Welcome to the new el-oso.net, now with more nonsense and less seriousness. Hallelujah. First, the world: in South Yorkshire a man blew up a highway speeding detector. Using thermite, a pyrotechnic substance often used in underwater welding, Mr. Moore succeeded in wrecking the camera, but its hard drive survived – along with videotape of his [...]

This is my girlfriend, Mari. She’s beautiful and she’s kind. I love her very much. As many of you have already realized, this post had very little to do with butterflies and everything to do with her. Our encounter was to be brief and fleeting if at all. True to form, I showed up in [...]

I remember asking myself once, “what have I got if everything else gets taken away?” If I lose all my money, every single one of my possessions. What if I were to lose everything I’ve ever written, every photograph I’ve ever taken, what would I be left with? “My body and my brain,” I remember [...]

“Estación Chacao” says the pre-recorded voice. The brakes screech to a halt, the doors sigh open, and I depart. Those former lovers with whom I had been lying in bed are again strangers. They will mug me in the street and they will help me when I ask for directions. They will give me the [...]

Question: Why is ancestral country and culture so important to some Americans and not others? And why do some ethnicities identify with the home country and culture of their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents more than others? It seems to me that “roots identity” is much more important to Irish, Italians, Mexicans, and Indians (and [...]

Freedom A couple days ago I wrote that “these days” we have too many choices and that, perhaps, those choices impede our happiness because each decision carries the heavy uncertainty of all the other options we ruled out. From the thoughtful and meaningful emails I received afterwards, it appears that the idea resonates with a [...]

En español más abajo. Those of you who keep up with Global Voices Online know that it’s been a year of elections in Latin America. And they’re far from over. Nicaragua, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela all have major elections in the next couple months (not to mention Panama’s canal referendum). Because I need to stay [...]

The following is my translation of Juan Freire’s post “Declaration of Independence of the Blogosphere: Promoting Hacker-Citizens” and is posted with his permission. The internet is an opportunity. Weblogs are, within the network, another opportunity to recuperate the power that is proportioned between the synergy of individual identity and the collaboration of many. But to [...]

Always one foot on the ground – Regina Spektor I’m 26-years-old. A quarter of a century. Half the age of many I consider my good friends. And already, during my short interval in this thing called life, I have experienced thrice what some never discover: love. The irrationality, the pain, the elation, the addiction, the [...]