Sunday readings

31 May 2009

Clearing out my bookmarks on a Sunday afternoon:

Leftist governments are anti-business?

Otto the Inca’s latest “chart-o-the-day” should give pause to those who think conservative governments are, by definition, more investor friendly than the lefty ones. At least it appears investors don’t follow the same line of reasoning:

LWpopulists

Here we go again

Abortion is likely to be before the Supreme Court again. Here in Mexico that is.

Diego Cevelos (IPS):

In the last 13 months, 12 of Mexico’s 32 states have approved amendments to their state constitutions defining a fertilised human egg as a person with a right to legal protection, and seven other state parliaments are taking steps in the same direction.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) say it is a massive conservative reaction to a law decriminalising abortion up to 12 weeks’ gestation that went into force in the Mexican capital in April 2007.

The law was upheld in August 2008 by the Supreme Court, which ruled that it did not violate the Mexican constitution.

Behind the wave of reforms of state constitutions, according to critics, is a pact between the hierarchy of the Mexican Catholic Church and the leadership of the most traditional political parties to curb social movements advocating the legalisation of abortion.

Tag an alien, win five bucks:

This is just kind of neat. From the Mansfield (Ohio) News-Journal:

Allie Crall was happy and speechless when she learned a butterfly she tagged in September migrated nearly 2,000 miles to central Mexico.

“The most fascinating thing is how (monarch butterflies) get from here to Mexico and their travel distance,” said Allie, a Wynford Elementary School sixth-grader.

It was the butterfly enthusiast’s first time tagging a monarch for the Crawford Park District’s annual tagging event at Unger Park on Sept. 13. The tag was found in El Rosario this spring. Monarch Watch uses the tags to help with migration research. Monarch Watch pays $5 for each tag recovered.

“The glory that was Greece…”:

I wrote in my own book about the origin of the word “gringo” (from “greigo” — Greek). Its been a slow week, and I happened to look at where people were coming to my site from. I didn’t recognize “Saratakos.wordpress.com” but then… without a translator, I wouldn’t have been able to read it anyway. It’s a scholarly study of the origins of the word, Γκρίνγκο… which is, of course, Gringo in the original Gringo-lingo.