Get your own 80x80 icon here! Lubo Motl
Disclaimer: I voted for Thompson.
Some people at Hotair think the problem is with the name Czech Republic. The reasoning goes like this, if your country had an easy to remember name such as Slovakia, or Poland, then Johnny would be able to get it right every now and then.
Personally, I find it much more disturbing when McCain gets California confused with Mexico.
Lubos, if you feel the need to help the old codger out you could change the name of your country to Wheat Czech's, Rice Czech's, or Corn Czech's. Any of those three. 
Lubos, donīt be so harsh on him. Czech Republic is only a relatively small country. I am certain that not all Czech politicians could name the capital of Botswana or even where Idaho is located within the USA, not to mention the provinces of China (most of them are much bigger and more populous than Czech Republic).
But in general I tend to think, that the geographical literacy in the US is less than in Europe. I see 2 factors for this - A) probably worse primary education system? B) what I call the "complex of big nations" - that is certain amount of self-centeredness or self-absorption and lack of interest in the rest of the world. I spent about 1.5 years in the US and about 1 year in China and in both these nations some features were common.
Warren Buffet doesn't have a computer at his desk. At the really top levels, they just are not necessary, and may in fact be counterproductive.
I am older than John McCain but not by much and do, as a result of my own experience, have some concerns about his likely ability to carry out the heavy burdens of that office. My concerns, however, are not sufficient to keep me from voting for him unless he picks a running mate that I could not vote for.
My fingers are crossed.
I am more worried that he still supports an independent Kosovo run by Jihadis and Mafia.
I will vote for McCain as the alternative is so much worse -- a serial confabulator who only sounds good with a prepared speech. Granted, one of McCain's weaknesses is his age but it is also a strength as you know who he is and where he stands and for someone like myself who believes the War against Islamic-extremist terrorism has just begun, McCain can be trusted to not give up the fight for a Kumbaya hug in.
At least he said 'Russian' government instead of 'Soviet' government.
I was about to say exactly what papertiger said. I think that for a lot of Americans (and other Anglophones), "the Czech republic" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, and "Czechia" sounds even more awkward.
We have the same problem in the Balkans. We're used to saying "Yugoslavia", and don't want to have to think about which little burg occupies a particular square km now.
We have to stop changing the map.
I don't think it is being harsh, criticising a 71-year-old man who wants to be President for making repeated public statements about the politics of countries that haven't existed since he was 56. 56! Who loses the ability to form new memories at 56? Especially since he also can't use the internet, which came to popularity around the same time. It's like he has no knowledge of the world post-1992.
He probably has people to help with this stuff, yes, but either they've twice failed to alert him that the country he just mentioned doesn't exist any more, or else he's ignoring them. Which of those is supposed to reassure me?
Lubos:
I know this is OT, but I thought it was important, and i can't find you current e-mail
"...the possibility of Steven Hawking moving to Waterloo in Canada: 'A report out of Britain suggests Stephen Hawking is considering an invitation to come work at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics....But he's also being encouraged to move to Ontario by his University of Cambridge colleague Neil Turok, the mathematical physicist who will take over as Perimeter's executive director on Oct. 1. Perimeter confirmed last night that it has made a standing offer to Hawking...Turok is leaving Cambridge after failing to persuade university authorities, research councils and sponsors to spend $40 million...By comparison, Waterloo's Perimeter Institute has about $600 million in funding...The addition of Hawking to Perimeter's staff of top physicists would be a major coup for the research institute, founded in 1999 by Mike Lazaridis, founder and co-CEO of Research In Motion, which makes the BlackBerry.'"
from Slashdot:
http://science.slashdot.org/arti...454244&
from=rss
Yes, Czech has produced brilliant scientists, political theoriests, artists, engineers, and buisnessmen. Yet, thier greatest contribution to Mankind is the famous lager from Pilsen. Using only one type of barley (the Morvaian 2-row),one type of hop (the Saaz hop or Zatek Red), a unique strain of bottom fermenting yeast (smuggled from Bavaria), and very soft water, the brewers of Pilsen developed one of the finest beverages in the world.
If McCain wins the November elections, I hope Vaclav Havel sends him a cask of Pilsner.
Hussein will not be elected President.
Stephen Hawking is thinking of moving to the Perimeter Institute in Canada.
http://www.thestar.com/News/Onta.../article/
461065
The Czechoslovakia mistake is made quite often in the US. The word Czechoslovokia is burned into the minds of those who lived through the cold war. Now there is less media coverage of Czech issues since the end of the cold war. I would say many American politicians have wrongly labeled Czechia. Or is it the Czech Republic? How about Czechland.
Don't be harsh?
This man is the potential leader of the free world (an Americanism that means little outside of America), and he's making comments about a country that doesn't even exist.
I was 14 when Czechoslovakia split. My world was purely video games, girls, beer, and more video games. Even I had a clue that the dissolution of a major communist government was a big deal in the context of world history.
The guy's got his facts just plain backwards, even though he probably has a small army of speak writers and fact checkers at his disposal. At least I had an excuse at the time (teenage apathy), but I still got it right.
