Horizontalists stand up Tabaré Vázquez

Tabaré Vázquez, Uruguay’s new president is apparently a verticalist. I haven’t the faintest idea what that means, particularly as his predecessor was not a notable drunk, but it sounds like a good thing for a politician to be. Catalonia’s famously horizontalist leader, Pasqual Maragall, has announced that he won’t, after all, be attending the inauguration,…

Pork

Boaring equipment for a less obviously grubby political class.

Pretty pretty pretty!

Bruce Bawer’s links page, that is. Mr B is apparently part of the metropolitical tendency. I might be, too, if I thought any of my friends would know what it meant, and if I weren’t so ridiculously fond of being Attila the Idiot. (Thanks, MM.)

Our next interior minister

I’m currently putting together an e-commerce site for some people here who want to sell their products abroad. Since I haven’t yet found my next fixed address, this means writing PHP in internet/phone shops. Yesterday I was in a Punjabi one in the Raval when there was a sudden bout of frenzied rustling from behind…

The hole that rockets the cradle

Karim has published an interesting photo illustrating the latest advances in Tunisian motoring technology. Cars are to be fired vertically from secret underground silos in midtown locations; airborne, their trajectories will be managed using GPS. Plans for 2006 include roll-up-and-down of the product to the baby’s pram and market trader segments.

Banning languages

From José, an interesting variation on the evil-dictator-tries-to-eradicate-language urban myth: Franco banned Catalan but not Valencian.