the best aggregator online

Check out aldaily.com (Arts & Letters Daily Online). This is far and away the best aggregator of news & commentary from around the world. In fact, it's hard to believe that it has never gotten any hype.

we're back

I won't take back all my whinging about Delhi... But it did occur to me that the place takes the blame for all my personal travails while I'm here. Maybe it ain't so bad. Consider: Every time I land at the airport, I always feel a sense of satisfaction at the burnt earth smell you get through the cab window on the drive home. (That's after I finish fuming about the guy who wrestled with me over my bags in expectation of a mandatory tip). Was Hong Kong really so great, or just the city where I fell in love? Was New York boosted as the home of my discovery of--for want of a less pretentious phrase--an intellectual life? Was Boston merely the refuge and escape from terrible career ennui and the site of hope that even I, with my dull, problem-free middle class, white childhood, could be a writer? Maybe so, Delhi. Maybe so. Still, I'd like some good things to happen here soon.

free speech

I don't know why everybody got so exercised about India's recent blog-blocking fiasco. Personally, I've always wanted to be banned. Now my dream has come true. Too controversial! Scandalous! Shocking! Dangerous! Any suggestions on how to fit this into my curriculum vitae?

how do you like delhi?

I get this awkward question a lot. I sidestep. I evade. I volunteer unrelated information. I underplay. But there's no getting around the answer, which is not much. The main reason is that I run into too many bloated, obnoxious, aggressive louts--and not just on the road. The PM is right that Delhi's drivers are absurdly selfish and rude, but the behavior isn't limited to the road. A simple trip to the movies is ruined--not only by people who chatter through the whole thing, but by pushing and shoving in the queue, jumping the queue entirely, then fighting and justifying why YOU deserve to be first, etc. It's second nature, according to the Times of India. But I can't help wondering why. The Reader's Digest says Mumbai is the rudest city in the world, but nobody has ever been as rude to me there as in Delhi, where my neighbors treat me to a daily lesson.

I'm in the USA now, where people are racist, ignorant and every other thing, and I can't get over how polite everyone is, holding doors open, waiting to let me go first.... Is it overcrowding that makes people rude? Is it class? Is it the heat? I don't know.

Flame away.

manmohan knows

Attention drivers:
The horn is not a forcefield.
The Nathu Sweets entrance to the GKII M-block market is ONE WAY.
There is only ONE righthand turn lane.

Now, on to your reading:

Where are your manners, PM asks motorists

June 24, 2006 15:57 IST

Appalled by the chaos on Indian roads, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday said that wind swept roads and fancy cars alone did not reflect progress, it had to be accompanied by good road manners and discipline.

"Building modern roads and driving modern cars are not the end all and be all of progress. Good road manners and adherence to road discipline are equally important," he said at a national highway project inauguration function in Bangalore.

"I think we must ask ourselves, why can't we be more polite to each other, more caring of each other, more respectful of each other," Dr Singh asked.

The prime minister said people must learn road manners, how to give way to pedestrians, how to observe normal rules while overtaking, how to park and when not to blow a horn.

"These are simple rules, but their observance makes a lot of difference to our daily lives," he said, adding: "We Indians behave with great courtesy at home and with our family and friends. But sometimes, when we go out we leave these good manners at home. On the road, we lose control of our good senses. Why should this be so."

the big whine

Sometimes I wonder why Americans are so stumped why the rest of the world could do without them. Take the World Cup. Yesterday, the USA team was eliminated by a game Ghana side, the Cinderella of the tournament, and all the USA can talk about is the foul called in the box that resulted in the winning goal. Yes, kids, sometimes things won't go your way--even though the whole of FIFA has conspired over the past two decades to encourage American soccer.

Some points to consider:
(1) The foul, though minor, was similar to many that have been whistled in the tourney by somewhat overzealous refs. Players should be well aware of the trend, and play accordingly.
(2) Who cares? I'm psyched that Ghana is doing so well. I always root for Africa.
(3) Shouldn't the USA be questioning the error that put the ball in the box, where Ghana had better position on the ball than the US player, in the first place?
(4) A 1-1 tie wouldn't have been enough for the USA to advance anyway, because the team failed to win, or score a goal, in its other two games.

"To give a penalty in that situation is bizarre. It really deflated us."

