The American Cardboard Dream And The Mexican Realism

Baja Californians (Mexicans) reject American 'stick-built' housing construction, American heavy-watering landscaping and American no-cash-down mortgages. They build very slowly, in concrete blocks, ceramic roof tiles, paying cash as they go, planting cacti and other fat desertic plants. They basically enjoy their scenery the way nature made it: semi-desertic.
To them the American 'Dream Home' is 'matchsticks and cardboard', cannot stop a bullet (!) or even a toddler on his trike. On the outside it is packed with plants species that drink up like drunken sailors. And this is depleting the water tables and slowly drying up Mexican farms and cities too close to California. So that when the wildfires licked Mexico's border yesterday, pushed by violent Santa Ana winds, they had nowhere to go. The land in Mexico is rocky and mostly barren, the plants are all native, having thick water-gorged leaves, the houses all have mostly non-combustible shells. Here in Baja the 'bomberos' are truly a lazy bunch as there are few house fires.
An analyst on TV suggested that some of the arsonists in California are probably angry owners about to lose their house to foreclosure. This breed is unlikely to exist in a country where houses are built with cash.
Thanks, Mexico, for your school of realism, but don't you find it ironic that your Mexican sons in California have become the dominant landscapers and framers, stick-builders and sheetrock applicators? Thanks also for providing the Archimede Institute a few good arguments for the peculiar housing system it is about to export and build locally: low-cost prefabricated fire-proof ,earthquake and hurricane proof housing.

We Are Safe and Sound And The Electricity Is Back

The electricity left us Sunday night after the wind toppled a few hydro posts. Camille could not go back to Carlsbad with her two Yorkies so she stayed with us through a noisy night of wind tortured palms. The above photo I took Monday afternoon from our beach shows:

1. In the background the ominous plume of smoke blowing far into the Pacific, the fires east of Camille's house in Carlsbad 80 miles to the north.
   
2. The wind has been blowing east to west, right to left, kicking the hair of the wave up and away from its forehead as is the custom at this time of the year. Check out our Santa Ana blog of last month.
3. Along with your prayers, the Sagrado Corazon (Sacred Heart statue in the middle, standing 70 ft tall while facing the ocean) successfully blocked all flames from reaching us. (Another exciting explanation is coming in a future blog on our Archimede Institute Web Site!)
   

Since it is very hard to photograph the wind, this photo and the video will give you an idea, these 6 foot waves being blown back to the sea by air so hot and dry the waves seem scared. All kidding aside, we are safe and sound and fully electrified as of Monday evening after suffering our margaritas with less ice. We did crossword puzzles and appreciated the fact that here in Mexico the houses are of concrete and surrounded by barren rocky lots that support neither fire nor high watering costs. Here is an improvized video I just put together from clips filmed during the power outage. I call it EARTH, WIND, WATER and FIRE.
And thanks for your support of us and this blog during what we felt was a loooong absence!

We Are Still Not On Fire For Now, But Hang On For two More Days.

This map shows where the fire is heading, squarely onto BlaBlaBlawBlawg corporate headquarters. It has already crossed into Mexico and the winds with near-hurricane gusts are of the Santa Ana variety, blowing non-stop until possibly Wednesday. For those of you who would like nothing better than to see our blog reduced to cinder, let me remind you that the actual blog archives physically reside in Mountain View CA, well north of here, at Google's western headquarters, in an underground concrete bunker equipped with 60,000 first-class Cisco servers. If our terminal in Mexico burns down, we will evacuate and courageously resume our blog in some seedy Internet café, trying to conceal our ashen smell with a can of Glade and sipping cold coffee in soot covered paper cups handed out by the Red Cross, called more poetically 'La Cruz Roja' in Mexico. There!

Now for the real purpose of this blog message: In the Bill Gates animation below, if you see numerals coming out of BG's mouth and drifting to the right, you are a progressive forward-looking right brain dominant person like most of us and our readers. If you see the numbers ENTERING Gates mouth by drifting left, you are a regressive anal-retentive left-brainer, and worse, probably a Republican. Chances are you are the one wishing for a fiery end to our blog. This sneaky test of your dominant brain was planted there to unmask bad people like you!