Pack the kids in the car, it's time for fried chicken!

Everybody's favorite Guatemalan fried chicken restaurant is giving away free food! Check the news out here. One of these days, we'll get a Pollo Campero in Colorado. Probably before we get a Dunkin' Donuts in Boulder, which is the other thing that's keeping my life from being complete.

Why isn't anybody but Dani Rodrik...

...talking about giving the IMF new powers at a time when nonsense like Germany refusing to coordinate in the stimulus is happening. Is it time to think about broadening the mandate of the IMF to include other types of economic and financial regulation and management?

Fruit Trees

Not to go all Shugart on y'all...

One of the big problems municipalities have in these reforestation programs they carry out is how to get people to protect plants after they've been put in the ground. One municipality I visited up north pays a monthly fee for each tree that survives, but these guys down here in Cusco have another good idea.

They plant fruit trees.

By planting fruit trees, the local people have an incentive to protect the trees over the long term, since they stand to gain from the eventual harvest and sale of the fruit.

Something like 30,000 peach trees are about ready to be planted in Pucyura.

Participatory Fora as Commitment Mechanisms

One of the most important (and maybe the most interesting) things that I'm working on down here in Peru is finding out why participatory fora--basically, citizen-based problem-solving roundables, have an effect on local agricultural policy outcomes. Why is it that they have an impact on policy, when many of the other (more typical) things we expect to impact policy don't really seem to work down here. In addition, how do these fora arise? And how do they work--that is, what is the mechanism through which they have an effect on policy?

First, let me hit a little background. One of the weird things about Peru is that many of the standard rational-choice factors that impact policy in other places don't have an impact here. For example, in Bolivia and Guatemala (among a great many other places), governments seem to pay more attention to agricultural policy or forestry policy when (a) they make money off of those policies, (b) the central government is pressuring them to do so, especially through the use of economic incentives, and (c) voters have in interest in those policies and will vote them out of office if they don't carry through on supporting agricultural policy, etc...

These seem like pretty common-sense things. They should have an effect on policy, at least in theory, right? Funny thing is, they don't really work here in Peru. When we run regressions, variables that represent those factors don't seem to be statistically significant (at least at the p < .95 level).

However, one of the things that does have an impact here are these "participatory problem solving fora." Basically, where people can get together with representatives of the municipality and try to figure out common solutions for their problems.

So, the first question is, why do these fora have an impact? Often, they have no formal powers--they're merely advisory. And even where they're legally empowered, anyone who has spent much time down here knows that having a written law is often a far cry from having that law carried out.

The second question is, why do they come about? Who creates them, and why? If they work at having an effect on policy, how we get more of them? Over the last week or so, I've had some real luck in getting some good, straight answers to these questions.

First off, "participatory fora" are a way for the mayor and other municipal actors to gain the trust and cooperation of the citizenry in a country where politicians are typically regarded as universally corrupt. For a corrupt politician, participatory fora might take away some (or much) of the discretion that can make being the mayor such a lucrative situation. For an honest politician, however, who with political (not economic) ambitions, who hopes to make a career in politics (long time horizons), participatory fora are a good way to convince the citizens that they're really doing what they say they're doing.

Also, participatory fora are a commitment mechanism. Although municipal administrations give up some control of policy when they allow it to be guided by these fora, having broad citizen participation in the creation of policy (a) makes citizens aware of policy, and (b) makes it more politically costly to change policies that citizens created. As such, participatory budgeting can be a mechanism to increase the odds that the policies created by one administration will be carried through by the following administration. This makes it easier for municipal governments to work with other actors who may have longer time horizons--entrepreneurs, investors, and citizens who only are willing to participate in a costly (though beneficial) policy if it is really carried through.

Evo's in good shape, but...

One of Peru's trashier newspaper (Ojo, I think) reports that cousin Evo again called Alan García fat. True, of course, but Evo better be careful. He's in pretty good shape, but Uncle Hugo is looking a little chubby, and Daniel Ortega also won't be running any marathons any time soon.

