I've always thought of George Will's columns as a standing reminder of the dangers of overtightening a bow tie, and been content to leave it at that. But occasionally he manages to produce an essay that rises above this very high threshold of provocation, and his Washington Post column last week on bilingual ballots w…

Just when you thought nationalism had nothing good to offer the world, along comes a wonder like El Chaltén. A town with no conceivable economic or geographic purpose other than sticking it to the nearby Chileans, El Chaltén (Spanish for The Chaltén) is an accidental hikers' pa…

I'll write more about it after I've gotten over the shock a little bit. Meanwhile, if any readers of this site live around here, I'd love to hear from you.

You can't fight globalization!…

A better name for this place would be Holy Sweet Mother of Jesus National Park, since this is what you will say the first time you set eyes on it. The Torres del Paine is an absolutely ridiculous collection of mountains and lakes squeezed between Argentina and the Pacific ocean in Chilean Patagonia, not far from where Chile turns east at the bottom of the continent. The Torre…