Now here's a president with his priorities in order

Dubya is making the ultimate sacrifice.

He's cutting short his five-week wartime vacation by a whole two days to help monitor assistance to hurricane victims along the Gulf Coast.

I know I'm moved.

This would be awesome

Hugo Chavez is trying to get Pat Robertson extradited to Venezuela.

"I announce that my government is going to take legal action in the United States," Mr. Chávez said in a televised speech. "To call for the assassination of a head of state is an act of terrorism."

Grammar in the court

"The language ought to be used precisely, particularly by lawyers and judges," Mr. Sorensen said. "This is the best thing I've heard about Judge Roberts so far."

Now there's a ringing endorsement of John Roberts. He may hold offensive opinions on women's rights, etc., but at least he knows the difference between "affect" and "effect." Not to mention "ensure" vs. "insure."

No, seriously, I'm not trying to knock this. It would give Roberts some redeeming quality, however minor and relatively trifling, whereas Dubya can't even make up words properly.

Seems reasonable

In a further display of its status as a "haven for Islamic terrorists" (read: they hate our Christian, god-loving way of life), Venezuela has temporarily tightened permits for foreign preachers.

This, of course, comes on the heels of Pat Robertson calling for the assassination of democratically elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, then trying to backpedal from that remark by lying, claiming not to have mentioned "assassination" specifically (he did), but claiming that "take him out" could've meant something less criminal, such as kidnapping.

On Friday, Mr. Chávez said that President Bush would be to blame if anything happened to him after the comments by Mr. Robertson.

"He was expressing the wishes of the U.S. elite," Mr. Chávez said at a public event. "If anything happens to me, then the man responsible will be George W. Bush. He will be the assassin."

He said, "This is pure terrorism."

The measures taken by Venezuela seem eminently reasonable. A foreign elite openly broadcasts his wish to see the country thrown into turmoil by assassination, so the government immediately responds by taking targeted measures to safeguard national security.

I mean, it's perfectly responsible. You wouldn't expect the government to fail to act on an intelligence report with an awfully ominous-sounding subject line Certainly not a responsible government.

Whatever you do kids, don't take ... milk?

You can tell the batboys association has no clout (possibly because it doesn't exist):

On a dare, a Florida Marlins batboy tried to drink a gallon of milk in under an hour without throwing up. But not only did the batboy not succeed in the challenge, his mere attempt cost him his job for six games, the Miami Herald reported Wednesday.

In other words, had the unidentified batboy been a big leaguer caught using steroids for the first time, his suspension would've been a mere four games longer.

And Major League Baseball wonders why it isn't taken more seriously.

And Jesus? What would he do?

Stunningly. Stupid.

Pat Robertson, the televangelist asshole, called for U.S. operatives to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on air Monday.

''You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,'' Robertson said. ''It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop.''

Right, so to hell with that inconvenient commandment -- how does it go? "Thou shalt not kill"? Oh yeah, that one.

It's also refreshing to see him being honest enough to insinuate what his real concern is. No, not that Chavez is turning Venezuela into "a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism." (Earth to Pat: According to the CIA World Factbook -- put out by the CIA, those folks you'd like to have kill Chavez -- Venezuela is, at least nominally, overwhelmingly Catholic. What Muslim extremists there might be would fall into the 2 percent of "other," if that.)

But rather, it's all about oil. And when it comes to Pat, it's always about the Benjamins. Not Jesus. Though love of Jesus and Muslim-hating evidently provide a nice cover for Pat to protect his investments. And, uh, those help to support his televangelism, so that millions of people the world over can hear Pat expound on such Christian concepts as "love thy neighbor," "blessed are the meek," "thou shalt not kill" and "let's assassinate the democratically elected president of a predominantly Christian country so I can make more money in the oil market."

It's the same sort of Christian kindness that led him to speak out against the U.S. government when it tried to oust Liberian President Charles Taylor, a war criminal, because Taylor's ouster would turn over control of the country to "Muslim rebels." Oh, and it'd also jeopardize the sweetheart investment deal Pat had with Taylor in Liberian gold mines. Meek indeed.

(via Joe)

Co to znamená?

What does it mean, indeed?

I've been pretty frustrated with my language skills of late. Mainly this is the product of trying to jump into reading a collection of conference papers I picked up that are written in Czech and Slovak. I thought I'd forgo the Slovak, since I've never studied Slovak in the least, so I started reading the first two or three articles in Czech.

