The "qualitative jump" of having aim

The news about the day is that ETA has killed a police officer in France. Many people emphasize in his fronts that it is the first time and, therefore, one speaks about "qualitative jump" like this article about the same title in Abc, his publishing house online, or different news of elpais.com, lavanguardia.es, and of course many others. But the same means tell since this one that it is already the fifth shooting between French police officers and members of ETA. Already in 1996, account Abc, a police officer turned out to be a serious injured man in a pursuit (it is not clear if for shots or for accident), and in 2001 a gendarme received seven shots.
There is no, then, qualitative jump any. Simply, more aim. If the hermeneutics of a clandestine band is already of for itself very complicated, it would be better that we were not tangling it any more reading the result of bullets shot in a shooting as if there were revealing grounds of coffee of nonexistent decisions. In case of need, ETA will get involved to shots with the French police, and therefore, logically, it is ready to kill French police officers. We knew it for many years, and they had demonstrated it. Nothing of that has changed today.
On the other hand, Iñaki writes to me with these four apprehensions of screen of the fronts two French newspapers and Spanish two, of today, some time ago.




The contrast is showy (the news is absent in two French, and it is much emphasized in two Spanish), and the truth is that I do not know very well who does the correct thing. To treat to the terrorism like common crime (if a delinquent kills police officer in a clash after a theft in any place of Spain, it would not be in the front) is a possible way of fighting against him, reducing precisely his aptitude to influence our lives. Do we pass here or the French remain short?

To do graphs and maps with Google Public Data

Three years ago Google bought Trendalyzer, the technology that was behind the fabulous Gapminder page. Now Google throws a new page Google Public Data Explorer, where it applies the same hardware to new information, and invites to institutions with public information to make use of the tool to do his most accessible information and visualizables (what Gapminder already promised, but I believe that it had never just happened). Let's hope that this time they should be successful.
At the moment I put to them there a rapid test of what it is possible to do. Rascal.

The snow in Peking is a little a tiny tot

Excuse the refuse like My Fair Lady. The fact is that it is what there suggest the dozens of means on that they have published, spurred for Efe, that Peking remained paralyzed for "precipitations in the shape of snow of 4,8 millimeters, which in the north of the city became of up to 12,6 millimeters": Abc.es, Elpais.com, Lasprovincias.es (and the rest of the group Vocento), Wave Zero, The Avant-garde, Antena3, The Economist... and so many people others.
As Manuel says to me (thank you): Is nobody surprised of that a 0,5 cm snowfall to 1,3 cm paralyzes a city and it is considered to be historical? Perhaps yes, but the production line cannot stop in these minutiae.
On the other hand: where from has Efe extracted his fact? I have two theories.
The first one is that the said information is of meteorological stations, that they give the precipitation measurement in mm (liters of water per square meter), although this one has been in the shape of snow, and in effect, the information coincides approximately with those of Weatheronline for the sum of the 2nd and 3rd of January in Peking.
But as the meteorologists say to me, the precipitation in the shape of snow usually reaches a height 10 times major than the water (with changes), concerning 1 cm of snow per 1 mm of water. So that 12,6 mm of water might be equivalent to approximately 12 cm of snow, which begins being a considerable height, although very far of 30 cm about which they speak means of other countries (for example, the Sydney Morning Herald, quoting Frances Press), and that seems more logical for a "historical" snowfall (although it would not coincide with the Weatheronline information).
The second theory is even more simple: 30 centimeters are approximately 12 inches, as us remembers proper France Press. 12 inches, 12 millimeters...
You with which do they remain? Torrent The Wanda Sykes Show S01E16 Episode 16 now

Malaprensa 2009

After turning out to be forced to edit all the Malaprensa earnings in 2009, I have thought that there is sufficiently good material as to recover the award Malaprensa of the year, which we already gave for 2005, 2006, and 2007.
I have chosen the candidates with a combination of my personal taste and of you, across the (imperfect) indicators of the number of received visits and the number of comments. I have adhered to the examples of strict malaprensa, according to the original definition (news, with errors fácticos, not only of interpretation). This leads me to excluding articles about opinion, like those of the titanium of the silly thing Almudena Grandes (that it rectified, everything is necessary to say it) and César Vidal. I have excluded also corrected errors, like that of Pedro and Bibi in elpais.com, or that of the appointments of Marx de Cayo Lara. As far as I know, therefore, the candidates have not been rectified by the corresponding means (order me information if they find corrections or fes of errors that refer to them).
With these criteria, these are the candidates, for chronological order:

1. Madrid, very sure city, with 11 murders to the day (almost all the means)
2. The biggest increase of the participation in Gallicia that never existed (almost all the means)
3. Two circular graphs on the unemployment that conceal his dimensions (elpais.com)
4. The climate change, the biggest humanitarian challenge of our time (elmundo.es)
5. Every day 500 pages of infantile pornography are created in the network (as in 2004!!!) (elmundo.es)
6. The pupils of THAT romp like madmen (Abc.es, Elpais.com and others)
7. 12.000 portable ones lost a week in airports of the United States (elpais.com)
8. Federer wins for 6-3, x-x, x-x (The New Spain)
9. The mileuristas will dedicate almost a salary to pay the increase of taxes (Abc)
10. Every minute 95 children die for malaria (elpais.com)
11. The prices of the hotels lower 94 % in New York (The World)
12. 20.000 children prostituyen at present in Spain (elmundo.es)

Cargando...

