with aggressive slaps of the brush. His father explained [and I paraphrase]:

Kade, the first thing to know is that a strike zone doesn’t exist. Only strike zones exist. And it’s not what’s between the batter’s knees and shoulders. Strike zones are in the ump’s head. That’s what you gotta figure out. I could stand out here all day throwing balls at a black rectangle and it wouldn’t mean the damndest thing ‘cause I don’t know who’s looking.

The metaphor is obvious and is carried throughout the book: our success in life isn’t judged by some objective strike zone. No. Our success is judged by those who watch us and those who judge us. And maybe most importantly, those who we let judge us.

Things like prepositions and perjoratives can still get the best of me so hopefully this book will help infuse some grammatical confidence.