Czech Republic 4 - 0 U.S.

On Friday 13th, Czechia lost in the semifinals to Sweden - the first loss - so much of the optimistic and self-confident tone below has been rendered obsolete. ;-)

But let's get back.

Much like most Czechs, I am watching all matches of our team on the 2011 World Ice-hockey Championship in Slovakia.



The final score may indicate otherwise but this quarter final match was extremely dramatic.




The Czech team - one that defends the gold medals - won the first six matches of the tournament - it didn't lose a point against Latvia, Denmark, Finland, Slovakia, Russia, and Germany.

Russia had to experience a defeat on their Victory Day, May 8th, while this historical irregularity was partly fixed on the anniversary of the liberation of Prague, May 9th, when the Germans were beaten again (5-2). ;-)

But those six matches didn't play any role whatsoever in the quarter final.

In the play-off system, you lose once and you go home. Moreover, America was full of energy. The U.S. team is, in average, 4 years younger than the Czech team. Their simple game patterns and the ability to constantly attack and threaten our players has been scary throughout the first period.

Could they sustain this amazing speed?

Fortunately, the answer turned out to be No. ;-) Already during the first period, Jaromír Jágr scored a goal, 1-0. Jágr is 39-year-old and he's finally getting a little bit mature and experienced. I guess that in 10 or 15 more years, he may become a pretty good player. One sign that he is already an adult player is that he prays after each match and he eats a lot of Tatranka and Mignonka chocolate bars. He also insists on having simple black hockey sticks, not to speak about his legendary number 68.

But, as the climate articles on this blog have occasionally mentioned, you can't just linearly extrapolate the data into the future, can you? If you could, you would also predict that Jágr would score another goal in the second period, and a third goal in the third period. In that way, you would boldly predict a hattrick. You would have to claim that hats will start to land on the ice.

And damn, you would be right! ;-) At least in this case, the flawed extrapolation algorithm worked. Jágr scored in the 2nd period for the second time, and in the 3rd period for the third time. Another goal in the 3rd period was added by Plekanec.

Again, those 7 pretty much safe victories won't mean anything in the semifinals where Czechia will face the winner of the Sweden-Germany quarter finals. If it's Sweden, we can't be sure yet that it's trivial to beat them because we haven't tried. The winner and loser of this semifinal game will play the final and the bronze medal game against two teams from the Canada-Russia, Finland-Norway list.

Well, I admit that the advantage of the home-like environment is significantly helping the Czech team. In fact, the Slovak capital of Bratislava may feel more like home than the Czech cities - a similar effect, to a lesser extent, exists in Germany and Austria as well. But in the Slovak case, it's more pronounced especially because most Slovaks, after the elimination of their team, became fans of the Czech team, too. Thousands of visibly Slovak fans on the streets of Bratislava wear both flags, among other symbols.

It's an authentic emotional relationship that's not being promoted by any centralized political power. After 18 years, they finally began to realize that they're damn close to their Czech brothers and it is kind of unrealistic to try to grow everything at the level of their village or even Slovakia which is still unnecessarily small for many purposes.

Still, Slovakia has managed to win the championship in 2002, too. Since its birth in 1993, the Czech Republic has won the gold medal 7 times, when I count the Nagano Olympics (and if I don't count the ongoing tournament yet, of course haha). Together, Czechia, Slovakia, and Czechoslovakia won 47 medals from the World Championships which beats Canada with 46, Sweden with 42, and Russia/Soviets with 41.

Josef Váňa wins his 7th Velká Pardubická Steeple Chase

In the morning, Josef Váňa who will celebrate his 58th birthday in two weeks said that 7 was a nicer number than 6 so he would prefer to win the race for the 7th time. This mathematical argument sounded sensible.

A few hours ago, he won the Great Pardubice Steeple Chase for the 7th time, indeed.



If you want to optimize your chances of winning the most prestigious Czech horse race, statistics strongly suggests that you should be approximately 58 years old, 166 cm tall, 62 kg of weight (the horse has to carry some extra baggage to avoid any advantage from your lower weight!), and you should have already experienced a clinical death as well (Váňa's heart has repeatedly stopped in June 1994 after a complicated collision with another horse in Baden-Baden). :-)




Also, much like Váňa, aside from the death, you should be sure to have collected a sufficient number of milder injuries, including a fracture of pelves, broken all ribs, two fractured vertebras, five fractures of the left clavicle, three fractures of the right clavicle, a fragmented right shoulder, fractures of both wrists, a broken left leg above the huckle-bone, fragmented heel bone, broken jawbone, and five concussions of the brain.

