Los mejores libros de 2014

El Iceberg de Oro reconoce por primera vez un ensayo, El hombre y la muerte, de Edgar Morin, como el mejor libro del año. La vida es aquello que hacemos esperando a morir. Pese a ello, es sorprendente lo poco que sabemos de ella. El libro de Morin ilumina nuestra ignorancia.

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L'Iceberg de plata és per a El marqués y la esvástica, un llibre periodístic que desemmascara una icona de l'Espanya que va guanyar la guerra. El periodisme literari és un gènere poc explotat a Espanya. Per això, l'obra de Rosa Sala i Plàcid Garcia-Planas sobre González Ruano té un mèrit doble. La recerca de Sala obre habitacions que mai s'havien obert; la prosa de Garcia Planas és, com de costum, un plaer.

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The Aleppo Codex is awarded with the Bronze Iceberg. Matti Friedman  found a particular story to research about that discovers a dark chapter in the foundation of Israel: the looted heritage.

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Los otros dos finalistas del año son:

Los demonios, de Dostoyevski

i la poesia de Pier Paolo Pasolini, El plany de l'excavadora.

2014 Best Movies

Boyhood is awarded with the Golden Iceberg as the best movie in 2014. There are several reasons to recognize Boyhood as the best movie of the year. First of all, it's been filmed during 12 years; there is no record of a production of this kind. Secondly, Boyhood is a masterpiece because it portraits all together the frailty of the western middle class and the weakness our souls. Everyone can find something in Boyhood that reminds big issues of his/her life. Finally, Boyhood is a 'delicatessen' that can be appreciated by all kinds of audience.

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The Silver Iceberg goes to True Detective, a creation that proves the maturity of the current golden age in TV productions. True Detective catches the general public attention thanks to its thriller/police plot while exposing to society our darkest and most metaphysical nightmares.

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The bronze Iceberg goes to Festen, a 90's Danish movie that will be remembered for decades as a clear example of intelligent black comedy and an acid critic of a truth that not many people would assume: the worst crimes are committed behind the walls of our family homes.

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The two other finalists are:

Breaking Bad.

And the Coen Brothers, this time with Inside Llewyn Davis.

2014 Best Iceberg Songs of the year

The Golden Iceberg goes to The Libertines and their Time for heroes. This song doesn't only have an excellent rythm but it is also a perfect example of self-mockery:

"Did you see the stylish kids in the riot
We were shovelled up like muck
Set the night on fire
Wombles bleed truncheons and shields
You know I cherish you my love..."

Els Libertines, en el seu any de retorn als escenaris, guanyen L'Iceberg d'or també per la presència de Pete Doherty a Sarrià el mes de maig passat.

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El Iceberg de Plata es para Sonido Changorama, banda que trabaja a la perfección el sonido electrónico, el metal y el sonido de la vida cotidiana de México.

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Donnie Lonegan The battle of New Orleans is awarded with The Bronze Iceberg. The jury recognizes the  influence that Lonegan's song had on John Lennon.

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And the two other finalists are:

Love is won, Lia Ices.

Comeback kid, Sleigh Bells

A lot of respect for that man

-Major Colvin: You see that building there? It's the Old Stryker building. It was a funeral parlor. Last stop before the cemetery for west side white folk. Back when there was still some of those around. Right about the time that, uh, Jim Crow was breaking up. Back in the early '60's. Somebody asked old man Stryker, they said "Stryker, you're gonna change your policy and start burying black folk?" And Stryker said "yeah, on one condition: I can do them all at once." [Colvin laughs]

-Councillor Carcetti: That's sick.

-Major Colvin: But you know something? I had a lot of respect for that man. Because unlike most folks, I always knew where he stood.

The Wire, third season.

La armonía bárbara

Hay en los fenos un salvajismo asombroso y una pobreza detestable: ni armas, ni caballos, ni hogares; hierba para alimentarse, pieles para vestirse, el suelo para dormir: toda su esperanza en las flechas, que, a falta de hierro, llevan un hueso afilado en la punta. La caza proporciona alimento lo mismo a hombres que a mujeres, pues éstas les acompañan a todos los sitios y reclaman su parte en el botín. Los niños no tienen otro refugio frente a las fieras y lluvias que la cubierta de ramas entrelazadas; allí acuden también los jóvenes y es protección para los ancianos. Pero piensan que así y todo es mejor que sufrir en los campos, trabajar en las casas y mantener siempre expuestas sus propias fortunas y las ajenas entre la esperanza y el miedo. Tranquilos de cara a los hombres y los dioses, han conseguido algo muy difícil: no echar en falta ni siquiera el deseo.

Tácito, La Germania.

La luce del futuro non cessa di ferirci

Povero come un gatto del Colosseo,
vivero in una borgata tutta 

e polverone, lontano dalla città

e dalla campagna, stretto ogni giorno

in un autobus rantolante

e ogni andata, ogni ritorno

era un calvario di sudore e di ansie. 