"If that's a foul, there's a lot of penalties in the game."

"The referee should have the experience to know what's a foul and what's not."

etc.

Third worlders, take heart. The USA may continue to whine and make excuses, but not only have Americans failed to match their hype in World Cup soccer. Team USA also failed to win the international baseball classic, got blinked 0 wins and 4 losses in Olympic hockey, and even failed to win gold in Olympic basketball--notwithstanding the whinging that opened the amateur competition to NBA players a few years back after the US lost for the first time.

Maybe we don't "deserve" to win.

confession: not a good socialist

OK, I know that I tend to profess a certain fellow feeling for the common man in this blog. But I have to ask: Has anyone else recently vowed never to fly Air Deccan again, following a scrum at the ticket booth, the gate, and the door of the aircraft? The words "very expensive interstate bus" come to mind....

I imagine a TV-comedy sketch with guys walking down the aisles of the Deccan flight, tinkling soda bottles and reeling out "Kaaald drrrink," "Aaahmlit brayda, Aahmlit brayda..." Guys parachuting onto the wing with vada pao, etc.

sad, but not surprising - a prejudice for English

Posting from the good ole USA today.... Now, not only are schools refusing to admit poor students, they're finding reasons to refuse students with bad English. Reasonable enough, in one sense--private schools needn't be in the business of providing remedial English help. But this is another piece of evidence showing the tremendous obstacles that face the lower class before they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps--which is apparently what most would have them do.

97.6% marks is not enough for admission to Delhi school
PTI
Wednesday, June 21, 2006 18:24 IST

NEW DELHI: Sixteen-year-old Garima Godar achieved the rare feat of securing 97.6 per cent marks in the class X board exams, but she got a rude shock when a top Delhi school denied her admission apparently due to her poor spoken English.

Everything seemed to be going right for Garima, daughter of a police constable, until she appeared for the entrance test for admission in Delhi Public School (DPS), Dwarka.

To her dismay, despite her excellent academic record, she did not find her name in the merit list of the school.

"I just don't understand what went wrong. I was a bit nervous in the interview. But my performance was up to my expectation," she said.

When contacted about the incident, DPS Dwarka Principal Umat Aluma said that though Garima's academic achievement was good, she fell short of standards in the entrance test and interview for admission to the top public school.

"We take into account the marks of previous examination, performance in entrance test and interview. She had secured good marks no doubt. But her performance in the other two tests were not up to our expectations," she said.

However, Garima is not satisfied with the reasons offered by the school for not selecting her. "In my case, it seems it was my performance in the interview (including my spoken English) that was not up to the mark. If this is true, is it not the responsibility of the school to help me improve my English? What else is a school meant for?" she asked.

Taking note of an incident wherein a top public school in the capital denied admission to a girl who secured 97.6 per cent marks in class X exams, Delhi Government today launched an inquiry into the matter and decided to offer scholarship to her.

Besides asking his ministry officials for a report by tomorrow in the matter, Education Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely has asked another branch of Delhi Public School to admit her.



"We are inquiring into the matter. I have asked officials of the education department to get the details from both the school authorities and the girl by tomorrow," Lovely said.

reservations

My recent post on reservations received a number of comments from both sides of the debate, primarily showing how polarizing this issue has become.

I am reminded of the US, where education has long been known to be greatly biased against the poor and non-white. Ridiculous solutions and ridiculous proposals are constantly introduced--and rarely is anything implemented--though that is not to say either that India's new quotas are ridiculous or won't be enacted into law.

e.g. Private school "vouchers" - This plan admitted that the US public school system was a failure in poor urban communities and proposed to give parents "vouchers" tha twould help them pay to send their kids to private schools. Since the vouchers would have been valued at a few thousand dollars, and private schools cost around $20,000 a year in the US, and the concerned parents make around $15,000, this was an absurd plan. But the most absurd thing was that the media, and many Americans, treated it with the utmost seriousness. Not only would it not have helped the relevant communities, by abandoning government-sponsored schools and hiding behind fake privatization, it would have left the poor much worse off.

