The Most Influential Person in History You've Never Heard Of

The man is Rudolf von Havenstein, the German central banker who brought about the Weimar hyperinflation of the early 1920s, also known as "der Geld Marschall".

I believe that there are a couple of important lessons from the story of von Havenstein. One comes from the fact that the man was a patriot and an aristocrat, i.e. he always thought that he had his country's best interest at heart. Despite that, he created one of the biggest economic firestorms ever to hit a civilized country. Admittedly, he faced some very tough choices, with Communists and Rightists battling in the streets, unemployment at record highs, industrial production plummeting, and Germany owing a huge war debt to the victors of WW1.

The second lesson from his story is the difficulty in ceasing to print money once it has already begun. It's frying pan or fire, take your pick.

Any resemblance to our current situation is purely coincidental.

How many more parallels do we need: escalating geopolitical tensions across the world, an Eastern European powder keg, Quantitave Easing masking as just economic doctrine, and, on top of it all, a deranged money printer. Just as von Havenstein set the foundations for the most destructive war in world history, is his modern reincarnation currently doing the same, as yet another, much more destructive military conflict possibly approaches?

Average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 nations

Here's the abstract to a paper by Richard Lynn, Average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 nations:

Evidence is reviewed pointing to a negative relationship between intelligence and religious belief in the United States and Europe. It is shown that intelligence measured as psychometric g is negatively related to religious belief. We also examine whether this negative relationship between intelligence and religious belief is present between nations.We find that in a sample of 137 countries the correlation between national IQ and disbelief in God is 0.60.

Lynn adduces four lines of evidence for this idea: 1) studies that find negative correlations between religious belief and intelligence; 2) lower level of religious beliefs among "intelligence elites" than in the general population; 3) decline of religious belief with age among children and adolescents; and 4) perhaps the most interesting, the decline of religious belief in the 20th century due to the Flynn Effect.

Lynn discusses one large anomaly in the results, namely that of the U.S., which has a much greater degree of religious belief than would be expected from this analysis. One factor is, according to Lynn, the presence of a large number of Catholics; more speculative, and therefore more interesting, is the notion that large numbers of the original immigrants to North America, i.e. those who founded the U.S., came because of religious persecution. In other words, the original inhabitants may have had far stronger religious beliefs than those who remained behind, content with the system. Since "parent-child correlations for religious belief are quite high at 0.64 [...] and 0.69", the current American population has to some extent inherited the religious beliefs of the founding population.

Duesberg's Paper Permanently Withdrawn

Since I've covered this issue, and in case any of you still care, here's a letter notifying Peter Duesberg that his and his co-authors' paper has been dropped into the memory hole, never to return.

February 24th, 2010

Dear Professor Duesberg,

I am writing regarding your article: ‘HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS – A new perspective’, which was withdrawn as a Medical Hypotheses Article-in-Press in August 2009.

As you know, following the recommendations of the external expert panel, the article was sent out for independent peer review, under the management of the Lancet editorial team. The article was sent to five external reviewers; the reviewers’ reports are also being sent to you along with this letter.

In light of the unanimous ‘reject’ recommendations by the reviewers, the Panel has recommended to Elsevier that your article should be permanently withdrawn. We are following this recommendation, and will adjust our withdrawal notice to read as follows:

“This Article-in-Press has been permanently withdrawn.
The editorial policy of MEDICAL HYPOTHESES makes it clear that the journal considers “radical, speculative, and non-mainstream scientific ideas”, and articles will only be acceptable if they are “coherent and clearly expressed.” However, we received serious expressions of concern about the quality of this article, which contains highly controversial opinions about the causes of AIDS, opinions that could potentially be damaging to global public health.

Given these important signals of concern, we commissioned an external expert panel to investigate the circumstances in which this article came to be published online. The panel recommended that the article should be externally peer-reviewed. Following a peer-review process managed by The Lancet editorial team, all five external reviewers recommended rejection, as a result of which the expert panel recommended permanent withdrawal.

The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause.”

Sincerely yours,

Chris Lloyd

VP Health Sciences Journals
Elsevier

[Emphasis in original.]

Linkage May or May Not Be Good For You

Diversity is not strength in Ukraine.

Lawrence Auster and Stanley Fish have both rediscovered David Hume.

Why did Amy Bishop always get away with criminal activity that would have put a man in the pen for decades to life? The question answers itself.

