El País y Millenium

Los lectores de la segunda parte de la trilogía Millenium, de Stieg Larsson, "La chica que soñaba con una cerilla y un bidón de gasolina", pueden haber detectado un paralelismo entre los hechos que se narran en el libro y el desarrollo del caso Gürtel; o más exactamente, en el seguimiento que el periódico El País hace del mismo.

¿Dónde radica ese paralelismo? En el enfoque que se da a las filtraciones policiales. En Millenium las filtraciones realizadas por el fiscal Ekström, contribuyen a crear un clima en la opinión pública adverso hacia una de las protagonistas, Lisberth Salander. En el caso Gürtel las filtraciones han sido realizadas por una persona desconocida, y la intención es claramente la misma, aunque en este caso la víctima no es una persona, sino varias, y la víctima indirecta es el PP.

Respecto a las filtraciones policiales, no tiene absolutamente ninguna importancia quien es la víctima, ni cual es el delito, ni tan siquiera si es culpable o no. Las filtraciones policiales son ilegales e inconstitucionales, y deben ser perseguidas a toda costa.

El País puede defender su derecho a publicar cualquier información que obtenga, pero nunca en ningún caso, puede defender a un miembro de las fuerzas de seguridad que comete un delito, y que actúa al margén de la ley.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo & The Case of the Moutain of Tor

I've just finished reading "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (more accurate would be "The men who hated women"). I would never say that it is a masterpiece, but it is surely one of the most enterntaining that I have read (and the prove is that I have already started the second part).

The catalan edition.

While reading it it has come to me the similar points (only distant, but I think that interesting) with another story (this time real), but that had a big coverage in Spain, via documentary first (from the catalan public channel, TV3, "Tor, la muntanya maleïda", watch it -not always working- here), and as a book, later ("Tor. Tretze cases i tres morts"). It is the story of the mountain of Tor, in the catalan Pyrenees.

The story of Tor has always been complex (as a natural between the peninsula and the rest of the continent). But the real conflicts began more than one hundred years ago, with the establishment of a law that determined that the owners of the mountain of Tor, could be only the people who was actually living in the village of Tor. This was going to be the cause of three murders more than one hundred years later.

In the 90s a journalist, Carles Porta, was sent to make a 3 minut coverage. After watching the results, the director of the program "30 minuts" decides to send him to make a full documentary about the history of this mountain. The documentary is quite a succes. After several years he decides to put all the history on book.

The parallelisms between Millenium and Tor, come, more than from the story itself, from the depiction of the characters (and isolated place with a little population of eccentric people) and the foreigner who arrives to discover the truth, and the suspiction that (probably) all know what really happened except the foreigner.

Apple Saturation

It's a long time that I've been thinking that the public (the potential buyers) are becoming saturated of the apple brand.

Years of elitism have been swept away by a decade of massification of their products (since the launch of the iPod, more or less). No mather how good (even magnificient their products are, the iPod is the best example) people begin to feel that one Apple product is not out of reach of anybody's possibilities, and that -and that is the worst point- maybe the latest beautiful toys with the apple logo are nothing really outstanding.

I've been reading lately "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and (although the book is really enjoyable) the constant references to Apple products (iBook, PowerBook, iPhone... almost all appear) are a little boring.

To tell the truth I am totally proud of my iPod; I think for music lovers there has never been such a tool to help us enjoy our little jewels.

But when it comes to talk about computers, for me, there is nothing so reliable like a Toshiba. Maybe 20 years ago one Apple laptop could beat any PC in the design oriented software field, but at this moment, there is no real difference (only in the minds of the Apple fans).