A few notes...

First, Emily and I are beginning an official movement, backed by the WPPA, to have Learned Hand appointed, posthumously, to the Supreme Court. For God's sake, he should get it on the virtue of his name alone.

Second, it's really starting to tee me off when people refer to people's outrage at (a) bailouts, (b) AIG bonuses, and (c) corporate flights in private planes as "populist" outrage. As I've pointed out recently, the term "populist" is imprecise--often intentionally so--but almost always carries implications of irrationality and irresponsibility. I do not understand why it is either irrational or irresponsible to be angry that my tax payments now and for the next 75 years are being used to pay bonuses to the "top talent" at an insurance firm that appears not to be able to tell the difference between a wise investment and the the methane-producing end of a Long Island investment banker.

Furthermore, pundits and economists (unsurprisingly, usually the non-"populist" right-wing kind) keep pointing out how small the sum of 165 million dollars is, compared to the size of the bailout package.

I don't give a damn about the relative size of the bonuses vs. bailout package. $165,000,000 is a lot of money. I'm no economist, but that should be enough to feed, house, and clothe about 2,250 US families of four fairly comfortably for the likely duration of the recession, or 41,000 Peruvian families, or about 137,500 Guatemalan families. That sounds like something perfectly rational to get upset about to me.

Kapish?

Finally, allow me to express my disgust at the way my beloved GOP has fallen all over itself to cater to the whims of the extreme right, from Rush Limbaugh to the nut job at the Aurora gun show who was trading steel core 7.62Soviet rifle bullets for automatic rifles with which to fight the black helicopter troops off.

The Republican party started as the anti-slavery party and has become the party of tortue, the party which invented conservationism under T.R. and carried it into government under Richard Nixon has become the party of the oil industry, the party which fought big capital through the trust-busting and consumer protection of the early 1900s has become the party which resists regulation on industries which have no interest in self-regulation, the party which built the national highway system has become the party that resists spending which will improve the country's competitive edge and ensure our economic system's survival. And the party that invented the North American Free Trade Agreement has become the party of border fences and racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Ironically, the party of small government and mistrust in government has become the party of a dramatic expansion in government powers and the party of a bizarre trust in the ability of politicians to make decisions about the use of force and the suspension of civil rights.

Allow me to also add that I am the grandchild of an English man, an Irish woman, a couple of Germans, and lord knows what else. We are a country of immigrants, and it makes me ashamed to have to explain to the Peruvians that most of the racism in the US nowadays is anti-Latino.

None of these values are US values. And it shouldn't take a bleeding-heart to see that sleep deprivation, waterboarding, anti-immigrant racism and market fundamentalism will not help us win the hearts and minds of potential opponents, be they Russian, Venezuelan, or Afghani. Our liberal democratic ideology is far superior to anything Putin, Chavez, or the Afghani Taliban can throw at us, but human rights and tolerance are an inseparable part of those ideas.

I look forward to a time when I can vote for my party again, but they seem to be determined to turn me into a Democrat.

Indeed, every reasonable voter in the country should look forward to a time when I can vote Republican again, because it takes a competitive opposition to keep the government honest. However, party leaders are not giving me much hope.

Also, it might be snowing in Iquitos...

Jagdish Bhagwati supports unions, here. I have renewed respect for the guy, and totally agree.

In other news, at the moment, I could stand to be here.

Town Meetings in Peru

First off, I've added a few (bad) pictures to the Cusco album in the sidebar. Check it out if you like painted campaign signs.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Got a chance to go out to one of the Anta participatory budgeting fora today. Interesting. Anta is the province which implemented the participatory budgeting process in Peru, which, in theory, is supposed to be universal nowadays. Indeed, the institutions of participatory budgeting seem to be widespread, but the way the budgeting process is carried out, and whether or not the budget is carried through is an open question. I've met several people (in other places) who have said things like, "we were supposed to receive X soles in last year's budget, but the money was never provided."