Now, I don't want to say my efforts met without success. Let's just say that this wasn't the most efficient use of my time. Granted, my tempo was slowed considerably by my desire to look up all the words I don't know (a terribly high number), which slowed the pace quite a bit. But it was still laborious. I was reading at a rate of maybe three pages an hour. At that tempo I'll never be able to do any significant research.

Then today during break, while I was waiting for the lecture to begin, I started in on the next article in the book, which was in Slovak, just to see what I could understand, since I had nothing else to do and about 10 minutes to kill.

And the hell of it is that I seemed to get through the Slovak article much more easily. As in, I was reading the damn thing at something resembling a normal reading pace. Moreover, I was actually understanding probably 80 percent of it, all without benefit of a dictionary.

I realize that Czech and Slovak are very closely related languages, sometimes even classed as members of a subgroup of the West Slavic branch of Slavic languages. That said, I still can't figure out why I can read in the language I've never studied much more quickly than I can in the language I've been learning for most of the past four years, particularly when my ability to understand Slovak is wholly dependent on my knowledge of Czech. Crazy, no?

OK, so there are a few potentially mitigating circumstances. I had lower expectations when I started, reading for general comprehension rather than direct translation and even then not expecting to be able to rough out much at all. And, Slovak, I'm told has fewer words than Czech, which perhaps spares me from encountering lots of new or unfamiliar vocabulary, as is too often the case for me with Czech. And, probably, it didn't hurt that all those vocabulary words I had to look up to get through the first few articles in Czech perhaps came in handy for reading stuff in Slovak on the same theme.

Still, it puzzled me.

Don't get me wrong; I was thrilled to have done so well. And this is certainly welcome encouragement at a time when I kept thinking I was going to have to abandon course because I didn't think my language skills would permit me to do extensive research in Czech, let alone Slovak. So that's good.

It was also good that, when the lecture started, I concentrated really hard and understood about 90 percent of the talk, which is phenomenal from my standpoint.

It now remains to be seen how this translates to the final exam I have to take tomorrow morning. At least I already completed my report for my fellowship, complete with the grade I received "or think I will receive."

Hick chick -- er, chic

Some people nearing retirement age seek to escape from the grind of urban life and return to the land, so to speak. THere's nothing wrong with deciding to relocate to a little cabin in the middle of the woods, miles from civilization. Hell, J.D. Salinger has been living in the middle of New Hampshire for decades.

But then there are the folks who think, "Gee, Thoreau went and lived in the middle of the woods. Why don't I move to middle of some wooded area and build a rustic-looking house with ultramodern features and pretend like I know what I'm doing there!"

Such is the "moderated ruralism" of the "Cracker Modern" (no, that's not my appellation; the developer is really calling it that) development) development in rural Florida.

The idea is a corporate reinvention of new urbanism, an antisprawl movement that advocates compact, old-fashioned towns where residents can commune in parks, shops and restaurants within walking distance of their homes. Instead of connecting with neighbors, new ruralism promotes connecting with the land - though these cabins in the woods come with wireless Internet access and porches with screens that unfurl by remote control.

Now, it'd be silly to think that people could actually be expected to suffer the unpleasantness of the untamed wilds. You know, all that nature and stuff.

"We honestly asked ourselves, 'Will people live in this environment?' " said Kevin Fox, the St. Joe executive overseeing RiverCamps. "We've got critters, we've got heat, we've got humidity."

Not to worry. The developers have it covered.

At RiverCamps on Crooked Creek, which is near Panama City Beach and offers two-acre lots for up to $1 million, the overhaul involved thinning the forest and burning the thick underbrush so that softer, greener grasses would emerge. With the land reworked, a landscape architect identified 54 "environmental jewels" - Spider Lily Marsh and the like - and mapped them out for prospective buyers. Brochures promise homes in the "Cracker Modern" style: lots of wood, metal roofs, broad roof overhangs to block the sun and screened porches.

Of course, some might argue that the enviromental jewels were, you know, all that thick underbrush that occurs naturally and makes the nature, well, nature. Unspoiled if a nuisance to the latter-day faux Thoreau.

