José M. Guardia

ENTRARÍA EN 'DEBATES BLOGOSFÉRICOS', pero no con quien -incapaz de entender que se puede hablar de contradicciones asociadas a algo sin entrar en ese momento en el fondo del asunto- elige la táctica más hooligan de todas las posibles: la provocación (aunque la más habitual en él, y es una pena: es indudable que el tipo tiene talento, y es una verdadera lástima que se empeñe en echarlo a perder una y otra vez). Como si yo tuviese que demostrar algo de mi trayectoria... Je.

¿SE ESTÁ EXAGERANDO la gravedad del vertido de petróleo en el Golfo de México? La revista Time cree que sí:

Yes, the spill killed birds — but so far, less than 1% of the birds killed by the Exxon Valdez. Yes, we've heard horror stories about oiled dolphins — but, so far, wildlife response teams have collected only three visibly oiled carcasses of any mammals. Yes, the spill prompted harsh restrictions on fishing and shrimping, but so far, the region's fish and shrimp have tested clean, and the restrictions are gradually being lifted. And, yes, scientists have warned that the oil could accelerate the destruction of Louisiana's disintegrating coastal marshes — a real slow-motion ecological calamity — but, so far, shorelines assessment teams have only found about 350 acres of oiled marshes, when Louisiana was already losing about 15,000 acres of wetlands every year.

Seguid leyendo; hay mucho más.

NO ENTRO en el debate de fondos "toros sí, toros no" y si es o no una buena idea haberlos prohibido. Nunca he estado en una corrida, y no creo que vaya a estarlo nunca, pero este no es ahora la cuestión. Sólo quiero destacar que los mismos que han votado a favor de la prohibición son los que hace pocos días rechazaron prohibir el burqa, con el manido argumento de que las prohibiciones siempre empeoran las cosas. Es mejor, dicen, ir convenciendo poco a poco de que es preferible ir abandonando la costumbre por propia voluntad.

Sí, ya sé que las corridas de toros acaban con la muerte del animal, y el burqa en sí mismo no supone la muerte de las mujeres que lo llevan (aunque podría decirse que la cosmovisión asociada al burqa sí implica en muchos casos la muerte de mujeres). Sé que hablamos de una muerte física frente a lo que podríamos llamar una muerte civil. Pero esa es una comparación que sólo se sostiene si uno piensa que los toros, o los animales, tienen más o menos el mismo valor que las mujeres, lo que parece que muchos deben de creer si prefieren prohibir el maltrato a los bichos mientras les importa un pimiento el maltrato a las mujeres (e ir andando bajo una mini-tienda de campaña lo es). En un mundo real, nos preocuparíamos por los animales, sí, pero no antes de haber solucionado cuestiones fundamentales que afectan directamente a la dignidad del ser humano.

ACTUALIZACIÓN. Por otra parte, tenemos a alguien, el presidente de la Generalitat, que pide "moderación y sentido de la responsabilidad por parte de todos" tres segundos después de decir que ha votado en contra de la prohibición "porque cree en la libertad". Lo que significa automáticamente que los que han votado a favor no creen en ella. Lo que puede ser cierto, pero que al decirlo no se está contribuyendo precisamente a la moderación...

[Actualizado] UN GRÁFICO sobre el coste comparativo del rescate financiero que quita el hipo.

ACTUALIZACIÓN. No se puede escribir con prisas, está claro: no se trata del coste del rescate, sino de las pérdidas provocadas por la crisis financiera; que la cantidad ronde el 80% del PIB de Estados Unidos debería haberme dado una pista...

GRANDES MOMENTOS de la filosofía política:

El ministro de Fomento, José Blanco, ha asegurado que el hecho de que la familia del presidente de Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, "haya escogido España" para sus vacaciones es un "motivo de orgullo" y refleja que "España tiene un papel en el mundo que es reconocido en muchos ámbitos".

Esto es altura de miras geoestratégica, y lo demás tonterías. La memez está a la altura, si no desbanca, lo del "acontecimiento planetario" de Leire Pajín. Sólo espero que nunca se les ocurra tener un romance... no serían los primeros que han estado liados en el gobierno, pero el riesgo de una descendencia que combinara la genética de ambos sería demasiado hasta para los más devotos de Mendel.

