The most expensive dinner

of my life so far occured yesterday in Prague, and thanks to those who have organized it and paid for it. It was a lot of fun. Given the fact that we used to have $50 and perhaps $100 dinners in the Society of Fellows, you might be surprised that Prague could beat it but it probably did. ;-)

Dear Benjamin, yes, I have beautiful pictures of Prague and you could also be told all the details about the dinner but I chose not to publish these things.

Bike anniversary

Today, my bike speedometer, reset in Summer 1995, showed 17,000 kilometers. If the bikes were used to move along the geodesics instead of oscillations between different parts of Pilsen and its vicinity and various parts of Greater Boston, I could have reached, your humble correspondent could have gotten to virtually any point on Earth such as North Korea. But who cares about North Korea anyway. ;-)

Weather

After a boiling July when temperatures surpassed 35 degrees Celsius almost every day, we have a freezing August with the temperatures quite safely below 20 degrees. Meanwhile, the East Coast faces temperatures such as 38 degrees.

Czech deadlock

Two months after the elections, the Czech Republic still doesn't have a new government and/or a boss of the new Parliament. And frankly speaking, no one cares. The invisible hand of the free market is what really matters and this hand is managing things quite well.

Viktor Kožený's bombshell

Viktor Kožený who might be extradited from the Bahamas is preparing a bombshell that will "terminate the political career of many Czech politicians and change the historical interpretation of their personalities". I am quite curious and it could be a lot of fun.

On Castro and regime change

With this news that Fidel has handed off some of the titular responsibilities of running Cuba to brother Raul -- no spring chicken himself -- I have asked a Cuban-born American citizen to guest-post here in the next few days.

She emigrated in 1962 1961, in the arms of her mother and father, and lived in New York and Petersburg VA before moving to Texas in the late '70's, where I met and later married her.

Mrs. Diddie has a few blog-worthy tales to tell about her family's experience as political dissidents, asylum-seekers, immigrants, and then US citizens. Regarding the man ultimately responsible for my being introduced to my wife, I only hope that his now-timely demise doesn't force her to hasten a thoughtful posting. Her mother has end-stage Alzheimer's and her father suffers again from a return of the bladder cancer that he has valiantly beaten back five times over the past ten years, so getting a few of their recollections of La Revolucion published is urgent enough as it is.

Look for this post here hopefully by the end of the week.