Over at deseretnews.com, their Real Salt Lake correspondent had this to say about United after this week: "After stinking it up for most of the season, MLS defending champion D.C. United stepped it big time last week." This, from a guy who covers a team who's only achievement this season looks to be setting the MLS record for longest goal-scoring drought. At the beginning of the season, RSL's roster looked like it should be able to compete immediately with Eddie Pope anchoring defense, Clint Mathis looking to regain his playmaking and scoring form, and Jason Kreis knocking on the 100-career-goal door. But for some reason, the team hasn't clicked at all during the first half of the season. I hope the team can click in the second half and reward the Salt Lake City fans, which have given it the 2nd highest average attendance in the league.

Also, over in MLS Owners Face Thinking Cap Time, we learn that the league's owners might be ready to loosen the purse strings and spend a little more cash on teams and players. I don't think we'll see \$10 million payrolls or Europe's best players over here anytime soon - European Leagues and the Champions League will continute to be the proving ground for the game's elite players. B bumping the salary cap near the \$3 million range should allow MLS teams to attract the best American (North, Central, and South!) talent and then judiciously transfer some stars to European clubs.

The consensus among the owners was that more money needs to be invested in MLS, particularly in player acquisition, so that the standard of play continues to rise.

I haven't blogged about it this time, partially because my dad isn't trapped there this time, but after another bouth of unrest, Bolivia is on its 3rd president in as many years (i think). Populist political leaders have used the nationalization of the country's natural gas industry to channel the dissatisfaction of ordinary Bolicians into political action. From afar, its easy to realize that driving away much-needed foreign capital to export said natural gas is not a rational choice of course.   Bolivian society needs to change in fudamental ways - particularly to improve the economic and living conditions of the poorest (and majority) of Bolivian citizens, that much is clear.  But the country is made up of the European descendarnt Haves, who are content with the status quo, and the indigeneough Have-nots - who are impatient for ANY change that might improve their lives and will support demagogues who promise it to them. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a strong, unifying leader emergin who can peacefully bring this transformation about.

Former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada has this slightly rambling analysis at FT.com.

Bolivia gains more by working with foreign investment than by shunning the international economic system. This is no time to start another quixotic quest to nationalise the oil

I'm back online! We've been settling into the new house over the last two weeks. Almost everything is unpacked and put away, although there's lots of little stuff left to do like hang up pictures, organize books, finisih setting up the home theatre, and so on. I've mowed the lawn twice now, thereby tripling my lifetime number of lawns mowed, and it hasn't been as much of a chore as I thought it would be.

Today, I finally was able to connect via Verizon DSL. Supposedly it was going to be activated last Friday but I got an automated call that installation was delayed until this Wednesday. That didn't stop another e-mail and an automated call from James Earle Jones on Friday welcoming me to my newly activated account. You'd think those systems could be automated or something. Unfortunately, there's something weird about the phone wiring inside the house. Although, DSL is in theory coursing through all the phone jacks, the modem only finds a connection when hooked up to an amateurish looking phone jack in the basement labelled DSL. The previous owners did the work of running Cat5 cable up from their to the 3rd floor.

To end on a geeky note, Verizon now offers a free integrated dsl modem + router + wireless network and it didn't not nearly suck as much as I feared. Actually, that was a little harsh. I should say I was pleasantly surprised by how configurable it was and it looks like it has a pretty decent firewall built in, but the bar wasn't too hight. I haven't used it enough to judge day to day performance, connection dropping and the rest. Still, I'm paranoid that it's secretly logging my traffic and sending it to Verizon.