Just a couple of quick links--it's been a long, busy day, which included taking my mother-in-law to the hospital for a preliminary eye exam for her cataracts operation in two weeks.

The Times has a piece on the feud between Vargas Llosa and García Márquez. This is even more fun than Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal. I'd love to see Mailer and Vidal slug it out in a no-holds-barred caged death match, so I could root for them both to lose.

Jonah Goldberg has an article in National Review--it's on American politics, but is very applicable to Spain--on why controversy and dissension in a democracy are a good thing.

Snopes looks at a probably spurious quote attributed to Robert E. Lee.

The Daily Standard has details on a French law that would ban private individuals from filming acts of violence. And some people say America is full of censorship.

Julian Barnes has a review in the NY Review of Books of what looks like a very interesting history of the rivalry between England and France.