And then there are the thornier matters, like the fact that all this people who want to "go back to the land" don't exactly know how to do that. But, fortunately, once again, the developers have thought of everything.

At the first WhiteFence Farms site, southeast of Tallahassee, St. Joe is preparing 373 acres of former watermelon and peanut fields for "people who have always wanted to live on a farm but don't see themselves as farmers," Mr. Fox said. They must also be willing to pay $20,000 to $45,000 an acre for the land alone. The company is digging ponds and smoothing pastures for buyers it imagines dabbling in horse riding, beekeeping, wildflower growing and field plowing.

You have to wonder about the folks who have this desire to settle an urbane backwater. It recalls a phrase frequently used by a sage philosopher, who spoke often of people "with more money than sense." (Or was that "cents"?)

Ms. Dudley said she wanted to emulate Florida's early rural settlers, known as crackers, who, wrote a British traveler in 1857, "lived among the pines, raised a few hogs and cows, grew a little patch of corn, and just barely survived." Yet Ms. Dudley said she also expected the comforts that cracker settlers sorely lacked.

"Absolutely I want that privacy and those woods," she said. "Yet at the same time, I want to be able to invite a neighbor over for a glass of wine and I want a nice kitchen with a Sub-Zero refrigerator."

True that. We couldn't have the place going all rustic.

I have to think that, had Thoreau had the chance, he probably would've tricked out Walden with a 42-inch plasma TV, Dolby surround sound and lightning-fast wireless Internet. It really helped with all the meditation and convening with nature. He probably also could've used a few "farmhands" to do all the chores, too.

Things I could've done without

Riding back from the Bohemians match this evening, our tram got quite an unexpected and definitely unwelcome vocal performance.

A group of Americans -- who else? -- launched into an impromptu concert of various Christian worship songs. Ugh. Several on the tram reached for headphones and the rest of us envied those with the good fortune to have brought something to blot out the choir. One of my companions, a Dane, tried to reciprocate by starting a Bohemians chant, but it didn't catch on, so for several stops we had to endure the church choir.

Ugh. It was bad enough that Bohemians lost the match, and that we had stood for the second half in a steady rain, which made us quite soaked and a bit chilly by the time we boarded the tram. But the last thing I would've wished for was a reminder of what I'm "missing" by not being in the United States.

Nothing against persons of faith, but there's a difference between belonging to a faith and proclaiming it to anyone and everyone, the fellow believers and those who'd rather not be disturbed. Not to mention the attempts at proselytizing. It's quite inappropriate and rude to just horn in on someone with such a personal and potentially volatile issue. And still worse to be a captive audience when you have no escape.

It was just a little disappointing, because you generally don't get that in Europe. Especially here, in a country where the plurality religious affiliation is atheist, a nation that has been suspicious of organized religion for more than six centuries, where religion is relegated to its realm and where religion doesn't encroach on the secular. Normally.

Devolution

This whole "teach-the-controversy" approach to classroom science teaching of evolution being spearheaded by the misnamed Discovery Institute is downright ridiculous and shameful.

It'd be one thing if, say, there were legitimate differences of bona fide scientific opinion on the subject, something where there were multiple theories of scientific merit. That, of course, would warrant teaching science students about the various arguments postulated for a natural phenomenon.

But, of course, this is pure politics. There is no "controversy." And the notion that a fictitious controversy exists is a disturbing testament to the ability of the extreme conservative movement to fabricate such a debate in order to get into the picture.

Mainstream scientists reject the notion that any controversy over evolution even exists. But Mr. Bush embraced the institute's talking points by suggesting that alternative theories and criticism should be included in biology curriculums "so people can understand what the debate is about."

I certainly don't consider Dubya an expert on scientific matters, or much of anything intellectually rigorous, so I find it highly inappropriate that he and others of his ilk would lecture us on something like science, which in its purest form strives for true objectivity in the form of empirically derived and verifiable results.

And it's all high and noble of these conservative cultural crusaders to couch their PR campaign in the language of academic freedom, when clearly the real controversy is simple whether religion has any business in a science classroom, or in most classrooms, for that matter.

While it's tempting to term the "intelligent design" missionaries cultural Luddites, that'd be a misnomer. The Luddite movement only aimed to forestall technological progress; the anti-evolution crowd wants to turn back the scientific clock at minimum a good century and a half.