I forgot to tell you that his clinical death in 1994 was supplemented with another serious concussion of the brain, multiple fractures of pelves and ribs, contusion of chest, and a partially torn left lung. Two months after he experienced these mild symptoms of death, he was racing again. As you can see, the training needed for a good horseman is not quite trivial - it's not even easy to memorize what you have to do - but I don't claim you can't do it as well. :-)

You shouldn't expect that Váňa will simply allow you to win because of his compassion. As he has mentioned, if you want to get rid of him, you will have to shoot him.

See the nearly identical text from 2009. A simple argument based on mathematical induction implies that a similar text with the numbers 7,58 replaced by 8,59 may be posted on the second Sunday of October 2011. :-)

Nobel prize in medicine: Robert Edwards

The 2010 Nobel prize for physiology or medicine was awarded to

Robert Geoffrey Edwards of U.K. (Wikipedia)

for in vitro fertilization. Here, in vitro means "in the glass": compare with vitrines and vitrages. ;-)

The egg is taken out of a woman, fertilized externally, and returned to the woman. In this way, sex may be avoided. ;-)




Of course, aside from the possible elimination of this sin :-), the controversial advance is useful in the case of various infertility situations. Today, about 1-2% of people are born in this way so this guy is responsible for millions of new lives every year, nicely extending the mankind's carbon footprint.

It is not 100% comprehensible to me what was hard about this procedure and why it took 20 years of his work but I hope that some commenters may offer a comprehensible explanation.

The identity of the new winner was leaked a few hours before the announcement. I don't know why they present it as such a problem - the leak didn't get anywhere, anyway.

TRF congratulates the laureate and wishes him good health - which, I hear, is not great right now. Patrick Christopher Steptoe, who contributed to the invention, has made a mistake that has cost him 1/2 of the most recent Nobel prize: he died in 1988.

---

Some sports news



This is completely off-topic. But congratulations to the American readers who watch basketball. In the women's world championship in Czechia, the U.S. women defeated the Czech women in the finals. The massacre in Carlsbad, Bohemia was calmly watched by our basketball-player-in-chief, President Václav Klaus.

---

Meanwhile, the soccer in my hometown of Pilsen has provided us with another proof of global warming.

After 11 rounds of the main Czech soccer competition, the Gambrinus league (sponsored by the canonical Pilsner beer for the masses, Gambrinus, named after a Scandinavian God of beer), aptly named FC Viktoria Pilsen has 31 points - 10 victories and 1 tie. One can calculate that among the 16 teams, the Pilsner soccer is 3.1 standard deviations above the mean. It is 12 points ahead of the second team that has 19 points. Well, there are 3 of them: SK Sigma Olomouc, FK Mladá Boleslav, and AC Has-Been Sparta Prague. ;-)

The probability that a particular team is 3 sigma above - but not below - the mean is 1 in 600. The probability that any team among 16 satisfies this condition is above 1 in 40. At any rate, this is unlikely to occur by chance, so at a 95% confidence level, there has to be a reason. Global warming is the only possible reason why Pilsner soccer could suddenly be so good: we have never been any Real Madrid; we were at most Rational Madrid. The Gambrinus league table therefore proves that global warming is real and it will soon kill us.

Acknowledgements: the discoveries above are not purely mine. They are essentially rephrased from the insights by the IPCC, James Hansen, and others.

Prague Mayor Pavel Bém on top of Mount Everest

Two days earlier, first purely Czech female scaled the peak

Klára Poláčková (29), a consultant born in Prague, became the first Czech female citizen to conquer Mt Everest on 5/16. Congratulations!

She went there together with Tashi Tenzing, the grandson of Tenzing Norgay who got to the top with Edmund Clinton in 1953.

Pavel Bém MD, the neo-liberal mayor of Prague who was allowed to go despite some controversies in Prague followed by other controversies in China that didn't give him the permission (so he switched to Nepal), was one day from the top when Poláčková already got there.

He was lucky enough to become the 10th Czech to defeat the peak today (on Thursday, the weather was bad). He has also become the second mayor to reach the tip - and Joe Quimby has only gotten there in the form of a sticker. In Bém's case, the victory was without oxygen, unless the plans were changed in the final stage.



