Sweet Sue

In a riposte to a piece by Ron Gompertz about Spanish plans to sue Italy over the Roman occupation, Al Pernales suggests that a win might encourage Madrid to sue the US for collaborating with continental drift during the Triassic and thus raising to an unacceptable level the price of an afternoon’s shopping in Manhattan.…

“Where’s the baldie?”

Apparently a bunch of American academics came to Barcelona recently on their annual beano and, rumours about Baldie Tours having spread, recoiled in horror when they got into their coach on Monday morning and found a delightful young Spanish woman waiting for them. “Where’s the baldie? We want the baldie!” they cried as one. Apparently.…

Nothing new in politics

Two brothers [illegible] one kingdom. One dreamed of peace for his country, the other fought valiantly for his ideals: This photo (scroll to no 25) is from the University of Hawaii’s brilliant Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands collection. Sfida al re di Castiglia (“The Tyrant of Castile”), a 1963 Hispano-Italian, helmet-clattering, bodice-busting epic featuring…

Heidegger and Beckenbauer

I’ll be visiting Jan van Bakel’s site again shortly to quote from his extraordinary collection of letters written by Flemish soldiers in Napoleon’s armies, but here‘s another strange thing I found, which he quotes from Rüdiger Safranski’s Martin Heidegger – Between Good and Evil (1998): Heidegger by then was a venerable old gentleman, and his…