College for $99 a month, and on your timetable, not the professors'. Sidestep the Gramscians while you're at it.

Claims of rising sea levels retracted.

Resistance exercise reverses aging through gene expression.

Magnesium and insulin: adequate magnesium levels may be crucial to human health, and may be implicated in obesity.

PaNu: "paleolithic nutrition - duplicating the evolutionary metabolic milieu", by Kurt G. Harris, M.D. I recently discovered this excellent blog and have read the whole thing. Try "Cardio" Causes Heart Disease for some provocation.

On Evolutionary Psychology

In this part of the blogosphere, most of you will need no convincing that evolutionary psychology and human biodiversity can provide powerful explanations for many hitherto unexplained or puzzling aspects of the human world. One reason for this is precisely that theories of human behavior derived from these are so controversial and unaccepted; once these ideas become better known, they will seem like the conventional wisdom.

But today's conventional wisdom can be seen in the remarks of a commenter, who said that it is just obvious that some people will get upset at the making of "invidious" distinctions, implying that discussions of group differences always entail the incitement of, according to my dictionary, "ill will, odium, or envy". (The same commenter noted that some men come to blows over remarks made about their favorite sports teams; this goes a long way toward explaining my dislike of sports.) I'd say that this attitude is a modern one, a product of the era of equality, the kind perverted from equality under the law to actually equal in ability.

A few years ago I wrote something on stepchildren and divorce, which has become the top-ranked item in a search using those terms. In a nutshell, I said that given our current culture, and given that a mother has stronger bonds to her children than does a father (on average!) or than she has to a husband who is not the father of her children, it's almost inevitable that strong conflicts arise in a marriage that has stepchildren.

Comments keep coming in, and the gist of many of them is that the post is an eye-opener. That if they had known or thought about this ahead of time, they might have done things differently. That knowing this helps to explain what went wrong in their marriages and that this can be some small consolation. That with the best will in the world, they couldn't keep their marriages together and the post explains why.

So, an explanation based on evolutionary psychology can go a long way toward explaining a certain facet of the world, and ignorance of it can cause a great deal of harm and misery.

With regard to invidious distinctions, it's no secret that the most common explanation for the lower achievement and higher social pathologies of non-whites is racism. Is it any wonder that many of us are intent on pointing out that other, better explanations exist? Just as marriages could be improved by the knowledge of evolutionary psychology, so society could be, and so could whites be relieved of the charge of racism.

Most Italian Immigrants Came From the North

Another spot of bother erupted in the comments regarding the Italian north-south IQ gradient. Apparently, Italian immigrants to the U.S. have incomes and education in line with or even slightly above the white American average. (I have to admit, news to me.) It is also apparently "common knowledge" that most of those who emigrated from Italy to the U.S. were from the southern part of Italy. Therefore, the reasoning goes, something must be wrong with Richard Lynn's data on Italian IQs, whether in biased test results, or because the PISA tests are not good IQ proxies, or for some other reason. However, since Lynn's data are the primary ones, i.e. he calculated the IQ scores from actual tests, it would be hubris to throw out his results on the grounds that a group, only partially related and descended from people who left Italy 100 years ago, apparently have at least average IQs.

Nevertheless, it appears that some anomaly exists. Blogger Extrapolitica has provided a way out of the anomaly: most Italian immigrants to the U.S. came from the north. His source, L'Emigrazione Italiana, states that in the period 1880-1925, more than 16 million people emigrated from Italy, and of those, around half came from the north, and around 3.6 million from Veneto alone. Thirty nine percent came from the south.

These numbers come from official Italian statistics.

That would seem to solve the anomaly, as well as exploding what I would say is a widespread myth, namely that most Italian immigrants to the U.S. came from the southern part of Italy. They did not.

Vitamin D, Omega-3 Index, Obesity

First up is vitamin D. The chart shows the degree to which vitamin D will prevent various diseases at any given blood level of the vitamin, referenced to a baseline. The high and low figures are from the literature, those in between are "reasonable extrapolations". It's clear that a population-wide increase in average vitamin D levels would probably do more for public health than any health insurance scheme existing or planned. If you want to have radically decreased risk for the most common diseases, vitamin D3 supplementation is a must.

Next, the omega-3 index is proving to be the single most effective test for coronary heart disease, discriminating among cases with better accuracy than any other test. (The only other one that came close was for C-reactive protein.) The graph above shows the odds of sudden cardiac death and primary cardiac arrest respectively, based on quartiles of the omega-3 index, and as can be seen, in the highest quartile of the index, the odds dropped dramatically.