Technical comment: I need to go to New York to welcome my father now. Sorry for the moderation.

Czechia vs Canada 3:4: enough

Ice-hockey world championship.



Czechia vs Canada. 1:0, 1:1, 2:1, 2:2, 3:2, 3:3, end. It turns out that this tie in the standard time was enough - despite the 3:4 loss afterwards - for the Czech team to continue. They won all matches in the basic group B but lost to Germany and Slovakia afterwards which is why a loss to Canada wasn't an option. ;-)

As expected, Americanada and Czechoslovakia go to the quarterfinals group from the group F to play against Russfinns and Swederland from the group E.

Harvard PhD student wins sudoku world title

Václav Klaus, the Czech president, has organized - no, it is not a rock concert against the global warming religion (he only organizes jazz concerts at the Prague Castle) but rather the second world championship in Sudoku,

• Sudoku 07

It might have been a preparation of the campaign of Prague to host the olympic games in 2016. One week ago, the representatives of the Czech capital have voted that they wanted to fight for this event.



Figure 1: Olympic games 2016: Prague?

It's a pleasure to announce that Thomas Snyder, a 27-year-old Harvard PhD student of biochemistry (JPG) who grew up in Buffalo, New York, became the world's champion. Congratulations!



Figure 2: The world's champion together with the organizer.

Roman Šebrle wins third straight Euro indoor heptathlon

Congrats. See news.google.com.

Šárka Záhrobská: first Czech alpine gold

Mr. Petr Záhrobský is not a skier. He is a theorist who has read a lot of books about skiing. Using this knowledge, he has designed a theoretical framework how to earn a golden medal in slalom. He gave birth to his daughter, together with her mother, became her coach, and sent her to Sweden.



On the picture above, taken a few hours ago, Šárka Záhrobská (Sarka Behind-the-grave) is already going to pick the first Czech golden medal from alpine sports from any world championship. ;-) The Swedish press may have been a little bit surprised but the Austrian press was stunned.




"Crazy, the world Champion speaks Czech!," the Österreich daily wrote, although the content of the article was more realistic and noticed that she has been successful in the past. She also speaks excellent German because she's been trained in Alps for many years and shoppings in Vienna were her main hobby.

Vaclav Klaus on global warming

Czech President explains his views on the IPCC panel

See also: Klaus in the Financial Times, Klaus in the U.N., Gore's Nobel prize, Klaus's book in English

Update: Václav Klaus is just visiting Japan and his Japanese notes contain a message to the American non-Al-Gores. Please distribute the link if you like it.

DEUTSCH: HIER KLICKEN (interview)
PORTUGUES: CLIQUE AQUI (interview)
ESPAÑOL: CLIC AQUÍ (interview)
SWEDISH: CLICK HERE (interview)

Václav Klaus, the second president of Czechia, is an avid tennis player.



But today, he became a victim of friendly fire. Andy Roddick, owner of the fastest serve in the game today, targeted Klaus' chest with a tennis ball. ;-) Even though the bodyguards proved to be useless under these circumstances, the leader of the Czech Republic survived while America defeated my European homeland in Davis Cup.



This experience hasn't stopped Klaus - who currently enjoys 82% support of the citizens - from analyzing the international climate panel of the United Nations (IPCC). In an interview with "Hospodářské noviny", a Czech financial daily, Klaus answered a couple of questions (well, more precisely, the interview took place yesterday although it was published today, on 02/09/2007; the translation from Czech to Czenglish is due to your humble correspondent):

• [Questions and answers related to EU politics are skipped; the full translation was published on 02/14/2007 in Prague Monitor]
• ...
• Q: On Wednesday, the European Commission (EC) has approved limits on carbon dioxide emissions for new cars. One week ago, the U.N. climate panel (IPCC AR4) released a report that has described, much like previous reports, the global warming as one of the major threats for the whole civilization. The Stern review about similar threats was published before that. At the same time, you decide to declare that the global warming is a myth. Try to explain, how did you get your idea?
• A: The idea is not mine. Global warming is a myth and I think that every serious person and scientist says so. It is unfair to refer to the United Nations panel. IPCC is not a scientific body: it's a political institution, a kind of non-government organization with green flavor. It's not a forum of neutral scientists or a balanced group of scientists. Its members are politicized scientists who arrive there with one-sided sentiments and one-sided tasks. Also, it's an undignified practical joke that people don't wait for the complete report that will appear in May 2007 but instead react, in such a serious manner, to the summary for policy makers where all the "ifs" and "whens" and "buts" are scratched, erased, and replaced by oversimplified theses.
• This is obviously such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians... If the European Commission were instantly going to buy such a trick, we would have another solid reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar matters.
• Q: How do you explain that we can't see any other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would defend your viewpoint? No one else seems to offer such strong opinions...
• A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-tier politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voices.