¿HABÉIS ESTADO haciendo guarreridas en Chatroulette, pillines? Pues era una mala idea: han estado registrando direcciones IP y haciendo pantallazos para pasárselo a las autoridades. Así que mejor que os vayáis subiendo los pantalones...

COMO CONVERTIR un truño en un notición en cuatro cómodos pasos. Je. Y qué gran verdad. Por cierto, ya que a El País, como a todos los grandes periódicos, le preocupa tanto el uso indebido de sus contenidos, ¿habrán pagado por la foto del fiestorro?

Y MIENTRAS OBAMA SE HACE EL MACHOTE criticando la ley de inmigración de Arizona, además de recurriéndola en los tribunales, por otro lado está expulsando más ilegales que ningún otro presidente: lo está haciendo cuatro veces más que Bush en su último año de presidencia.

LA TABLA PERIÓDICA de las tonterías irracionales, ahora en español. (via)

SERÁ MEJOR que esto no lo lea Zapatero: varios estados del oeste de EEUU, como Utah, Colorado y Washington, han empezado a prohibir que la gente recoja el agua de lluvia que cae en sus propias casas o empresas porque no es de su propiedad. Teniendo que todas las chorradas que tanto gustan a las fuerzas de progreso europeas han empezado curiosamente en el país que más odian (de ahí vienen cruzadas antitabaco, lenguajes políticamente correctos, animalismos, y más), no tardaremos en ver cómo algún borracho de estatismo propone lo mismo aquí.

TOMA CONSENSO CIENTÍFICO: aquí tenéis nada menos que 800 artículos de revistas científicas, todos ellos revisados por pares, que plantean objeciones a la teoría pseudocientífica del calentamiento global antropogénico, tanto en sus aspectos estrictamente científicos como económicos. Ochocientos. Obviamente no voy a entrar en lo que afirman cada uno de ellos, ni estoy preparado para hacerlo. Simplemente lo traigo aquí para refutar la tontería habitual de que la ciencia es unánime blablabla.

Para un ecocondríaco, esa lista debe ser algo así como el noveno círculo del infierno dantesco.

ACTUALIZACIÓN. Una propuesta incómoda para los alarmistas:

Let’s assume that a third of the world’s population really believes mankind has the power to adjust the Earth’s thermostat through lifestyle decisions. The percentage may be higher or lower, but, for the sake of this exercise, let’s put it at one-third. Now it seems to me these people have a special obligation to change their lives dramatically because they truly believe catastrophe lies ahead if they don’t. The other two-thirds are merely ignorant, so they can hardly be blamed for their actions.

Now, if those True Believers would give up their cars and big homes and truly change the way they live, I can’t imagine that there wouldn’t be some measurable impact on the Earth in just a few short years. I’m not talking about recycling Evian bottles, but truly simplifying their lives. Even if you were, say, a former Vice President, you would give up extra homes and jets and limos. I see communes with organic farms and lives freed from polluting technology.

Then, when the rest of us saw the results of their actions—you know, the earth cooling, oceans lowering, polar bears frolicking and glaciers growing—we would see the error of our ways and join the crusade voluntarily and enthusiastically.
 
How about it? Why wait for governments to change us? You who have already seen the light have it within your grasp to act in concert with each other and change the world forever. And I hate to be a scold, but you have a special obligation to do it because you believe it so strongly. Then, instead of looking at isolated tree rings and computer models, you’d have real results to point to, and even the skeptics would see the error of their ways and join you.

MÁS PERIODISMO DE KALIDÁ: un grupo musical pilla a El Mundo publicando la crónica de un concierto ("Otra vez, funcionó la comunión público-artista"), dando la lista de temas interpretados... antes de que se celebrara.

(via)

MÁS PRUEBAS de horror, puro horror, en Gaza. Escalofriante. A su lado, esto no tiene la más mínima importancia.

LOS HECHOS MUTANTES: San Zapatero, mártir, en la portada de El País. Dentro es otra cosa.

TAMPOCO HACE TANTO que cosas así eran las que se veían en televisión los domingos por la mañana. Pero parece de otra galaxia. Y no es la tele de la época franquista, precisamente...