This was profoundly sad, considering that the US government could immediately redress many of the problems that plague education without spending an additional dime on funding. How? Public education in the US is funded almost exclusively by property taxes. The rich neighborhoods have the highest property values, pay the most tax, and have the best schools. Unlike India, the US is segregated economically, so the poor receive educations funded only by their paltry property taxes. A simple solution would be to put all the property tax into one big pot, and allocate it to the school districts based on population and/or need. As in India, however, the wealthy do not want to sacrifice any of their advantages to benefit the less fortunate.

india's maoists step up rebellion

By JASON OVERDORF
Thursday, June 8, 2006 Page A16
Special to The Globe and Mail

DORNAPAL, INDIA -- Madkam Devi, a pretty 19-year-old in a sari printed with pink flowers, shifted the thin-limbed infant on her hip and gazed into space as she described how she narrowly escaped being hacked to death by Maoist revolutionaries a month ago.

She and 51 other villagers of Manikonta, a village in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, had returned to their homes from a government relief camp on April 25 to collect cooking pots, plastic buckets and other household items they had left behind when they made their hurried departure for police protection from the guerrillas. Finding the village deserted, they quickly gathered their belongings and started back to the relief camp. They didn't get far before the Maoists ambushed them.

"Some people panicked and tried to run, but some of the Maoists were wearing uniforms and shouted to us that they were the police, and we shouldn't be afraid," Ms. Devi said.

The Maoists, including about 50 gunmen in uniforms and another 150 irregulars armed with axes and wooden staves, killed two villagers and captured the others, Ms. Devi said. Some were badly beaten, a taste of the treatment the prisoners would receive over the next four days. But the worst was to come. As an example of the fate that awaits villagers who participate in a government-aided people's movement against their rebellion, the Maoists executed 13 of the villagers.

The Maoists -- sometimes called Naxalites, in reference to an armed uprising in the village of Naxalbari in West Bengal, from which the movement began in 1967 -- have maintained a low-level insurrection in India for nearly 40 years, organizing uprisings among landless workers, hijacking trains, mounting frequent attacks on police posts and industrial facilities, and murdering their political opponents. Their rebellion is gaining ground, expanding across 14 eastern and central Indian states, running all the way from the Nepal border in the north to the southern coast, and becoming a major Communist force intent on winning control of the Indian state through military means.

And the war is growing ever more deadly. More than 700 people, 500 of them civilians, were killed in raids, land-mine blasts and other incidents in 2005. Provisional data from the past four months suggest the death toll will be higher in 2006.

The rapid increase in violence has prompted some experts, such as Ajai Sahni of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management, to warn that the Naxalite insurrection has surpassed separatist terrorists in Kashmir as the largest internal threat to India's ability to govern its vast territory.

India's national and state governments have long refused to acknowledge the seriousness of the problem, because of what it says about their administrations, Mr. Sahni said. "Unlike the Kashmir issue, which we could blame on somebody else, this was entirely indigenous. It pointed to state failures."

The Maoist movement is rooted in the deep impoverishment of rural India. Although India's economy is growing at close to 8 per cent a year, nearly three-quarters of its people live in rural areas that continue to lag far behind the cities, especially in the problem states of north and central India. Just 20 per cent of rural people have access to basic amenities such as running water, compared with 70 per cent in urban areas. And poor nutrition and lack of health care mean that the infant-mortality rate for rural India is nearly 40 per cent higher than in urban areas.

In Chhattisgarh, the lack of local economic progress is obvious despite a huge influx of investment to develop the state's mineral resources. "Mining has been going on for three decades, but the only industry to flourish in the area is prostitution," a spokesman for the Maoists recently told local reporters.

In recent months, the rebel attacks have become more daring. In November, hundreds of Maoists stormed a jail in Bihar, freeing a captured Maoist leader and about half of the facility's 650 inmates. In February, the rebels raided a state-owned mining company in Chhattisgarh, stealing tonnes of explosives for the manufacture of crude bombs.

The violent attack on the villagers of Manikonta signalled a shift in strategy by the guerrillas, who previously had focused attacks on organs of the state. By brutalizing ordinary villagers, the Maoists are taking a dangerous gamble. Historically, they have embraced local causes and won respect, and sometimes support, through hard work and a dogged battle against social injustice and government corruption.

In Chhattisgarh, local observers say that years ago the Maoists forced contractors to pay tribal labourers the wages mandated by the state, rather than skimming from the payroll. They thrashed corrupt officials of the forest department, and forced truant government teachers to show up for their classes in the deep jungle, instead of merely drawing their salaries.

