I also found this news report, which is in Spanish, of course.

Apparently there are recycling companies who have some interest in receiving these plastic caps. They have offered to donate 200€ for each metric ton (1,000 kg = 2,204 lb) of caps collected. The little eleven-year-old girl, Aitana, requires an operation in Boston (“which is very expensive since medicine is private over there”, the reporter mentioned) that costs 200,000€.

Let’s do some math, shall we? For every kilogram of bottle caps I save, the company will give 0.20€. I asked the internet how much a bottle cap weighs, and the general consensus is that it’s between 2-3 grams. That means that I need 333-500 bottle caps to complete my kilogram, which comes out to 17-25 bottle caps for one euro cent going to Aitana’s 200,000€ operation.

Further research has uncovered the recycling companies’ motivation behind such an effort.

Plastic bottle caps are often made from a different type of plastic from the bottles they’re attached to. Soda bottles are generally made from Type 1 Plastic (Polyethylene Terephthalate) while bottle caps are made from Type 5 Plastic (Polypropylene). These different types of plastic have to be recycled separately. If the bottle and the cap were recycled in the same batch of plastic, the two different plastics would melt unevenly and the whole batch would be ruined.

Whoever came up with this idea is an absolute genius. Ignoring any marketing philanthropic “corporate image” benefits for the recycling companies – of which there aren’t many since I can’t seem to find the name of any participating companies – it seems pretty obvious that it would cost considerably more than 200€ to remove the caps from 500,000 bottles, even if it could be mechanized. The task of getting the general public to properly separate items for recycling must be one of the hardest issues for recycling companies to tackle.

The media, of course, absolutely loves tearjerking stories of little dying girls, so there’s no problem getting the message out. Local governments are also suckers for positive press, and are willing to set up bottle cap collection centers at the town halls. Schools can use it as an easy way to teach simple philanthropy to the nation’s children.

Your average citizen that decides to participate in this scheme by saving bottle caps isn’t going to do the math and see that, if it takes five seconds to save each bottle cap, then it requires three and a half hours of work to produce a single euro to help the little girl. But, what it steals from you in paying ridiculously low wage is made up for by the positive feelings of wellbeing that philanthropy brings. I’m certain that, psychologically, someone saving bottle caps is going to be happier than a cynic who has done the math and refuses to based on the triviality of it.

It’s nice to find a scenario in which all parties involved come out winning.

• The people saving the caps get to feel good about themselves.

• The schools get to teach philanthropy give children the experience of happiness through helping the less fortunate.
• Local governments and organizations get to put on a positive philanthropic face.
• The recycling companies save money, which, in turn, results in lower government contract bids and tax money saved.
• The environment is ultimately less contaminated.
• A little girl gets a life saving operation. (I’d be skeptical of them reaching their goal, but this isn’t the first iteration, so they’ve done it before.)

It’s a win-win-win-win-win-win-win situation. Like I said, pure genius.

Yesterday I bought, downloaded, and read Sam Harris’ new e-book, Lying. (No, really, I did!) It was a quick read. Amazon lists its “print length” at 26 pages. While not as thought-provoking or groundbreaking as Harris’ full length books, it did make me consider how honesty and dishonesty affect my life. It was definitely worth my two dollars.

That’s right; it only costs $1.99, and it’s only available in e-book format.

This is the first “book” of its kind that I’ve seen on Amazon. It straddles the gap between essay/article/blog entry and full length book. I like the idea that someone can write thirty pages and then charge a small fee for people to download it. Obviously this won’t work for all genres or authors. If what you want is for your ideas to reach the largest number of people, then you’d better be giving your words away for free. But if you’ve spent a few weeks polishing your too-short-for-a-book thoughts on a topic, and are already a respected author or person that people will want to hear from, then it seems like a great way to make a little money for your troubles.

Apple has already shown the value of pricing music and software down at the $1 level; consumers are much less picky about deciding what to buy when the prices are so low. It will be interesting to see if other authors begin publishing shorter works, perhaps single short stories, as electronic books.

Americano en Colindres

Erik Rasmussen cuelga en la red su particular punto de vista sobre la realidad española

Erik Rasmussen es la otra cara de la moneda. Si a veces a los españoles nos cuesta imaginarnos cómo es un país desconocido, no digamos cómo será para los foráneos imaginar el nuestro.

Erik Rasmussen es un estadounidense que lleva seis años viviendo en España, en Colindres (Cantabria), pero escribe en inglés. Nada más llegar, y ante la temible pérdida de contacto con su familia, abrió un blog: American in Spain (erikras.com), cuya principal fuente de lectores son ellos, los Rasmussen que ha dejado atrás.