Por no hablar de esto:


Menudo festival de caspa.

POR QUÉ los stress test no valen el papel en que están impresos. Por cierto, hacía tiempo que las portadas de la prensa española de hoy no eran tan estupefacientes. Y ya es decir. Cinco de los siete cateados son entidades españolas, y para la prensa española parece que una versión financiera de Iniesta haya marcado el gol que hace a la banca española campeona del mundo. Dentro de poco oiremos "soy ehpañol, ehpañol, ehpañoooooool" por la zona financiera de altos rascacielos en Frankfurt, a este paso.

JUAN CARLOS ESCUDIER sobre la "Década Prodigiosa" de Zapatero:

Hay que reconocer que en 2000 Zapatero no era gran cosa y tenía poco fondo de armario. Al día siguiente de ganar el Congreso del PSOE que Bono perdió, su nueva Ejecutiva le acompañó en un paseo por la sede del partido. Al pisar el que sería su despacho no pudo reprimir la confesión de que nunca antes había estado allí, lo que en una persona que llevaba tres años en la dirección socialista significaba que había sido un cero a la izquierda para el anterior secretario general. Ya instalado, no tardaría en recibir la llamada de presidente Aznar para que acudiera a la Moncloa a conocerle. Tenía el tiempo justo para ir al Corte Inglés y comprarse un traje. Fue una de sus primeras decisiones como líder del PSOE.

Leed el resto; ni siquiera Escudier puede ser compasivo.

MÁS PRUEBAS ESTADÍSTICAS de que son los estados que limitan la tenencia de armas los que son más inseguros.

SIETE ENTIDADES EUROPEAS no han superado los stress test: cinco de ellas en España, caja de ahorros todas ellas (resultados íntegros en pdf aquí). Pero tranquilos, seguiremos oyendo a muchos diciendo que la solución a la crisis financiera es más banca pública...

ACTUALIZACIÓN. Más en GurusBlog.

EL ZAPAGRAMA: análogo al de Obama, es un diagrama de flujo de las críticas a Zapatero. Je.

ASÍ QUE Rouco Varela, y la jerarquía católica, son unos integristas retrógrados que quieren imponer su moral a todos, exactamente igual que los ayatolás, según dice tanta gente. Pues a ver cómo explican esto:

El presidente de la Conferencia Episcopal y arzobispo de la Archidiócesis de Madrid, Antonio María Rouco Varela, ha afirmado que espera que la Ley de Salud Sexual y Reproductiva e Interrupción Voluntaria del Embarazo sea declarada "inconstitucional en algunos aspectos", aunque manifestó que los gobernantes que no lo apliquen tendrán que dimitir porque "no están por encima de la ley".

"Un gobernante tiene que aplicar la ley y si no lo hace tendrá que renunciar a su cargo", ha dicho en referencia a las reticencias iniciales de algunos presidentes autonómicos respecto a la aplicación de la norma.

Igualico, igualico, que los islamistas.

SOBRE la polarización de la política en España.

ARE PEOPLE exaggerating the seriousness of the damage cause by the Gulf oil spill? Time thinks so:

Yes, the spill killed birds — but so far, less than 1% of the birds killed by the Exxon Valdez. Yes, we've heard horror stories about oiled dolphins — but, so far, wildlife response teams have collected only three visibly oiled carcasses of any mammals. Yes, the spill prompted harsh restrictions on fishing and shrimping, but so far, the region's fish and shrimp have tested clean, and the restrictions are gradually being lifted. And, yes, scientists have warned that the oil could accelerate the destruction of Louisiana's disintegrating coastal marshes — a real slow-motion ecological calamity — but, so far, shorelines assessment teams have only found about 350 acres of oiled marshes, when Louisiana was already losing about 15,000 acres of wetlands every year.

Keep reading: there's lots more.

THIS CHART of the comparative cost of the financial rescue package will take your breath away. And not in a good way.

UPDATE. My mistake (I'll repeat 100 times: I won't write a quick post in haste again...). It's not the cost of the financial rescue package, but the estimated cost of the financial crisis. The fact that the amount is about 80% of US's GDP should have jumped out to me, but it didn't. Sorry about that.

