A Spring Awakening for Human Rights

Today the New York Times ran an opinion piece on the legacy of the Prague Spring. The author, Jiri Pehe, argues that the celebration of the Prague Spring has been muted in the Czech Republic because, while the ideas generated during this time (for example, respect for human rights) resonate with more importance than ever, the reality of living with this oppression are too painful to look at too closely.

He says,

A good illustration of our conflicting attitudes toward the communist past was a recent discussion in the Czech Parliament of a the new state-run Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, which is to hold and study the communist archives. In giving the institute such a complicated name, lawmakers had to define “totalitarianism.” In the end, they decided that totalitarianism in the Czech Republic includes the entire period from the communist takeover in 1948 to the Velvet Revolution in 1989.

But including 1968 in the totalitarian period makes it difficult to explain how it’s possible that the Prague Spring produced works of literature, film and drama more significant than anything the country has produced since the fall of communism.

Oppression has always produced great art, hasn't it? Solzhenitsyn comes to mind. Lack of oppression, if it doesn't produce equally great art, has the consoling attribute of producing great wealth.

Link to the article via the title.

Wonderful food eases newly empty nest

This week I took Daughter #1 back to college in Madison, Wisconsin. Madison is a fantastic town for it's natural beauty and intellectual ferment. There are more restaurants here per capita than anywhere else in America. Delightfully, many of the restaurants are ethnic and very affordable.

Within a few blocks of daughter #1's new apartment there is a Japanese, Peruvian, Laotian, Swiss, and Vietnamese restaurant. I especially admire the exuberance of the Vietnamese owners, they called theirs the "I'm Here" restaurant.

The last time I had any exposure to Peruvian culture was my fourth grade shoebox diorama on the Incas, so I voted for the Peruvian restaurant called "Inka Heritage." It was a choice we did not regret.

We were among the first in for the evening

and took a window table.

Andean flute music added to the experience.

As did our terrific waiter Pablo.

Pablo brought us Peruvian corn (very crunchy)
with a tangy cilantro sauce for dipping.

I ordered Lomo Saltado, a dish of very tender beef tenderloin flambed with onion, tomatoes, cilantro, rice and potatoes.

It was fabulous!

Daughter #1 ordered Seco de Cordero, lamb cooked in cilantro sauce, with rice, canary beans, fried yucca, and creole sauce. She enjoyed every bite and said the canary beans tasted sweet.

Almost all of the deserts had a milk-flavored theme.
I chose Tres Leches.
The spongy cake and liquid under whipped creme
was interesting texturally.

Daughter #1 went wild over hers, Mousse de Lucama.

Lucama is a Peruvian fruit that was new to us both.

I enjoyed this Peruvian adventure. Until I get to Machu Picchu, this will be my favorite 'Peruvian' memory. It beats the diorama hands down!

Everyday Wonders

The amazing architecture of a backyard resident

Medals Per Capita

A staple of American Olympic reporting every four years is the medal count. Right now, Americans lead in total medals and China leads in gold. But a perfect example of how everyone's media tells them what they want to hear is this blog post by Rick Steves describing his deflation when a Dutch friend asked him to consider her country's Olympic accomplishments. We should include this reporting method in America because it's equally as impressive (if not more so) than number of medals won. Link to the post via the title.

Hey Google, you should invent this

Much has been made during this Olympics how Michael Phelps body is uniquely suited for success in swimming. His legs are the length of a 6’0” man which makes them more powerful for kicking and pushing off the wall. His torso is outsize for his actual height which helps his upper body pull him through the water. His size 14 feet function like flippers. His wing span makes his strokes extra powerful.

There are all kinds of career tests where kids answer a bunch of questions, and out pops guidance of what they would be good at as a career. It’s amazing how accurate they are and how well they match ability and interests. It’s also thought-provoking to see all the different suggestions of possible careers one might not have considered otherwise.

Google, or some company in that field, should create an application where parents and children could enter their children’s age, height and limb measurements, possibly their Presidential Fitness test numbers (or the international equivalent of various sport measurements like running speed and throwing ability) and out pops suggested sports given a child’s body type.

Then the whole application could be tied to Google Earth and the next thing that comes up is the sports clubs in a fifty mile radius that a child could avail themselves of if interested in a particular sport.

This could help people who’s level of sport selection sophistication is at the level of “gee, we’re tall, we should play basketball or volleyball.” There’s more to matching oneself or one’s children to the sport than that. The perfect match between body type and sports program availability is why countries dominate one sport over another year after year.

In America, we have every possible size and shape. There are sports out there that are not offered in schools but exist with club teams. An easy way to consider every possibility out there could be to enter all one’s data in this application and see what’s suggested.

World champion gymnast and very petite person Shawn Johnson just happened to walk into her native Chinese coach’s new American gym club in West Des Moines, Iowa and the rest is history. A software application like this could make that matching process less driven by chance and more methodical.

Email me for my address so you know where to send the check(s).

Gold Medal Writing

I found this article so fun to read, I had to share it. Of course, it starts with a great story -- the Czech/American romance between two Olympians, but the delight this man displayed writing the story made it that much more fun.

Hat's off to Bill Fitzgerald of Yahoo Sports for showing a gold medal sense of humor and fun. Link to the story via the title.

Where's the beef?

Before donating blood today, I was asked this question among the other six thousand they normally ask: "have you spent more than five years living in Europe?

"What difference would that make in the fitness of my blood," I asked.

"Mad cow disease. They don't want it entering the U.S. blood supply."

What? If I eat a hamburger in EU, do I have to worry about such things? Do y'all worry about getting Mad Cow Disease via your beef consumption over there? I thought we, the Americans, were supposed to have beef Europeans objected to, not the other way around.

What's up with that?