Check out Atlético Rules, who has a nice post on celebrating Thanksgiving in Spain. I don't celebrate it, because I don't like holidays. Most Americans over here do something, though. I remember a particularly eventful Thanksgiving a few years ago at our friend Jane's place. Cinderella Bloggerfeller has pulled off a hilarious spoof of the "delinking" issue that is suddenly all over Blogistan. He's also been adding to the Axis of Porcel, which should have a rapidly expanding readership after this inspired publicity stunt. And Sasha Castel and Andrew Ian Dodge have something to say, so y'all ought to go on over there and check it out. Merde in France, which you ought to be reading--it's even good French practice, since it's bilingual--links to Dissident Frogman and Sofia Sideshow, the first belonging to a rather non-traditional Frenchman and the second to an American who is apparently a movie producer. The Jedman has something growing in his belly button.

Here's a site, called the Expatriate Café, which is aimed at people living or planning to live in Spain. It doesn't appear to have a blogmeister, but is open to all posters, and some people post there a lot. I'm an Old Barcelona Hand so I already know most of this stuff, but it might be of interest to some of you. The site is rather full of youthful exuberance, and I advise anyone influenced to do something based on what he read there to check with me first. There are, unfortunately, people looking to exploit new arrivals, and I noticed a couple of them as posters to this site. (Check out Bob, who'll have $100,000 in five years because of a lawsuit, who is looking for investors in a disco-bar. I wonder if the laws regarding interstate fraud would allow the Attorney General to bust Bob, as his fraudulent ass is hanging out in all fifty states through the Net.) The great majority of the posts look legit, but you should beware of anyone who asks you for a significant amount of money no matter under what guise. I'm exaggerating a little; if you see somebody selling, say, hams over the Net, and you decide you want to buy one, that's perfectly reasonable, but "business opportunities" are clearly something very different, and anything that sounds too good to be true is.

Christopher Hitchens, a writer whom I normally like despite disagreeing with him 90% of the time, has had a falling-out with his friends on the Left over the War against Terrorism. Hitch is for it and almost all his other pals are against it. The situation has become so tragic that Hitch has had to leave the American left-wing rag The Nation; this means there is now no longer any possible reason I might have to read The Nation. He's got two posts up in Slate, one on anti-Americanism and another that I don't agree with but will link to out of fairness on Henry Kissinger; it wouldn't be fair to claim Hitch as a complete convert to the Right. Not yet. I bet he's well on the way, though, just as I figure that Orwell, his hero, if he'd lived, would have come over to the Right on economic and international issues. Orwell was too anti-totalitarian to have sided with the Russians in the Cold War, as we know from his list for the British government and Nineteen Eighty-Four. As for economics, a lot of intelligent Brits of Orwell's age were some kind of radical Socialist. They'd grown up and lived their young adulthood in Britain between 1914 and 1945, an especially rough span of years to be British. No wonder they were pissed off at the system in general. Everyone was poor, nothing worked, and it always seemed like another war was right around the corner. The most intelligent of that lot figured out by about 1956 that capitalism could be combined with a lot of social-democratic rhetoric and some social-democratic action (though most didn't come all the way over to capitalism), and that Soviet Russia was definitely an evil to be resisted. If they didn't figure that out after Hungary in 1956, they weren't smart enough to ever figure it out. Orwell would have been one of those who was smart enough to figure it out. By '56 he'd have become a hawkish supporter of Labour.

In soccer news, last night Barcelona beat Bayer Leverkusen away, 1-2. Van Gaal started a rough, defensive team with only one forward, Kluivert, in what looked like a slightly confused 4-5-1. (Four defensemen, five midfielders, one forward.)Near the end of the first half Bayer scored on a header off a corner kick. At halftime Van Gaal pulled out Mendieta, who needs a benching, and defensive midfielder Gabri, and put in Riquelme and Saviola, changing to a 4-3-3 with Riquelme playing behind Saviola and Kluivert and feeding them passes. Saviola almost immediately stole the ball and ran a give-and-go with Riquelme; Savi blasted the ball into the goal from close range. One-one. Then they fouled Kluivert in the area and Riquelme blew the penalty kick. Barça kept attacking and they put in Overmars for Motta, making the alignment even more offensive, really a 4-2-4. This was very exciting football, with two chances for Savi, one for Riquelme, and a header by Kluivert off a corner, with Bayer defending all-out but one step behind the Barça players. Then, with only a couple of minutes left, Riquelme fed Kluivert in the area, who unselfishly fed Overmars, who crossed up the goalie and drove the ball to the far post. One-two. Barça has won its last seven European games, in contrast with their extrememly mediocre performance in the Spanish League.

