FROGLEGS

Two things I learned from this video:
1. Even heads of state blow off steam in public. The King will more than likely get in trouble for this, but I still think he’s a dude.
2. Hugo Chavez is a whiner. He needs to learn when to speak and when to shut up.

I might comment on this later and why I think the Juan Carlos was so incensed by Chavez’s comments.

We’re back in the US for my sister’s wedding and to visit family.  It’s been nearly 2 years since we were last back and everytime there are things that just strike me as strange or absurd.  Not bad, mind you.  I’m not passing judgement.  I just find them really weird.  Here’s a quick list:

•  Since when is the cost of living in Brooklyn almost exactly the same as living in Sevilla?
• Taking money out of the Spanish bank in the US is fun.  Euros = muchos dolares.  Nice.  Usually it’s the other way around.  Dolares = not very many Euros.
• Variety of choice in US supermarkets.  Who really needs 100’s of breakfast cereals?  We seem to get by in Spain with about 15.  How do we do it?
• 800 television channels?  Seriously?
• People you don’t know talk to you.  Its kind of cool, but it freaked me out at first.  Folks in Spain will always say something about Sophia.  But a guy in line at the supermarket the other day just started talking to me about the weather.  That doesn’t really happen in Spain.
• Analog mobile phones still work over here.  Hilarious.
• MLS Soccer looks about as elegant as my high school soccer team.  Note to Fox Soccer Channel: Don’t put Spanish Primera League highlights in the same program with MLS highlights.  It doesn’t make American sports look very good.

We’re on the East Coast until the 7th of November.  Then we head to California for fun in the sun. 

The BBC is reporting that the suicide rate rises in hot weather. The tagline for the story reads: “The damp summer may have made us all miserable, but research suggests it is hot weather that really tips us over the edge.”

The article features a summary of a study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in which “researchers found that once the daily average temperature rose above 18C each further degree increase was associated with a rise in suicides of almost 4%.”

Wow! What if the Brits lived in Andalucia where the current average temperature is around 35C? Shouldn’t they all be lining up nooses in their back gardens for a communal “offing”? Oh wait, they do live in Andalucia. About 1.4 million of them are having the retirement of their lives down on the sunny Costa del Sol. Be right back, just going to go check the news here in Spain…

… Nope, nothing there. I am happy to report that there has not been a self-imposed purge of Brits on the coast surrounding Málaga!

I might be the only one that finds this to be a humorous insight into the British psyche, but isn’t it a bit odd that as a country recovers from the worst spat of bad weather (in which several friends of mine were either nearly flooded or flooded) anyone can remember, London’s Institute of Psychiatry publishes a study that the good weather can kill you too?

Talk about being stuck between a rock and and a hard place.

I’m working on an essay about the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade this week. There are a few things that jump out at me:

• The Holocaust of the Jews during WWII, horrific as it was, involved about one fifth of the fatalities of what must surely be considered in today’s parlance “Africa’s Holocaust”. Conservative estimates put the total traffic of the Atlantic slave trade at around 40 million total slaves bought on the African coast. Around 27 million survived the “middle passage“.
• As much as we’d like to think that an altruistic appeal to Judeo-Christian humanistic values led to the abolition of the slave trade, it is more likely that it ended because a)it was becoming less profitable and b) it was in the best interest of the British Empire and its unbelievably large naval fleet to do so.
• William Wilberforce was probably not at all like he was portrayed to be in the recent movie “Amazing Grace” and countless sermons and Christian books. (This might lead me to go on a rant about why we, as followers of Jesus Christ, seem to have a penchant for being dishonest about our history?)
• Thomas Clarkson was a dude worth making movies about.

Rant continues after the break…

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Apparently, Sevilla is on a fast track to become one of the greener cities in Europe. Both Engadget and AutoblogGreen picked up a story featured on the Agencia Andaluza de Energia (Andalucian Energy Agency website which says that there is a plan afoot to convert all of the city’s stoplights to energy-saving LED models. That is a fantastic plan and a great way to spend tax-payer’s money. I think investing in sure fire energy-saving methods is extremely appropriate at this time in history.

We’ve also got a solar power plant under construction that could, if expanded, power the entire city. I think that would probably make Sevilla one of the greenest cities in the world, wouldn’t it?

As this is Sevilla, the land of patronage and corruption, anything could go wrong between now and the completion of these two projects. But the fact that they have been approved and received funding is promising. Maybe Andalucia isn’t as backwater as some have thought in the past?

I was saddened last Friday to hear that Buck O’Neil had died in Kansas City, Missouri. A lot of you that read this blog won’t have the faintest idea who Buck O’Neil was. You might not care. Fair enough, just click on to the next blog and have a nice day. But I’ll be honest with you: you are a poorer person for not having ever encountered Buck O’Neil.

For me, and for many others, Buck O’Neil was one of the defining personalities of professional baseball. He grew up at a time in American history when being born black segregated you into a separate society. Baseball was no exception to that rule. For decades, blacks were forced to play professional baseball in a league of their own which they called the “Negro Leagues“. Buck was one of the great players in the league and he played with some of the most amazing athletes to have ever graced the game.

So why was an elderly black man from Florida, who I never actually met, important to me? Well, it has to do with a dark little secret that most readers of this blog don’t know.

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