What do you know about Africa?

Africa is often on the news, but usually just for its negative side: starvation, war, exploitation of natural resources, corruption, dictatorships or abuses against human rights. This negative side is part of Africa, but Africa is much more than that. Africa, like other continents, has a rich cultural diversity and scenery, but we barely get information about it. To begin with, Africa is made up of more than fifty different countries, but we usually talk about Africa as if it was a homogeneous continent, without making differences between African countries. However, Africa is not a country. 

Just to check how little we know about this continent and how difficult it is for us to tell the differences between African countries, we suggest that you play our game: 15 questions about music, literature, science, arts, nature and society, which are part of human cultural history, and you have to guess which country we are talking about. If we asked similar questions about American or European countries, you would likely get all answers right. But let’s see how many right answers you can get when talking about Africa. Just click and find it out!

Sources:

1. Africa is not a country is the title of a collective blog about this continent in Spanish. We strongly recommend it: http://blogs.elpais.com/africa-no-es-un-pais/    

You can use the following code to embed this game into your website:<iframe width="400" height="600" src="http://www.alexcanosa.com/Dd/J002ang.swf" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Returnable bottles and cans

Every day, 51 million containers are consumed in Spain, and figures keep on increasing. There are less and less products sold loose or by the litre, there are more and more disposable containers, and we consume more and more canned or bottled drinks (water, soft drinks, beer, juice…).
Fortunately, selective recycling has been going on for more than 20 years and everybody knows, more or less, where to dispose each container. However, this recycling system which should make us reduce our ecological footprint is not working well: at present, in Spain only 35% of containers are properly disposed. People usually throw containers with the rest of rubbish, so that they end up cremated or forgotten in huge dump sites.
Our laziness to recycle has environmental consequences, but also economic consequences. Taking and treating bottles and cans disposed in the wrong container costs 68 million euros every year, and the value of missed raw materials (metal, plastic, aluminium, glass, etc.) amounts to 65 million euros. Summing up, we waste a total of 133 million euros every year for just being too lazy to separate our residues. It is the same cost as the Spanish plan to make Internet available to everybody, with one-mega connections around the country.
Therefore, we’d better pay attention to our rubbish. On the other hand, besides improving our current residue selection system, we can introduce new parameters: we could go back to returnable bottles and cans. The process is quite simple: when we buy a drink, we pay for the bottle or the can, and this money is refunded when we return the empty container. It used to be that way, and this system has many advantages:
 

1.- Some of these containers (especially glass) can be refilled, so we spare the recycling costs.
2.- Those containers which cannot be refilled can be recycled separately, avoiding the loss of value of the material, so that it can be recycled many more times.
3.- Consumers would not throw empty cans on the street or in our woods (they are refundable!), so our environment would be cleaner.
 

At Retorna website, an initiative promoted by several NGOs, consumer’s associations and the recycling industry, you can find some videos and articles about the advantages of returnable bottles and cans. It includes very interesting data: in Spain, only 30% of manufactured containers are recycled, whereas in Germany the percentage amounts to 98.5%.
Needless to say, if citizens are lazy to dispose bottles and cans in the correct recycling container, they will be even lazier to go back to the shop and return them, but refunding is likely to be encouraging... The impact of this new return system would be great because 50% of our containers are drink cans or bottles.
Is it a utopia? No way. This system is working well in Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Israel, Scandinavian countries and some estates in the US.

Sources:

1. Recycling game at Delivering Data: http://www.deliveringdata.com/2011/11/recycling-game.html
2. Post at Delivering Data about Third World dump sites: http://www.deliveringdata.com/2011/06/living-in-dump-site.html
3. Our recycling problems: http://www.ecoticias.com/residuos-reciclaje/62034/Preocupacion-bajo-indice-reciclaje-envases
4. What can be done with 133 million euros: http://www.xatakaon.com/noticias-adsl-y-cable/el-gobierno-destina-133-millones-de-euros-para-universalizar-la-banda-ancha
5. Retorna website: http://www.retorna.org/es/retorna/quees.html
6. Retorna video about the advantages of returnable bottles and cans: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=B1AoZki5ny0

     
     
      
   