• Q: But you are not a climatologist. Do you have a sufficient knowledge and enough information?
• A: Environmentalism as a meta-physical ideology and as a world view has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or the climate itself. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Despite these facts, it is getting fashionable and this process scares me. The second part of the assertion should be: we also have plenty of reports, studies, and books of climate scientists whose conclusions are diametrically opposite.
• You're right that I never measure the width of ice in Antarctica. Indeed, I don't know how to do it, I don't intend to learn it, and I don't pretend to be an expert in such measurements. Nevertheless, as a scientifically inclined man, I know how to read science articles about these questions, e.g. about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. The papers I have read simply don't lead to the conclusions we may see in the media. But let me promise you something: this topic worries me which is why I began to write an article about it last Christmas. The article grew in size and it turned into a book (Blue, not Green Planet). In a few months, it will be published [also in English). Among seven chapters, one will organize my opinions about the climate change.
• Environmentalism and the green ideology are something very different from climate science. Various screams and findings of scientists are misused by this ideology.
• Q: What do you think is the reason that conservative media are skeptical while the left-wing media interpret the global warming as a well-established fact?
• A: It is not quite precisely divided to the right-wingers and left-wingers. Nevertheless it's obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of contemporary leftism.
• Q: If you look at these things, even if you were right...
• A: ...I am right...
• Q: ...Don't we have empirical evidence and facts accessible to our eyes that imply that Man is ruining the planet and himself?
• A: It's such a nonsense that I have probably not yet heard a greater nonsense.

This page was the 8th hottest page of the global blogosphere on Feb 13, 2007. See also conversation tracker. Besides a thousand of blogs, a special report at the Drudge Report, and the Washington Times - where congratulations from James Inhofe were also reported - the interview was publicized at Foxnews (video).

• Q: Don't you believe that we're demolishing our planet?
• A: Let me pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore can argue along these lines: a sane person hardly. I don't see any destruction of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a sensible and serious person might say that he has. Look: you belong to the economic media so we should expect a certain economical erudition from you. My book will clarify these questions. For instance, we know that there exists a strong correlation between the care we give to our environment on one side and the technological prowess and wealth on the other side. It's obvious that the poorer the societies are, the more roughly they behave towards Nature, and vice versa: the richer they become, the more they care about the environment.
• It's also the case that there exist social systems that are damaging the environment - by eliminating private ownership and similar things - much more than the free societies. These tendencies become crucial in the long term. They unquestionably imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected incomparably more than on February 8th ten, fifty, or one hundred years ago.
• That's the reason why I ask: how can you pronounce the sentence you told me? Perhaps when you're unconscious? Or was it meant merely as a provocation? And I may perhaps be just too naive and I allowed you to provoke me to present all these answers to you, am I not? It is more likely that you simply present your honest opinion.
• ...
• [Questions and Klaus' answers about Czech politics followed; the full translation was published on 02/14/2007 in Prague Monitor]

Well, it seems to make a lot of sense, Prof Klaus. Other parts of the interview were devoted to the Organization of European States (and Jo Leinen, MEP), the Czech civil cold war that has already ended, a possible radar for the U.S. missile defense, and the president's relationships with the new Czech government.



Show postings on this blog that contain the word Klaus such as Klaus' talk at Cato or Klaus' letter to the U.S. Congress.

See also The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary and the most important fact about the ice core: co2 lags temperature. Sunspots and cosmic rays seem to be correlated with temperature much more closely than CO2.

Other topics:

• An exceptionally simple theory of everything
• Přišlo mi to vhod

Ecoactivists vs female athlete of the century

Nancy Greene Raine is an alpine skier and an Olympic winner who has been voted to be Canada's female ahtlete of the 20th century. After she retired, she's been working to improve several ski resorts. This week, she will open a new Pontiac GMC Cup season. She is also the current chancellor of Thompson River University in British Columbia.

