Description

I'm going to describe Mr.X, there's no prize for recognising him:

When I first saw Mr.X, I noticed inmediately that he couldn't stand still. He was a teenager, he had a slightly lower than average height, a short black hair with a thin ponytail, brown eyes, some acne, round factions and he was quite overweight. Shortly after "first contact", it seemed quite obvious to me that he was quite an unstable person, and that he lacked personal skills as much as he redunded in nervous ticks and manias. Within little time I discovered that he was a seemingly bottomless pitch of information, wich was equally divided in usefull, useless, important and rubbish. "It's because I lack any control over my brain" he would say rather worried "It usually follows my advice, and I will have for example easily learned the name and spin of every elementary particle, but sometimes it does not, and I end up not knowing the way basque verbs decline but knowing the entire script of a family guy episode by heart". I realised that during long periods of time, his humour would change from "maniachal-frenetic-optimistic" to "surrendered-passive" to "depressed-worried-emotional" (even if he did not show this emotion in public). This states could stay unchanged for a long time, or change fastly for such outlandish reasons as "LHC is back online" or "the complexity of the sky is almost fully apparent today", and sometimes even without cause. Altough people was nice to him, he had very little social life. He could not detect when people was interested or not in what he was saying, so he would usually ramble on and on without pause. Quite lazy in everything he was not good at, he lacked the ability to like people because he didn't like himself because of all the failures that resulted from his lazyness. Lacking self-steem, he would react very defensively to critics refusing to change, only worsening his defects. Ironically, even his deep distaste for organized religion had not prevented him from being like a saint, that is, being a voluntary and useless martyr and a virgin. I left Mr.X with a growing sense of distress within me.

The 4 ways sound affects us: Report

Julian Treasure speaks about how sound affects us. He intends to transform the way we interact with sound, and explains that there are four ways in wich sound affects us. The first one is physiological; The sound of a circular saw working increases the levels of the hormone cortisol, and the sound of the sea is very soothing . The second one is psychological; Albinoni's adagio will surely make you sad, but a bird's tweet will relax you due to ancient instincts. The third one is cognitive; Productivity is reduced TWO THIRDS in a noisy workplace (This is also true in high scholls ¿eh?). The fourth and last one is behavioural; people with rythmic music doesn't drive in a stedy speeed, and "soundscape" is vital for sucessful retailing. Mr. Treasure has developed a system wich allows him to know the effects of a sound and vice-versa. He then speaks about music, wich is very powerful because it's very recognisable and it's very strongly associated to other memories and feelings. He finishes by saying that music has been inapropiately used especially in marketing and gives advice to people working in marketing.

It's english a mania ?

Some months ago, I was pretty shocked when I saw PM Zapatero saying "fair play" instead of "juego limpio". It was completely innecessary, but he repeated it two or three times more during the next week whilst the interest in the topic he was speaking about faded. My shock came mainly not from the fact that he was using an english expresion, but from the fact that he doesn't know english (another spanish tradition that hampers our progress) and he emphasized the expresion a lot. Was it an idea of one of it's advisors? or worse, was it his?
But back to my point, what I was seeing was another step in the race of english for becaming as ubiquitous as the monotheistic gods or corrupt politicians. As a result of two centuries of anglo-american hegemony in economy, trade, science, war, popular and not-so-popular culture now english is king, despite having "only" as many native speakers as spanish and less than half than mandarin. It's the cornerstone of any attempt at superior education, tourism and all kind of international enterprises. It has even became a Synonym for modern and cool, and is therefore used on every slogan, catchphrase or product. Nobody is unaware of it's importance, and so it has become a mandatory school subject in almost every country, every adult person with aspirations is trying to learn it, and virtualy everybody knows at least a hundred words in english.
Some people have claimed that it might be destroying the different cultures of the world, but I don't agrre with that, as it seems obvious to me that even if a person works, learns, and even watches TV in english, he might introduce some of it in his everiday life, but his everiday conversations, humour, debate and cultural production will still happen is his mother-tongue. I would also like to remember that every language metamorphoses each layer of new words be them foreign or indigenous, making it evolve without destroying it. People might still know easily that spageti or futbol are italian and english rooted words, but they have generaly no idea that gripe, auskalo, Irina, algebra or mendia came from German, Spanish, Latin , Arabic and Celtic.
And that's how you ramble on and on without answering a question.

The 250 words story

A minute after Christina had entered the room , she knew that something was wrong. Very wrong. She knew that it couldn’t be anything good, after all it was an emergency meeting, but she hadn’t seen the usually cheerful #1 so gloom since…. Well, since never. She had started to worry when the cabinet had started to fill with men in uniform, and her worry had only increased when she saw that Lars was biting his nails, something that he only did under lots of pressure. Eventually, the president took seat in the front of the long table and the officers did so opposite to the ministers. Christina noticed that the man in front of her had a plate which read “Gn. Gerome de Larimer EFNDS” She swallowed loudly.

-As we have no time to lose, I’ll be brief –Said the president in a dry tone- The purpose of this cabinet meeting is to answer to sudden changes in the international scenario that pose a serious threat to us. As you all know, due to civil unrest the Chinese government has been lately trying to divert the attention of its citizens by threatening Taiwan. However, fifteen minutes ago the Chinese military bombed several radar and coast defense stations which are critical to the US strategic defense system. The president of the US, Mrs. Burns, has probably been reminded by its joint chiefs of staff that her country is part of the NATO and, in an unusual deviation from her unilateral policies, has agreed to have a videoconference with us before answering to the attack. Questions?

Christina wished she hadn’t gotten up that day.