Appliances on standby

An electric toaster is a small appliance invented in 1909 and made up of two electrical heating elements designed to make toasts. But it is not only commendable for making toasts: when it is not toasting bread, this appliance does not consume electricity.
This initial paragraph may be one of the most stupid sentences to start a new post and I am sure that some readers stop reading right here. But for the ones who wish to read on, we owe you an explanation. Despite being ridiculous (it is, indeed), other than toasters, most household electrical appliances do consume electricity when we are not using them and even when we are not at home.
As you all may have guessed, we are talking about the standby power, also known as vampire power or leaking electricity. That is, the little light or indicator on our TV set, ADSL router, hi-fi, DVD, Blu-ray or video recorder, lap top or even some washing machines, when they are all switched off. This little light or a small screen with numbers does consume some electricity, but it may seem an overreaction to devote one post to such petty cash. However, if we take a look at the consumption data of appliances on standby --as recorded in the energetic consumption survey of households in Spain published some weeks ago by IDAE, the Spanish Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving--, we’ll realise that it is not just petty cash. This survey is 50% funded by Eurostat, the European Union statistics agency. It is one of the most important surveys ever conducted in Europe, and most data can be extrapolated to other countries for a general overview.
First, we should take into account that this survey only includes household electrical consumption, which represents 25% of the total electrical consumption in Spain. And now the revealing data: the standby mode stands for 6.6% of our household consumption. Be aware: this is not the total consumption of appliances with a standby light, but the direct consumption of the standby light itself. The appliance consumption is calculated separately. Just to have a broad idea, our expenses of standby mode is three times more than our expenses of air conditioning, twice our expenses of freezing or dish-washing, three times our expenses of drying and one and a half times our expenses of oven or computers. 
As the price of KWh varies depending on consumption, on type of energy and on the ups and downs of market prices, it is difficult to estimate in euros the final expenditure of standby mode for a Spanish family. However, if you take your latest bill and a calculator, you can easily check how many euros are 6.6% of your total consumption. And then do your sums to check your annual expenditure of standby mode… If you do not wish to reduce your consumption for environmental reasons, at least you can reduce it for pocket reasons.
In this website you’ll find a calculator about standby expenditure: you just have to tick on your household appliances and then you will have your annual consumption, your waste of euros and the produced CO2 caused by the standby mode. It may be worth while turning it off.

Sources:

1. The electric toaster: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toaster
2. Survey on energy consumption in Spanish households by IDAE (in Spanish): http://www.idae.es/index.php/mod.documentos/mem.descarga?file=/documentos_Informe_SPAHOUSEC_ACC_f68291a3.pdf
3. IDAE, Spanish Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving: http://www.idae.es/index.php/id.171/lang.uk/mod.noticias/mem.detalle
4. Eurostat, the EU statistics agency: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home/
5. About kilowatt-hour (KWh): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilowatt_hour
6. Website where you can calculate the consumption of appliances on standby: http://www.ocu.org/stand-by/

   
    
     
     

What's the use of having a noble title?

