How to gain publicity for your "Oktoberfest"

These days Avilés, a town of 84.000 inhabitants in Asturias, is frequently on the news because it's socialist city councillor for women's affairs wants the organizers of a beer fest to change their poster announcing the event as she deems it sexist. The poster is the one acompanying this post



and the question is debated widely in the Spanish blogosphere. Helpfully a blogger already has put together a collection of American posters inviting to similar events.
The link is here.

If the authorities in Munich thought as the councillor in Avilés does they would have to impose dress codes on the waitresses there...

All of this might be part of what Javier Marías sees as a growing trend in Spanish society of prohibiting everything that you do not like. There certainly is this trend but a lot of things they want to prohibit I would prohibit, too, e.g. smoking in restaurants, bars and other public places or bull fighting in Catalonia (I would prohibit it in all of Spain, too).

Animals and Climate Change

After reading the current number of Fluter, a German youth magazine on political topics, I am seriously thinking about becoming a vegetarian, or at least reducing my intake of meat and dairy products.
Up to now I was not aware of the enormous amount of CO2 and other climate killers such as methane produced by cows and other domestic animals. In one of the articles it says that the problem of the future will not be the nine billion people on earth but the still larger number of cows, pigs, etc. to feed them as more and more people switch to meat-eating as they become richter... I never especially liked dogs; now there is another reason not to have one as a German shepherd, for example, during a year produces about half the amount of carbondioxide of a European human being.

I am not sure this entry is good English but I am getting out of practice with Catalan provincial journalism...

Burqa, no; T-Shirt, yes, please!

Strange times in Catalunya. More and more city and village administrations are introducing local ordinances that prohibit the wearing of a burqa or other face-covering Islam-inspired dresses inside public buildings. As if the streets were full of burqa-wearing women ready to storm city hall. The craze is such that even villages where there are no immigrants at all are thinking about introducing such a measure preventively in case a burqa-wearing immigrant wanted to move there. And parties on the political right are insisting that the words "burqa" or "niqab" are included in these ordinances; the prohibition of entering a public building with your face covered does not do it for them - pure knee-jerk populism in an election year (regional elections to the Catalan parliament in November 2010). Surveys say that a majority of the population would prohibit the burqa in public places, i.e. on the streets in general, but local administrations can only rule on public buildings.
Meanwhile the city of Barcelona has got a different problem at the same time: apparently a lot of tourists like to wander around Las Ramblas in the heart of the old town or use the metro with nothing on but a bathing suit or bikini; often not a nice view, and apart from aesthetics a potential public health problem. Therefore, the city will fine these "nudist" tourists, but first wants to raise awareness to the problem with an information campaign ("dress well") and stickers like the one pictured down here. We are living in strange times.

Not really news

This is a short version of a news story I wanted to write but was not allowed to as the chief editor thought the topic was already everywhere else and not really of interest to our readers, and he might have been right ;-)
As I browse the news about the ”iPad” I see that today’s headline is that the gadget has already been sold more than 2 million times since it came on the market two months ago, or 60 days to be more precise. In Europe, it’s launch came last Friday, May 28th, and at least in Madrid stocks sold out within hours. This is quite amazing, as the gadnet does not come cheap: the iPad’s most basic version costs 479,- € in Spain (499,- € in France, Italy, Germany) and 499,- USD in the States, the most complete one (with 64GB memory and 3G access) 779,- € in Spain (...) and 799,- USD.
The iPad is a tablet PC, something between a smartphone and a laptop computer. It’s LED screen has a size of 9,7 inches and you can use it by touching on the screen. The simple version can connect with the internet via a wifi red, the more advanced version can use mobile internet via a 3G red – but you need a separate service contract (that will cost you around 35 € per month if you opt for the flat rate option in Spain). The typical user of the iPad will be more of a consumer than a creator as the machine incorporates the typical Apple programs for contents consumption rather than creation - it's not a MacBook (from 979,- € in Spain). With the iPad the company also launched its own digital bookstore and wants people to read the book on the pad – though it does not offer the digital ink technology typical of other e-readers’ screens. The user can also use e-mail and administrate music, videos and fotos but the iPad does not incorporate a camera. Neither are there USB slots. It also does not support contents made with flash technology. And it can do only one thing at a time, i.e. there is no multi-tasking. These are the main points of criticism alongside the absolute control that Apple has got about what you can and what you cannot do with your machine and that it is a little difficult to type on a touchscreen. On the positive side are the iPad’s slick design, its speed in executing tasks, its low weight and the long battery life, up to 10 hours without recharging. And you can buy some accessories like a dock with a USB slot and a physical keyboard, if you like to. There are already competitors in sight: the iPed (I think, Chinese ;-)), and more seriously NVIDIA’s Tegra2.
What I personally find most suspicious is the exclusivity as to the applications one can use with it. If I had to buy a device like that right now, I would go for a far cheaper netbook and watch as Apple develops future generations of the iPad like it does of the iPhone all the time.

