Sorry your indaba didn't work out, Indaba. Guess Central America is still...Central America. Funny how the place (Central America in general, not Belize in particular) dominated the news in the 1980's, then went away. But it didn't go far!

Ah, Reynosa! How I enjoyed (in 1982)  bussing from San Antonio to Pharr, then walking to Hidalgo, bivouacking on a roadside, then crossing the border, heading south until I heard a train whistle, then vectoring toward it and finding the railway station and taking the train to Matamoros. I knew I should do this because a year earlier, in New York City, I'd visited the offices of  N de M and picked up a cheaply mimeographed but accurate railway schedule - one I would use until 1990, to catch a train from Nogales to Guaymas. 

Hard as it is to believe, there is romance in Mexico. The place looks and (I believe) is awful. But sunbaked do-it-yourself was and (I believe) is possible.

Do you have conversations with world travelling friends who cram in business insights, but also gossipy trivia thatis more interesting?  No. And I never would. This does reinforce my belief that debt crises are vanity-driven. Somebody wants power, thinks the way to get it is by loaning money, and...there you are. 

Baton the hatches! Really. Hey, I'll do my best. And who's Mike Jaguar?

I am not sure that there are subcultures in America. I started doubting about a month ago. I was in a certain fast-food outlet in a certain city which...well, let's just say that if you came from there and you made it to the NBA, townspeople would be awed and also want you to give them money. I listened to the cackling and looked at the obesity and waited for my ration and thought: this isn't another cultural dimension, it's just one end of a bell curve and I'm on the other.

Reminds me to check again if the Argentina/Maldives remark had any legs in Latin America. There had been nothing on Brazilian sites. The Brazilian media do love Obama and would never criticize him. But a search for Obama Maldivas turns up a few snorting reactions on Spanish-American sites. Not that Obama or Hillary is paying attention to any of this. I still think that if you're a Chicago pol, you just don't care about foreign stuff.  If you're a Chicago pol, you figure you can afford to be slovenly. Except for vaguely remembered injunctions against wave-making and loser-backing, you're not guided by very much. And hey, you're still in office, with a good chance of staying there another 4 years!

Until a U.S. President uses the word Facebook in an Inaugural Address, I am not really worried about this. After a U.S. President does, though, I will be very very alarmed.

In college in the '70's, the 1970's I mean, I had a housemate who went to your school, or at least had lived in that area. This house was a co-op, meaning the university owned it but We Da People ran it. My housemate was more or less in charge of the physical maintenance of the place, and I would soon be, and I think he would have agreed with me that it gave the lie to the very definition of socialism, which is worker control of the means of production. Not that we produced anything, but there were clearly people driven to run things and other people content to show up and do just enough. The latter didn't want control. This division is normal and only those who refuse to understand human personality and temperament will miss it.

This doesn't really answer the question, but if something bumpersticker-grade is needed, and I suspect that is the case, I propose "He Didn't Make His Pile Writing Autobiographies."

To answer the question strictly, I was going to propose "liquidity," but that is way too arcane. 

Zzz. Unlike everyone who talks about "Latinos," I've eaten Ecuadorean plantains and told a Dominican his music was loud and twisted my neck 180 degrees reading Chilean subway maps. Mexico (the appeasement of which I presume this is really all about) doesn't even register. I believe the interests of the Just-Don't-Get-It-American Community need to be addressed. That community just might be pretty big.

Every time I hear (or eat) anything Cajun, I think: man, we are SO far ahead of the Russians.

Commiseration? Advice? Don't got any.  My big 5-0.

This is not at all a constructive answer, but I have long thought a great name for a superhero would be Scant Nanoseconds. 

Really thought someone would swing at #1. Has it occurred to no one that if Obama lost in 2012, he'd come back for 2016? And if he lost in 2016, he'd come back for 2020? Even if he didn't want to, his legions of besotted admirers would demand that he do so, and appeals to his vanity would instantly be answered in the positive. We may never see the end of this guy.

I asked a question and I sure got an answer. Thanks!

I can't decide if it's good or bad that a political change at the top could result in radically improved service at eye level. Aren't diplomats supposed to show an offhand competence that never depends on who is actually in charge? Well, maybe they're supposed to, but I guess they don't really! I can picture a political leader who is indifferent infecting the lower ranks with that indifference, but the opposite is hard for me to imagine. How to (re)inculcate a crackling pride in one's work, especially in an environment where productivity is not measurable? Maybe not all management fads are silly; maybe some actually work!

I'm still bicycling 500 miles a month. And displacing a Maine Coon cat whether she likes it or not.

Regarding people with spinal injuries, which I presume is the subject of the video (don't have time to look at it), I will say I meditate on them constantly as I ride. I used to think a drunk driver might someday take me down, or out. I no longer think that. I think it'll be some klutz texting. At least there are fewer drunks, and at least drunks pretend to be paying attention as they drive!

I'll still not feelin' it. Unless a gene for drug resistance is also a gene for pathogenicity. And the drug increases transcription or translation of that gene.

Not that I am hostile to Lamarckian evolution. Hey, it could happen! But imagine my face-scrunching when I saw on my visitors' log that this frail caprice had been found through google.fr. French Google, man - what an abyss that must be.

Antibiotics may prove a silent mutation (that already happened, by chance, minutes or millennia ago) to be an advantageous one. But do antibiotics cause such mutations? I've never understood this.