THE LATEST in Obama's Facebook feed. LOL.

SO MUCH FOR public banking being the solution to the financial mess in Spain:

Seven out of 91 European banks failed the region's long-awaited stress tests and may need to raise more than 3.5 billion euros ($4.5 billion) of additional capital, the Committee of European Banking Supervisors said Friday.

Five of the banks that failed were in Spain, with Germany's Hypo Real Estate and Greece's ATEBank also unable to maintain a Tier 1 capital ratio of more than 6% under the most severe scenario tested.

All the other German lenders including the troubled landesbanks passed the test, along with all of Europe's big listed banks.

It needs to be noted that the five Spanish banks who failed are all cajas (savings banks), which are owned and operated by local or regional governments.

NEW YORK IN BLACK AND WHITE: an impressive set of old pictures.

SELLING THE 'NAZI CAR' TO THE JEWS: the fascinating story of how the Beetle was advertised in New York.

MUSLIM EXTREMISTS 'infecting' UK's health system?

IF WOODY ALLEN AND BETTE MIDLER wish to make a sequel to their '91 movie, they've got the perfect location. In Gaza.

NEW YORK CITY FROM ABOVE: an impressive set of aerial pictures of the Big Apple.

AMAZING DRAWINGS done with a humble Bic pen. (some may be NSFW)

THE SWEET AND CHARMING Queen Rania of Jordania has just written a children's book touching issues such as "getting to know others, openness and multiculturalism." Of course, that means rejecting any offers to publish an edition in Hebrew...

THE WORKER'S PARADISE:

North Korea's health care system is in shambles with doctors sometimes performing amputations without anesthesia and working by candlelight in hospitals lacking essential medicine, heat and power, a human rights watchdog said Thursday.

North Korea's state health care system has been deteriorating for years amid the country's economic difficulties. Many of its 24 million people reportedly face health problems related to chronic malnutrition, such as tuberculosis and anemia, Amnesty International said in a report on the state of the health care system.

A 24-year-old defector from northeastern Hamkyong province told Amnesty that a doctor amputated his left leg from the calf down without anesthesia after his ankle was crushed by a moving train when he fell from one of the cars.

"Five medical assistants held my arms and legs down to keep me from moving. I was in so much pain that I screamed and eventually fainted from pain," said the man, identified only by his family name, Hwang. "I woke up one week later in a hospital bed."

The report was based on interviews with more than 40 North Koreans who have defected, mostly to South Korea, as well as organizations and health care professionals who work with North Koreans. Amnesty researchers did not have access to North Korea, one of the world's most closed countries.

At least they have a public health system, not like that cruel and merciless private healthcare in the US...

CAN YOU IMAGINE the uproad if it had been Bush's Secret Service, instead of Obama's, who dragged away a reporter?

"IT'S NOT ANTI-SEMITISM, it's anti-Zionism". Yeah, right:

MALMO, SWEDEN — At some point, the shouts of “Heil Hitler” that often greeted Marcus Eilenberg as he walked to the 107-year-old Moorish-style synagogue in this port city forced the 32-year-old attorney to make a difficult, life-changing decision: Fearing for his family’s safety after repeated anti-Semitic incidents, Eilenberg reluctantly uprooted himself and his wife and two children, and moved to Israel in May.

Sweden, a country long regarded as a model of tolerance, has, ironically, been a refuge for Eilenberg’s family. His paternal grandparents found a home in Malmo in 1945 after surviving the Holocaust. His wife’s parents came to Malmo from Poland in 1968 after the communist government there launched an anti-Semitic purge.

But as in many other cities across Europe, a rapidly growing Muslim population living in segregated conditions that seem to breed alienation has mixed toxically with the anger directed at Israeli policies and actions by those Muslims — and by many non-Muslims — to all but transform the lives of local Jews. Like many of their counterparts in other European cities, the Jews of Malmo report being subjected increasingly to threats, intimidation and actual violence as stand-ins for Israel

SPAIN'S BANKS are all dried up:

Spanish banks' recourse to European Central Bank funding hit a record high in June, against a backdrop of intensifying turmoil on financial markets.