In Barça's Group A, it's Inter Milan and Barça with three points each and Bayer and Newcastle zero. In Group B, Valencia tied Ajax last night, 1-1; the standings are Arsenal 3, Ajax and Valencia 1, AS Roma 0. Group C: Borussia Dortmund and AC Milan 3, Real Madrid and Lokomotiv Moscow 0. Group D: Manchester U 3, Deportivo and Juventus 1, Basel 0.

The fallout from the fans throwing crap on the field last Saturday in FC Barcelona's Camp Nou is hitting the fan. Some joker threw a (roasted) piglet's head at Madrid player Luis Figo. Other possibly dangerous stuff, like mobile phones and a whiskey bottle, was also thrown. You need to remember, as the National Geographic survey proved, not all Europeans know too much about geography. The most that most people in Europe know about Barcelona is the soccer team, which, until now, was highly respected in the rest of Europe. (OK, people remember the Olympics, too. Gaudí is known among those who can read.) This episode has not made either the team or the city look too good. The German papers headlined, "Achtung! The pig throwers are coming!" over their stories about Barça's visit to Leverkusen. That is not precisely the image the city fathers wish to promote. Get this, one of the Barça executives commented regarding the piglet's head, "It's a setup by the Madrid papers. Here in Catalonia we don't eat roast piglet." (It wasn't a setup. It really happened; the TV footage shows it.) Van Gaal also had a good quote when some German reporter asked him how his team was reacting to the vilification of everything regarding the Barça by the German press: "I don't think my players read the Bild am Sonntag."

In war news, the Vanguardia is reporting that the American plans for Iraq include a small, fast invasion aimed at paralyzing the Iraqi state's communication channels and energy supplies. There are some 30,000 soldiers now in position to be used and there are 45,000 more who can be deployed in the area within a few days. There are more than 1000 tanks and thousands of tons of supplies at American facilities in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrein, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Turkey, and Diego Garcia, ready to be used. Hundreds of land-based planes are stationed in the area, and there are two carrier groups on the scene, the Abraham Lincoln and the George Washington. Three more are on the way: the Constellation, Kitty Hawk, and Harry Truman. Each carrier group can attack 700 targets a day, four times as many as in Gulf War I. CIA operatives have supposedly already infiltrated northern Iraq, and, we wouldn't believe this if they hadn't cited Time magazine, Israeli units have already swept Iraq's western desert looking for Scud launch bases. Meanwhile, should Iraq fire at any British or American aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones, as they have the bad habit of doing, there will be retaliation--not just the destruction of antiaircraft batteries and radar installations, but also of command and communications centers and the Iraqi fiber-optic network.

This is overwhelming force. Saddam's government and army will fold up like a house of cards when it is turned loose. We just hope they get him before he can gas or infect our guys, which he will undoubtedly do if he gets the chance, since he knows the only outcome of this is his head on the end of a pike no matter whether he uses bio-chem weapons, which he certainly possesses, or not. There should be no retaliation by Allied forces with bio-chem or nuclear weapons. We'll win anyway, even without them, and it would be silly as well as inhumane to use that stuff on troops who are only a day or two away from surrendering anyway, not to mention any unfortunate civilians in the area. And how much do you want to bet they're planning some sort of Skorzeny-rescuing-Mussolini caper, ready to jump in there and grab Saddam by surprise? If they could somehow pull that off it would save a lot of lives.