"We are in the very initial stages of a scientific revolution," said the center's director, Stephen C. Meyer, 47, a historian and philosopher of science recruited by Discovery after he protested a professor being punished for criticizing Darwin in class. "We want to have an effect on the dominant view of our culture."

But therein lies the problem. It's advocacy of science grounded in religious and cultural prejudices, rather than pure, empirical science, the bedrock of, well, pretty much every major advance in knowledge since the real Scientiic Revolution and Age of Enlightenment, at minimum.

"All ideas go through three stages - first they're ignored, then they're attacked, then they're accepted," said Jay W. Richards, a philosopher and the institute's vice president. "We're kind of beyond the ignored stage. We're somewhere in the attack."

Well, that's certainly one route. But there are a lot more ideas that fell by the wayside because they couldn't withstand proper scrutiny. We can only hope this creationism-in-sheep's-clothing business meets a similar fate.

What strikes me as particularly dangerous and damaging in this whole controversy is that it doesn't address real, pressing needs in scientific learning and education. I don't know the current figures, but I know American schoolchildren have routinely scored dismally in comparison to the students of other leading industrialized countries in math and science. This hubbub over a pseudo-controversy on evolution doesn't help to rectify that gap. Certainly American science students aren't falling behind their counterparts in Asia and Europe because they aren't being taught hokey, meritless rebuttals to evolution. But, you know, if it was really about learning and not cultural politics, then we wouldn't be discussing this at all.

Except that cultural conservatives are growing ascendant, or at least gaining influence in powerful places, with dire consequences for all involved.

A watershed moment came with the adoption in 2001 of the No Child Left Behind Act, whose legislative history includes a passage that comes straight from the institute's talking points. "Where biological evolution is taught, the curriculum should help students to understand why this subject generates so much continuing controversy," was language that Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, tried to include.

Ironic in all of this is that these and other arguments about growing ecumenicalism and an emerging Christian majority have unacknowledged echoes of bastardized social Darwinism.

Crikey, people in L.A. are pathetic!

The dog days of August means a slow news period for the media ("cucumber season," as the Czechs call it). How the news media of different countries choose to fill the news hole is instructive and interesting.

Take the Czechs. They've taken to some good old-fashioned muckraking, reporting on CzechTek, an incident that's making waves here since riot police appeared to brutally attack about 5,000 ravers at an outdoor techno party in the countryside at the end of July. This has had everyone weighing from the current and former presidents to the average raver who just wants, you know, to throw a wicked techno party without getting his head bashed in my the police.

The image of police beating young people remains especially problematic for the government, says Jirák, because it brings to mind violence used by communists to stifle opposition before — and during — the 1989 revolution.

Then there are the Brits. Seems Tony Blair is doing his best Dubya impression by taking a long vacation in the middle of the war. Only, Tony's people asked the British press not to say where he's taking his holiday, citing "security concerns." And, incredibly, the British media have gone for it.

Sort of.

Unable to report on "Tony and Cherie get a tan," the British media are at least having some fun with it.

The Sun, publishing photographs of Mr. Blair and his wife, Cherie, said the images had been taken somewhere in the Caribbean. On Thursday, The Daily Mail published a spoof quiz entitled "Where's Blair," offering readers 10 possible venues for the prime minister's vacation, including Afghanistan and Iraq, along with more plausible places like the Caribbean. A columnist in The Sun suggested that Mr. Blair might be staying at the home of a "bachelor boy" - the title of an early Cliff Richard song.

And then there's the L.A. media. From the folks who never fail to cut to live coverage of the high-speed police pursuit du jour, the media that go into "Storm Watch" whenever measurable precipitation falls, the TV networks that make a big to-do of weather forecasts for a climate that has some of the most monotonously nice weather in the country, we have the epic story of the summer: Gator Watch. Apparently there's an alligator that was someone's pet and has since been released into an area lake, and the media are treating this like, well, like the O.J. Simpson chase. But it's just another example of how lame-ass L.A. "news" media are.

Now, maybe if this were, say, more serious, and not purely whimsical, it might warrant some coverage. Kind of like when someone got loose in San Diego with a military tank and a death wish.

But let there be no doubt about how frivolous this whole farce is:

It was time to call in a professional. Enter Jay Young, a 31-year-old, $800-a-day hunk and alligator hunter from Colorado. Wearing a leather cowboy hat and alligator-tooth necklace Young surveyed the scene and dismissed the danger involved: "At most I can lose a couple of fingers," he declared.