Spanish banks raised €126.3 billion ($160.6 billion) in funding from the ECB in June, up 48% from €85.62 billion in May, according to data the Spanish central bank published on its website Wednesday. The June borrowings are the largest on Bank of Spain records dating back to 1999.

A SAUDI WOMAN comments on France's banning the face-covering veil:

Covering the face has been a highly emotional and politicized issue in the Muslim community for the past two decades. I have written about it before and called it the sixth pillar of Islam. It has become a false banner for Islamic piety. Islam is now reduced to a dress code. It does not matter if you lie, steal or slander your friends and neighbors, if you cover your face you are perceived by society as an untouchable religious God fearing person.

[...] Covering the face is the very essence of objectifying women. With her face covered, a woman is reduced to an object that needs to be protected by a male guardian. For every woman who truly chooses of her own freewill to cover her face, there are hundreds if not thousands forced and pressured to by the religious establishment, family and society.

[...] What are women covering from? They believe that the sight of their face will cause men to commit sin. Fitna they call it. And yet the places where most women cover their faces, like in Saudi’s central region, you can’t take a step outside your house without being harassed, it doesn’t matter if you’re 18 or 80. It’s much more dangerous to walk the streets of Riyadh as a woman than it is in New York. Hence what the face cover is protecting us from has proven to be the complete opposite upon implementation.

It doesn’t stop at face covering. The subtle difference between putting the abaya tent style over your head or leaving it like a cloak on your shoulders decides if you’re “asking for it”. In both cases the face is covered but in the first the shape of the shoulders isn’t defined and so it’s a more religious and respectable style. Covering the face escalates into such silly issues like the seductive powers of a woman’s toes.  Isn’t it about time that men take responsibility for their actions instead of using the centuries old argument “she seduced me into it by not dressing properly”?!

How many public Islamist women figures (do they even exist?) do you know advocate face covering? The majority out there calling for it are men; Muslim men who brazenly stand there in Western clothes and with clean shaven faces and say it’s their religious belief that women should cover. Walk down Oxford Street London in July and see how many abaya swathed women with their niqabs are accompanied by their shorts wearing clean shaven male guardians.

FASCINATING IMAGES from inside a sex doll factory. (NSFW, I guess)

CONTRARY TO what the Spanish government is wishing, the World Cup won't save the country's economy.

IT WAS THE DRIVERS, not the Priuses.

CHEERS!

A shamed Tory MP has admitted he was too drunk to vote in the debate on the Budget after a night of debauched behaviour on the Commons terrace.

Former banker Mark Reckless was so inebriated that he fell to the floor of a Commons bar before the crucial vote in the early hours of the morning, before being bundled into a taxi home by fellow MPs.

Conservative chiefs also apologised after another MP, Sheryll Murray, was allegedly rude to a parliamentary official after she, too, had been drinking on the terrace overlooking the Thames.

The extraordinary scenes came during a six-hour drinking session that lasted until 2.30am on Wednesday, involving dozens of MPs and their aides.
Commons bars took a record £5,000 during the evening as taxpayer-subsidised Pimm’s, wine, beer and champagne flowed.

Witnesses said a ‘significant number’ of MPs who took part in the Budget vote were either drunk or under the influence of alcohol.

‘It was disgusting,’ said a female MP. ‘The chamber and the voting lobbies stank of booze and sweat.

'There we were, voting through the most drastic Budget in decades, and some MPs barely knew where they were, let alone what they were voting for. Some could hardly stand.’

Hmmm. Not sure that a lawmaker (and not just in the UK) needs to get hammered not to know what he's doing, no?

YOU'LL BETTER PREPARE YOUR COATS:

Long-term global cooling began in 2002, according to a just-released study in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed publication produced at Harvard-Smithsonian’s Center for Astrophysics. Man-made global warming was real and dangerous, the study finds, but the danger has passed.

The study, authored by Qing-Bin Lu, a rising star at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo in Canada, explains why climate models have been so spectacularly wrong in trying to tie the global warming of the last half of the 20th century to CO2 — the climate modelers fingered the wrong culprit when they targeted CO2. The true culprits, Dr. Lu explains, were CFCs, the now banned substances that until the 1990s had been a refrigerant and propellant to products as diverse as air conditioners and hair spray cans.

The actual study on pdf here.