The omega-3 index was developed (in part, to my knowledge) by W. S. Harris, the author of the paper from which the above graph came. The index is simply the fraction of omega-3 fatty acids in red blood cells, expressed as a percentage of total fatty acids. As noted, it has remarkable predictive power, but better for our purposes is that it can be modified. By increasing the intake of omega-3 fatty acids (from fish oil) and decreasing the intake of omega-6 FAs (mainly from vegetable oils), one can increase the omega-3 index. Harris states that an index value of under 4% denotes high risk, greater than 8% is low risk. Dr. Davis of the Heart Scan blog believes that an index value of 10% or greater confers the highest protection from heart disease. (Incidentally, I cannot recommend his blog highly enough.) He also says, "I believe the emerging data are becoming increasingly clear: If you desire maximal control over heart health, know your omega-3 index and keep it 10% or higher."

The omega-3 index is integral to the health effects of paleolithic eating. Early man consumed a diet with an estimated 1:1 ratio of omega-6/omega-3 FAs, and presumably suffered from no heart or circulatory diseases. Compare to a ratio of more like 20 or more for the SAD (standard American diet). Today, the Japanese consume far more omega-3, and this is thought to be mainly responsible for lower heart disease rates, despite higher rates of smoking and hypertension.

Obesity: a recent op-ed, The slimming of America good for economy as well as health, claims that the financial costs of obesity are the equivalent of an ongoing recession. We've also heard from Michelle Obama and her "war on obesity". But here's the problem with both of these notions: if we try to fight obesity using their methods, the problem will only get worse. The government's war against dietary fat caused the obesity epidemic.

"This isn't like a disease where we're still waiting for the cure to be discovered," Mrs. Obama said. "We know the cure for this. This isn't like putting a man on the moon or inventing the Internet. It doesn't take some stroke of genius of feat of technology. We have everything we need right now to help our kids lead healthy lives." [...]

Congress this year is supposed to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act, and Mrs. Obama is asking that school lunches and breakfasts get more funding so students can be served more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy products.

In essence, as Mrs. Obama said, the key to reducing childhood obesity is to eat better and exercise more; how to do that has vexed officials and medical professionals for years.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Obama's prescription, which is shared by virtually the entire health establishment, will do little to help. "Healthy eating" in their minds is code for "less fat"; exercise has been shown in study after study to have virtually no effect on weight loss.

We won't make progress in the war on obesity until the true causes and cures are acknowledged. Bringing back stigma probably wouldn't hurt either.

North-South IQ Gradient in Italy

Richard Lynn has a fascinating paper from this past year, In Italy, north–south differences in IQ predict differences in income, education, infant mortality, stature, and literacy, published in the journal Intelligence. (Which is, by the way, published by Elsevier, the publisher of Medical Hypotheses. If the enemies of science are looking for a politically incorrect journal for Elsevier to abolish, Intelligence looks like a better candidate.)

The abstract:

Regional differences in IQ are presented for 12 regions of Italy showing that IQs are highest in the north and lowest in the south. Regional IQs obtained in 2006 are highly correlated with average incomes at r=0.937, and with stature, infant mortality, literacy and education. The lower IQ in southern Italy may be attributable to genetic admixture with populations from the Near East and North Africa.

I recommend that you read the whole thing, but I'll touch on a few points. A huge takeaway point from this paper is that explanations arising from human biodiversity can go far in explaining previously insoluble problems. Lynn notes that North-South differences in living standards have been known for hundreds of years, and economists and social scientists have written libraries trying to account for it.

An Italian economist has written that “there is a huge literature dealing with the so-called “questione meridionale” — the social, cultural and economic backwardness of southern Italy” (Felici, 2007, p. 1). Another Italian economist has written that “works dedicated to the southern question would fill an entire library but many of the economists' questions as to the size and causes of Italian economic dualism remain unanswered” (Toniolo, 1990, p. 159).

Yet, despite Herculean labors, no good explanation has been forthcoming; along comes Richard Lynn, who finds that "IQ differences explain 88% of the variance in per capita incomes across Italian regions."

Lynn found that IQs in Northern Italy were identical to those in central and northern Europe, that they decline with latitude, and that IQ correlates with latitude at .964 (sic). Furthermore, IQ has a strong positive correlation with stature, and a strong negative correlation with infant mortality.