In Anta, however, the process seems to be fairly well implemented, in a democratic way, and indeed, there seems to be some follow-through. Not only does the government seem to carry out the things the budget prioritizes, they have developed a simple but consistent way of prioritizing projects, which doesn't permit the districts to select projects which are contrary to the municipality's strategic development plan. In other places, such contradictions (between development plans and participatory budgets) have been a major complaint of municipal officials about the participatory budgeting processes.

The actual meeting took place outside the church in one of the rural villages in Anta, which chickens and stray dogs at our feet, and with a beautiful view out onto the valley which makes up most of the province.

Probably half the meeting was conducted in Quechua (some of which I understood fairly well), and the community was generally in reasonably strong agreement about their priorities in the budget--completion of an irrigation project which has already been started, and the introduction of clean drinking water and sewage/drainage to the community. Apparently, this sort of agreement is fairly unusual, and there are usually conflicts within communities, including between different factions, and conflict whipped up by individuals with political ambitions.

My take on the participatory budgeting process is thus:
1. It promotes transparency. The communities know what projects have been selected for completion, and therefore, know when things haven't been completed.
2. It promoted better decision-making. Although the prioritization of projects is ultimately performed by the mayor's office, the process feeds information to the mayor about the needs of the communities. Without such an extensive institutionalized process of interest articulation, local executives simply don't know as well what voters need and want.
3. It promotes a participatory culture. Repeatedly, interviewees have told me that the participatory budgeting process has changed citizens' ideas about government from "Kiss the hand" of the mayor (as one interviewee described it), to the expectation that the municipality has a duty to carry out projects for the citizen. This sort of culture makes it more likely that politicians will be punished for following their own personal agendas, and not the agenda of the communities.

New pictures up

Just put up some photos of the impressive ruins at Moray and a couple of interesting photos of architectural details around Cusco. Click on the links in the sidebar to go to the albums.

Particularism vs. Pragmatism

...which gets me to another thing. How can you differentiate between "populism," which presumably has implications of irresponsibility, "pragmatism," which is presumably desirable, and "particularism," which is assumed to be undesirable.

Pragmatism has something to do with being practical and non-ideological.

Populism is a poorly defined term as well, but presumably has something to do with giving the people what they want. Maureen once pointed out to me that this is also a big part of democracy, but there are clearly times when governments do irresponsible things to satisfy public demand.

Particularism has something to do with corruption--politicians supporting policies that promote narrow interests (rather than the interests of the majority) in order to receive some advantage, either politically or economically.

Populism and particularism both are seen as undesirable, but they are also, in some ways, opposites.

So, when does a policy go from being particularistic to being pragmatic? Is the support of some local industry (a milk industry, for example) particularistic if it directly advantages only one small group of the population, not nearly a majority, even if it is promoting economic development that will have positive spillover effects and secondary effects for others in the area? The milk producers will, for example, buy products from local merchants and will use local transportation firms (taxis and buses, for example), to get around.

And when do you know when a government has gone from pragmatic to being populist? Is constructing homes for the impoverished populism if it will result in healthier children and more productive adults, even if it is, at its core, basically a handout?

These are normative questions--not to downplay normative questions, because they're important--but they also have practical implications. Effectively, where do you draw the line between desirable and undesirable policies at the local level? If I want to know when a government is doing a good job (which is clearly something that interests me), I need to know what a "good job" consists of.

Socialism, Capitalism, and Pragmatism

The last couple of days, I've been doing interviews in the province of Anta, right outside of Cusco, where I'm back living with the family I stayed with when I was doing my language training.

The government of Anta is controlled by the Peruvian Socialist Party--one of the only places where the party is a going concern. The socialists like to kick and scream about the state of the capitalist system, the financial crisis, and the way the Peruvian anticrisis package is helping the capitalists and hurting the rural people, but when it comes down to it, they're really pretty pragmatic in government, doing pretty non-socialist things like supporting local entrepreneurs in building a quality local dairy industry and training local restaurant owners in cooking in order to improve the local "gastronomic tourism" industry.