However, Chhattisgarh officials now say that the Maoists more often work to stop projects that would benefit the local poor.

"Contrary to what they [the Maoists] say, Naxalism is not growing, because there is no development in the state," said Chhattisgarh Home Secretary B. K. S. Ray. "Basically, this is a terrorist movement to gain political power through violence. Initially, they may have wanted land reform and equality, but now it's a gang of extortionists, gangsters and killers."

The tribal people of rural India need roads, schools and jobs. But the Maoists are committed to a full-scale Communist upheaval and radical redistribution of wealth, and believe that these incremental gains will never erase the gross inequalities of what they term India's "bourgeois comprador democracy."

"There is no dilution in the ideology," said Mr. Sahni of the Institute of Conflict Management. "There is absolutely no set of economic initiatives on the horizon that can give prosperity, dignity et cetera to 810 million people in rural India."

reservations

After weeks of insipid and simplistic commentary, the reservation debate is finally starting to kick up some interesting points, with the Hindustan Times looking into the relationship of college admittance and the attendance of elite public schools on Sunday and today running a comparison of alternative models for allocating university seats developed by Yogendra Yadav, Satish Deshpande and Purushottam Agrawal. (Link not available yet). Similarly, the HT has called for a new study of caste in India--the last was in 1931--to determine exactly what conditions prevail.

These are productive ways of looking at the problem, and a welcome substitute for the anti-reservations harangues that have taken up the edit pages of all the major dailies for weeks.

Another element that bears study: the South. In Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, reservations are already in place for more than 50% of the university seats and government jobs, a fact that infuriates many high-caste southerners. On the other hand, some say that the expansion of reservations in the South has successfully ensured the empowerment and upliftment of traditionally oppressed classes. What's the reality? Why does nobody in the North care to look into it? I guess the South really is another country, albeit a far more successful one.

visit absurdistan

Gary Shteyngart's first novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, blew me--and everybody else--away. His second effort is already winning high praise in the NYT. Somebody check it out and tell me whether it's more than a reprise of the first one.

she's just a kid

Schadenfreude has always been one of my favorite emotions--especially where writers under thirty are concerned. But it seems like the glee over Kaavya Viswanathan's plagiarism gaffe is getting out of hand. Yes, she goes to Harvard. Yes, she got a $500,000 advance for a book that we now know was plagiarized (an advance one presumes she'll have to return). But now that she's been Lewinskyed, condemned to fame-for-the-wrong-reasons ignominy, isn't it time for us to recall that she's only 19? Hell, when she committed her "crimes" she was probably a minor. Anybody who never plagiarized anything before they turned 20 raise your hand.

That's what I thought.

reservations

Those of you who have dutifully trolled through all my articles know that I have written several times about caste, discrimination and India's reservation policy. The truth is that my views on the subject are still not fully formed, and each time I revisit the topic I learn new things that color my perception of the problem. One thing never changes: my sympathy lies with the Dalits and to a lesser extent with the other lower castes that have been dehumanized by thousands of years of prejudice. I am also convinced that reservations have been the single most important tool in uplifting those few Dalits who have managed to break out of a cycle of poverty, poor self-image, exploitation, and more poverty. (Any Dalit who's made it will tell you).

Those issues aside, I have begun to believe that the thinking about India's reservation policy has become narrow-minded and cynical--motivated purely by vote-bank politics--at the very time that it needs to be most forward-thinking and innovative. For example, the government has failed to IMPLEMENT reservations at many levels, claiming that there are no qualified personnel to fill the reserved posts, but rather than seek a solution to this dilemma, they continually battle about whether the number of (unfilled, I presume) reserved places should be increased. So, too, in education. Only here the short-sightedness of the bureaucrats and elected officials is more frustrating, because they are squandering the only tool that we have to eliminate the need for reservations, instead creating a system that will only entrench and perpetuate the inequality of India's castes, and therefore enshrine reservations as an endless political necessity.

What do I mean?

