Advances in hieroglyphic decipherment have confirmed that the Ancient Maya had a rather crude and cruel sense of humor.


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Recent Ruling Shows True Tragedy of Katrina was Federal Government's Creation of the Disaster Itself. HuffingtonPost article by Sandy Rosenthal. You might have heard the story before, but might have missed some of the juicy details here.

Thailand is 'in network'? Employers and insurers embrace medical tourism. DailyFinance article on more U.S. ( Read more... )

tv show "Cracking the Maya Code" schedualed to air on the PBS network tonight as part of the "NOVA" series. (Here in New Orleans, 7pm Central Time, rebroadcast at 1am)

News story via la_azteca:

Posh hotel on the "Rivera Maya" tries to eject Nobel laureate for being Maya.
Rigoberta Menchú in Cancun

I recall some 30 years ago the first Maya governor of Yucatan, Francisco Luna Kan, was ejected from the train to Mexico City-- reportedly they couldn't believe an indio could be anyone important. Would have been nice to see ( Read more... )

Hyped publicity gimmick:

Telegraph: New Seven Wonders picked after global voteBah. Chichen Itza got in. Dang; Ms Hollie and I have been discussing a trip to Yucatan sometime in the next year or so; now Chichen is going to be even more mobbed with tourists. Chichen has serious niftyness, but as Maya ruins go, Tikal is much larger and Uxmal, ( Read more... )

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I was able to attend a couple of events of the Tulane Maya Symposium. The highlight was the keynote address by Dr. Karl Taube, discussing interesting less well known aspects of iconography and tying them in to the same motifs in other parts of Mesoamerica and up to the US Southwest-- including nifty illustrations of ancestors arriving from creation ( Read more... )

Carnival season is gearing up here in New Orleans. Saturday was a nice party with a small street parade around upper Carrollton-- my first playing a parade this season.

Meanwhile, later this week is the 4th Tulane Maya Symposium, 1-4 February, New Orleans, 4 Days of Pre-Columbian Maya scholarly goodness, with the theme "Murals and Painted Texts ( Read more... )

I never got around to posting about Apocalypto, which mshollie and I saw over a week ago ( Read more... )

I saw the film "Deja Vu". It got two thumbs down on "Ebert & Roper" so I wasn't expecting much, but it wasn't too bad as an action-adventure flick with an implausible time travel plot device ( Read more... )