Some of these things sound like state-led capitalism to me. They're certainly doing things that Austrian style economists would disapprove of--the local government is certainly promoting certain industries at the expense of others--but they're also things that don't look terribly inefficient or anti-market to me. In fact, they seem to be helping to overcome development traps and market failures to make the market work more efficiently.

The local government has built and funded an artificial insemination post to improve the breeding of local cattle, and they buy wholesale quantities of seed for the improvement of pastureland and sell it to locals at cost. It doesn't seem entirely inappropriate to see this as a replacement for foreign direct investment, except without the foreign part. Effectively, the municipality is helping the locals to overcome a development trap--the absence of capital accumulation--to promote industries which would simply not have the opportunity for improvement without the government assistance otherwise.

It should be noted that, if the local officials are to be believed, the results have been impressive. They have increased the yield of the milk industry somewhat, but apparently the primary improvement has been the quality of the local product. While local cheese had previously been sold on blankets in the street, for example, they now produce cheese that's cleanly packaged in plastic, vacuum-sealed bags and sold in Peruvian supermarkets. If the local officials are to be believed, local government intervention was a necessary condition for the organization and capitalization of the dairy sector in Anta.

Clearly, of course, there are times when such government intervention doesn't work very well--and we all know how inefficient government can be. On the other hand, it's hard not to look at our economic situation today and think that sometimes, free markets aren't all that hot either. But state capture and the resulting inefficacy and inefficiency is a real concern in a place like this--but the province of Anta appears to have largely avoided that, thus far.

Of course, I could be wrong. But if I'm right, what's the explanation?

I don't have an answer at the moment--I need to keep doing interviews. But I wonder if the outcomes seen in Anta are a result of (a) a strong local party structure based on internal institutions which promote long-term party viability rather than short-term individual political viability, (b) the prior construction of institutions for democratic, downward accountability through transparency and elections, and (c) the early adoption of a median-voter strategy by the current government. This last one is a result of strategic interaction coming out of an awareness (by the local government) that they don't have as much wiggle room when it comes to pursuing self-enrichment through political office.

This doesn't explain, however, why the system hasn't resulted in particularistic, patronage politics, which I think should be a more likely result of the wild and wacky Peruvian local electoral system. But maybe that's what is going on, and I just haven't seen it yet.

Maybe next week...

Think y'all might enjoy this.

here.

Slum Living

A fascinating post from the brilliant and often intestinally ill Blattman:

Are slums/shantytowns/favelas/pueblos jovenes really good places to get ahead?

Huaraz to Lima

Hey all,

New pictures are up--click on the link in the sidebar, if you're so inclined.

Back in Lima

Heading on back to Cusco/Cuzco/Qosqo on Tuesday, so I hopped a bus from Huaraz to Lima this morning. I'll be here in lovely, lovely San Isidro (where there's not much going on except good restaurants, pretty parks, and lots and lots of construction) until Tuesday, when I catch my flight back up to Cusco, "navel of the earth."

The ride from Huaraz is beautiful, and not too bad in length--only eight hours--but I hadn't seen it on my way up there, since I wasn't able to find a bus that went during the day. I don't understand the Peruvian fondness for night buses, and this time, I was able to find a company that runs a bus that leaves at 9am.

The trip is simply incredible. I'll put up the pictures when I get a chance--though most of them were taken through the bus window, so I'm not sure how they'll turn out.

Starts out high in the mountains, of course, in Huaraz, and climbs up above treeline, then plunges down a long canyon, through some of the most incredible scenery I've seen down here. As it's the rainy season, there are incredible waterfalls, and the landscape is lush and green.

