Yah know?
I try not to post too much here that is negative, but jeez, starting to feel like I'd have to be the biggest sort of ostrich.
Climate change is upon us. Well done us.
Middle east, where does one start?
Spain? sigh. I think I know too much. Canaries wanted to have a referendum about fracking. Seems they're not allowed. Valencia, they were fracking there too, got it stopped, but the Spanish gov't has decided to give the company 1.5 million (or is that billions, see below) Euros cause they had to stop. The health center in town has shut down all but normal working hours and the school has no optionals, but we can spare 1.5 million. Oh, and know who owns the company? The same guy who owns Real Madrid. That football team.
Oh and also, the utter unimaginable stupidity of differences in the meaning of a billion between the US and the UK. I mean honestly. S.T.U.P.I.D.
And the BBC, as a final comment in a minor article mentioned Spains deepening financial crisis. I thought things were actually starting to improve. They seem to be in day to day ways around us. Maybe trusting what I see is better than trusting what a journalist in London says, no?
On another note, the Catalans just voted in what is probably the most advanced LGBTQ legislation in the world, and funcionaris (FUNCIONARIS!) are signing up to work voluntarily to help the vote go through in November. These are civil servants who are famed for being horrible paper pushers in a badly bloated system whose main purpose is to make life more difficult.
Girding up the optimism again.
4 comments:
Hmm. I definitely am an ostrich at the moment. Though I am happy to see the news of the Catalan legislation-- I'll have to look that up to get more info. That's huge!
I first encountered the billion conundrum while teaching math (actually I was studying for my Spanish teaching degree, not yet teaching)but I thought it was a Spain thing-- didn't realize that in the UK it was the same.
Ok, just looked it up:
In British English, a billion used to be equivalent to a million million (i.e. 1,000,000,000,000), while in American English it has always equated to a thousand million (i.e. 1,000,000,000). British English has now adopted the American figure, though, so that a billion equals a thousand million in both varieties of English.
The same sort of change has taken place with the meaning of trillion. In British English, a trillion used to mean a million million million (i.e. 1,000,000,000,000,000,000). Nowadays, it's generally held to be equivalent to a million million (1,000,000,000,000), as it is in American English.
Interesting. You'd think the one thing you could count on for objectivity would be numbers.
Oh well.
I agree. It is ridiculous, if we could agree on anything, you would think it would be math, no?
Not following the news so much... But I did see the LGBT news (actually probably shared by you on your FB feed), and those are great news. And at the same time, last Sunday in France, anti-gay-marriage hordes were out at it again.
*Le Sigh*.
*le sigh* precisely.
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