El blog de Erik no es de los más transitados de la red, ni de los que más seguidores tienen en Twitter, pero sí es abundante en contenido. Es, de alguna forma, una correspondencia transatlántica íntima, pero a la vista de todos, y subraya, además, todas esas pequeñas perlas de nuestra tierra que no hacen más que escapársenos a simple vista.

Por ejemplo: Erik opina que los españoles no sabemos utilizar las rotondas, y lo explica en una extensísima entrada, fotos incluidas, en las que detalla para sus congéneres la «peculiar» manera de circular por estos lugares. O la querencia que tenemos por esos gatos dorados de saludo sempiterno que venden los chinos. O la relación de su hija -está casado con una española- con su próxima hermana. O el poco espacio que una aerolínea deja entre asiento y asiento. Todo desarrolladísimo: incluso detalla para lectores poco enterados la polémica que salpicó al jugador del F.C. Barcelona Sergio Busquets en mayo de este año, cuando una cámara le captó lanzándole la palabra «mono» o «morro» al madridista Marcelo.
Erik Rasmussen es una especie de corresponsal extranjero, de veraneo permanente (un fan de las tapas), transatlántico y con un particular gracejo. Desde Colindres, con color.

Now in English:

American in Colindres

Erik Rasmussen publishes, on his personal web page, his own point of view on Spanish reality

Erik Rasmussen is the other side of the coin. If sometimes it’s hard for us Spaniards to imagine how it would be in an unknown country, how it must be for foreigners to imagine our country.

Erik Rasmussen is an American who has been living in Spain for six years, in Colindres (Cantabria), but he writes in English. As soon as he arrived, to counter the frightful loss of contact with his family, he opened a blog: American in Spain (erikras.com), whose primary readers are the Rasmussens he left behind.

Erik’s blog is not one of the most visited on the internet, nor the one with the most Twitter followers, but it has abundant content. It is, in some form, an intimate transatlantic correspondence, but available for everyone to see, and it furthermore underlines all those little pearls of our land that easily escape our notice.

For example: Erik thinks that we Spaniards don’t know how to use roundabouts, and he explains it in a very extensive entry, with photos, in which he details, for his counterparts, the “peculiar” way people circulate in these places. Or our haunting of those golden eternally waving cats that are sold in the Chinese shops. Or the relationship between his daughter – he’s married to a Spaniard – with her next sister. Or the lack of space an airline leaves between seats. Everything is extremely well developed: including the detail for uninformed readers about the scandal that dirtied F.C. Barcelona player Sergio Busquets in May of this year, when a camera caught him shooting the word “mono” or “morro” at the Madrid player Marcelo.

Erik Rasmussen is a species of expat correspondent, on permanent summer vacation (a fan of tapas), transatlantic and with his own wit. From Colindres, with color.

To Alejandro Carantoña, let me know if you ever want an interview or a foreigner perspective on something. You can contact me by commenting on this blog.

UPDATE: This article was in El Diario Vasco (The Basque Daily) too!

You decide! Morro or mono?

My Opinion

The more you watch Spanish fútbol, the more you see people touching their faces to mean mucho moro as a gesture of general “Hey, you jerk!” disapproval. There is, however, still a lot of inherent racism in Spain, mainly because it’s still such a racially homogenous country. Personally I’m inclined to give Busquets the benefit of the doubt on this totally ambiguous case. But then that wouldn’t be much of a media story, would it?

At least no one is suggesting he said moro…

Last night, she laid out, much more elegantly, the case I made in the first paragraph, outlining the fundamental difference between the two political parties in the United States, although her explanation is valid for any modern democracy. I think it would be worth ten of your minutes to watch this video.

Here’s an important bit of the transcript:

It’s kind of a numerical mismatch between these two sides. But it always is. It’s the upper crust versus the middle class. It’s the few people who own the company versus the number of people who work for the company. It’s the people who write the paychecks versus those who cash the paychecks. It’s the economic elite versus the average person.

And what the elite lack in terms of numbers of people, they makeup for in leverage in terms of the amount of money they can spend in order to advocate for their side. And that – that split between these two sides, aside from social issues and civil rights and issues of political style, that’s split is the reason that there are two different political parties in the United States of America.

And because the Democratic side is inherently the one that has more people in it, and this is a democracy, and it’s one person, one vote, the Republican side, in order to compete with that, has to use money to leverage as many votes as they can, because their side represents the interest of fewer people. That’s where they found social issues and abortion and gay rights and religion and all of these other things to come in handy.