Said Susan Sontag in Madrid, as quoted in yesterday's Vanguardia: "I've always been a little ashamed to be American." (I've always been a little ashamed that you're American, too. You know, if you're ashamed of it, you could easily emigrate to a country you could feel proud of. I hear there are opportunities for sugar-cane choppers in Cuba.) "This is something that comes from long before 9-11 and Bush." (Let me get this straight. 9-11 makes you embarrassed to be American?) "It's a good thing to feel uncomfortable." (Perhaps this is why Ms. Sontag enjoys autoflagellation so much.) "Now there's no political debate there." (Gee, I looked at today's Washington Post and Fox News and it looked to me like there was plenty of political debate.) "We have only one party there, the Republicans, because the Democratic opposition doesn't exist." (Doesn't exist? What party do the Baghdad Three, Maxine Waters, and Terry McAuliffe belong to, not to mention Billy "White Stain" Clinton and Al Gore? And whose fault is it that they keep losing elections? America is a democratic republic, remember, and if the Dems are out of power, it's because the people put them there.) "They're building a new, horrible imperialism." (You call it what you want, Susie. I think "national security" is a better term, myself.) "A lot of people are against this, but they have no voice or political representation." (Remember, Susie, we've had a couple of elections in the last two years, and a handful of smart people like you torpedoed Al Gore in 2000 because he wasn't quite nutty enough for you. You had to go bolt the party and vote for Nader. Now, I'm thrilled that you did, because you took enough of the Democrat vote to put Bush in. It was the Left, using its voice and political representation, that got Bush elected. As for your European pals, the French Left is so dumb, even dumber than the American Left, that they went out and did the same thing a couple of years later by wasting their votes on assorted Trotskyites and got their man Jospin massacred in the first round.) "Since 9-11 I've received death threats, in writing and by telephone. But as long as they don't shoot me, it doesn't bother me." (Susie, you're so brave and heroic. Look, you are so insignificant in the global scheme of things that it's not worth anybody's while to take the necessary risks involved to kill you. If you are assassinated, I will personally eat The Road to Serfdom at high noon in the Plaza Sant Jaume with all-i-oli and salsa brava.)

Here in Spain we not only have the ETA, we've also got a minor-league terrorist gang called the GRAPO. They're not nationalists like the ETA, though ETA also proclaims itself to be Marxist; they're extreme leftists, like the Baader-Meinhoffs or the Red Brigades. The last really bad thing they did was a couple of years ago when they robbed an armored car in Galicia and a couple of security guards, I believe, were killed in the shootout. Their most famous recent crime was the kidnapping of prominent Zaragoza businessman Publio Cordón a few years back; the GRAPO claims that they got the ransom money and turned Cordón loose. They've been quite insistent about it over the years, but Cordón has never turned up. I'm sure they didn't kill him; killing a kidnap victim after you've received the ransom money is very bad business. The most popular theory is that Cordón died on them in captivity of a heart attack or something along those lines. Another hypothesis is that Cordón took the opportunity to disappear after he was set free and is now living it up in Rio or Bangkok.

Anyway, the GRAPO is just about finished and a good solid nail was driven into its coffin by the Guardia Civil, who busted seven of its leaders on Tuesday in Madrid. Among the arrested were two of the three members of the command troika and several smaller fish in the propaganda, finance, and communications organizations. Good. Lock 'em up and throw away the key. One of the arrestees, María Carmen López Anguita, was released from prison in 1999. She had been sentenced to 385 years in 1979 for the murder of eight people in a Madrid coffee shop. Two of the other arrestees have also done serious time.

Here's a good piece from National Review on what college international relations textbooks are teaching about terrorism these days. If you want to read a real right-wing American hawk, check out this article by Victor Davis Hanson. And here's Jonah Goldberg's Thanksgiving column, which he had the gall to reprint from last year.

For some insane bullshit regarding the ETA check this out. Check out the rest of the site, too. These people are nuts. I hope they're too insignificant to be dangerous.

The Vanguardia has a table on the sources of petroleum pollution in the oceans. In thousands of tons of petroleum and its derivatives spilled into the oceans per year, these are the six biggest sources:

Sewers (urban and industrial waste): 1,343.
Ship maintenance (cleaning, etc.): 466.
Atmospheric emissions (carried by rain to the sea): 340.
Natural sources (undersea geological releases): 229.
Tanker accidents: 126.
Oil drilling platforms (maintenance and accidental spills): 51.

What the chart shows is that tanker spills have a disastrous effect but only in small, specific places. The best thing that can be done to protect the environment in general from petroleum pollution is to build water treatment plants and hazardous waste disposal sites and to stop dumping the stuff straight from the sewers into the ocean. This kind of pollution is concentrated in poor countries, since the rich ones have already built the necessary facilities. Barcelona has barely started on its water treatment plants; they've built a small one on the Llobregat south of town, but they have to build another to take care of all the crap from the Barcelona suburbs out there. As for the Besós north of town, they're building a big plant right now which will go into operation within a couple of years. But, right now, of the crap that Catalonia dumps into the Mediterranean, only about a fourth of it is treated; this hasn't been permitted in America since the Seventies. The other thing that really needs to be done is some enforcement of the international maritime standards on when and where you can clean the bilge out of your ship. Again, this kind of pollution tends to be concentrated in the Third World--the Equatorial Guinea harbor police, say, probably aren't nearly as efficient, or existent, as those in Copenhagen. After that, doing things to reduce emissions into the atmosphere, like mandating unleaded gas and getting cars with primitive, i.e. pre-Nineties in America, emissions systems off the road is important not only for air quality but for water quality, too.