This regional disparity appears to have existed for hundreds if not thousands of years. Lynn cites Murray's figures in "Human Accomplishment" for the number of significant figures in science in Italy, from 1400 to 1950: from the North came 187 significant figures; from the Center, 32; and from the South, 17.

Lynn posits "a possible explanation" for the IQ gradient in genetics, citing Cavalli-Sforza to the effect that

“northern Italy shows similarities with countries of central Europe, whereas central and southern Italy are more similar to Greece and other Mediterranean countries. This corresponds to the well-known differences in physical type (especially pigmentation and size) between the northern and north-central Italians on the one side and southern Italians on the other” (1994, p. 277). By “Mediterranean countries” Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza mean the countries that border the Mediterranean including those of North Africa and the Near East. They note also that the Sardinians are genetically more closely related to the Greeks, Lebanese and North African Berbers than to central and northern Europeans (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994, pp. 78, 274). Subsequent studies have confirmed the genetic impact of immigration from the Near East and North Africa into southern Italy.

Why the genetic differences? Invasion and immigration (much of the time with subsequent insolvency). The Arabs ruled Sicily from 965 to 1091, until the Normans kicked them out, but meanwhile the Arabs left a large genetic footprint. Other invaders have done the same throughout the history of Italy. Arabs sacked Rome in 846.

(Thanks to reader Zoip for the link.)

Why South America Is Poor

A spot of bother erupted in the comments section when I referred to human biodiversity issues with regard to Argentina and Uruguay. Specifically, I stated that the fact that most of the European immigrants to those countries came from Spain, Portugal, and Italy may be related to the relative poverty and lack of achievement there. It was pointed out to me that Spain, for example, has an estimated IQ of 99, not materially different from Sweden's 101, and that could not possibly explain Uruguay's relative poverty.

Possibly not. However, Lynn and Vanhanen's article Intelligence and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations gives the IQ of both Argentina and Uruguay as 96, not exactly low but compare to Germany at 102, and if La Griffe du Lion's smart fraction theory of IQ and the wealth of nations is correct, then the smart fraction in Germany will be considerably greater than that of Uruguay - Germany's smart fraction, the fraction of the population above 108 in IQ, will be nearly 35%, versus around 21% for Uruguay. From this it would be hard not to conclude that differences in the average IQ of the two countries are significant, and relevant to the respective economies.

Interestingly, Lynn and Vanhanen specifically address the issue of Uruguay in their paper, since according to their work, the country is an outlier that should have a much higher real per capita GDP. (Their explanation is unsatisfactory, saying mainly that Uruguay has a lot of catching up to do - yes, but why does it lag?) The level of trust (see below) may be relevant, but in my view, the contingency of history may explain much. Just as stock market data are contingent, i.e. dependent on historical circumstances and which could have been otherwise, so too is data like this. South America has had a fairly unhappy history, with dictatorships and many seemingly senseless wars, and these will obviously affect economic development.

Culture is another issue, less easily quantifiable, but levels of social trust strongly correlate with GDP.

The cross-country heterogeneity in the level of national trust is striking. The most trustful countries are the Scandinavian ones, where more than two-third of the inhabitants trust each other. The Anglo-Saxon countries come just next. In contrast, Mediterranean countries, such as Greece, Portugal or France, lag behind, where generally 20% of people are trusting. At the bottom stand developing countries, with no more than 10% of trusting people in African countries or Arabic countries. Knack and Keefer then showed a strong cross-country correlation pattern between country levels of trust and country levels of income per capita.

So, immigrants to Argentina and Uruguay came largely from countries with a low level of social trust. To the extent that these attitudes will be passed down through generations, that will affect the level of wealth.

Borges vs. Che

One morning in October, 1967, [Jorge Luis] Borges is in front of his class in English literature.

A student enters and interrupts him to announce the death of Che Guevara, along with the immediate suspension of classes in order to pay tribute to him.

Borges answers that the tribute surely can wait.

A tense atmosphere. The student insists: "It must be now and you will attend."

Borges does not give in and shouts: "I'm not going anywhere! And if you are so tough, come and pull me from my desk."

The student threatens to turn out the lights.

"I've taken the precaution of being blind, as I was expecting this," replied Borges.

[Source. My translation. Borges was blind and 68 years old at the time.]

How to make a martini, Old School

My brother Tim has made an important contribution to the advancement of the arts and sciences with How to make a martini, Old School.