There’s an economic split between the two parties, between Democrats and Republicans, but more people are on the Democratic side of that economic split, almost by definition. So, Republicans, by and large, have had to use noneconomic issues to get people to vote with the economic elite and against their own economic interest.

The local fishmonger was as full as I’ve ever seen it on Christmas Eve morning. Shellfish is a major holiday staple across Spain. The lobsters, tagged as having come from Canada, were still sluggishly moving about on the ice.

Langostinos a la plancha = grilled jumbo shrimp

Eggs stuffed with crab meat.

Gilda = 1 hot pepper + 1 anchovy + 1 olive. They are named after the 1946 Rita Hayworth film because their shape resembles her hourglass figure. If there was ever a word coined by an inebriated man at a bar, this is it.

Mmmm.. Flan!

After the meal, I helped polish off a bottle of Wild Turkey that my parents gave my grandfather-in-law a few years back. Among the bottles that get taken out every year is a bottle of patxaran from 1993.

We had only light flurries of snow on Christmas day, but the mountains around us were covered. This is Udalaitz, the largest mountain overlooking the town of Mondragón.

Nora enjoyed a ride on a carousel set up in town for the holidays. This time she was in a Ferarri. I was there with her and very nearly got dizzy.

We sang traditional Spanish Christmas carols. Since I only ever hear them one night a year, and the lyrics vary from family to family (and thus cannot be found on the internet), I have yet to learn the lyrics, except to the most repetitive songs. The bizarre percussion instrument is called a zambomba, or friction drum, and must be played with a wet hand, which vibrates on a cane shaft and is magnified by a drum head. Nora had a delightful time with all the music.

There are several reasons why I am in favor of this festival as a general local citizen. It gets people out into local establishments, spending money and applying social lubricant, it provides a stage for local restaurateurs to showcase their craft, and it generally makes for a more contented populous. Triple win!

Here’s the PDF of the brochure.

I’ll present the tapas in the order that I consumed them.

La Abadía – To Harrow: puff pastry, respigos, cod, tomato confit, cured ham salt, and parsley oil.

I was very concerned that we might have had the best one first.

La Atalaya – Christmas Seafood Salad: Monkfish, shrimp, tuna, egg and pink sauce.

It was good, but pretty close to a tuna salad mix I can make at home.

La Marina Company – Crunchy Cod Ravioli: Cod, cured beef, leek, wheat flour, olive oil, and paprika.

It was good, but we were still disappointed because of the good food we’ve had out of the Marina Company’s kitchen before. That, and…

The pincho they had for the competition was the least attractive thing in this big pincho display case they had on the bar. How could we not be disappointed?

Cafetería Colón – Seafood Sandwich and a Hit of Sea: fish soup, shellfish croquette and toast.

The brochure reads “ropa de pescado“, which means “seafood clothes”, but I’m pretty sure they meant “sopa de pescado“, so that it’s “seafood soup”. The soup was very good, especially with the cold weather, and they do an excellent job with croquettes at Cafetería Colón. Their kangaroo croquette was our favorite pincho last year.

La Tropicana – Foie and Goat Cheese on Toast: foie, goat cheese, and bread.

The presentation was absolutely abysmal, very unappealing to the eye. But holy cow, it’s foie and goat cheese! It was wonderfully delicious! It definitely got top marks for taste.

El Guti – Fish Meatball Bathed in Fish Velouté: hake, red sea scorpion, salmon, and shrimp sauce.

Again, the taste was better than the presentation. The chef is a friend of ours, and he told us that they weren’t given much time to sign up for the competition, so they threw in an old favorite instead of getting too creative.

Inside the fish meatball.

El Portalón – Duck a l’Orange In Old Clothes: duck, onion, tomato, tomato sauce, raisins, orange, and humus.

This was the first year for El Portalón. Being mainly a restaurant more than a bar, they are usually closed during the work week in the winter, so agreeing to be open all week long for pinchos has never really appealed to them. But then they participated in another pincho competition this past summer and won first place, so their fans forced them into participating in the winter competition.

I’m not a very big fan of anything a l’orange, but this pincho was very good. The use of a slate shingle as a plate was a clever touch.

El Somera – Skewer Of Octopus And Shrimp With Veggies: octopus, jumbo shrimp, vegetables and paprika mayonnaise.

That’s four of them in the picture because we met up with some friends. This one was very, very good; easily in the top three. The following day I turned on the television and the regional news was doing a report on this Semana del Pincho, and they specifically went into El Somera and interviewed the chef.