The UNO asks for 390.000 millions

This was the holder of news yesterday in the edition in role of The World (of payment), referring to the request of the UNO to help the Haitians. I suppose that they were based on this office of Europe Press.
The number is in euros. In the text of the news, which Miguel sends to me (thank you), one adds that the original request is 560.000 million dollars.
Naturally, it is enough to know that the inhabitants of Haiti are 9 millions and the affected ones by the earthquake approximately 3 millions (as tell all the newspapers these days), to realize that something sounds rarely: there would be 43.000 euros (62.000 dollars) for Haitian or 130.000 euros (187.000 dollars) for affected. Approximately the current GDP of the country for 80 years.
Nobody did the accounts nor was missed. But a little of common sense and a search online had clarified that the real request, for urgent help, is 1.000 times a minor: 562 million dollars.

Basque and German

One is already so used to that the means limit themselves to copying and giving the errors (or pitfalls) that spend to them others, which one forgets of that they solitos also can fix them bullshit is invented.
Thanks to Dani I read this Deia holder:
The Basque workpeople gain almost the half that the Germans
Go, I who believed that we had converged a little more with Europe. Do not worry, that here the subtitle comes:
His annual gross salary is 25.488 euros opposite to the 40.914 of the Teutonic ones
Very well, I am already remaining slightly calmer on the salaries; although really perplexed on the holder, who in addition to the calculation harms, chooses arbitrarily the Germans as it indexes (they are not those who more win of Europe) and it mixes information of years and different sources for the comparison (reading the text it is seen that the fact of the CAV is of 2009, of the INE and that of Germany of 2008, of Eurostat).
In the text that thing about appears again "almost the half", but this time comparing the Spanish salary for 2008, 21.500 euros, with those of Great Britain (46.058), Holland (42.720) and Germany (40.914). He should have said "about the half", because in a case it does not come, in other is the half, and in other it overcomes it.
My hypothesis: the one that the holder wrote put the txapela (as the news is said in the local journalistic slang to "vasquizar"), changed three countries into one (for space, perhaps) and forgot to check the calculation. A beauty, go.

Quite free for Haiti?

(Eye: this is not malaprensa)
The seemingly widespread scandal amazes me a little because the banks receive commissions for doing transferences on having done donations for Haiti.
In general if I want to deposit a money in a foreign account (let's suppose that of a bank different from mine) I have several ways of doing it: the free some (I go to my bank, I 'stand in line in window or use the cash dispenser, extract money, go to the bank where the account is, 'stand in line again, and deposit the money) and others that it are not (from the cash dispenser of my bank, or by phone or for Internet, or 'standing in line in window, I arrange a transference, the bank does it and normally he receives a commission from me). The second ones are normally more comfortable and rapid than the first ones, and that's why the bank charges from me, which is explained because it does the easiest life to me and gives me a service that I appreciate. If the price seems expensive to me, I can always resort to the free options.
But it seems that if I want to transfer the money to an account of an ONG in the direction of Haiti the bank is also forced to give me the service that gives me (to me, not to the Haitians). I do not see why, frankly (safe, clear, that the bank has promised to do it, as he affirms in this news about The Country, although the management bank speech rather of a custom, not a commitment).
Following this logic, and still with more reason, I suppose that the air companies must not receive the tickets from the cooperating ones, firemen, or journalists who have traveled there. Or if they want a more nearby similar one, which must not charge are the travel agencies, for the commissions to express the tickets. Those of transport of goods should not receive the freightages either. The telephone companies must give to the ONGs the calls to Haiti (or related to Haiti, if it was possible to know which are). I imagine that all the newspapers must publish free whole the announcements these days asking for donations. And the news agencies that design these announcements will make them free. And those who make or sell sanitary material, I imagine that they will have to give it to the ONGs... and this way ad infinitum. I wonder if the journalists (especially the freelance) that are in Haiti should resign to his salary of these days, do not be going to be that anybody accuses them of taking advantage of the catastrophe. In fact, every employee of humanitarian ONG who receives a salary, for definition, lives of the foreign evil. Scoundrels!