That's right. When people in L.A. need to catch a gator, they turn to some bloke from Colorado, a state known for having a large gator population.

But hey, he's an "$800-a-day hunk," and it wouldn't be L.A. if they weren't superficial.

Dia de los dictadores

Today in conversation we continued the ongoing theme of the week, whereby various students talk about their hometown or homeland.

Now, while this normally wouldn't be terribly edifying (lucky me for getting to talk about the crap factory that is the Orange Curtain), today's was unusually so.

Why, you might ask? Because we had presentations on Belarus, Florence and ... North Korea.

For whatever reason, Prague is evidently authorized by the Great Leader as a destination for exchange students, which accounts for the apparent popularity of Czech (we were told it's popular, which evidently meant that maybe 10 people in all study it).

And we got the party line about the country. "Thanks to the People's Army," the country was liberated after the Second World War. Then she passed around some magazines about the country, most of which for whatever reason were written in Russian, but one of them was a brochure about this cabin or campsite in the mountains where the Great Leader, Kim Jong Il, had been born. But it was in English, which was fortunate, since I can only sort of decipher Russian; my knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet is imperfect, and even then I'm limited to roughing out the common Slavic roots based on my knowledge of Czech. I want to see if there's any way I can get a copy of that pamplet, though, since it's not your garden variety tourist brochure.

Pretty much everyone was captivated by the opportunity to not only hear about North Korea, but to actually get to ask questions about life there. Lots of questions. We spent roughly half an hour or so doing this.

And, I got to ask a very interesting question, namely what do people in North Korea thinking about America?

We're Enemy No. !.

Surprise, surprise.

I had thought about telling her that North Korea is maybe enemy No. 3 for us, since I assume the countries we're currently trying to occupy rank higher, even though I would think North Korea should also be at the top of the list, as it poses a more direct threat to U.S. territory should it keep progressing with that nuclear program.

But I opted not to, in part because it seemed undiplomatic. But I was also strongly discouraged by not quite having the vocabulary for it.

Catholicism Wow!

Cardinal Ignatius Glick would be proud to see the connection the world's youth are making with His Eminence, Pope Benedict XVI:

"As Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger he was like the church's bulldog; he was putting the smack down on heresy," said Pedro Russell, a 21-year-old Montanan who had both green-dyed hair and a rosary around his neck.

Do you think he has a Buddy Christ?

700 Free Hours of Jesus with New Version 9.0!

Warren Smith, the publisher of an evangelical Christian newspaper in Charlotte, N.C., compares the movie "Jesus" to the jawbone of an ass.

Yours truly, as the sole proprietor of this blog, compares evangelical Christian newspaper publisher Warren Smith to a jackass.

However dated its production values, "Jesus" has come to be viewed by many evangelical Christians as a singularly modern tool for spreading the Gospel. It speaks, though without special effects or quick editing, to a populace fluent in Hollywood. It comes in multiple languages on one disc. It concludes with a "salvation prayer" the viewer can recite with the narrator. Its local distributors consider it so effective that millions of dollars have already been spent toward the goal of delivering a copy to every household in the United States, as if it were free trial software from America Online.

The comparison to AOL junk mail is instructive, if only because it seems likely to gain just as low a reputation as those ubiquitous AOL trial discs.

So the question becomes, how will you use your unsolicited copy of "Jesus: The Campy Movie"?

A) coaster
B) frisbee
C) fuel for a home-produced laser show in the office microwave
D) adhered to a brick and returned to sender with postage due
E) other (leave your ideas below)

AC Sparta Praha 2, FK Siad Most 1

At long last, I attended a professional football match.

You can pardon me for having not attended previously as, well, there really isn't much in the way of professional football played in the U.S. I missed out on the World Cup in 1994 (too young to have had a highly developed interest), and I don't really see the point of shelling out a lot of money to watch Manchester United or one of the other top European clubs play an exhibition of some sort on a preseason tour.

But now, the tables have turned. Or, rather, I have the good fortune to find myself in Europe at the start of domestic league play.

And thus I made my way to a venue whose official name shall be stricken from the record for being corporate.



