Chest problems?

Take Goig Heroin Elixir: From La Vanguardia anno 1912. Their current principal source of immoral earnings, apart from editorial-related state subsidy and tax-(ahem-)efficient paid-for journalism, is, of course, brothel advertising. I seem to recall it worked out at around €1M pa, but now most things do. The first ever front page of this then conservative,…

Edgar Alampo

Is still only scoring 9 ghits in the Vulgar Latin Empire, while the great Japanese detective author Edogawa Rampo is on

Mobile office

I’m in transit quite a lot, and I like getting out of houses anyway, so I’ve built up a list of unofficial workspaces where I can pop in and do email and stuff free and without registering. This arty one is quite close: Down one hill and up another, it’s ca 25 minutes on my…

Removing copy protection from PDFs

This is often a work issue–eg with stuff forwarded to attorneys by IT-challenged clients–but also arises when archives digitalise stuff which is way out of copyright but which they still protect from private fiddling around, whether because of a lack of sophistication in their systems or because of some mad bureaucrat stuck up in the…

Why the Spanish judiciary and executive aren’t actually separate

This piece by Julio José Elías Baturones explains how PSOE lawmakers led by Alfonso Guerra neutralised the guarantees contained in the constitution. I don’t know whether it’s accurate or complete, but it certainly makes recent events and today’s judicial strike easier to understand.

Caretasió

Check out the excellent Quiosquero on how Catalan is actually Chinese.

Enterprising Romanian gypsy beggar

Crouched on the street with the usual placard. A granny passes: –5 cents, for the love of God! –Sorry, no. –Well then let me give you a lucky gypsy kiss! (Leaps up and embraces the granny, despite her protests.) –Oh all right then. Wait, I want to give you 20 cents. –Thanks, I’ve already got…

Reconstruction of Puerta Osario, Seville

Sevillanadas has photoshopped back into place one of the Moorish city’s gates, demolished in 1868 by the same man who restored it twenty years earlier following a serious bout of generalised brotherly hate. Will it now be rebuilt?

“El AVE cotiza al alza en el down jones de los transportes”

Francesc Peirón and his Vanguardia editors don’t know the name of the world’s most famous stock market index. “Down Jones” is used jokingly for “Dow Jones” when the market is falling (it’s up this morning) and in suppressing the Legitimate National Aspirations of the Welsh Race (we have none).