On the radio, she had the following to say about the global warming:

• In science, there's almost never black and white. We don't know what next week's weather is going to be. To say in 50 or 100 years, the temperature is going to do this, is a bit of a stretch for me.

It is not only reasonable but it is also wise and probably true. Her statement can be supported by quantitative arguments rooted in physics or statistics. Indeed, the question whether the short-term uncertainties about the weather can be averaged out so that the long-term predictions can be trusted is a very difficult one.

Because no successful and non-trivial enough predictions of the long-term weather patterns have been made so far, it is very reasonable to think that we are not capable to do so at this moment. Also, Ms Greene Raine realizes that things simply can't be as black and white as some people would like to paint them.

But you can guess what such an innocent statement means in the present world: "furor on campus" as Kamloops Daily News, the local daily, called it. "Professors" - even though your humble correspondent would use somewhat less flattering words - immediately demanded Ms. Greene Raine's ouster from the ceremonial post.

Galileo Galilei's legal troubles resulted from his bold statements about the role of the Earth in the Universe, among other things. Larry Summers' troubles resulted from his guess that there could be cognitive differences between men and women. Ms Greene Raine's problems emerged after she said that things are not black and white and we should be more careful in making multi-decadal predictions if we can't do multi-week predictions.

Wall Street Journal thinks that her views are analogous to the views of Freeman Dyson and many others. But the message for Ms Greene Raine is clear: register the support for "good" environmentalists against "bad" skeptics, close your mouth, and submit to whatever prescription the Al Gores of the world prescribe for our salvation.

Adrenaline sports

Have you ever attended a rope center, such as one in Dolní Polžice (gallery)? It's been slightly nontrivial but we have finished it. Polžice is the village where the enlightened and famous Czech 17th century aristocrat, Kryštof Harant z Polžic a Bezdružic, was born. The literal ;-) English translation of his name is

• Christopher the Bastard from After Spoons and Without Satellites

A rope center consumes more energy than a bungee-jump that we tried a couple of years ago.

America and Czechia out

World Cup: Czechia lost 0:2 to Italy and America lost 1:2 to Ghana.

Soccer: Czech Republic vs. United States 3:0

Off-topic: the doubling of the traffic is not permanent. It is caused by thousands of people looking for Mary Winkler's motive again.

Figure 1: Czech president during the Czechia:America match

98 percent of the Czech betters believe that Czechia will beat America. America returned to the World Cup in 1990 after 40 years. In their opener, they lost to Czechoslovakia 5:1. But times have changed a bit. Not much.

• CNN

For U.S. readers: soccer is a strange game that is more popular than baseball abroad in which legs kick a round ball. :-) After five minutes, America was losing 0:1 because of Jan Koller's goal. In the 36th minute, Rosický improved the score to 0:2 and in the 76th minute the same player made it 0:3 which is the final score. However, Koller had an injury. Nevertheless, as other fans say,

• Who's not jumping is not (a) Czech :-)

As many of you know very well, my support for both teams was comparable, with a slight bias for the Czech team ;-). But such matches are fun anyway and I admit that I have had an extremely good time while reading the colorful reports in the U.S. media. :-) It could be good for America to start to like soccer - that could really introduce the U.S. to the family of other nations. :-)

The Czechs were also leading the off-side score: 9:0 but I don't know what the final off-side score was. According to a controversial computer formula by FIFA, Czechia is the 2nd soccer superpower in the world after Brazil.

Is George W. Bush a feminist?

David Goss has sent me an insightful

• article by Phyllis Schlafly

that starts with the announcement that the Bush administration is going to investigate universities with fewer women in math and science than the feminists such as Barbara Boxer would like. Schlafly notices that even though Bush has been the president for more than five years, Bill Clinton's feminist policies are apparently still in force.

She asks: Is Bush a feminist or just a gentleman who is intimidated by the feminists? At the physical level of policies, there is no real difference between the two answers. 171 wrestling teams have already been intentionally destroyed by these dumb policies and math and science may follow.

Schlafly explains how this mindless feminist mentality, based on a striking misunderstanding of the differences between men and women, can have a devastating effect on universities and beyond. There is of course not a shred of evidence of any discrimination, she writes: men are simply more interested in competitive sports, math, and science.

