Balkans

Perhaps not as bad as Zeno, but close. At least I used to watch, when I was a kid, whenever Yugoslav national teams in various sports played at big international competitions like Olympics, World Championships and European Championships. I watched Red Star soccer team demolish all of its European and World competition back in 1990. I watched Jausovec, Zivojinovic, Seles and Ivanisevic at Wimbledon and French Open. Perhaps there is a difference between inter-club competition and international competition and in the USA nobody cares about international competition. Since I never watched…
(August 10, 2005) --------------------------------------- Since "The Connection" was abruptly cancelled by the Boston affiliate of NPR, the local station is scrambling to fix the schedule. We got Diane Rehm show instead and also something called "The World". I was listening to the World this afternoon - interesting stuff about the Harvard Zoology Museum collection, about a Slovenian alpinist rescued from the Himalayan mountain called "The Killer" (9th highest peak in the world), etc. At the very end, they had a segment, just a few minutes, about an interesting German band and their new CD. It…
Srbija najbolja na Astronomskoj olimpijadi (my translation): Serbia, whose most modern telescope was built at the beginning of the 20th century and was brought to Belgrade as part of WWI war reparations, won two gold and two bronze medals at the 11th World Astronomy Olympiad in Bombay earlier this month. Olympic winners from Serbia are students of the first [ninth] grade of the Mathematical Gymnasium in Belgrade: Luka Milicevic and Natasa Dragovic. Milicevic competed in the younger category as he is 15 years old, while Dragovic is only 14. On the Serbian team were also Aleksandar…
Ferenc Puskas died last week. One of the greatest of all times!
Two years ago, there was quite a brouhaha in the media when Serbian minister for education decided to kick Darwin out of schools. The whole affair lasted only a few days - the public outrage was swift and loud and the minister was forced to resign immediately. I blogged about it profusely back then and below the fold are those old posts: ----------------------------------------------------------------- I Take This Personally (September 09, 2004) Serbia takes a bold step back into the Middle Ages Serbia strikes blow against evolution Creationism put on equal footing with Darwinism Serbia vs…
If you are interested in the saga of the Bosnian pyramid, it may be difficult for you to follow it as the members of the Anti-Pyramid Webring write mainly in some version of Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian language. But now, they have started a new, central blog for posts in English - the APWR Central. Contributors are needed.
You may have heard about the crazy "discovery" of a pyramid in Bosnia, the scientific nonsense about it and the political heat it provoked. I have covered the story last winter and spring in a lot of detail (see my posts from December 07, 2005, January 30, 2006, April 17, 2006, April 22, 2006, April 29, 2006, May 02, 2006, May 07, 2006, May 13, 2006, May 16, 2006, June 02, 2006 and June 07, 2006), but have lost touch since then. And a lot of stuff happened in the meantime. The members of the Anti-Pyramid Webring have been pursuing the story with vigor and I'll try to catch up with them and…
It is pretty amazing what some people can do with just paper and scissors!
I know, I know, Tuesdays are supposed to be for touchy-feely personal posts or navel-gazing posts about blogging, but today is an election, so I decided to go with provocative, hard-hitting stuff instead (originally posted on June 27, 2005, click on the clock-spiderweb to see the original): ----------------------------------------------------------------- Back in 1991, before I left Belgrade, we were demonstrating against Milosevic. Many plackards and graffiti at the time compared Milosevic to Saddam. They were mostly NOT comparing him to Hitler. Why? Not because we liked Milosevic and did…
There is a new study out on computer and internet use in Serbia (via). Several things immediately jumped out at me: how many people connect by modem, how many connect from home (as opposed to work, school, etc.), how big is the rural/urban divide, and how many people think they have no use for the Internet and expect never to use it in their lives. I have a feeling that these findings are quite different from other countries (not to mention the US). I'd like to know what are the equivalent numbers in other countries in which such studies have been done. The numbers in Serbia may be also a…
It's been a year since this first appeared (September 21, 2005). I wonder if the "academy" is still open or what are they studying there.... This I learned from Eric: How to become an astrologer For those few remaining stubborn hold-outs who still cannot read Serbo-Croatian, here's a quick translation: Institute for Astrological Research and Education "Johannes Kepler" recently opened in Belgrade. The goals of the Institute are to support the research in astrology, academic approach to astrology, and to aid astrologers and astrology in gaining social status. The Institute is not a part of…
This strange November 09, 2005 post should really be posted on Friday as part of the Friday Weird Sex Blogging.... Via Shakespeare's Sister and Blue Gal in a Red State comes this crazy article: Serbs line up for testicle shocks Men in Serbia are lining up to have electric shocks delivered to their testicles as part of a new contraceptive treatment. Serbian fertility expert Dr Sava Bojovic, who runs one of the clinics offering the service, said the small electric shock makes men temporarily infertile by stunning their sperm into a state of immobility. He said: "We attach electrodes to either…
Visit the Balkans, join the Lost Highway Expedition (already in progress): A massive movement of individuals will pass through Ljubljana, Zagreb, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Skopje, Prishtina, Tirana, Podgorica and Sarajevo. The expedition will generate projects, art works, networks, architecture and politics based on the found knowledge. Projects developed from the expedition will lead to events in Europe and the US.