Neumannová, Swedes, and taxes

I have finally received my 2005 tax refunds, both from the state level as well from the Feds. Filing as a resident has trivialized this portion of bureaucracy and I only spend about 5 hours a year or so with the forms for IRS and DOR. It used to be completely out of control when the various forms reflecting the international treaties had to be filled out - several weeks of the process of figuring out what to fill out and what to write in the forms. And I still didn't know the answer to some very basic questions like Whather I should pay any taxes or not. Despite the simplification, yes, I still think that taxes should ideally be eliminated or at least replaced by some concise flat or fair tax system.

Kateřina Neumannová got a virosis two days ago so she had to decide whether she would compete in 30 km cross country skiing - free style (skating) - at the end of her last olympic games. The final decision was yes and of course, she has won the gold medal, improving the Czech medal budget somewhat. One of her previous gold medals was right after she gave birth to her daughter Lucie. Is not she amazing?

The Czech ice-hockey players face Sweden in the semifinals at 10:30 am EST today. The Swedes want to revenge for their lost semifinals with the Czechs in the 2001 semifinals, for their unsuccessful attempt to revenge in the 2004 World Cup in Sweden in which the Swedes lost 6:1 in front of their own fans, and for their futile 2005 attempt to revenge for their failed revenges in Vienna. Well, quite a lot of stuff to revenge for. ;-) Important background: the Swedes stole a lot of books, gold, bronze statues, fountains, and other good stuff from Prague in 1648 and it seems that their conscience has not yet been cleared. :-) Unfortunately, the Swedes are going to win today 7:3. Note that I don't like the Bayesian inference so I prefer to tell you the result instead of some meaningless figures encoding the "probabilities".

However, on Saturday, the Czech team will easily beat Russia 3:0 (1:0 - 1:0 - 1:0), humiliate lonely oyster's predictions, and grab at least the bronze medals. Sweden will win the gold medals by a 3:2 victory over Finland on Sunday, leaving the Finns with the silver medals.