Meet Naia the 12,000-Year-Old Teenager

She is the oldest complete skeleton ever found in the New World.

Is the Chinese Communist Party Doomed?

Professor Minxin Pei has a question: Is the CCP doomed?  It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.  Still, here's a thought - change or die:

The answer to the question of how a one-party regime can manage its own political transformation to save itself is more interesting and complicated. 

Essentially, there are two paths for such regimes: the Soviet route to certain self-destruction, and the Taiwan-Mexican route to self-renewal and transformation.

Nerd News: A Professor Ponders Cinco de Mayo

Not a Mexican import after all?

Awesome: Rodrigo y Gabriela

Stop everything and treat yourself to a magnificent bit of guitar by the Mexican duo of Rodrigo y Gabriela!

Checking IDs for Illegal Immigrants: Is This Arizona Or Mexico?

I haven't posted on the flap over the new Arizona law because everybody else has been frothing about it. But this is worth a look. The article appears in USA Today here.

Hypocritical much, Felipe Calderón? I'm just SAYIN'. You come to the US and criticize the Arizona law, and what are you doing at home?

MM in the Kitchen + Movie Fun: Puerco Pibil from "Once Upon a Time in Mexico"

I'm in a fun mood. The Sibling and I, with Il Barista, La Parisienne, and the Kamikaze Editor, had a food-filled reunion this past weekend, and on the agenda was an absolutely sinfully gluttonous visit to a fabulous Mexican restaurant.

I had the puerco pibil (also called cochinita pibil), and that was in honor of one of the Cine-Sib's favorite movies, Robert Rodriguez's quirky "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" (2003) -- which we watched again on DVD recently. (Great cast of Antonio Banderas, Johnny Depp, and Salma Hayek.)

Here's a recipe for puerco pibil. I intend to try making it sometime in the next few days. (I need to add something to my South-of-the-Border repertoire besides the now-famous salsa verde carnitas, after all. Oh, and since I am evil, I can't help bragging: Il Barista ordered carnitas at lunch, and he said he liked mine better. AWESOME!)

But here on the blog, it's really much more fun (a) to see the dish's appearance in the film and then (b) see writer/director/producer/overall cinema Renaissance man Robert Rodriguez's personal take on the dish (available on the DVD of the movie).

Bring on the puerco pibil! For your culinary and cinematic pleasure, I give you:

The clip from the film:




The Rodriguez recipe (caveat: he says a rather naughty word in the first few moments of the clip, but it's clean for the rest of it):



OK, I'm going to make this dish and hope nobody shoots me afterwards.

Swine Flu Mania from Mexico

EVERYBODY PANIC! Or not.

Good grief, I look away for five minutes and a public health emergency breaks out over swine flu.

By the way, CDC, way to go on calming people down. Why not just issue a public announcement that has this helpful medical directive:

When in panic or in doubt, run in circles, scream, and shout?