It was the second round of play in the 2005-2006 Gambrinus League (yes, I realize that's also a corporate name, but 1) it's for a very good domestic brand of beer and 2) you've probably never heard of it and didn't even know that Gambrinus referred to a product), AC Sparta Praha against FK Siad Most, the first home match of the young season for Sparta.

Pity, though, that these matches aren't better attended. This match drew 7,782 fans, or about 37 percent of the stadium's capacity of 20,565.

I'm not sure why domestic matches don't draw more fans. I mean, it's not an expensive proposition, at least in comparison to going to any sort of North American sporting event. Maybe it's a bit more by local standards, but I really find it difficult to believe that it's truly beyond the means of most folks.

Here's what I spent at the stadium today:

Ticket: 70 Kč
Beer: 3 X 20 Kč = 60 Kč
Sausage: 30 Kč
Program: 35 Kč

Grand Total: 195 Kč

In other words, I spent a shade under $8(!)

Then again, it actually wound up costing me 95 Kč, as I later discovered that the ticket vendor had wound up giving me incorrect change, and thus ended up giving me 1030 Kč after I had given him a 1000-crown note to pay for my 70-crown ticket. So this wound up being quite a bargain indeed.

And mind you, it's not like I went super stingy. Granted, I could've paid as much as 230 Kč for a ticket, but as it was, I was sitting in the eighth row behind the goal line, down near one corner. And I drank three large draft beers. I mean, I can't remember the last time I bought a ticket to an American sporting event for as little as I spent on the entire outing today. And the only time I've ever had a beer at a sporting event was when I went to Game 1 of the 2003 NLCS at Wrigley Field, where I spent $7 for a 12-oz. can of Molson, only because I was buying a beer for Nikolai, who had managed to procure our gratis tickets. So, in other words, my outing today, seeing one of the two powerhouses of the Czech league and drinking lots of excellent beer cost a smidgeon more than the one mediocre beer I got at a Cubs game. (OK, in fairness, I could've saved a buck or two by buying Old Style, which would've made me one of the people, but most people in Chicago -- and America, for that matter -- drink truly awful beer.) I love this game!



The match itself was interesting. There were a good number of chances for both teams, and the level of play, while maybe not World Cup-caliber, was still pretty good.

It was scoreless for a while, but then Most took down a Sparta player in the box, setting up a penalty for Sparta captain Karel Poborský.



Poborský scored, prompting jubilation from the home crowd and his teammates.



A little bit later, a foul near the corner brought up a set piece, with Poborský taking the free kick, a low, swooping cross, which Tomáš Sivok headed past the Most keeper, making it two-nil.

But it wasn't a rout. Just before the half, Most answered. And late in the second half, they damn near netted the equalizer off a cross when a header rang off the woodwork.

At one point toward the end of the match, a loud noise sounded from the section of Most supporters, some sort of bang akin to maybe a firecracker or other small explosion or gunshot. Police, festooned in fluorescent yellow vests, rushed into the section and began beating down some fans. This comes at a particularly difficult moment for police in general in the Czech Republic, coming three weeks after Czech police brutally broke up a large techno party, CzechTek, which has prompted an unending flurry of criticism of police conduct from all quarters here.

Possibly alluding to CzechTek, but mostly out of good humor, fans in the Sparta section began chanting "S-T-B, S-T-B," a reference to the StB (Státní bezpečnost), the Communist-era secret police, in response to the police action in the opposite end of the stadium. Later, the Most fans picked up the chant on their own, which allowed Sparta fans to return to chanting slogans of support for their squad.

So the match was at least worth the price of admission. Actually, that'd be a disparaging description. I'd say it was worth more than the price of admission.

So I'm now eagerly awaiting my next chance to see some football. I already bought a ticket to see the second match of the third preliminary round of the Champions League, pitting SK Slavia Praha against RSC Anderlecht of Belgium. But, Slavia plays another home match next Sunday, which has me itching to go to that as well.

Of course, the really pressing thing is to pick a side to root for: Slavia or Sparta? It's an eternal dilemma for Praguers, and while I can get away with just rooting for the home side at the moment, the day will come in the future when I have to take sides.

It's tough, because Sparta has the working-class tradition, but Slavia has a sort of dissident intellectual tradition (it began in 1892 a rebellious debating society). The pedigrees of both clubs have much to endear them.