Once you get to the base of the canyon, however, you start to notice that it seems drier, and in the distance of only ten or fifteen kilometers, you go from this lush, green landscape to yellow-orange desert. Once you get out of the canyon altogether, even the irrigated cropland of the valley floor disappears, and you're out among the dunes, but with a view of the ocean.

In places, you wouldn't know you were on the coast, when the ocean is out of view. In other places, it looks like the Pacific Coast Highway, except that instead of a green landscape, you're in amongst the sand and rocks.

And, of course, the shanty towns. Houses that are made out of little more than bamboo and straw, and if the residents are prosperous, adobe or concrete block.

No need for a roof that keeps the rain out, since there isn't much of that, so many houses are literally nothing more than bamboo and grass. All in all, it must be a hard life. Although these areas do seem to support some commercial agriculture.

When we got closer to Lima, I saw a couple of sailboats, including at least one beautiful catamaran. Looking at the ocean got me thinking about kayaking, although my skills are certainly not up to paddling the kind of waves that the Pacific produces on anything but the calmest days. Someday, though.

Really, when I'm on the road like that, I miss the freedom to be able to go where I want and stop where I want. If I had the time or the money, I would get a small motorcycle to travel around in down here. I could probably afford it, but it's far too much expense and hassle for the relatively short time I'm in the country.

Some new pictures up...

...click on the link in the sidebar, if you're interested.

Interview in the Field

All right, forgive me for the stupid title, but this was my first interview actually conducted in the middle of a field.

Interviewed a campesino community leader at about 1PM yesterday. He wasn't home, but his daughter took me out to the field where he was working, and we did the interview standing in the rows of corn.

Normally, I start my interviews with a handshake--think that's especially meaningful if I'm interviewing some rural farmer who's used to being treated like dirt by the local white folks. But this guy didn't want to shake hands, because he was literally working in the dirt with his hands--seeding, I think--and he was covered up to his elbows in this rich, black organic soil that they farm in, here.

One of the very non political science-y things that has really impressed me about doing these interviews has been the fact that, no matter how small or large the community, there seems to be somebody (sometimes a couple of somebodies) around that is clearly cut out for being a community leader. Every leader is a little different--some are smiley, some are very serious, some are talkative, some are quiet, some are men, a lot are women (I'm pretty convinced that women run the world around here), but it seems to come out in their mannerisms that they're used to telling people what they should do, who they should vote for, what their priorities as a community should be.

I don't think this guy could have had anything more than a 6th grade education, and I'd be surprised if it was at that level. But he really knew what was going on. And he had a pretty strong idea about what the local government was doing wrong. Hard to argue with "the district really should at least channel the raw sewage away from the secondary school, instead of having it run right by the schoolyard."

It also really impresses me how well-informed locals are about their local governments. I have never interviewed any citizen who, though they may have been apathetic about national politics, didn't have a strong and well-informed opinion about their local governments.

People really are better prepared to be informed consumers of democracy at the local level.

One of these days, I'll figure out how to measure the qualities of leadership, and I'll be the next Ron Inglehart. Without the huge head.

High Heels

So, as another way to squeeze a blog entry out of what probably should be only a comment, I wanted to respond to Aubrey's comment on high heels.

In brief:
1. I don't think high heels were invented by violent criminals. Just abusive husbands, at a time when abuse was commonplace and socially acceptable (personally, I'm thinking Victorian era, but probably a lot earlier than that).
2. I kind of like cobblestones, but I'll compromise with flagstones.
3. During the Spanish-American War, the "rough riders" were shod in cowboy boots, because they were supposed to be cavalry. But they lost their horses along the way. So they charged San Juan hill on foot, and were known by other soldiers as "Wood's Weary Walkers" (Wood was the first commander). Weary, because of the heeled cowboy boots.

So, take that, heeled shoes!

In other news, I find it extremely amusing that Aubrey's explanations for the persistence of high heels includes "institutional stickiness." Nerds, we are.