Lunghe camminate in una calda caligine,

lunghi crepuscoli davanti alle carte

ammucchiate sul tavolo, tra strade di fango,
muriccioli, casette bagnate di calce

e senza infissi, con tende per per porte...

Passano l'olivaio, lo straccivendolo

venendo da qualche altra borgata,

con l'impolverata merce che pareva

frutto di furto, e una faccia crudele

di giovani invecchiati tra i vizi

di chi ha una madre dura e affamata.

[...]

Piange ciò che muta. anche 
per farsi migliore. La luce
del futuro non cessa un solo istante 


di ferirci: è qui, che brucia
in ogni nostro atto quotidiano,
angoscia anche nella fiducia


che ci dà vita, nell'impeto gobettiano 
verso questi operai, che muti innalzano
nel rione dell'altro fronte umano


il loro rosso straccio di speranza.


Pier Paolo Pasolini, El plany de l'excavadora.






[Pobre com un gat del Colosseu
vivia en un suburbi tot calç
i pols, allunyat de la ciutat


i del camp, estret cada dia
en un autobús ranejant,
i casa anada, cada tornada

era un calvari de suor i d'ànsia.
Llargues passejades en una càlida calitja,
llargs crepuscles davant els papers


amuntegats a la taula, entre carrers de fang,
murs, casetes  banyades de calç
i sense marcs, amb cortines per portes...


Passaven l'oliver, el drapaire,
venint de qualsevol altre suburbi,
amb la mercaderia polsolsa que semblava


fruit d'un robatori, i un rostre cruel
de joves envellits entre vicis,
de qui té una mare dura i famolenca.
[...]




Plora també allò que canvia
per fer-se millor. La llum
del futur no cessa de ferir-nos


ni un moment. Està ací cremant
en tots els nostres actes quotidians,
i aclapara fins i tot en la fe


que ens dóna vida, en l'ímpetu gobettià
cap aquests obrers que, callats, hissen
en el barri de l'altre front humà


el seu roig parrac d'esperança.]

Los que miran en los accidentes

Tú eres de los que miran en los accidentes.
Te gusta ver el cuerpo descompuesto de la gente.
Por un instante lo que ves, te hace consciente,
el sudor se te resbala suave y lento por la frente.

Luego corres a un centro comercial
donde se diluye la realidad
y es tan fácil no pensar
y olvidarse de la muerte.

Tú eres de los que miran en los accidentes,
mueves la cabeza lenta y discretamente.
El tiempo pasa de manera diferente,
todo se detiene de repente.

Luego te permite reaccionar
y conducir y respirar,
y no pensar en nada más,
y olvidarte de la muerte.

Los Punsetes, Accidentes.

Thousands of years to recover

In the standard account of human history, agriculture represents the ur-breakthrough. The domestication of plants and animals allowed people for the first time to build up surpluses of food. This, in turn, allowed them to think about something besides feeding themselves. They became merchants and priests and artisans and bookkeepers. They built villages, towns, and cities. Every subsequent innovation—metallurgy, writing, mathematics, science, and even paleo web sites—could be said to owe its origin to those first farmers scratching with sticks in the dirt.

Agro-revisionists also regard the Neolithic Revolution as a critical event. They, too, believe that without it modern society wouldn’t exist. What they’re not so sure about is whether it was a good idea.

“The adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered” is Jared Diamond’s dour assessment, offered in an essay titled “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race.”

Like Stone Age hunter-gatherers, early farmers left little behind—just some burnt grain, mud foundations, and their own bones. But that’s enough to reveal how punishing the transition to agriculture was. According to a study of human remains from China and Japan, the height of the average person declined by more than three inches during the millennia in which rice cultivation intensified. According to another study, of bones from Mesoamerica, women’s heights dropped by three inches and men’s by two inches as farming spread. A recent survey of more than twenty studies on this subject, published in the journal Economics and Human Biology, found that the adoption of agriculture “was observed to decrease stature in populations from across the entire globe,” including in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and South America.

Early farmers were not just shorter than hunter-gatherers; they were also more sickly. They had worse teeth—one analysis from the Near East suggests that the incidence of cavities jumped sixfold as people started relying on grain—and they suffered from increased rates of anemia and infectious disease. Many now familiar infections—measles, for instance—require high population densities to persist; thus, it wasn’t until people established towns and cities that such “crowd epidemic diseases” could flourish. And, by living in close proximity to their equally crowded farm animals, early agriculturalists helped to bring into being a whole set of diseases that jumped from livestock to people.

“The adoption of agriculture,” Diamond notes in his most recent book, “The World Until Yesterday,” provided “ideal conditions for the rapid transmission of microbes.” According to Daniel E. Lieberman, a professor of evolutionary biology at Harvard and the author of “The Story of the Human Body,” “farming ushered in an era of epidemics, including tuberculosis, leprosy, syphilis, plague, smallpox and influenza.”