Moreover, when it comes to muscle growth, testosterone is the key to success.

After having explained how unreasonable the feminist approach is, she says that the Bush administration is ignoring one example of increasing gender disparity that can indeed have bad consequences: a decreasing percentage of male schoolteachers.

With all my respect for George W. Bush, let me offer an obvious answer to Schlafly's basic question. Yes, Bush is a feminist and he in fact does think that women are brighter in many respects including science and math - and most discussions he has with the First Lady have to reinforce this belief. ;-)

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.

Ice-hockey update

In the previous article about ice-hockey, another piece of evidence that the Bayesian reasoning is flawed was offered by the second anonymous "fast commenter" who has made the following prediction:

• The Bayesian probability of [Switzerland] winning gold is definitely higher now, whereas a frequentist wouldn't be allowed to put his two cents into the debate

Indeed, I said, the frequentist approach to probability does not allow us to say much, and if it does - and if it is combined with common sense - the result will be, of course, that the probability of Switzerland getting the gold is tiny. Most likely, Switzerland would be eliminated in the quarterfinals because it used to be frequently eliminated. ;-)

Needless to say, the Bayesian inference has been proved wrong once again and I was right - despite several fascinating previous matches, Switzerland has lost to Sweden 2:6. Canada won't defend its 2002 olympic gold because it lost to Russia 0:2. Finland defeated the U.S. 4:3.

The last quarterfinal match guaranteed that exactly one Czechoslovak team would make it to the semifinals. Slovakia has won all five matches at the beginning of the olympic tournament while Czechia was only able to beat two underdogs, namely Italy and Germany. Nevertheless, it seems that the Slovak players still view the Czechs as "older brothers" who are supposed to win: Czechia remains the most likely team to beat Slovakia. So eventually the Slovaks lost 1:3.

The previous link also explains that the Czechs had to play with the goalie #3 Milan Hnilička because the goalie #1 Dominik Hašek returned home with an injury while the #2 goalie Tomáš Vokoun was identified, much like loop quantum gravity, to be inconsistent.

In the semifinals, Czechia will play Sweden and Russia will face Finland. Czechia is the only surviving team in the tournament that will defend the glory of North American ice-hockey. The previous sentence should settle the question whom the citizens of the 1st and 3rd most civilized country in the world, according to the data in the right column of this blog, should root for. ;-)

Ice-hockey: Switzerland beats Canada

The LHC is a great investment. Switzerland rules. Many ice-hockey fans thought that the Swiss were on par with Kazakhstan, Italy, Latvia, and probably below Germany. Instead, the players from the 14 TeV country rule.

The Czech ice-hockey is defending gold from the 1998 olympics in Nagano as well as gold medals from the world championships in 1996, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2005. Yes, 1/2 of the golden medals in the last decade went to my homeland. And if you include Slovakia into my broader homeland, it will be 60% because of their gold in 2002. The only other golden country since 1996 is Sweden that won in 1998 and Canada discussed below. Nevertheless, Switzerland managed to beat the Czechs 3:2.

You may think that it's just the Czechs who perhaps don't play that well right now. If you're modest and Swiss, you may have counted the victory over Czechia as a fluke and the greatest victory in your country's history, as The New York Times point out. Sometimes it only takes one day to reveal a gigantic flaw in your calculations. ;-)

Canada, the birthplace of ice-hockey, is defending the 2002 olympic gold from Salt Lake City as well as the golden medals from the world championships in 1997, 2003, and 2004. The Swiss have beat Canada 2:0, believe me or not.

If some feminist readers think that it's just the Canadian men who failed, let me mention that the Canadian women lost to Japan 5:2.

After these two matches, you must be tempted to add Switzerland among the favorites ;-), in the same group with Slovakia, Russia, Canada, and the Czech Republic. I've already eliminated Swedes who lost 0:5 to Russia.

What can happen next? Yes, Italy can also defeat Canada - although just in soccer so far. ;-) The Italians are already reasoning that if the Swiss may have beaten the Czechs, they can do it, too. Superficially such reasoning may look rational but still, I feel that it is kind of flawed. ;-) Finland, on the other hand, beat the Czechs 4:2 after they tried to kill Jágr. Slovakia improved its top position in the group B by their victory 2:1 over the U.S.

The New York Times explains that the three losses today were very painful for the three Northern American teams - Canada, U.S., and the Czechlands.