When reading this question, many of you will surely reply: “no use at all, noble titles belong to the past”. And it’s true: nobility no longer entitles you to a long list of privileges. But noble titles still exist, and they are acknowledged by European monarchic states. Contrary to other private titles (like Miss Universe, the Bishop, or the King of Pop), there are some public organisms in charge of preserving nobility. With law in hand, nobles have no more privileges, but it is not always like this.
To check it out, just take the case of Spain as an example that can be extrapolated to many other European countries with monarchies. Noble titles are as old as monarchies, so there have been nobles for many centuries. However, current noble titles usually come from the Middle Ages. But this post is not meant to go that far back analysing the privileges of former dukes, counts or barons. We will only go back to 9 December 1931, when the Second Spanish Republic was constituted. In its article 25, noble titles were abolished with the argument that “there should be no privilege granted for nature, paternity, gender, social status, wealth, political ideas or religious belief”. But this article did not last long, as the Spanish Republic perished soon: in 1947 General Franco restored nobility… until today. With the approval of the in-force Spanish Constitution, it is made clear that the Spanish King can grant honours and distinctions (article 62), so noble titles are accepted in the Spanish democratic system, and subsequent Royal Decrees (like RD 602/1980) just made noble titles legal again.
Now let’s analyse the figures. In 1980, the Spanish Ministry of Justice (not joking, this Ministry is in charge of nobility) published the Spanish Official Guide of Nobility and in 2011 we got an updated edition. There were 2,601 titles in 1980 belonging to 1,940 people (some nobles have more than one title: the Duchess of Alba is the person with the most titles in the world, accounting for more than 50). I have not been able to check the 2011 update (it is not available in the libraries and I’m not willing to pay 20 € for a hefty wad of about one thousand pages) but in the 2004 edition there were 2,833 titles, that is, 232 more than in 1980. In other words, the Spanish King loves granting new noble titles to pay favours, sympathies or friendship. For instance, the manager of the Spanish national football team Vicente del Bosque was granted the title of Marquis del Bosque when his team won the World Cup. Or the writer Mario Vargas Llosa was appointed Marquis too when he was awarded with the Nobel Price. Therefore, noble titles do not belong to the past, just the opposite: we have more and more nobles every day.
And now let’s analyse the other issue about current nobles: privileges. People assume that nobles no longer have privileges, but this is not true. In 1812, at Cadis Cortes, Spain abolished the former privileges of nobility (not paying taxes, not going to prison for debts, etc.) but the Spanish modern Constitution still admits one of the main privileges of nobility: nobles are still the owners of lands and real estates plundered to common people under their jurisdiction. Whenever this issue arises, people who advocate and benefit from this former plundering appeal to their sacred right of private property, as if those who complain were just jealous. Curiously enough, this former plundering from feudal times does not differ much from the Nazi plundering, but it seems that if it happened more than one hundred years ago, then it is legitimate. And the current nobles, often descendants of former plunderers, are not ashamed but defend their ancestors with pride.
But this is not their only privilege. Those privileges granted by the State are no longer in force, but those granted by nobles to each other are still valid and unbeaten. For instance, all Spanish lords and ladies (the so-called Grandee) have the right to request an audience with the King whenever they want. This may seem rather useless, but it is not: after the Spanish dictatorship, when democracy was restored, many political parties tried to have a noble as a politically-active member of the party in order to be heard by the King. Hence, José Luís de Vilallonga, marquis of Castellbell, played an important role within the socialist party, allegedly for his wits, but some historians report otherwise: the socialist party needed him to be heard by the King.
Those who advocate in favour of noble titles argue that there are no privileges any more. Nobles just make up a private club, like many others. But private clubs do not need the Ministry of Justice (paid with our taxes) to make their accounts, and no other private club has its president as Head of State. 
Since 1997, the writer Javier Marías appointed himself king of Redonda Islet, a bunch of rocks in the middle of the Caribbean. Since then, he grants noble titles to his friends and other celebrities. True nobles may consider that he is too eccentric and he is just playing a silly game. But they do not realise that Javier Marías (King Javier I of Redonda) is just doing the same as their ancestors and he has the same rights to grant noble titles as King Juan Carlos I. And at least, Redonda nobles have never plundered.

Sources:

1. Constitution of the Second Spanish Republic, abolishing noble titles (art. 25): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Constitution_of_1931
2. The current Spanish constitution (art. 62f): http://www.congreso.es/constitucion/ficheros/c78/cons_ingl.pdf
3. Royal Decree 602/1980 modifying previous acts in terms of noble titles (Spanish): http://www.boe.es/aeboe/consultas/bases_datos/doc.php?id=BOE-A-1980-7011
4. Spanish Official Guide of Nobility published by the Ministry of Justice (Spanish): http://www.mjusticia.gob.es/cs/Satellite/ca/1215198356356/Publicacion/1288775574131/Detalle.html
5. Vicente del Bosque and Mario Vargas Llosa, new marquis (Spanish): http://www.lavanguardia.com/gente/20110204/54110565649/el-rey-nombra-marques-a-vicente-del-bosque.html
6. Cadis Cortes abolishing the privileges of noblemen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A1diz_Cortes
7. Former privileges of nobility: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Privilege
8. Spanish Grandee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandee
9. Redonda kingdom: http://www.javiermarias.es/REDONDIANA/JohnGawsworth.html
10. Redonda nobility (Spanish): http://www.javiermarias.es/REDONDIANA/DuquesdeRedonda.html