The first step in making a good martini is to throw away your vodka. Sorry, but there it is. No self-respecting martini drinker would be caught alive with a so-called “vodka martini” in his hand, a misnomer if there ever was one, since there is no such thing. Martinis are made with gin. Deal with it.

Making a martini is really rather simple (unless, perhaps, you’ve had a couple), but it’s also pretty easy to mess up. But to my mind, when properly made, there’s no more satisfying after-work, pre-dinner drink to be had — clean, medicinal and, best of all, powerful — so follow my instructions closely.

First (OK, second, since you’ve already thrown away the vodka), slap a Dean Martin CD on the stereo. Listen for a while, then turn it off, so you can concentrate. I’ll trust that you have martini glasses and a metal cocktail shaker. If not, stop reading and go to the store now (try Crate and Barrel).

Back? All right, now you need a good gin. Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire are reliably good — but don’t buy any of their flavored varieties. Ever. The best gin I’ve ever had is Hendrick’s, a small batch Scottish gin, widely available these days, pricey but worth every shot. If that’s over your monthly budget, Trader Joe’s offers an exceptional gin under its own label for less than $10. It’s called Rear Admiral Joseph’s.

The vermouth doesn’t matter a lot; you’re not going to use that much of it anyway. Martini and Rossi is fine. But it must be dry vermouth or just forget the whole blasted thing.

Really, people.

Read more. Then go have a martini.

Medical Hypotheses Affair in BMJ

BMJ (British Medical Journal) weighs in on the Medical Hypotheses affair with an article by Geoff Watts, amusingly entitled Emasculating Hypothetical Oddities? (Only an extract is available for free, but my secret connections have provided me with the full text.)

With postal deliveries comprising mainly junk mail, the monthly arrival of the journal Medical Hypotheses is a treat. But for how long? If its publishers have their way, what makes it so distinctive may in due course wither. Elsevier is demanding that the editorial decisions currently made by one man, Dr Bruce Charlton, should be overseen (and often, no doubt, over-ridden) by a group of peer reviewers. Subject to the constraints of an unfamiliar orthodoxy, the bright and sometimes highly coloured plumage of Medical Hypotheses would surely fade to grey.

Peer review would utterly change Medical Hypotheses into your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, dull (for the most part), science/medical journal. The journal's guide for authors states:

The purpose of Medical Hypotheses is to publish interesting theoretical papers. The journal will consider radical, speculative and non-mainstream scientific ideas provided they are coherently expressed.

Now, I ask you, does it look like a potential conflict of interest exists between peer review and the mainstream scientific establishment? Of course there is: those whose theories have become more or less well-established and the targets of lucrative grant money would often prefer that "radical, speculative, and non-mainstream scientific ideas" not see the light of day. Peer review provides the perfect cover for rejecting the idea of pesky innovators. Max Planck allegedly said that scientific theories advance one funeral at a time, so I call Planck as a witness here. How much better it would be if the world didn't need to wait for the funerals, but instead had a source of radical, intelligently-expressed ideas; we have that now, but a number of people want to see an end to it, and return to the funeral system.

The article fills us in on some of the vicissitudes of Bruce Charlton's career, as well as his view of the journal, some of which were news to me:

By his own admission, Charlton’s somewhat erratic career—a stint in neuroendocrinology followed by an MA in literature and philosophy and then by successive attachment to university departments of physiology, anatomy, epidemiology, and finally psychology—is evidence of rapidly changing interests. "But this was my qualification for Medical Hypotheses because it’s a journal that covers the whole of medicine." I asked how he would respond to the label "libertarian radical" as a shorthand means of describing the outlook that emerges from his editorials. He says this would have been right five years ago, and is still in his temperament. But he’s since moved, surprisingly perhaps, towards religion. Perhaps one shouldn’t make too much of it, but there is a whiff of the Old Testament about his views on contemporary science. He talks of corruption and dishonesty, of hype, and spin, of "impression management," of the loss of individual integrity. He can muster little enthusiasm for the managerial arrangements that increasingly govern science. "I’m quite creative but not very good at working on other people’s projects. I have an abrasive side to my personality. I’m not a team player."

