No news today. The green line of the metro went down today between 8:30 and 9 AM, thereby screwing up the system during morning rush hour. Meanwhile, a car wreck on the motorway leading into town from the suburbs in the Vallés at around 8:30 AM caused a seven-mile backup. Probably nearly 100,000 people got to work an hour late, costing us that much productivity. When one piece of the puzzle goes down, the entire infrastructure feels it.

Three-quarters of Spanish workers are suffering from workplace stress and feel burned out. Of these, three-quarters claim to be suffering health problems due to said stress. Causes: Not knowing what is expected of them, not being permitted to make decisions, and not feeling secure about their future.

I would add generally distant management that is not able to convince the worker that his and the company's interests are the same. I would also add that small businesses in Spain often try to exploit their workers big-time, I believe more so than in the United States. My wife Remei has only been satisfied with the way management has treated her at one of the small companies she's worked at; I can personally state that small language academies in Spain are generally very badly run.

More boat people: 34 black African illegal immigrants arrived near Almeria today, having crossed the Mediterranean from Morocco. The foreign press didn't notice.

44% of Spanish university students admit having used a cheat sheet on an exam, and 47% admit copying off another student's paper. Now they're trying electronic tricks, using MP3s and the like to store information. I can't claim to be Mr. Ethics and Morality, having fallen short of my own standards many times, but I never cheated on a test. One thing is that I was always good at school, so I never felt like I had to.

In America they take this really seriously. I knew a guy at KU who got expelled from the university for cheating on a chemistry final exam. Not much loss; he was a jerk anyway. Ted Kennedy got kicked out of Harvard for cheating on a Spanish final.

Latin gang fight in Madrid last night: two stabbed, one seriously, and three arrested. At least in Madrid the Latin Kings aren't a "cultural organization."

Heavy rains and flooding in the Basque Country, especially near Bilbao. They've evacuated parts of several towns, including Guecho and Santurce. Some of the highways are closed down, and the trains have been seriously delayed. Nobody's died yet or anything really bad like that. Here in Catalonia the reservoirs are all above 50% of capacity, and several are higher than that.

Barcelona sold Zambrotta to Milan for €9 million and Giovani dos Santos to Tottenham for €8 million. I think they gave up on Giovani too quickly, he's got tremendous talent, but the story is that he picked up a lot of bad habits in Rijkaard's free-and-easy clubhouse.

Other news from around here:

Zap says he's going to turn over management of the Barcelona commuter train system and the Barcelona airport to the Generalitat. Somehow I think this will mean that they go from being badly administered by Spanish bureaucrats to being badly administered by Catalan bureaucrats. How about a little privatization?

Domestic violence increased by 29% in 2007 in Barcelona, while sexual assaults increased by 32%. I imagine most of the increase is due to a higher percentage of crimes being reported, but this is not good.

More African boat people: a cayuco with 55 persons on board reached Tenerife. I am tired of the international media ignoring this story.

Basque prime minister Ibarretxe is going on and on about his October 25 referendum on self-determination for the Basque Country. The problem, of course, is that such a referendum is unconstitutional, besides having no legal value. But Ibarretxe says he's going to hold the damn thing anyway, and that its results will be binding if approved by the Basque Parliament. He's wrong, of course, since the Constitutional Court outranks the Basque regional government.

For comparison's sake, imagine if Alabama were to hold a referendum on reinstating segregation, banned by the US Constitution. Or on outlawing abortion, protected by the US constitution. Or establishing the Baptist Church, executing juveniles by burning at the stake, raising the voting age to 30, or banning the Communist Manifesto. What do you think would be the consequence, whether they passed it or not?

Ruiz-Gallardon announced his support for Rajoy in a speech at which Esperanza Aguirre did not show up. Read into that what you will.

So the government polling agency CIS, and why we need one I don't know, did a survey ranking world leaders in popularity here in Spain. Michele Bachelet was first, and Lula de Silva was second. Bush came in third from last, followed by Castro and Chavez.

Spanish heartthrob pop singer Alejandro Sanz is appearing in the Spanish-language pro-Obama ad, titled "Podemos." Although Sanz is not American, of course, he does have freedom of speech and so he can say what he wants, including endorsing a candidate in another country's elections. I remember back in 2000, though, when the American singer Gloria Estefan campaigned for Jose Maria Aznar, and the entire Spanish left became very indignant at this foreign interference. So which is it, people?

The Lakers, featuring Catalan power forward Pau Gasol, made the NBA finals, where they'll play Boston. Everybody's getting all excited about it over here, especially the media, and of course 100% of them are backing the Lakers. I don't care because I 'm not interested in the NBA; half of me wants the Lakers to lose because I've never liked them and their big-city Hollywood glamour image, and the other half wants the Celtics to lose because it would piss off Bill Simmons so much. I suppose I'll be rooting for Boston because former Kansas star Paul Pierce plays for them.

The orgasmicness over Gasol, billed as the first Spanish player in the NBA finals by TV1 and the first Catalan player in the finals by TV3, is going a bit too far; he's a good player, but not an All-Star. Oh, well, he's happy to get out of Memphis, which he bad-mouthed for years in the Spanish press, and get him some media spotlight.

Oh, yeah, speaking of TV3, they've taken it off their site now, but last night they headlined their story about the "new" Amazon tribe, "A tribe that has never seen white men before." Uh, guys, they've never seen black people, or East Asian people, either. Not to mention women of any of those races. Talk about sexist ethnocentrism. I demand an investigation. Heads must roll.