Banditry Again

A couple of weeks ago, I posted my thoughts on Zane's post about the situation in swat in Pakistan. Then he responded to me. I just wanted to make it clear that in my original post, I wasn't critiquing his understanding of Olson--he's dead on. I just think Olson's missing a piece in his own theory.

In general, I think Olson-esque rational choice approaches work great when the actors in a given situation possess the cognitive models which make it likely that the rationality they will exercise will resemble that which we possess. Example: everybody likes to be richer, other things being equal.

The question (and it is only that--a question) is, in this situation--in any situation involving the Taliban--is it appropriate to assume that they (a) want to be richer (their goals might have less to do with wealth and more to do with living some sort of religious lifestyle), and that they (b) are able to enrich their territorial jurisdiction if they do want to be richer?

So, basically, I wonder if the roving bandit/stationary bandit theoretical approach applies in this situation.

I realize that wondering these things means that I'm becoming some sort of political culture/constructivist hippie. But I got a really short haircut a couple of days ago (for about $1.30) to compensate.

On a related note, this popped up recently--effectively, this sounds much like the strategy followed by the US in Iraq under "The Awakening," which was a lot like the strategy followed by the Peruvians under Fujimori against the Shining Path, which also resembled the strategy that was followed by the Carrancistas in Mexico during the revolution (which ultimately defeated the great Pancho Villa, among others).

Militant anarcho-communitarianism, anyone?

Chavín Forestry Incentives

The lead forestry engineer in Chavín made strong assertions that the only proper way to deal with the problem of deforestation in Peru is a top-down approach in which the central government requires landowners to reforest all vacant land at their own expense. This struck me as more than a little implausible, and politically unfeasible. Frankly, I was pretty impressed with the program that the municipality had already thought up, and the scale of their ongoing program.

The municipality has created a very well thought-out series of incentives that both encourages reforestation, and also incentivizes the care of existing forests. They pay individuals to (a) plant and care for trees in tree nurseries, both in the urban and rural parts of the municipality, and (b) take part in the planting of saplings out in the countryside.

That's the easy part--that's pretty much also what you see from most other reforestation projects.

The other portion of the project that is more unusual is the generation of incentives to care for trees which have already been planted. This may be (arguably) the most important part of the project, and the most interesting.

What Chavín does is pay 30 centimos (about ten US cents) per tree, per month for maintenance of trees planted in the past, for a period of several years (I want to say three years, but I'm not 100% sure about that--it's in my notes somewhere).

The brilliant part of the project is that this payment is made to the local government committee of the "Centro Poblado," the smallest unit of organization of these rural villages. Then, although the forest engineers help to mediate any problems and also provide technical support, they pretty much leave the situation alone and let the locals regulate their own affairs.

Evidentally, the typical problem in these rural places is farm animals getting into a recently reforested area and trampling all the newly-planted trees. The typical community solution to this is (a) locals round up the offending animals and corral them. They then (b) inform the owner that he is to charge a fine, to compensate for the loss the community would have received. If the owner doesn't pay, they (c) butcher the animals and distribute the meat to the community.

In this way, every individual in the community has an incentive to enforce local rules about the protection of reforested areas, and an incentive to obey the rules, because they know everybody is looking out for them.

The endshot is that the program is well-funded, and quite extensive. It also has very few problems in terms of sustainability over the term of the project.

In the end, I'm rooting for the current mayor in the next election. He's no saint, from the sound of it (and I'm a little annoyed that I could never get to meet with him), but his does seem to be doing a good job. And if he's reelected, there may be a fair chance that he'll continue the reforestation project.

New Pictures Up

Hey all,

I've put up links to two new Picasa photo albums--all from Chavín. The links are over in the sidebar. Take a look.

Rural Chavín

"Rural" Chavín:

The title implies that there is an _urban_ Chavín, which probably isn't
true in the North American sense, but there _is_ a difference between
life in town and on the road, where there are more basic services and
there is less poverty, and life in the campo--the countryside--where
poverty is much greater and there often isn't any government presence at
all.