India's reservation policy--and indeed the lion's share of its education spending--is focused nearly exclusively on higher education. As I understand it, the only thing that the government has done is require state-run (and now other) universities to admit x percentage of students from Scheduled Castes and Tribes and (later) Other Backward Castes. As far as I know (I confess ignorance here) there has been no effort to ensure that they succeed once they enroll. More importantly, there has been no effort to improve the quality of primary and secondary education that the lower castes receive, or to provide some kind of supplementary preparatory education, so that they would (at least over time) be able to meet university entrance requirements without the aid of quotas.

So what should be done?

There are several possible courses of action, but all of them would focus on a single goal: restructuring India's education funding system to focus on primary and secondary education instead of (or in addition to) the university. I won't go into it here, but my assumption is that the high value of university education in the job market would allow universities to charge much higher fees than they do at present, that a healthy banking environment would make low-interest college loans available, etc. Let's leave all that aside, however, and talk about what the problems are with the primary education system, a quick fix and some longer term ideas.

First, the government must acknowledge that India's state-run primary and secondary education system is a failure. The middle class, and even the lower middle class, has already acknowledged that fact and voted with their kids' feet--nobody who can afford not to attends government schools anymore. Next, the government should acknowledge that however good it is at making laws and writing rules, it is miserably bad at implementing them, so initiating policies intended to improve the quality of government schools, throwing money at the problem, etc, are likely to prove futile at worst, and proceed at a snail's pace at best. Finally, the government should review what IS successful about India's education system and reconsider how it can take advantage.

This is what I believe they would find, if they went about this exercise sincerely. The most effective and successful education initiative that the government has ever pursued was the establishment of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). Meanwhile, the most effective and successful initiatives in primary and secondary education have all come from the private sector; India's private schools are excellent, as good as or better than those found in the US or Europe, perhaps. To me, this suggests two courses of action. First--and this could be done most quickly--the government could explore ways to support and expand the nation's private schools, while simultaneously making it profitable and desirable for them to admit students from the depressed classes. Second, over the long term, the government could establish "IIT-style" primary and secondary schools, beginning in key cities, where top-class educations would be provided for a nominal fee to students who pass a competitive exam. This would take some doing, but maybe the test could be of an IQ test sort, so that kids from the depressed classes would not be at a disadvantage due to a lack of books in the home etc. There could be extensive efforts to ensure that EVERY kid in poverty-stricken slums takes the exam, awareness campaigns, etc, etc.

But why reinvent the wheel? There are already excellent schools in nearly every Indian city, though not enough of them. The main problem for the depressed classes is that they cannot gain admittance to these schools (because they aren't adequately prepared) and cannot afford to pay the high fees. The government has tried, and failed to implement, laws to force these private schools to admit children from the depressed classes, because everybody in India knows that the government is impotent when it comes to enforcement. It simply doesn't wield the stick. Or only after a 25 year court case. OK, then, point taken. But why not hold out a carrot instead? How about a comprehensive, national merit scholarship program that would allow qualified students from the depressed classes (whether Dalit, OBC, tribal, poverty-stricken, Muslim could be decided later by the babus) to attend the best private schools? Hell, you could even give the schools HIGHER FEES to take these kids, to compensate them for the work they'd have to do to incorporate them into the mainstream, eradicate caste prejudices, soothe parents' ruffled feathers, etc. Today, as far as I know, there are scholarship programs to send these students to university, but they largely go unused because the kids who would take them never got the fundamental schooling they'd need to take advantage of a university education. Kill all these programs immediately, and put the money into a similar, but better organized and promoted, program for the school level. No more money would be needed, but the effects would be immediate. What's more? Why not give the project to a McKinsey & Co (founder of the Indian School of Business) or like organization to administer? Get the babus out of it, lest they screw up the private schools as badly as they have the government-run outfits....

yucks

This gets my vote as the funniest newspaper lede in awhile.

Snoop Doggy Dogg held by police after Heathrow brawl

· Five of entourage also in custody in VIP lounge row
· Gangsta rapper unable to fly to Johannesburg for gig

Jacqueline Maley
Friday April 28, 2006
The Guardian

The rap group NWA once declared that "life ain't nothing but bitches and money". But for fellow gangsta rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, entry to the first class airport lounge is quite important too.

v for vanity

Alan Moore has severed ties with everybody who has tried to make money out of his various comic books, as those in the loop must know from way back. Somehow his childish petulance strikes a chord. Read on in the New York Times Magazine.

dull dystopia

Dystopia can be so boring.