Part of the fascination of Medical Hypotheses stems from the individuality of some of its editor’s decisions. "If I’ve been stimulated into thinking about something in a way I consider constructive," he says, "even if the paper itself is almost certainly not correct, I think it can be a valuable contribution to the scientific literature." That may be how some of the more exceptional papers find their way into the journal. In accounting for some of these off-the-wall contributions to Medical Hypotheses (a public health danger posed by showers, for example, or the effect of jet lag on mental illness, or the use of cashew nuts to cure tooth abscesses) he quotes Marc Abrahams, the man behind the annual Ignoble awards. "First they make you laugh, then they make you think." An academic publishing world in which all editors worked by these principles would be impossibly chaotic; one in which none is permitted to act in this manner would surely be the poorer.

Where else can you read Low level nicotine: A novel approach to reduce osteoporosis incidence, or Borderline personality disorder: A review and reformulation from evolutionary theory?

Medical Hypotheses takes a deliberately different approach to review: the editor sees his role as a 'chooser', not a 'changer', choosing to publish what are judged to be the best papers from those submitted. The Editor sometimes uses external referees to inform his opinion on a paper, but their role is as an information source and the Editor's choice is final. The papers chosen may contain radical ideas, but may be judged acceptable so long as they are coherent and clearly expressed. The authors' responsibility for the integrity, precision and accuracy of their work is paramount.

Fervor de Buenos Aires

I just returned from a trip to Argentina and Uruguay. Right now, I've been on the road for over 24 hours with an attendant lack of sleep, but here goes anyway.

................................................................................

The best reason to take a trip to Buenos Aires - if you're a man, that is - is for the women, who are simply astounding. In general, the women of Bs As (as the Argentinians abbreviate it) are far more attractive both in terms of quality and quantity than American women - but maybe that isn't saying much. (Apologies to my female readers; this is of course not directed at you.) Everywhere you look, slender, long-haired, and generally young women hove into view.

Since anecdotes don't count, I gave some thought as to the how and why. First of all, Bs As women are, in general, slender. Given that most of the men over the age of 25 or so have at least the beginnings of a gut, it seems clear that the women work at keeping their figures. (Whereas many American women couldn't keep their hands off the donuts and pizza if their lives depended on it.) I saw a few women who were thin to the point of anorexia, which means - I surmise - that many are trying, but few succeed. (Not to be taken as an endorsement of anorexia.) I suspect that, for many women, at least two meals a day consist of a coffee and a cigarette. Instant appetite suppression. Add to that lots of walking, since few people own cars, and you've got some slender women.

It's summer there now, and exceedingly hot and humid, with summer dresses and skirts and halter tops the female uniform, so the local women are flaunting great amounts of flesh, and happily too. (A friend asked me whether I went to Argentina to check out acreage, and after I'd been there I had to reply, "No, cleavage.") Which brings me to another point, the vague concept that goes by the name of "femininity". Long hair and clothes appropriate only for women means that they're streets ahead of the jeans-and-t-shirt clad American specimen.

Unfortunately, the twin evils of American slutdom, the tattoo and the piercing, are rather prominent down there. Can't have everything.

.................................................................................

Hipsters: plenty of them in Bs As. What is it with people who allegedly turn their backs on the mores and manners of society, but are so concerned that everyone must notice? The strange hairstyles, usually including some form of dreadlocks, tattoos and piercings, addiction to strange music - well, it all worked on me, as I was disgusted. And this new male hairstyle, tying up the hair in a knot at the top back of the head... who do they think they are, Toshiro Mifune?

...............................................................................

Scene in a grocery store: Chinese owners, including youngish girls, speaking Chinese and looking like they hold everyone around in contempt.

.................................................................................

The 100 peso note is the largest in general circulation, worth about $25. Try to use one in a transaction, and they look at you like you've just made a huge imposition. I actually had a cashier yell at me quite rudely once for doing this.

..................................................................................

Scene in a cafe, Saturday morning, 7 A.M.: two obviously gay men sitting drinking beer, still partying from the previous night. They kiss, and the two middle-aged women who run the place run over and yell at them that they "can't do that here", collect the bill, and make them leave.

................................................................................

Fervor de Buenos Aires.


Update: This post isn't meant as a travelogue, and I'll shut up about it shortly, but I want to add another reason to visit Buenos Aires: the food. For around 8 bucks American, you can get, depending on the cut, up to a pound (sic) of steak, a huge salad, and a half liter of wine, i.e. enough food and drink to make you stagger, literally. The problem with Argentine food is that in three days, you're hungry again. Also, supermarkets sell Argentine wine in a box, perfectly drinkable, a liter for $1.25. The money saved can be spent on rehab when you return home.