Category: (More) Society and Social Issues
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The dust of reality
How AI is frakensteining a new ‘Non-speak’ language. In the beginning was the word. In the end, the word was. The new language we are rapidly producing in our lives could be called Newspeak, as Orwell thought it would be best labelled, but in the forming cancer of our non-expressive reality it would more accurately…
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Where have all the Sad and Angry songs gone?
How mainstream music no longer reflects the temper of our time I heard a French song on the radio the other day. It sounded like one of those lovely ballads from around the time of the Second World War, and it had a melody and lyrics that were sung with just enough melancholy to somehow…
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Swimming against a sea of immigration lies
It makes me happy to see that others enjoy what I enjoy… Vicente Molina Foix once wrote about riding in the Madrid Metro: “I like to see the juxtaposition of various skin colors, and hear the melody of incomprehensible languages, as the train of the future approaches on the rails of life.” Here is a man at…
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How to read this poem
Please make sure you are:Sitting in a little child’s wooden classroom chairReading this with someone else’s glassesPiling information blocks on top of each otherStopping, starting, stopping, startingJust as importantly, make sure you are:Watering heavily in both eyesEmploying the great deftness of AI to understand the meaning of these linesUniting with the community, in a fashionWhile…
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The loneliness of the long-distance teacher
March 2020 was just the start… At least the badly-exploited Glovo guys on their bikes get together in the public square. They can have a chat or a moan with each other between deliveries. Unlike them, the average Business English teacher here in Spain is now more than likely to be sitting solo at a…
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Post PowerPoint Trauma Syndrome
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July, 2010] Have you ever sat through and silently suffered during a PowerPoint presentation? Most likely, you have more than a few times. Together with ten other teachers, I have been asked (or is it told?) to do a PowerPoint presentation about my History elective subject for…
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Barcelona’s cannibal restaurant and murderous barber
Legend has it that a certain inn was known for the quality and cheapness of its meat dishes. (Please note: No AI was used in my translation of this article.) There are two old mansions on a Barcelona street named Pou de la Figuera. They seem to stand somewhat isolated among the many modern buildings…
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Christmessi
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2023.] Is the legend now complete? Is it a case of all praise to The Great One, Lionel Messi, the Messiah of Argentina, Saviour of Rosario and FIFA-family favourite? On the whole it seems so, but like so many public figures, this 35 year old…
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Greater than skaters
Climate change, habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity, ocean plastics, food insecurity and the list goes on. What can one person do? That’s a question that John French has been asking himself for nearly four decades. He moved to Spain over 10 years ago and says he has found an answer that came from a most…
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It has now come to this
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Oct. 2022.] The following is based on current and factual information… How would you fancy sleeping in a car or a van? Rather than the now antiquated 20th century idea of having your own bed in something as outdated as a house, for the price of…
Brett Hetherington 