Bilingual blogs

Sheesh! Someone called Luistxo has invented a complicated spec–read and shiver!–with which you have to comply in order to have a proper bilingual blog. Kaleboel has dropped its forked-tongue strategy, having discovered that people get much more excited when you are rude about them in English rather than their own obscure dialect. But that, of…

People stopping bombs

Maybe the British have had more practice than the Spanish, but while the Metropolitan Police and MI5 (“keep garden areas free from dense shrubbery“) public information campaigns are very professional, here I haven’t seen anything. Does the Spanish state really have such a low opinion of its citizens’ abilities?

Half eel, half snake, all mad

Just about the only politicians who fear for the nation and for the national religion/myth and language as much as the French are the Malaysians. A couple of days back, Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Rais Yatim said that Malaysians were destroying Bahasa Melayu by using it in a rojak manner, mixing it up with…

Cocaine: long sentence coming up

This excerpt from a court statement made on 1928/1/11 is taken from Paco Villar’s Historia y Leyenda del Barrio Chino (1997): On the night of the 13th to the 14th of April, 1927, by virtue of information held by the police implicating the individuals Rafael “Little Madrid” García Serra and Mario “Dove” Guallart García in…

Foodies

This article represents one very important reason why you just don’t want to live in Manhattan, ever. An excerpt: Even if you have never sampled their handiwork, you may have heard about such haute-cuisine iconoclasts as Heston Blumenthal, the chef at the Fat Duck in Bray, England, which recently earned three Michelin stars for a…

Madrassa murders

An investigation is underway in Mehmood Booti, Lahore into the bizarre murder of three young men at a failing prayer school: There was blood splattered on the wall. A boardgame was found near the bodies. Police believe at least two assailants murdered the three brothers because they found two different footprints in blood at several…

Spread of speech

There’s a very interesting Beeb article that suggests that the introduction of sign language increased deafness rates by enabling carriers of hearing impairment genes to get it together more easily. In particular, this comment by research leader Walter Nance opened a new window: When you think about how the onset of selective marriages among deaf…

Hobswamm

Lluís Foix is another of the lost old fools who wander round La Vanguardia gabbling the ultra-conservative mantras of the Franco era, but with a Catalan accent, bien entendu. Lying (sorry: publishing extraordinary errors of fact) about America has been an integral part of La Vanguardia’s corporate culture for a very long time, and Mr…

Hetro as the metro

Metrosexual. The Americans blame French cissies and Brit hacks, but the honours go to Galician AZ Alkmaar footballer, José Fortes Rodriguez: Some women just don’t get it. They’re not used to being turned down. They say: Go on, you want me don’t you! I say: Am I talking Chinese? I don’t find you attractive. And…