If I were to put my anti-pollution money where my mouth is, the first thing I'd do is get rid of my 1988 Renault and buy a new car with a catalytic converter. (The Spanish government runs a successful plan every few years to get old hunks of junk off the road, giving you a big tax break if you buy a new car and junk one that is more than, say, ten years old. They also have a strict vehicle-inspection program, and crappy old cars just don't pass it. We applaud both measures.) The second thing I'd do is demand that my taxes be raised in order to build bigger, better water treatment plants so that my poo will no longer just float on out to the Mediterranean. Well, I'm all for spending lots of my tax money on water treatment plants. That should be a major governmental priority. I'm just against spending it on some of the other dumb stuff they currently spend it on--not so much the conservative central government, which has balanced its budget three years in a row, but the Catalanist regional and Socialist municipal governments, neither of whom even bother to pretend not to be lavishly spending our money on toys.

Note on American sports in Spain: Basketball is very popular. The Spanish league is one of the two or three best in Europe, and many former NBA players play over here. The Catalans are very proud of their homeboy Pau Gasol, who plays for Memphis in the NBA. The Spaniards just don't get the concept of baseball, perhaps justifiably. As for American football, the Barcelona Dragons of NFL Europe are not precisely a hot ticket. A common Spanish complaint is that it's exciting when there's a nice pass or a good tackle or a long runback, but the game is just too slow and has too many interruptions.

What I'd do to get rid of all the damn interruptions is to set up a very simple rule: Allow no substitutions during a series of downs and allow only thirty seconds between plays. Substitutions during a series could only be made if a player was injured, and that player couldn't return to the game. This would reduce the time between plays and would force the team to always have a player who could kick on the field, since you wouldn't be allowed to bring in specialist kickers and punters. The all-around player would have a big advantage over the specialist; you'd want decathletes instead of sprinters and weightlifters. You wouldn't see nickel backs or designated pass-rushers or third-down backs or deep snappers or quarterbacks who can't do anything but throw. Teams would go for it more often on fourth down and a 40-yarder would become a long field goal again. If you proceeded to get rid of TV timeouts, allow the same 30 seconds for a change of possession as for any other break between plays, get rid of the two-minute warning, get rid of video replays, and cut rosters to 40 players to force everyone on the team to be able to play both ways and in several positions, that should bring the game down to a little over two hours and make it a lot more exciting, much more like the glory days of the late fifties and early sixties that old-time fans remember as the best years of the NFL. As for TV commercials, there would be a lot fewer, sure; that would make them more valuable so the networks could charge more for each one--and if the game became even more popular because it was faster and more exciting, the ad spaces would cost advertisers that much more. Will they do this? Naah.

Spanish Cannabis Slang:

hashish: chocolate, costo, grifa.
marijuana: maría, hierba.
a joint: un porro, un canuto, un petardo.
a hit: una calada.
stoned: fumado, colocado.
a stoner: un fumeta.
to light (a cigarette or a joint): petar.
to roll (a joint): liar.

La Ley del Fumeta:
El que lo lia lo peta.
The Smoker's Law:
The guy who rolls it lights it.

I felt like getting out of the house last night so I went down to Miguel's bar downtown. It's sort of like a speakeasy--it doesn't have a sign, you have to push a button outside that lights up a bulb inside, so they know to let you in. It's all stone inside, what used to be the stable and the basement storage rooms of a large fifteenth-century house. The effect is kind of like that of an opium den with heavy metal on the stereo. It's not like an exclusive place or anything; I've never seen anyone turned away, but you do have to know where it is. Miguel sells, uh, herbacious and other organic substances. He has a code that I think is more of a joke than anything else; you ask for, say, a twenty-five euro ticket to the Al Green concert. This will get you six or seven grams, which is a pretty good deal. You can also ask for tickets to James Brown or Barry White. I don't do Barry White. It's a lot easier to get James Brown around here, since we're so close to Morocco. The Rif is the world's number one producer of hashish, and smoking hash is really very traditional among those social classes along the margin of respectability in Spain. People used to pick up the habit doing military service in old Spanish Morocco, the Spanish Sahara, Ceuta, and Melilla. Al Green is so much more bulky than James Brown that they don't ship Al in from Morocco--it's all locally-grown. When you can find Al, which isn't always, it's available at a better price-per-puff than James since it only passes through one or two hands between the grower and the seller. But you can always find James at reasonable prices. The supply is guaranteed.

