Friday, September 28, 2012

CASE CLOSED: "Couples who share the housework are more likely to divorce, study finds.  Divorce rates are far higher among “modern” couples who share the housework than in those where the woman does the lion’s share of the chores, a Norwegian study has found. "

So tell her to do the dishes and clean the bathroom... it's for your marriage's sake!

UPDATE. Unsurprisingly, people quickly jumped on Twitter. Speaking more seriously, the headline messes up cause and effect; the article body explains it better. What the study finds is that the divorce rate among couples who share house chores is higher than among those who don't, nothing more, nothign less. But that doesn't mean that sharing it leads to divorce. What happens is that couples who share it tend to be more 'modern', less traditional; they are the kind of couple who also see divorce as more 'natural' than more traditional ones.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

I DIDN'T HAVE TIME to write about the New York Times' piece on hunger in Spain and how people were dumpster-dumping for garbage to eat (I was going to write "disappointing piece" but, alas, it's no surprise that the Grey Lady's reporting is, to put it mildly, improvable). Plus, people could say that I had some sort of horse in the race and couldn't be objective.

Well, a Barcelona-based American writer, Mark Herman, has responded. One-sentence summary: "What the f*ck are you talking about, NYT?" (I paraphrase).

Thursday, September 20, 2012

WHY the newpapers' situation is not due to the internet, in one chart:


Wednesday, September 12, 2012

THIS IS GOOD NEWS—only if you look at the short term: "Germany and Europe can both breathe a sigh of relief on Wednesday: The Federal Constitutional Court has rejected a petition to stop the ratification of the permanent euro rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism. The decision clears the way for the ESM to go into effect."

So is the Euro saved? Not by a long shot. At least not for our grandchildren, who will be those paying this stuff.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

11 YEARS AGO, just a few minutes before everything happened.


Thursday, September 06, 2012

MY WORLDVIEW, my whole intellectual edifice, just came crumbling down... it turns out, according to this CIA unclassified document, that it was the agency's analysts who blew it in their assessment that Iraq had WMD.

So.... it wasn't Bush? Wow, I know quite a few heads about to explode...

GREAT MOMENTS in governance: "Simon Burns, appointed Minister of State for Transport in the wake of this week’s Cabinet reshuffle, was convicted in 2009 of careless driving following an incident that left a cyclist with his neck broken in two places, it has emerged."

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

I'M GUILTY of sometimes neglecting the blog a little more than I should. Being busy as I am, I often find the just time to post a quick comment or a reply on Twitter but little else. So to merge the best of both worlds I have added the new interactive timeline that Twitter allows using elsewhere.

So if you want to see what I'm up to, go straight to the right part of this blog, below the Amazon ad, and you'll find continuously updated tweets.

Let me know what you think...

PROS AND CONS of living with your significant other...

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

THOSE ARE the homes of 25 of the top tech titans.

TALK ABOUT METAPHORS: "European Parliament's Brussels debating chamber closed because of faulty roof"

Saturday, September 01, 2012

HAPPY SEPTEMBER, EVERYONE! To celebrate, I've prepared a September Special on BarceMusic, with tunes that will pop out throughout the day. Check it out!