The New Mexican Tortilla Wars

Thanks to Cargill and other grain speculators, the price of tortillas in Mexico increased 738% since the advent of NAFTA, according to this insightful article tranlsated from La Jornada on the political economy of the new Mexican tortilla wars.

The Way He Ballz

You honestly can't make this stuff up: Via Pink Dome, meet Texas new Assistant Parliamentarian, Ron Wilson. He's the speaker sitting behind the desk at the beginning of the video.

Meanwhile, Pink Dome has its own legislative best/worst contest going, and since for some reason I couldn't leave this comment on the site, I'll include my suggestions here:

BDM - Royce West, no doubt, followed by the Lite Guv
BDF- Slim pickin's, but Hernandez or Van de Putte
WDM- Tie btwn Dunnam and Haggerty
WDF- Mowery, by a country mile
CIA- I love Jessica Farrar, but yes, it's her scarves
WH- Dan Patrick, with honorable mentions to Dunnam and Haggerty
LILF/F- With respect to Lois Kolkhorst, who is one of my faves, this must go to the angelic Veronica Gonzales
LILF/M- No opinion, except to say that whoever nominated Steve Ogden is one sick f%#k

Drinking with bloggers

Shaine Mata posted a nice picture from a beer and burgers outing at Mother Egan's last night. From left to right are Kevin Kennedy who writes about blogs for Texas Weekly, me, Vince Leibowitz from Capitol Annex, and the fellow who does McBlogger, who by his own designs shall remain nameless.

Shaine is a South Texas blogger who's working for House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee Chairman Aaron Peña's legislative staff this session. He told me he's only gotten to go home twice to visit his family since session began, and that he supports dark horse Bill Richardson for president because "I'm dark, too." Shaine said he thought it was time Latinos began promoting their own leaders for statewide and national office and Bill Richardson is the only Latino in the field. The photo was taken from a cameraphone. Shaine has more pics.

I've known no war, and if I ever do I won't know for sure

Can you even imagine living in a state of constant war? The Virginia Tech massacre shocked the nation, and yet that kind of thing happens in Iraq weekly, maybe daily. Mind boggling.

YouTubin': Some days you miss Stevie:

This Week on Easter Island

I made this over at Witty Comics. Click on the image to view a larger version, and Happy Easter.

Primates lived in Texas 42 million years ago when Laredo was on the coast

Forty two million years ago, the area that today is quite-inland Laredo was a coastal lagoon, and researchers have discovered evidence primates occupied the area ("Researchers study evidence of ancient primates in Laredo area," Waco Herald Tribune, April 2). See an artist's depiction of one of the animals at left. According to news reports:

Lamar University Professor Jim Westgate and two colleagues announced the discovery of three new genera and four new species of primates based on their examination of material removed from Lake Casa Blanca International State Park near Laredo and the Mexican border.

Westgate said the Laredo area was a coastal lagoon during the stage of geologic history known as the Eocene Epoch, which was when primates were becoming extinct on much of the continent.

"It was kind of the last gasp for the primates in North America," said Westgate, a professor of earth and space sciences.

The researchers presented their findings last week at a conference of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Philadelphia.

Westgate and others are still studying the 15 tons of material excavated from the park's fossil deposits between 1983 and 1996. Researchers recovered 1,800 mammal teeth, including 50 from primates.

Dana Cope, a co-author of the study and associate professor of anthropology at College of Charleston in South Carolina, compared the teeth with other primate teeth from the same era. He said the newly discovered teeth, which measure about 4 millimeters, were not from known primates.

"This is a very important locality," Cope said. "Not much is known about Eocene mammals outside the Rocky Mountains."

The Beaumont Enterprise linked to these additional web resources on the topic:

Lake Casa Blanca International State Park near Laredo

The Eocene Epoch link 1

The Eocene Epoch link 2

The Eocene Epoch link 3

Tarsier link 1

Tarsier link 2

Tarsier link 3

Galago/Bush Baby link 1

Galago/Bush Baby link 2

If I'd kicked Muhammed Ali's ass I'd brag about it, too!

Meet Alberto "Tex" Henderson, who broke Muhammed Ali's jaw in the second round in 1972 in a San Antonio exhibition match while the champ was banned from boxing.

He said the referee counted to 16 - one to eight, and then went back and started from one.

"I said, 'Get your (rear end) up, boy. You ain't hurt,' " Henderson said he told Ali.

My expectations of the general public continue to decline, until I look in the mirror

If you don't believe that voters elect the candidates they deserve, consider that these have a market. Via MariaMaria.

In the interest of full disclosure, growing up in Tyler I had a Confederate battle flag hanging over my bed until I left home to go to college at 18. The last time I was home it was still hanging in my father's garage. As I (half) joked with Maria in the comments, I've got relatives for whom these would probably make a good gag gift. What can I say? In the big picture, like a lot of multi-generation Texan families, a lot of my family came to Texas fleeing union occupation after the Civil War.

That was true of everybody I knew growing up. The road from the Deep South into Texas literally led directly through Tyler and Smith County, and once they got to East Texas' Piney Woods, many of them traveled no farther. One of my best friends in junior high and high school, Waterson Calhoun, was John C. Calhoun's great-great grandson, if I remember correctly. (Wat's father was county judge in Smith county for many years, and I should add that his mother is a gracious, joyful and lovely woman.)

That said, while I don't condone the use of Confederate symbology, neither do I automatically associate its use today in the South with racial hatred. (Whether it's smart or useful or necessary or unproductively provocative are all different questions than racist intent.) Many people are too quick to judge complicated historical situations and cultural associations.