Miguel's place is interesting because not only is it an emporium for organic substances, but it's a regular bar that people come to for regular bar reasons. There wasn't much business last night, so I sat down with Miguel, this guy Lluís, and this Dominican guy named Mike who lived in New York for a few years. He likes me because he can speak English with me--he's justifiably proud of his good English, and I understand his English better than his Spanish anyway because his Dominican accent is so thick. Dominicans drop word-final S, among other consonants, and they don't distinguish between the Y and LL; both sound like an English ZH. Mike pronounces the name Lluís "zhoo-EE", while a Catalan would say something like "lyoo-EES". We engaged in mild substance abuse and watched the soccer on TV--Milan beat Real Madrid in Champions' League play, 1-0, and Deportivo tied Juventus 2-2. Both games were very good, and in deference to this blog's 75% American readership, I shall speak of soccer no more today, except for this TV note: All Champions' League games on the same day are played simultaneously, so they show one game live on the main Televisión Española channel, TV1, and don't tell you anything about the other one. Then, when the live game is over, you switch over to TV2 and they show the other game as if it were live, and since you don't know the final score, it might as well be. This is why, when Miguel let somebody into the bar during the second game, the first thing he said was "SSSHHHHTTTT!" just in case the guy was going to spill the beans. It's a great, compressed, three-and-a-half hour sports extravaganza, the best teams with the finest players in the biggest stadiums with the loudest fans, and you can see two whole games in the time it takes you to watch just one NFL game.

Here's the first paragraph of a piece by Miguel Ángel Aguilar from today's Vanguardia. Aguilar is not an idiotarian, though I've never found him too interesting in general. Anyway, check out what he's got to say.

Some American journalists are running around Europe digging into the environmental level of anti-Americanism. This search in Spain is completely useless. Here anti-American feeling died fifteen years ago. During decades it fed on two sources. The first, the defeat of 1898 in a war touched off by the falsehood of (American accusations of Spanish guilt in the sinking of) the Maine, which was perpetrated through the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst, a true man-before-his-time. Since then, all wars have been preceded by the necessary media preparation, destined to promote warlike ardor, spread hate, and foster antagonism. The second, the support provided by the United States to General Franco. The Americans say because of the necessities of the Cold War. But there is a contrast: in so many European countries the Americans were liberators from the Nazi-Fascist yoke, while here they appeared as a support for a dictatorship that without them and the agreement of the Holy See would have lacked the necessary oxygen to survive.

Aguilar's point about the Spanish-American War is dead on. That was, realistically, a naked American power grab; the only possible excuses are the fact that other countries at the time were even more rapacious in their search for colonies and influence and by the fact that the Americans treated their colonized peoples better than anyone except the British. Aguilar, I think, is mistaken about the Americans and Franco. Franco had been in power by 1953 for fourteen years and he had no serious opposition within Spain. The Americans had tried being unfriendly to Franco between 1945 and 1953--Truman hated Franco and America refused to have anything to do with the Spanish government during that time. For example, America vetoed Spain's application to join the UN in 1946. Spain was not admitted to the original Marshall Plan. But a civil war was raging in Greece between the Communists and the Western-backed anti-Communists, and the Russians had just finished their own power grab in Eastern Europe, culminating in the 1948 coup in democratic Czechoslovakia and the Berlin Airlift. Then the Russians tested an atomic bomb and Franco began looking not so awful. When Eisenhower became President in 1953, replacing Truman, the last obstacle to a Hispano-American rapprochement was gone; Churchill had become British Prime Minister again the year before and he, too, was in favor of an aperture to Franco. The deal was made that same year: America would get bases in Spain and Spain would get American economic aid.

