Congratulations to me!

I just finished the final chapter of the novel I've been working on, seems like forever! At about ten this morning (Carboneras time), I put in the last period. Whoopie! Now to see about publishing it.

Ox-bow revisited: Acquittal in Fatal Beating - NYTimes.com

And we thought we were making progress in race relations in the U.S. This just shows we have a long, long way to go. National Briefing - Mid-Atlantic - Pennsylvania - Acquittal in Fatal Beating - NYTimes.com

In case you don't remember or never read this famous 1940 novel (and 1943 movie with Henry Fonda), you can check out my review of The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark. Another literary antecedent is O. Henry's invention, the Cisco Kid (NOT the one who appeared in the TV series), a maniac who murders Mexicans for the fun of it. Here's where you can download the pdf of "The Caballero's Way" by O. Henry, as frightening and beautiful as any by Cormac McCarthy.

Cities, architecture and all that

I just discovered this terrific blog: Geoff Manaugh's BLDBLOG: Architectural Conjecture, Urban Speculation, Landscape Futures. Just what I needed as Susana and I continue working on Latin American urbanism in the 21st century (the last section of the book for W. W. Norton).

Organized atheists

In case you missed this: readers of this blog will probably be interested in this NY Times article by Laurie Goodstein, More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops. I've already said what I had to say about this topic. Click on label "religion" below for my previous comments on religion and atheism is Spain and elsewhere, including a review (2006/07/15) of William James great work, The Varieties of Religious Experience.