(At a football game) nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

From a piece about a mammoth public mural project in New York:

But while working in the United States, he said, the idea of the resolutely upbeat cheerleader - her charms alternately infectious and annoying - appealed to him as something quintessentially American. "You as a nation are the cheerleaders," he said.

So he started picking up copies of American Cheerleader magazine - "I thought I'd be arrested when I was buying it," he said - and using photographs for paintings. At the same time, he was struck by how much cheerleaders' contorted poses, in tight focus, can seem to be images of people being tortured. Later, a friend in Britain sent him a copy of a painting, probably a Flemish work from the 15th century, of a man being crucified, most likely one of the thieves executed alongside Jesus. The man's arms are lashed atop the horizontal bar of the cross, and his body is bent backward, with one leg extended back almost delicately. Finally, the last element was in place: Mr. Hume decided to paint a crucified cheerleader.

I'm not sure which part amuses me more: the equation of America with cheerleaders, or the observation that American cheerleaders of the 20th and 21st centuries bear a striking resemblance to torture victims of the Middle Ages.

Perhaps both of those say something about cheerleading; I'm just not sure what exactly.

Bizarre

Spotted, on multiple billboards yesterday, while returning from Karlovy Vary to Prague by bus:

"Big Brother vidíte tě."

Literally, this means "Big Brother is watching you." It's an ad for the upcoming season of the Czech edition of "Big Brother." But these ads are a bit creepy, especially when you consider that they're in a country that endured one of the nastiest bouts of Stalinism in the entire Communist bloc in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I mean, if you're going to be so brazen, why not also include a huge-ass picture of Big Brother himself?

Where's Johnny English when you need him?

How about that? It seems British "intelligence" is just as sharp as its American counterpart after all.

As in, evidently they got a warning from Saudi officials weeks before the London bombings about a likely attack:

Saudi Arabia officially warned Britain of an imminent terrorist attack on London just weeks ahead of the 7 July bombings after calls from one of al-Qaeda's most wanted operatives were traced to an active cell in the United Kingdom.

Although, I suppose, in fairness, this wasn't intelligence gather by MI5 and MI6 themselves, nor did it come across anyone's desk as a memo with a title like "Islamic Terrorists to Coordinate Suicide Bombings on London Public Transit."

Because if you had just a glaring memo, there's no way you could ignore it. Oops.

English -- who needs that? I'm never going to rural Georgia anyway

Nothing like draconian enforcement of ridiculous drug laws to perpetrate a little oblique racism.

Now, I'm sure that federal prosecutors arrested 49 Indian convenience store clerks and owners in rural Georgia because these folks were clearly flouting laws meant to prevent the sale of over-the-counter pharmaceuticals with applications for making methamphetamines. It's pretty much an open and shut case.

Oh, sure, defense attorneys for the accused may plead cultural and linguistic lack of understanding. But, honestly, like these Indians really didn't know that "cook" was slang for making meth.

"This is not even slang language like 'gonna,' 'wanna,' " said Malvika Patel, who spent three days in jail before being cleared this month. " 'Cook' is very clear; it means food." And in this context, she said, some of the items the government wants stores to monitor would not set off any alarms. "When I do barbecue, I have four families. I never have enough aluminum foil."

The audacity of these hardened criminals is just atrocious. They tried to protect themselves by observing the letter of the law but not its spirit.

Defense lawyers say the Indians were simply being good merchants and obeying what they believed was the letter of the law. Several refused to sell more than two bottles of cold medicine, citing store policy. They were charged, prosecutors say, because they allowed the "customers" to come back the next day for more. Prosecutors say that should have made it clear to the clerks that the buyers were up to no good.

Despicable.

All these attempts at pleading poor understanding of a foreign language just disgust me. Because, after all, the locals can puzzle out a little Hindi, even if they might have wrongly assumed that the Malvika Patel they picked up was the Malvika Patel in whose name a van was registered. Just a trifling mistake that shouldn't cloud the great strides local white Georgians have made to understand the new Indian culture spreading into their (red)neck of the woods.

Her misidentification has fueled the belief among the Indians that investigators were operating on cultural bias. This corner of the state is still largely white; Indians began moving here about 10 years ago, buying hotels and then convenience stores, and some whites still say, mistakenly, that "Patel" means "hotel" in Hindi.