The international acceptance of Spain coincided, probably not randomly, with the softening of the Franco regime. In 1950 Spain was desperately poor, internationally isolated, brutally governed, and dependent upon Argentina's Perón for food shipments. In 1960 things were clearly looking up. Spain was more prosperous than before, in touch with the modern world, and Spaniards could pretty much do what they wanted except express themselves politically in public. Not a great situation, but better than before, and by 1970 democracy was clearly on the horizon. Anyway, Franco would not have been overthrown by the Spaniards themselves, and American aid didn't change that; Franco had already been in power for fourteen years in 1953 with no serious attempts at removing him, and the choices for America were 1) hold your nose and use Franco as an ally against the Russians, or 2) maintain Franco as an enemy and hold the moral high ground. There are good arguments for both possible choices, but everybody needs to accept that choice 3) get rid of Franco was not on the menu, unless the Spaniards did it themselves. And that they didn't do. Many Spaniards, like Aguilar, blame America for Franco's long dictatorship; they might do better to look in the mirror.

Paul Hollander says that there are four causes of European anti-Americanism: historical grievances, Marxism, fear of the cultural threat, and nationalism. Aguilar is correct when he says that Spain's historical grievances against America are mostly forgotten in Spain today. That's largely true. If they're not completely forgotten, they're no longer deeply felt. As far as historical grievances go, the Spaniard-on-the-street is more likely to be anti-British (over Gibraltar) than anti-American. He is, however, obviously wrong on the other three counts, as our recent series of translations and dissections should demonstrate.

The French cops have done it again. They made eleven arrests in the Paris suburbs over the weekend of people affiliated with Al Qaeda, including Slimane Jalfoui, an Algerian who is a main connection between various European Al Qaeda cells. These guys are suspected of being behind a planned attack on the London underground which was foiled and also the Frankfurt cell's plot to blow up Strasbourg Cathedral at Christmas 2000. We do a lot of France-bashing, but we've always paid our dues when it comes to the French police and security services. They've been doing good work rounding up both Al Qaeda and ETA terrorists.

I've been listening to this "Internet radio" station out of East Tennessee that bills itself as playing "Americana and bluegrass". They play good stuff, real down-home music, not slicked-up country-pop. In case any non-Americans want to hear real hillbilly music, check these guys out. And you'll love the disk-jockeys' accents, some of which you don't hear all that much anymore now that American culture has become so homogenized.

For those of you interested in the Gibraltar controversy, here's the appropriate section of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, Article 10, which deals with the cession of Gibraltar to the British Crown. Note in particular the first paragraph, which puts the lie to the canard that by treaty no civilians were to live in Gibraltar, and in which it is specified that Gibraltar is to be ceded to Britain forever. Also note the clause on Jews and Moors, who according to the treaty are not to be permitted to live in Gibraltar. During the Franco years Spain demanded the return of Gibraltar on the ground that the British had broken this clause. They no longer use this particular argument, at least not publicly. The last paragraph does specify that Spain is to have the first right of refusal if Gibraltar is to be sold or granted to another nation, but it doesn't say anything that conflicts with the current state of affairs, though it might be used to impugn the possible independence of Gibraltar.

National Geographic has this survey on geographical knowledge that you might want to take. You really ought to get a perfect score if you're smart enough to read this blog, or any blog. We won't beat you too severely if you miss a couple. The fun part is that the survey was given to 300 18-24 year-olds in each of these countries, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Sweden, and to 500 Americans in that age group, and you can compare your scores to theirs.

The disgraceful thing is not so much the Americans' lousy performance, which is pretty awful, worse than anyone except Mexico. Canada and Britain didn't do any better than America. It's everyone's lousy performance. People around the world are geographically illiterate. That doesn't mean you guys, it means the Great Unwashed out there.

We suppose the story is this. Most people retain information that is useful to them and forget information of marginal or zero utility. If you don't travel and have a typical office job, if you don't read much and watch a good bit of TV, if you don't keep up with a newspaper or use the Net to get the news, you don't need to know much geography except for that of your immediate area, no matter where you live. So you forget it and are never reminded of it again in your life until you see it on a goofy test like this one. It's like the necessity of knowing a foreign language; if you stay in your country, don't need a foreign language for your job, and don't read much, you'll never need to know a foreign language in your life, so you forget what little you learned in school. And I sure don't remember the quadratic theorem, not having used it since Math 101 in fall semester 1984, in which I got a B. About the most I can do mathematically is simple algebra, because that's the maximum I need to know--that and enough about statistics to have some idea of whether they're legit or not.

It's still pretty disgraceful that significant percentages of people got any of these geography questions wrong. Typical slackers.

I love the Crime Library. Check out this story about this idiot, getting paid eight hundred bucks a trip in order to smuggle in leather goods from Pakistan. How smart is that?

The Jedman shares his views on personal space, current fashion, and personal hygiene.