In just two days the grand finale of the 2008 Czech Miss pageant will take place. The ceremony will take place in an airport terminal! In case you are not familiar with the Czech beauty, here are the finalists. Please follow the link, then click on the thumbnail collage and the keep clicking on the button that is labelled “DALSI”…
Czech Police are now focusing on their image more than ever. There is a I-Want-You recruiting campaign in progress: a TV ad with a small boy who protects his classmates and later becomes a cop, there are new uniforms which resemble those of British police…and police cars are now being resprayed to include the slogan WE SERVE AND PROTECT…
Obvious inspiration by numerous examples from the States (LAPD: To Serve And Protect). But it sure looks good and it works…
The Czech translation of the latest Harry Potter is in stores today. However, according to a special deal between the publisher and bookstores, the book will not be available in supermarkets for the next four weeks. The publisher wants to support bookstores this way…
I am hoping to get some interesting photos done…crowds of people fighting for the new books…
UPDATE: No crowds, obviously. According to booksellers those who opened at midnight were done selling at around 12:30 a.m. Compared with previous HP books many fans read the English version that has been in stores for several weeks.
For over six months the Czech Foreign Ministry has been keeping secret that the operation of the Czech embassy in Belgrade, Serbia is almost totally halted in relation to visa regime(s) due to corruption, the Denik daily writes.
FM officials claim that most corruption-related practices in obtaining visa take place on the sidewalk outside the embassy where the embassy has no legal powers. Local mafia and individuals are involved in “helping” desperate non-EU citizens in getting long-term Czech visa.
According to the ministry only Serbian employees were fired.
An American citizen was stabbed to death by an off-duty cop in Prague last night. According to Denik.cz news server the victim was a soldier stationed in Germany.
More to come…
UPDATE: The cop was drunk. The police are now investigating “who started it”. Later a minor investigation proved that the man was NOT a soldier. He was stabbed twice. Another investigation theory is that the American was also armed and the cop was only defending himself…
A couple of crazy things happened to me recently that can be briefly summarized under five new Murphy’s laws…Here goes…
The last one is particularly troubling :))
LDS President Gordon Hinckley died a the age of 97, CNN reports.
It should be noted and applauded that the CNN obit reminded the viewers some horrifying things he said in a 2004 interview with Larry King:
“We are not anti-gay. We are pro-family, let me put it that way. We love these people and try to work with them and help them. We know they have a problem. We want to help them solve that problem.” [VIA CNN]
If all thirteen million LDS members around the world think that gays “have a problem” and that they need to get help with the problem, AND that they need to get help from such a church as LDS, then WE ALL have a problem.
I really don’t understand why LDS wouldn’t give up. Gays and lesbians do not want their help, they are perfectly happy with their sexual orientation. LDS want a perfect world and so by “helping” gays become heterosexuals they would help themselves.
Let’s go back to the quote: so if LDS are not anti-gay, why would they want to help gays? Sure, they are pro-family. Does it mean that they will soon start opressing young people who have sex before marriage? Hinckley had five children, so he must have had at least five orgasms in his life. Does that make him an expert in sex life and related issues? Hell no. His views are nothing but religion-driven. No relation to psychology, medicine and other pragmatic things…
UPDATE: here is what might be heard at a university, a place for sharing ideas, philosophies and thoughts [via religioustolerance.org]:
“We do not intend to admit to our campus any homosexuals. If any of you have this tendency and have not completely abandoned it, may I suggest that you leave the university immediately after this assembly…. We do not want others on this campus to be contaminated by your presence.” — Ernest Wilkinson, president of Brigham Young University, in a 1965 lecture to the BYU student body, titled: “Make Honor your Standard.”
Sure, it was over 40 years ago, but still….And they named a building after this guy…
In a recent interview Theron admitted that “Budapest” felt like Cannes, France. She also said she visited a bazaar. Bazaar is Oriental tradition and is NOT generally to be found in Budapest, Hungary.
Mayor of the “real Budapest” responded by inviting the actress to the city where she can also see some traces of Oriental cultures. As the Tyden.cz news server reminds occupation of Hungary by Turks took place between the years 1526 and 1686.
Personal note: some readers usually respond to this kind of posts by saying that it does not matter and that they are sure I don’t know the names of U.S. state capitals. Well, 1) I do because I took numerous tests in U.S. Geography class at Provo High School and I kept getting A+’s; and B) there is a difference between the nation’s capital and a state capital… And Istanbul is not even the country’s capital…
Yesterday I saw some CNN news story about two U.S. soldiers who tragically died in Iraq. There was some malpractice of some USMC officer involved.
The C.O. of the soldiers spoke at a press conference. He did not promise investigation, he did not promise professional assistance to the families of the victims, he did not promise anything that would help to prevent the occurrence of the same tragedy again.
All he said was something like Our prayers are with the families of the victims…
Interesting… so when somebody in the USMC fucks up, they pray for the victims and their families? How is this going to help? Religion-oriented hypocrisy in a military conflict is one of the worst strategies the Bush administration can implement. Bush should make up his mind: he can either keep sending men and women to Iraq, have them killed and admit that there is no such thing as God because if PEOPLE don’t get stuff done, nobody does, OR he can pull the troops back home from Iraq and say that if something is God’s will, then God puts on a Kevlar and the whole Iraq issue can be settled without casualties….
World War II Wehrmacht soldiers who died near the Czech town of Cheb were to rest in piece on a local cemetery but the town wants “grave rent” that is unacceptable, the Novinky.cz news server wrote. But the German daily Bild am Sonntag came with the story first.
The costs are 500,000 euros, but the Mayor of Cheb claims the said price is not “rent” but necessary costs associated with the renovation of the cemetery.
It looks like it is extortion but it is not, the mayor says.
Many locals oppose this idea, no matter what international conventions and treaties might say. Something tells me that the more this issue gets stirred the more councillors will vote against the project. After all, a cemetery with graves of WWII German soldiers in a town that suffered a lot during the war…
