You have to read this article from the Times on Spanish trash TV. It's hilarious, and there's always a trash program on somewhere. The difference between Spanish trash and American trash is that ours is almost always focused on lower-class people who live in trailer parks behaving uncouthly in public, and theirs is almost always focused on "famosos," people who are notorious for no particular reason.

Just to name a few, there are Raquel Mosquera, a former hairdresser who was briefly married to former boxer Pedro Carrasco; Rocio Carrasco, the daughter of Pedro and Vegas-style singer Rocio Jurado; Ricardo Bofill, son of a Barcelona architect, who once "wrote" a novel and was briefly married to Rocio the second; Julio Iglesias's father, who, as they said about Strom Thurmond, needed to have his coffin lid hammered down with a baseball bat; Boris Izaguirre, an extremely flaming homosexual who comments on the adventures of the famosos on every single one of these shows; semi-prostitutes Malena Gracia, Marlene Morreau, and Yola Berrocal, all of whom have horribly inflated breasts and garish thick lips; the Duchess of Alba, who is quite eccentric; and a cast of thousands more.

Anti-war readers, along with everyone else, should read this debunking piece from the Wall Street Journal on commonly held urban legends, misconceptions, and outright lies about the Iraq War. The WSJ has another debunking article on the lack of global warming by Pete du Pont's intern that is an absolute must-read, and InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds has a piece on increasing the birth rate by creating social incentives for parents.

He's got a point. One thing I've noticed is that kids today ain't got no respect, and it's even worse in the US than it is in Spain. It's no longer prestigious to be an adult in a position of authority in today's culture. Parents and teachers are routinely treated with contempt by eleven-year-old punks. The only way to teach a class of teenagers here in Spain is to be an absolute hard-ass, because if you aren't, they'll take advantage of you. You've got to win their respect, and that means "not takin' no shit off nobody," to quote Billy Joel, which I rarely do. But you can't teach them a damn thing if you haven't made it clear first who's boss, and it shouldn't have to be that way. I'd rather be friendly and open and communicative, but I've been eaten alive before and it's not going to happen again.

You have to wonder how much the ironic edge to popular culture that developed in the 1980s in the US has to do with the way the little bastards behave. Matt Groening may have a lot to answer for.

I liked this: Der Spiegel is compiling a "Germany Survival Bible" on particularities of German culture that foreigners might want to know about. Definitely check this one out. It's actually quite funny. Davids Medienkritik is the blog of reference here for further reading. And if you didn't believe that the Germans have a sense of humor, And A&L Daily links to this one from the Guardian on why the British think the Germans aren't funny. In my experience, the British think they're the most humorous culture there is, much funnier than they really are as a general rule, and this leads them to underrate other people's senses of humor. The guy from the Guardian goes with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis; he thinks British humor doesn't work in German because of language differences. He's wrong; generally British humor doesn't work in America, either. It's a culture thing, not a language thing.

One thing being semi-bilingual teaches you is that you can't rely on plays on words for humor. That is, jokes that depend on a funny situation generally work in translation, and those that depend on a play on words don't. One rather sad thing that came into movies when sound was developed around 1930 was the end of the silent movie comedians, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd and even Charlie Chaplin. These guys were funny without words; since there was no sound, there could be no plays on words, and so the humor had to depend on the situation. These guys are largely forgotten in the US, where most people prefer modern word-dependent humor. But modern American word-based humor doesn't work overseas, at least not nearly as well as the silent stars do. This is why if you meet somebody from, say, Austria, he will be much more likely to be a fan of Buster Keaton than you.

It's why the French think Jerry Lewis is funny. His humor is broad, yes, physical, yes, but it's not word-dependent, it's Jerry acting wacky. His antics translate perfectly into any culture. Mr. Bean is so popular here in Catalonia because of the situations he gets into, not because of the things he doesn't say.

National Review is running a great series on the top 50 conservative rock songs. They're going through the top five in detail this week, and they'll post the whole list Friday. You won't believe Number Three--I'd never have figured it, but they do have a point. And Gregg Easterbrook, my favorite moderate sensible Democrat (also known as Tuesday Morning Quarterback over on NFL:com), demolishes the new Al Gore movie on global warming in Slate. He's even a sincere, committed Christian! (Atheists like me need to look at belief.net occasionally to remember that religion can be a great force for good.)

And I swear this is the only time you're ever going to hear me say, "You know, Hillary's moral position is completely correct."