In Memoriam Àngel Hidalgo, † 07/05/2010, 89 years

I got to know him in his 80s though I did not really know him personally. He was a short and skinny man with an egg-shaped head, always cleanly shaven, who walked around in old-fashioned clothing of the countryside, hat included. One would see him around the village or on of the paths surrounding it, with a plastic bag and maybe some small tool gathering stuff that might be useful, edible or sellable: e.g. in May that might be wild asparagus, in October almonds from trees grown wild or from those whose owners did not care to collect their fruit – he did not steal, I think. On Tuesdays, market day in the county capital 7 km away, he would put cushions in the back of his tricicle-like open vehicle powered by a noisy motorcycle engine and take his partner to the market at a speed of about 20 km/h. His wife had died years before and his new partner he had got to know by placing an ad in a newspaper, they said. She claimed to be more than ninety years old but nobody around here knew for sure. They were close to few people in the village, maybe because of their Castilian origins. She sometimes went to the 6 p.m. train to see her grandson pass by – and to give him some food or money. On Friday we passed by their house and saw it was for sale; we had not seen them around in quite a while. On Saturday we heard the church bells ring for a funeral mass but did not know who had died. On Sunday we learned it was him whom they had buried the day before at the village cemetery in a “whole” next to his wife; he who had recently lived with a daughter of his in a neighboring village, separated by the circumstances of old age and ill-health from his partner who lived with her children somewhere else.
As we are at it: Àngel had had a short and skinny son also named Àngel, who died about five years ago of lung cancer: a chain-smoking construction worker who was a regular at the local bar, one of the likeable ones, until they diagnosed his disease. He left a bereaved wife and two grown-up sons, both of them short and skinny, one of them “problematic”, also named Àngel...

NY impressions: Starbucks

On a recent trip to “the Big Apple” I discovered the convenience of having a Starbucks café on nearly every street corner of downtown Manhattan. As the weather was mixed it was good to know that there was a safe haven around whenever one needed it. Though the heating did not work properly in all of them and not all of them had a restroom, if one made sure about these requisits, one could spend an agreeable time with cheap coffee (1,20 EURO the smallest one, paradoxically called “tall”), sometimes even seated on comfortable armchairs, watching people. As they offer free wireless internet access, one could learn about the types of laptop computers now “en vogue” and especially see which types of cell phones the locals use: basically Blackberries and phones by other brands that are emulating these, i.e. have a keyboard for comfortable text-messaging. Probably our favorite Starbucks was near Cooper Union, with another one near Columbus Square a close second. I observed Asian-American students discussing a passage from scripture: one with a traditional Bible in front of her, the other with the text on her cell phone screen. Other students tasting cup cakes that one of them brought with her from another store. Some even studied. People in danger of becoming homeless and / or alcoholics sleeping in a corner or with their head bend down touching the table or a note pad in front of them. At some establishments sleeping was tolerated, at others they were woken up by staff. If one doesn’t fall asleep, nobody cares about how long one stays, and there are refills at half the price if you keep your cup. Some people might critizice that they provide only unisex bathrooms. And I would recommend a better waste management, i.e. selection and recycling of plastics.

Dreary shopping

This morning I went grocery shopping in a discount supermarket in Móra d’Ebre, Ribera d’Ebre district, a small town about 20km from here where they have real supermarkets. The experience was depressing, as always. It rained, not a common event around here, and the temperature was about 15°C (59°F). The main road leading to the supermarket is windy and open to traffic in two directions though due to a variable width not all spots of it allow for two cars using it at the same time. Parking spaces are limited and with heavy rain, a popular spot underneath a river bridge becomes dangerous as the water coming down from the centre of town might flood away the cars parked there. I arrived at about 10 a.m. At the supermarket’s fruit and vegetable area it was difficult to reach things as there were crates and boxes everywhere as they were still filling the shelves – one hour after opening. Nowadays one has to be very attentive and look carefully as a lot of the stuff they sell is already rotten or about to rot or behind its “best before” date; today all the broccoli they had was brown... Walking through the rest of the supermarket one could observe a lot of immigrants: one Brit in bathing shorts, extravagant to say the least, considering the weather. Maroccons going quietly about their shopping. Sub-Saharan Africans counting their change to see if they could afford a packet of bread and a glass of mayonnaise; and a homeless of local origin counting his change to buy a tetra-pak of red wine. Near the cash register I saw a price tag for a USB memory stick, a good bargain. Items like these, but also brand deodorants costing 1,99 EUR, they sell from locked shelves. I asked for one stick, they had to look for the key first, and then they discovered that they did not have any... I paid and went outside to carry my shopping to the car. On the way there, I passed the window of a cheap-goods store run by Chinese and I could smell its typical smell though the window was closed. I also saw a group of homeless-looking men sitting in a dry spot drinking canned beer and two gypsies, one inside and the other aside an open trash container where they looked for I don’t know what. If one tries to leave old clothes in a special container there, they are immediately beside one and ask one to hand them the old stuff. My car was still there and I could drive home. Though it might sound condescending or even racist, I always feel relieved that I do not live there and only have to go every other week for the grocery shopping.