It took thousands of years for human bodies to recover; Lieberman reports that “it wasn’t until the twentieth century that Europeans were the same height as cavemen.” And, almost as soon as the stature gap closed, new problems arose. People began to grow not just taller but also wider.

Elisabeth Kolbert. Stone soup. The New Yorker.

Mother of a killer

Yvette was a biker chick from the first time she ever got on a motorcycle. "I was hot as shit, I ain't gonna lie," she says over a steak at TGI Fridays. "Hair down to my ass. I was hot."

By all accounts this description of Yvette Rafferty is accurate. She arrived in northern Ohio from out of the American South as a woman from a dream issue of Easyriders magazine, skinny and willowy, with hair spun from ice cream and sunshine and a taste for denim and leather. She liked to party, and she was crazy, too. She met Mike when she was working at a bikini bar. That was not long before she became addicted to cocaine. She says she was sober while she was pregnant. But Rafferty wasn't three days old when she disappeared into a crack house with him still swaddled in a hospital blanket. Mike took Rafferty away after that, and they separated. She still seems like kind of a love mama, even though a good chunk of her humanity appears to have disappeared into addiction. She is a hug person, a kiss person, a person who loves to cry, the type of hippie biker chick who'd want to sleep with all her babies in a big family bed but also bungee them to a chopper for a ride to get formula. But in reality, she is now a 49-year-old woman who has to remove her new dentures before she eats a TGI Fridays steak with Jack Daniel's sauce. Who, after two beers, starts shivering and loses the gift of coherent speech for long stretches and tries to eat a wet napkin off her plate. Sits there chewing it like lettuce. Rafferty has known before memory that his mother is an addict. When he was ten, he found evidence on the internet that she'd prostituted herself. During the steak dinner she admits knowing what she'd become. Her face crumpled and she said: "I know all this is my fault. I know it is. If I hadn't have been an addict, none of this would have happened."

Devin Friedman, Wired. Behind the bizarre case of the Craigslist killers.

Que torni la Guàrdia Civil

Malfieu-vos dels homes sense panxa.

No us enamoreu mai d'una dona no batejada. Practicar llit amb ella seria practicar el bestialisme.

No presentar queixes als cambrers. Cal fer sortir el cuiner amb bones cares i quan el tingueu al davant el falteu al respecte. Sempre.

No mengeu mai a restaurants amb vistes: és per portar-hi les fulanes. I molt menys puestos que facin cantonada. Xanfrà a l'eixample. Ojo.

A no ser que sigueu nascuts amb mala sort, eviteu viure sota la Gran Via: és el Nibelheim wagnerià.

No aneu mai a Sabadell.

Allunyeu-vos dels homes que no calcen sabates de cordons.

Quan algú s'aixugui la mà als pantalons just antes de donar-vos-la, quedeu-vos tiesos. Feu l'orni, fingiu una trucada. És un asquerós.

No accepteu mai un refresc de llauna: la nostra dignitat és en mans de Nostre Senyor, no d'un cambrer.

Eviteu els marinos. Els militars no, que és bien: parlo dels pedants que et trobes al Turó Park sota una tormenta i diuen: "RES, AIXÒ RES!!". Imbècils de veler atracat al Maresme i loden blau marí amb botons daurats que viuen en un pis a Madrazo amb la cuina de l'any 62.

Que torni la Guardia Civil.

No fumeu pel carrer. I molt menos caminant.

No tolereu conversacions al telèfon de més de 3 minuts. Fotre xapes telefòniques és una falta de consideració. Sigueu maleducats: pengeu.

Eviteu prendes de roba amb marques ximples a la vista. L'elegància és el porte i és de neixement, les marques magnifiquen la cara de burro.

Sopeu amb les dones dels amics. Trieu-les guapes i lluiu-les pels puestos, que us vegin. Després ja serà el marit qui les aguanti 22 h. És fabulós festejar dames guapes casades i treure's de sobre la pressió aquella d'anar al llit. Que es mengi el problema el marit, per burro.

Convideu capellans a dinar a casa. Capellans! Capellans! I entre setmana, que el veïnat de l'escala els vegin. Feu-vos respectar.

Eviteu parlar malament del Caudillo en públic i en segons quines zones de Barcelona. Podeu ofendre greument l'interlocutor.

Tracteu el servei de vostè. Sempre.

Ignoreu qui us tracti de tu sense conèixe-us. Si a Vueling diuen "abrocharos los cinturones" feu com si sentíssiu plore. A la merda!

Si passeu pel davant d'un Mercadona entreu-hi. Aneu obrint galetes, patates, xampús, olis, etc. Tot potinejat. I quan ja tal, marxeu.

Cal ridiculitzar els convidats que a casa teva s'aixequen a mig dinar per fer caca. Si tarda més de 2 minuts cal cridar: "QUE FAS CACA??"

Canvieu de taxis si no és del vostre agrado. La dignitat senyors, la DIGNITAT!! Ahir vaig agafar-ne 3 per anar a la Illa Diagonal: tres!

Ignasi Barba, Els consells de Nacho de Sanahuja.