rights – don't confuse the narrator

of gender and generalities

There’s a general strike planned in Spain for this coming Wednesday and this advert appears in El Público today:

The call to action comes from the Izquierda Unida, the main left wing party in Spain (as opposed to the PSOE – the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party – currently in power and not half as left wing as the name might lead you to expect).

Whatever my sympathies might be for the left, and for those who intend to strike, I object to the phrase nosotras y nosotros.
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pictures of pigs

I hadn’t really planned it that way, but one of the things that brings people to this blog is the subject of pigs being slaughtered. It surprised me the first time I noticed the search phrase on the blog stats, but there certainly are several mentions – and photos – of pigs (or boars) in various states. That’s probably because I’m based in Spain and there are pig products pretty much everywhere.

As may be apparent from most of the posts, I do my own photography. Much of it is done in public places, as was the picture which follows the break. (Don’t look if you are faint-hearted.)
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taxing my patience

Buying blank cds to back up my ever-growing collection of photographs, I am reminded of university days when I studied Adam’s Smiths canons of taxation.

Every blank cd sold in Spain is subject to el canon – popularly referred to as “un impuesto por si acaso“. That pretty much describes it: a “just-in-case tax”.
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rights and royalties

When I wrote the previous post and thought about ‘tags’ for it, I included the Spanish expression derechos de autor. For non-Spanish speakers, it’s possibly worth pointing out the ambiguity of that phrase.

Literally, it looks like “author’s rights”, but in fact it can translate as both “copyright” and “royalties”. This can be confusing, but probably makes some kind of sense. Continue reading “rights and royalties”

copyrights and wrongs

Some years ago in Spain there was a clamp down on illegal photocopying.

At the copy shop at the end of our road, they had always been amenable to making multiple copies of whole books – very useful for penniless English teachers who had managed to filch a single text book from their last employer and were now using this to go it alone with private classes. But suddenly the shop changed hands and it was rumoured Continue reading “copyrights and wrongs”