Goodbye Word Cup

Here’s yet another intriguing Tunisian blog. Karim, the original, is meanwhile tracking the degradation and destruction of the southern Mediterranean coastline, following where Spain showed the way.

Dopey cyclists

There’s little doubt now that Tyler Hamilton’s going to lose his Olympic gold. I continue to find it difficult to believe–particularly given the Mike Anderson story–that it was just close friendship and the proximity of hills and flats that brought him and Lance Armstrong together in Gerona in doping-plagued Spain. Die an honest death: stick…

Book plugging in the digital age

Sounds like LanguageHat also got approached by Grant Barrett’s minder at McGraw-Hill offering “a look at our book” in exchange for a plug. I invited her to send dead tree all the way to Spain and have heard nothing more, which you may wish to attribute to Spain’s splendidly relaxed postal service or to a…

Change of nationality

To the extent that I ever was English, I hereby relinquish all claim. I was talking to an Ecuadorian the other day who, having observed the relative position of his country and Spain in the atlas, said he was a native of the Low Countries, los Países Bajos. Ecuador, Holland, anything but England.

“End of the national team”

This kind of thing is ridiculous. If someone doesn’t want to play for the national team, fine. Individual liberties shouldn’t just be available to people with whom we happen to agree.

Spanish anti-Americanism

RMF@fum i estalzí makes the interesting suggestion, re Pew, that anti-Americanism is stronger in Spain than in prominent Muslim nations, which, we are told, have every reason for hating Americans. Maybe religion isn’t such an important determinant of attitudes after all.

Granada’s keys in Moorish hands

From John Drummond Hay, Morocco and the Moors: Western Barbary, Its Wild Tribes and Savage Animals (1861): There are descendants of the Moorish families of Granada now residing in Tetuan and Fas [Fez], who still preserve the keys, and it is said also the title-deeds, of the houses of their Mauro-Spanish ancestors, in the hope…

One for the teachers

“Oh ye! who teach the ingenuous youth of nations, Holland, France, England, Germany, or Spain, I pray ye flog them upon all occasions“

Disadvantages of rapid corpse disposal

“The Cardinal Espinosa, prime minister under Philip the Second of Spain, died, as it was supposed, after a short illness. His rank entitled him to be embalmed. Accordingly, the body was opened for that purpose. The lungs and heart had just been brought into view, when the latter was seen to beat. The cardinal awakening…