As with many places in Peru, the "government" presence here is more
often than not local government--there are a number of projects funded
by the district, there are informal institutions for self-governance in
the rural villages, and there is very little in the way of central
government presence.

Yesterday, a couple of the local forestry technicians generously took me
out to see some of their work. Leaving at about 6AM, we walked for
several hours into the mountains, visiting several rural villages,
seeing a great deal of reforestation, and visiting a couple of temporary
tree nurseries that had been set up in some of the rural communities for
the municipality's reforestation project. We also ate a couple of meals
out in the campo and saw a bit of rural village life.

Projects in Chavín:

First, the municipality really is doing a very good job in implementing
projects which improve the standard of living of the rural poor. These
range from nutritional services for school children to health to
infrastructure, including the construction of healthy rural homes with
plumbing, road-building, and school construction in some of these rural
communities. Seeing the success of these projects is a welcome change
from the apparent inactivity in Carhuaz.

A "Dutch Disease":

Second, the money for the large number of projects taking place here
comes from a fund of money coming out of a local mining firm. The
result of (a) the mining project, and (b) the large number of
municipally-funded projects is a _very_ large government, relative to
the size of the local economy, and a high rate of inflation in labor
prices. Because the inflation is caused by local factors, the results
have not been negative in the short-term, but there has been something
of a "Dutch Disease", in which it is difficult to promote industries
other than mining, because production of everything else is at a
disadvantage. The cost of labor is so high--sometimes two or three
times what it is even two hours away in Huaraz (itself a relatively
prosperous place)--other industries tend to go our of business. This
has especially been the case in agriculture.

Over the short term, the increase in the cost of labor has been a good
thing, but over the long term, a number of the municipal and
agricultural workers expressed concern that, when the price of
commodities (like the gold that comes from the Antamina mining firm)
drops, the result will be a rapid decline in the standard of living,
both because of the decline in income from labor, and because of a
neglect of agricultural infrastructure (and perhaps a loss of local
knowledge about how to farm).

In any event, the results of a drop in prices will likely be felt soon,
as the effects of the US economic crisis come to this tiny place, three
thousand miles away.

One thing I wonder

Normally, I'd just post a comment on Aubrey's blog, but the current
internet connection is too slow for that, apparently, although my
NetNewsWire RSS aggregator works great, and Thunderbird works maybe 50%
of the time.

So here's the comment:

Why wear high heels? As a male, and a not particularly left-leaning or
feminist one at that, they seem like a transparent attempt by men of the
past to control the mobility of women by designing shoes for them in
which it is impossible to run. I don't really believe they're
necessary, from a fashion or professionalism standpoint, and aren't the
drawbacks far greater than the possible advantages?

What are the advantages, anyways? Blisters?

My grandmother could not wear flat shoes, because her achilles tendon
had shrunk in the 90-plus years she wore heels, making it very painful
to wear shoes in which she could actually get around with some
reasonable degree of speed. For her, the strategy worked. Fortunately,
my grandfather was not abusive.

I think it's no coincidence that she was also forced to wear a corset.

Cowboy boots have a heel (about 1", by the way) so that your boots stay
in the stirrups. (Although Chuck Norris wears them because... well...
do you want to get kicked by one of those things?) And logging boots
have a short heel so that you can strap on the tree-climbing gear and
not have it come off.

What other explanation is there for women's high heels?

Just a soapbox of mine. Sorry.

Uncle Hugo and Uncle Bush

Yesterday, when I was conducting one of my interviews, I got into a
conversation with the interviewee--a local city council member--about US
politics. I thought it was very interesting that the interviewee, a
distinguished gentleman with grey hair, compared the political
philosophy of George Bush to that of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro,
suggesting that they were all "radicals." He then hoped, aloud, that
Obama would be more "conservative." Interesting. And when you think
about it, there aren't too many conservatives in Latin America nowadays,
but the moderates do tend to have a quieter foreign policy.

Interesting.