RIP, Six Feet Under. Just watched the series finale. Pretty powerful. I won’t supply any spoilers, but I will say this: the episode certainly provided closure. Though I missed most of the last two seasons, it was one of the few shows I’ve ever watched regularly. I will miss it.
For a post-mortem on tonight’s finale, keep an eye on the official SFU bulletin boards.
Thanks to an unexpected mention on linkfilter, I’ve been getting a lot of traffic to my buddy CD’s hilarious story about an emergency room trip due to a run-in with a bunch of jalpeno peppers. If you missed the tale when I first related it, be sure to give it a read.
The details, from the BBC:
Ecuador’s state oil company says it is suspending crude oil exports following five days of protests in two provinces that have slashed production.
Hundreds of demonstrators in Sucumbios and Orellana have occupied oil installations and airports.
What it all boils down to:
Not all sections of Ecuadoran society have benefited equally from oil revenues.
The traditionally dominant Spanish-descended elite gained far more than the indigenous peoples, who make up a large proportion of those who live in poverty.
BBC:
More than 100 people are feared drowned after an Ecuadorean ship carrying illegal migrants sank off the coast of Colombia, local authorities have said.
The boat is thought to have sailed from the port of Manta in Ecuador.
Thanks to a link from the excellent Global Voices Online, my post about Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Foreign Policy’s Failed States Index Map has attracted interesting comments from bloggers boz and Miguel A. Buitrago.
Boz agrees that the Index was flawed; he says the evaluators “tried too hard to rank all states on some common standard, and managed to fail a common sense test.” And Miguel points out some pages on the FP site that list the criteria they used in their rankings.
Yesterday I ran in my first ever 10K (6.2 miles) road race. That’d be the 17th Annual Harris Teeter YMCA Loudoun County Leesburg 10K & 20K road race. I’d never even run a 5K — 3.1 miles — race, which would have been a natural introduction to competitive racing, but I am a badass.
Or so I thought.
The good news: I finished the race. Without walking (save for stopping to get water at a couple of the water stations).
The bad news: I ran it slow. REAL slow. Like in an hour, seven mintues, and 30 seconds, which comes out to a eleven minute, 10 second pace. I knew I was running more slowly than my training pace, but I didn’t care. It was extremely hot. (Kudos to my buddy Jack W., who completed the race in 57:58.)
The really bad news: I was beaten by one Robert Gurtler, of The Plains, VA, who finished the race in 1:01:55. Robert — who I now consider my mortal enemy — is 70 years old.
The really really bad news: I was also bested by one Robert Smith, age 71, of Comus, MD, who finished the course in 58:26.
I hereby declare war on all septugenarians named Robert who run faster than me.
Here’re the offical race results, which reveal the sad fact that I finished 257 out of 289 male competitors. (Had I raced against the ladies, I would’ve come in at about 172 out of 234. Next time I’m running in drag.)
One final word: despite my poor showing, this race was a lot more fun than the last endurance athletic event I participated in, the dreaded VentureQuest.
Whiskeytown Falls is clearly no Tsangpo, but great to see that discoveries can be made close to home, even in places we think we know well.
Breaking news from Peru, which I recently mentioned in reference to the Failed States Index Map*:
CNN:
LIMA, Peru (Reuters) — Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo said Thursday he had asked all his ministers to tender their resignations and would evaluate who would stay on in their jobs.
The government was plunged into crisis earlier when Prime Minister Carlos Ferrero quit, following the appointment of Toledo’s controversial top ally, Fernando Olivera, as foreign minister.
Housing and Construction Minister Carlos Bruce also resigned immediately.
Bruce and Ferrero both publicly split with Olivera over legalizing some cultivation of the raw material for cocaine, and their resignations signal more turbulence ahead for the unpopular Toledo in his final months in office.
Under Peru’s constitution, once a prime minister resigns all ministers must tender their resignations.
The story’s still developing; the only other report I can find at the moment is from the BBC.
Stay tuned…
*Maybe those folks at Foreign Policy know what they’re talking about after all…
UPDATE: The the AP has this report, but other than that there’s been nary a peep in the daily papers — the WaPo has nothing at all, and the NY Times has only a paragraph.
If you’re like me (and surely you are), you’ll be happy to learn that Google News has added RSS feeds for its news sections and individual searches.
Personally, the section feeds are worthless to me, because I think the Google News front-page auto-aggregator is worthless. But for news topics I monitor regularly — events from Ecuador and Taiwan, for example — being able to subscribe to a feed for these searches is a real boon.
(Via Micropersuasion.)