La Cabaña – The Tramline: toast with cheese and mushrooms.

This was the biggest discrepancy between description and quality; the pincho was much better than the description made it out to be. I was pleasantly surprised. Plus, the cheese was a strong blue cheese, which is always fun.

Dolce Vita – Skewer of Marinated Chicken: chicken, pepper and cherry tomato on a piece of toast.

This was good, but nothing special.

A cool photo of the neon bar sign reflecting in my wine while I was waiting for my pincho.

Bodegón El Faro – Basket of Chorizo With Quail Egg

This was tasty, but colder than it should’ve been served, and a lot smaller than it looks in the photo. Good idea, but mediocre execution.

El Tendal De César – Autumn To Winter: Mushroom crepe with a seaweed reduction and moscatel.

This was a very pleasant surprise. It was bigger than most of them and full of mushroomy goodness. Moscatel sounds like a telecommunications company to me, but it’s really a port wine.

El Sinfo – Gardener Roll: asparagus, crunchy bacon and piquillo sauce with a Pedro Ximenez reduction.

El Sinfo has had the worst pinchos in this competition in past years, and this wasn’t much better. Meh.

Cafetería Berna – Boletus Toast: Boletus edulis, peppers and foie.

I had no idea what Boletus edulis was, but I’ve since learned that it’s a species of wild mushroom. The presentation and taste were excellent, but by the last bite, the pâté was pretty cloying.

Cafetería Nikos – What Crisis?: scallop au gratin in lobster sauce.

The bartender told me to be careful because it might be very hot, so I waited a couple minutes and it turned out to be cold. Despite that mishap, it was very, very good. We had something similar at our wedding.

Cafetería Cartago – Foie Eclipse: foie, potato, French onion, white wine, virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and brown sugar.

The presentation was unrivaled, but the taste was only average. The potato sticks were a bit impractical to eat with a fork.

Bodega la Casona – Crepe Filled With Mushrooms and Scallops with Idiazábal Cheese: bread, mushrooms, scallops, Idiazábal cheese, cream, soft cheese, tomato, garlic and olive oil.

It took us three visits to La Casona to finally get their pincho; once they were closed and another time they had run out. But it was worth it. Boy, was it worth it! What a wonderful sensation with the scallops, mushrooms, cream and cheese all mingling in your mouth. Fantastic!

Conclusion

The competition was fierce. It is extremely hard to pick a winner…but here we go:

Best Presentation: Cafetería Cartago – Foie Eclipse

Best Overall: Bodega la Casona – Crepe Filled With Mushrooms and Scallops with Idiazábal Cheese

Going from bar to bar eating pinchos and drinking wine is probably my all time favorite activity, and it’s the part of Spanish culture I would most miss if I were ever to leave Spain.

It took me four nights to visit 17 of the 22 participating establishments, and I loved every minute of it. Is it time for next year’s competition yet?

It was bigger than my head.

That’s some big fruit.

Of course some of us had to get silly.

It was way bigger than little 9-month-old Nora’s head.

When life gives you lemons…post photos of them on your blog.

Yeste walks towards the corner flag for a corner kick after two attacks on goal by Athletic Bilbao. He hasn’t yet set the ball down when a shout is heard from the far end of the bar: Gooooooal!!! Seconds afterwards, Yeste kicks the ball, which deflects off Lass in the first row, and Llorente scores the goal.

All the excitement of watching a soccer match has been ruined. What just happened?

The article is about a growing problem among bar-going soccer fans in Spain, specifically the lag time between sports radio broadcasts and the digital television signals displaying the events. Due to the nature of digital television, the analog signal has to be encoded on one end, and then decoded on the other, resulting in a lag time of up to 30 seconds. Where as old analog radio signals are just as fast as they’ve always been. Not to mention that once Spain gets off its ass and starts broadcasting television in HD, the added information might double the lag time up to a minute. So you’re at the bar watching the game with the boys and the old pensioner in the corner with ye olde transistor radio is experiencing the excitement well before you are.

And you’ll never guess what the proposed solution is…

AudioFutbol.com is selling radios with a retardador, an audio buffer like anti-skip CD players have so that you can add delay to the radio until it synchronizes with the television! How crazy is that?

Such are the problems of the digital age.

Strangely, the same day I read this article, I saw an episode of Leverage where a mark is conned into betting on a basketball game on a pub television where the signal has been delayed so someone can feed the conman information about what’s about to happen in the game through an ear piece.

Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I call it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all.

But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.