There was a time I would have thought this was funny. If I'm 100% honest, part of me, I guess, still does:

The Great Texas Archive War

Did you know about the Great Texas Archive War? Coyote Mercury gave some wonderful history I didn't know, even though I'd passed by that statue on Congress Avenue a thousand times. I especially like CM's headline, "That ain't no open records request!" Excellent blogging from Texas Independence Day.

Perry: Bush administration empowers 'environmental extremists'

In his State of the State address, Governor Perry said there are "environmental extremists" in the Bush Administration's Environmental Protection Agency. If the Bush folks are extremists, I wonder what that would make actual environmentalists?

Marquez vs. Barrera

I'm a boxing fan, especially of the smaller divisions where speed and skill matter more than the thunderous power of what have become truly massive heavyweights.

Mexico, of course, is the Mecca of smaller boxers - that nation's mean streets have produced some of the toughest small men you'll ever see step into a ring. So I was interested in this piece highlighting two brothers from Mexico City, Juan Manuel and Rafael Marquez, two small men who have fought their way into the limelight of the sport called the "sweet science."

The older of the two, Juan Manuel will fight Mexican legend Marco Antonio Barrera for the super featherweight crown in March. Marquez and Barrera share a high-profile common opponent, Fillipino Manny Pacquiao, who knocked out Barrera but whom Marquez fought to a grueling draw. Here's how Sports Illustrated described Marquez in that fight:

Juan Manuel stepped into the spotlight when he fought the Philippines' Manny Pacquiao, considered the best featherweight in the world. After being knocked down three times in the first round, Juan Manuel battled back to earn a draw -- and, perhaps more important, universal respect in the division. "Each time I got knocked down I thought of my family and how important this fight was to them," says Juan Manuel. "I couldn't quit; it's just not in me."

The fight with Barrera ought to be an outright war. I'll certainly be watching.

While most of the big money boxing matches still happen in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, more and more quality fights are being held in Texas now, frequently featuring Mexican boxers working their way up the ladder toward the bigger venues. (Marquez last fought in the Rio Grande Valley at Dodge Arena in November.) Kathy won't go with me to the fights, but maybe I need to find some buddies to go with because we're getting a lot more chances to see high quality fighters here in Texas than we did just a few years ago.

UPDATE: This turned out to be a high quality fight. Marquez won on both the scorecards and in my own estimation, though I certainly agree a flash knockdown by Barrera in the 7th round should have been called as such, and that round otherwise so heavily favored Marquez that could flip a closely scored bout. But it was a classic Mexican boxing war, the kind of closely matched slugfest that's good for the sport. For Marquez this opens up many options, not the least of which is a superfight with Manny Pacquiao. For Barrera, this fight might be a career ender unless he wants a rematch with Marquez. Like the HBO announcers who called the fight, I wouldn't mind seeing that.

You Tubing: Johnny Cash's prison blues

Who doesn't love this song?



My favorite line: "I bet there's rich folks eating in a fancy dining car. They're probably drinking coffee, and smokin' big cigars. Oh I know I had it comin'. I know I can't be free. But those people keep on movin', and that's what tortures me."

Johnny Cash never went to prison himself, but early in his career he realized that prison was a brilliant metaphor for a set of human experiences in a raw, extreme form that are universal, that all of us endure at one time or another. Commenters at YouTube compared Cash's near-glamorization of prisoners and their crimes to modern "thug life" attitudes routinely expressed by rappers. There are songs where that is justified - for example, Cocaine Blues:



But I wonder myself what Cash would have thought about modern thug life musicians? I don't think he'd hold as harsh an opinion as many of their critics. But I think in most of Cash's music about prisons there are a couple of differences with modern thug-life musicians, not the least of which is Cash's sympathy for the prisoners and his focus on remorse ("I know I had it coming") and often Christian redemption. For example, see God's Gonna Cut You Down:



Crime should not be glamorized, just as the crime-reduction value of punishment should not be oversold. But crime and criminals must be humanized - made understandable to the broader public in human terms - in order for the public to consider evidence-based anti-crime proposals instead of fear-generated ones. Art can remind the public that these folks are all somebody's son or daughter, somebody's sibling, cousin, nephew or niece. And that nobody is ever as good as their best act or, just as importantly, as bad as their worst one.

That's what Cash tried to teach through his prison-related art. Now that he is gone, who will pick up that mantle?

Guts

Via Tom Kirkendall at Houston's Clear Thinkers.

Tom called it the play of the year, and I'd have to agree. As he described it, "During a key part of the 4th quarter in the state 5A D-1 championship game between Southlake Carroll and Austin Westlake, Southlake Carroll QB Riley Dodge barks out the signals, vomits immediately before taking the snap, then throws a perfect TD pass to put Southlake ahead for good in the game, and then is helped off the field by a couple of his teammates as he vomits again on his way to the sideline." See for yourself:



How intense is that?

What did you learn in school today?

This Pete Seeger tune could have been written today instead of 40 years ago:



Surfing further around YouTube I also found this fine rendition by a much older Seeger of "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy." I'd heard it before but somehow, at the present moment in history - with the Iraq war degenerating and parts of Louisiana still devastated after Katrina - it takes on a bit of a different sense, doesn't it? Check it out:

Matisse: Artist as Sculptor

Kathy and I want to go see this Matisse exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art featuring his sculpture.

In search of bathroom graffiti

After writing a couple of recent posts on Grits about punishing graffiti artists, I enjoyed this provocative mini-documentary filmed in Austin in the mid-'90s on bathroom graffiti, found via Dirty Third Streets, which also has up a great set of pics of Austin graffiti worth a second look.