What is the punch line of this text with many seemingly unrelated numbers in it? Of course, the punch line is that Stephen Harper should better build a huge collider. :-)

Winter Olympics 2006

Many people watch it. I am sure that I am not the only one who can't afford it but who still wants to have some idea about the results. A few useful links:

• Olympics 2006
• List of medals
• Schedules and results
• Disciplines (explainers)
• Athletes' data

In the right column, a few links to other blogs were added, together with a counter of national visits. This blog has about 3,000 hits by 1,500 visitors from 72 countries per day.

Jágr's smile and jokes

Let me admit that I find most athletes uninteresting. Jaromír Jágr, the NHL superstar, is definitely one of the major exceptions. Lee Jenkins wrote an article in the

• New York Times

about this Czech athlete who has become a key player of New York Rangers and who is again the leading scorer and the dominant right wing in the league. What's so special about Jágr?

First of all, he likes freedom. Others usually prefer the money and the fame. The communists stole the farm of Jágr's grandfather and arrested him for several years. Jágr's grandfather died in 1968, during the Prague Spring. Jágr has been using the number "68" ever since.

As a schoolkid, not surprisingly, he kept a picture of Ronald Reagan in one of his schoolbooks or wallets. (So did I.) I am sure that most readers are completely unimpressed by these feelings, and they are wrong. Happy 25th anniversary to all Reaganites! It's been quarter a century since Reagan defeated Carter. (Jágr spoke to Reagan in 1992 via telephone and the conversation may have been difficult because he did not know what Gipper meant etc.)

Jágr also enjoyed to be himself as a player whose salary was as high as 11 million USD. Well, such a situation opens new dimensions of freedom, including room for heavy gambling, speeding tickets in fast cars, new arcade games, other symbols of Jágr neverending childhood, and occassional debates with the IRS. Two or three years ago, his difficult years were caused partly by the limitations imposed on his freedom and on his jokes and partly by the breakup with Andrea Verešová, a former Miss Slovakia (2003).

Well, yes, another reason for my understanding of Jágr is that I can imagine very well that it is discouraging if your Slovak girlfriend is not functioning properly. She is an attractive woman; but things look very different from the viewpoint of eternity.

U.S., Sweden, and Canada czech out

This article about the Czechs, the 2005 world champions, is very acausal because it was written at different moments.

The U.S. ice-hockey national team faced the Czech Republic in Vienna during the 2005 ice-hockey world championship. The match was the exact mirror image of the same quarter final match last year in Prague. Today, the U.S. took an early 2:0 lead in the beginning. The first 60 minutes ended with a 2:2 tie. No goal occured in the following 10 minutes - overtime. The Czech Republic scored the only goal during the shootout - 3:2 is the final result.

The Czechs have won the 1998 Olympic games in Nagano much like the 1996, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2005 world championships, see the history; the list of Czechoslovak gold medals would be too long for this blog. The Slovaks faced Canada. Although Slovakia was ahead most of the match, the Slovaks finally lost 4:5. The Canadians are simply better in dealing with the hockey sticks than the Americans; on Saturday, they will beat "unbeaten" Russia 4:3 to become the first finalist. On Sunday, Russia won the match against Sweden to grab the bronze medals.

Because the Canadians are better, it's them who faced the best ice-hockey team in the final match: the Czech Republic topped Sweden 3:2 in the other semi-final on Saturday evening - the last goal (the so-called Second Dvořák's New World Symphony) in overtime had to be confirmed by a videoreferee. What were the odds for the final match? Canada has never won a golden medal in Vienna, unlike Czechoslovakia, Czechia, the Soviet Union, and Sweden. Also, Canada has lost 1:11 with the Soviet Union in 1977 and 0:9 with Sweden in 1987 in the same city.

The previous final match between the Czech Republic and Canada took place in 1996 in Vienna, too. Canada lost 4:2 when the last two Czech goals occured within the last 19 seconds of the match. Last year, the Czechs beat Canada 6:2. The betting companies were kind of crazy because they believed that Canada's chances to win were higher than the Czech odds. However, the final match was a formality for Team Czechia. The Czechs defeated Canada 3:0.

• The Czech Republic is the 2005 world champion once again. Canada deserves the silver medals, and the Russians - the only team that was able to defeat the Czechs - grabbed the bronze medals.