Hasta Luego, Borrego!

Got up early this am and gathered up Mrs. A and Mr. 2T for a hike in the mountains north of Santa Fe. We did the Borrego / Bear Wallow loop.

For the first 3/4 of the trip, we only saw 3 or 4 other hikers, also with dogs. 2T had a blast playing with the dogs and wading in the creek that we hiked down to (Big Tesuque Creek). The last 1/4 we ran into a fair amount of folks getting a late start and doing the loop in the opposite direction that we did.

Here is a nice description of the hike.

On the way back, which is pretty much uphill all the way, 2T kept looking up at me like I had totally lost my mind. He made it in good order though, which is awesome for an 11.5 year old flatlander from OK.

Hidey Ho!

We met an awesome sculptor from El Paso TX yesterday at the Tesuque flea market. His exhibit was titled "gods for future religions" and his name (I am not making this up) is Ho Baron.

You can see his stuff here.

It's like Mayan mixed with Balinese mixed with peyote. I love it, but Mrs. Angus is not so sure, so we will be coming back to Norman Ho-less.

Some links....

Some links....

Smart parking meters (Nod to Aussie Matt)

Your race card is maxed out! (Nod to Angry Alex)

Year of the Pitcher? Maybe not.... Maybe... Here was your YotP...

Hot. Not.

It's a burden to be a smokin' hot professor.

Not that I would know. Didn't make the top 50. Or 500, or 5,000.

My understanding is that Angus was #51, just barely out of the money.

Maybe I need to have a male version of this kind of website: "The Mungowitz Experience." I'll ask the LMM what she thinks.

(Anonyman asks whether the reason I went to Germany last year was to escape my many fans, because of my smokitude. Um...No...)

Reds Buried

This is where the Cincinnati Reds' pennant chances were buried.

RIP, Brandon Phillips.

Birthright Citizenship

I see the point of those who have argued against birthright citizenship. If you think "efficient government" is a good thing, then sure.

But we are talking past each other. Birthright citizenship is an important check on how badly people can be mistreated. The slavery claim is hyperbole but I stand by it.

WSJourn article

Jeff Miron

The Takeaway: It's 1936 Again in America

Got to talk with my BFFs John and Celeste at "The Takeaway" this morning. Meant I had to get up at 5 am to think about what I was going to say, but always fun to do that show. Here is the archive version....

Two thoughts on this problem:

1. One by Bruce Bartlett. I don't always agree with Bruce, but he makes some good points here. Bruce is always worth reading... (Lagniappe: Bruce B also wonders about my pal Tino Sanandaji, an interesting Iranian-Swedish grad student at UC's Harris School)

2. Another by Lawrence Reed. It was written in 1998, but it's truly prophetic, unfortunately.

Markets in everything: Sovereign barter edition

The North Koreans want to pay the Czechs back in ginseng!

I am not making this up.

For their part, the Czechs are holding out for Zinc.

Is sunburn really a worse problem than lack of sexual vigor in the Czech republic?

Live and learn.

Worst Book in the Last Five Years

Angus' use of the garbage chute for "Witz" suggests a question:

What is the WORST book you have read in the last five years?

And by "read" I mean spent at least an hour on. Concluding a book sucks immediately doesn't count, even if you are right.

My entry into the sweepstakes:

_Bruce Springsteen and Philosophy: Darkness on the Edge of Truth_

This howling stinker was "edited" (in the loosest possible sense) by two unemployed street people named Anderson and Auxier. (And by "unemployed" of course I mean "working as philosophy profs at SIU Carbondale")

Now, I can read almost anything about Bruuuuuuuuce. I have read Dave Marsh's worshipful _Glory Days_ at least three times. Sure, it's appalling, but it has a narrative, and the background story is well told.

"Darkness" starts bad, and gets worse. But it's such a train wreck you have to watch in horrified fascination. Some essays describe how much the author likes Bruuuuuce (I think; these are lit philosophy people, so it's hard to TELL what they are saying); others use Bruuuuuce's work as a springboard for rambling commentary on many topics.

The best (ie, worst) essay has to be the one that blames Bruuuuuce for having prevented the Marxist labor revolution from happening. Written by a political scientist at Sacred Heart U, this fellow actually writes "Probably the most prominent voice [on liberty] belongs to Karl Marx (1818-1883). The great error (and evil) of capitalism" is the alienation of the individual from the product of his labor. And then "On the other end of the spectru, we find Professor Max Weber...." That's right, chilluns, he takes on the FULL ideological spectrum, from Marx on the left to Weber on the right. I am not going to quote more, but I do assure you I am not cherry-picking; the essay is full of juicy nuggets of nut-job lefty wisdom from academics whose smooth soft hands have never held a welding torch or a shovel.

But I did it, I read the whole book. And you can, too! Here it is.

Now, YOUR turn, commenters. What is the worst book you have actually read?

What I've been reading

1. "Chronic City". I am a big fan of J. Lethem and I really enjoyed this book, though there is no plot to speak of, and good editing to make it 10% shorter would make it 24% better. "Motherless Brooklyn" remains my favorite Lethem novel, but I'd recommend CC for sure.

2. "Ilustrado". This is good, people. Ambitious, funny, out of control, absorbing. Some of the themes end up a bit cartoonish, but this is a great debut novel, up there with "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" and "The Ecstatic".

3."The Lacuna". It starts so slowly that I almost quit, but patience is rewarded. The parts set in Mexico City are transcendent.

4. "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet". I adored the first part of the book and the unlikely hero DeZoet. The middle, DeZoet free, part dragged for me, too cartoony and lurid. Then Mitchell kind of pulls it together toward the end. What can I say, it's no "Cloud Atlas", but then again what is?

5. "Witz". After 15 minutes I physically deposited this POS into the garbage.