This weekend, intrigued by the pre-release hype for the movie version of V for Vendetta, I got ahold of the comic book series. My expectations were high, I suppose. But after the first volume, I have to say I'm not impressed, and I can't imagine why anyone would choose this particular series to make into a movie. Alan Moore's Watchmen was much, much better.

What's wrong with it? Nothing really. It just seems so tired. The whole dystopia England thing might as well have been written by a drugged up adolescent with an anachronistic love for Pink Floyd. England is the only country left after some intercontinental ballistic missile farce, all the world's arts and culture has been suppressed, the people of color and the homosexuals have been put into concentration camps and exterminated and the people in charge bear a distinct resemblance to a retread version of Orwell's 1984.... (You can just hear the lines "put 'em up against the wall" ringing). Throw in a dash of Batman (this time the Joker is the star), a little bit of Brazil, and mix well.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

killing a chicken to scare the monkeys

There's something particularly apt about the Chinese saying about making an example, "killing a chicken to scare the monkeys." On the one hand, the saying suggests that it just might be a useful strategy. After all, you can catch the chicken and the monkeys are sitting safe in their trees. On the other hand, it suggests that the person who gets made an example and the audience that is meant to take the lesson to heart often have little or nothing in common.

So, I believe, is the case with Zahira Sheikh. Today India's newspapers cheered the Supreme Court's imposition of a one year jail sentence and Rs. 50,000 fine on Zahira Sheikh for reversing her testimony in the Best Bakery case (related to the Gujarat pogrom). But what did this punishment really accomplish? To be sure, India has a huge problem with perjury, and the judicial and law enforcement authorities need to take action to solve it. Yet I have a sinking feeling. One prosecution is not an example. It's an exception. And, in this case, a rather obvious one. How easy is it to prosecute a woman without resources? Surely she cannot expect loyalty from the thugs she sought to exonnerate now they've been convicted. And how much freedom of choice did she really have in the matter to begin with? Will the forces of law succeed, too, in ferreting out and punishing the people who sought to pay or threaten Zahira to change her testimony? Will the Supreme Court now be issuign similar rulings against the witnesses in the Jessica Lal murder case--who have highly placed friends and belong to the elite class? Sadly, I doubt it very much.

pakistan is nucular, too!

I remember a buddy of mine returned from Pakistan with a t-shirt that read, "Pakistan is NUCLEAR!" Good stuff.

On to my point: Why is it that nobody in the press will ever admit that every country, especially those who imagine their interests may one day conflict with those of the US or another major power, wants to get nuclear weapons? Of course every country wants nuclear weapons. That's the only way anybody will listen to you. Do you think the US would have invaded Iraq instead of Pakistan if Iraq had nuclear weapons and Pakistan did not? I'm guessing the route would have started from Kabul and worked its way to Islamabad, a hellova lot more convenient than running two camps, one in South Asia and another in the Middle East.

That's why I think that Bush's policy on India's nuclear program is an intelligent, englightened, and realistic one. Yes, India's weapons may proliferate--they seemed to do a pretty good job of that without any help from America. But denying reality wasn't going to change anything. And by putting real effort behind his words about India's and America's common aims and values, Bush has accomplished much more towards ensuring that those bombs never go off--not to mention showing the rest of the world that America just *might* be a country that will listen to you if you don't have a thermonuclear device pointed in its direction.

Now let's see what happens with Iran.

al rancho

This isn't the first time I've lamented the absence of good Mexican food in Delhi (outside of Chez Overdorf, that is). Why can't anybody make salsa? Salsa is a simple matter. All the ingredients are available and cheap. OK, I'll give you guacamole--nobody wants to pay for avocados so they put in mayonaise or some rubbish--but salsa! No more marinara sauce! No more catsup!

This week I decided to give the (relatively) new Mexican joint in Defence Colony a try, mostly because I like to say the name. Al Rancho. Go ahead, try it. Al Rancho. Al Rancho. Al Rancho.

The good news? The quesadillas aren't too bad, even though you have to have to order them as though the word rhymes with sasparilla to get served. Even the salsa is a cut above the cooked catsup variety available elsewhere in town. I'm even willing to give the place another shot and try a couple other menu items.

The real reason, though, is that I want to call up friends and tell them to meet me at "Al Rancho."