Dr. Motl seems to have a good sense of humour about the whole thing. I don't think he was being harsh at all.
- Shawn
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/...czechoslovakia/
I'm pretty sure I left a comment about this and now it is gone. That is disappointing.
But like it or not, the link I mposted points to an Obama operative speaking for Obama that makes the same error.
The fine nuance of this name is not as important to not participants as perhaps it should be.
You don't have to like McCain, but if you are going to attack him it ought to be something important to the USA, and it ought to be something uniquely wrong with McCain.
And deleting political postings that annoy you is beneath you.
From practical point of view, the geopolitical importance of Czech Republic is comparable to those of Minnesota or so. I perceive as a personal success of Mr. McCain, he was able to remember and bespoke its name fluently at all.
OT, but I guess this means that the Arctic polar cap isn't melting and the polar bears aren't endangered?
http://www.adn.com/anchorage/sto...ory/
464849.html
As bad as McCain is on computers and relatively recent European geopolitical events, he is still the only candidate running for the office of US president who is
(1) not a marxist, and
(2) knows the difference between surrender and "re-deployment".
What Deadwood said.
Ditto.
"From practical point of view, the geopolitical importance of Czech Republic is comparable to those of Minnesota or so."
Zephir, I'd be careful... The last person who made a comment like that about Minnesota got a flying suplex off the top rope.
- Shawn
Now I'm truly frightened. This is basic elementary school geography. I don't care what excuses you make for them. It also illustrates their level of awareness of the world.
Does either remember enough basic math to balance a checkbook let alone a national budget
Why choose a lesser of two evils? Vote Cthulhu 2008!
I've been a "bleedingheart" libertarian since the senate and chief justice ruled that a president can be more of a liar than lawyers allow among themselves . I rejoined the republicans to vote for Ron Paul but will not waste my vote on McCain .
I will vote for Bob Barr who is the only real non-marxist running and most inclined to get US out of feuds between theocracies the 1st clause of our 1st amendment was intended to keep us out of .
Good for you! A vote for Barr is a vote for Obama. Good move.
Obama is going to win by a landslide anyway . And a vote for Barr is a vote AGAINST both flavors of the statist duopoly .
WRT McCain , see ReasonOnline : A few questions for John McCain .
Blame it on the Velvet Divorce. If Czechs had cut off the arms and legs of Slovak women and threw them in burning buildings to die, I suspect he would have remembered it. On the other hand, I suspect McCain would have objected to it and demanded NATO do something. Obambi's reaction would have been that it was none of our business really. Barr's too. This won't be the first time I've held my nose and voted.
Mephisto,
McCain went to primary school before the total dumb-downing took place. He probably went on military bases as well, and those schools now have higher standards than general public schools. "Fact free" education is a relatively new phenomenon (helped along by educationist Bill Ayers, terrorist and Obamabuddy.) and I see it all the time with the younger people I work with. In Massachusetts you can now graduate from high school thinking that Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat!
"This is basic elementary school geography. I don't care what excuses you make for them. It also illustrates their level of awareness of the world."
Can you draw an accurate map of Africa?
How about if I draw the lines, can you put in the names?
Kinda depends on which week you left elementary school.
I'll tell you, as a truck driver, the average person person can tell you the name of the next town.
One of my favorite stories--I was lost, trying to find a consignee--instructions from the dispatcher were bad, nothing matched up with the map. Called the consignee and talked to several people who, given the intersection of major (for the area) highways where I was sitting could not tell me how to get from where I was to where they were.
I finally found the place by circling town (it was just a little bitty place) in decreasing-radius circles until I spotted a likely candidate in the dark.
The Czech Republic is very important to lots of people, and given that they ought to quit changing names every few years. They have been through, what, four since I left grammar school?
Obama has made a few moronic statements himself. For instance, saying on the Sunday shows that he would order the Joint Chiefs of Staff to end the war in Iraq, when their role is limited to providing him with information and advice. Of course he cleaned it up on his website, and nobody but right wingers were low life enough to point out that his 140 days in the Senate, which is his entire resume, were not enough time to learn even the basics on how the presidency he expects to operate works. His ignorance of the US govt, down to the fact that he can't separate Memorial Day from the Fourth of July from Veteran's day, (Remember his "I see dead people" gaffe, he said something similar about the fourth being about remembering veterans) will leave him at the mercy of his advisors.
Larry
I ride my bicycle a lot and have always found it fun and enlightening to ask for directions. I get to see a bit inside peoples heads and how they view the world. And its a great way to start conversation. Then I pull out my map when I am out of view to find out for real. You have an important and honorable profession. But you are not driving around with the "Nuclear Football". If you were then you should be held to incredibly high standards. There is more at stake here then a simple geography spelling bee.
The candidates are plain old human beings, not gods or saviors. What is important is our involvement in the process and free speech. And my Constitutional right to call them both morons when it comes to geography.
We're all doomed! 
Larry Sheldon,
The Czech Republic has been the Czech Republic since nineteen ninety fucking two.
Anyone making public statements about the country's political position in the world has no excuse at all for getting its name wrong twice.
If anyone who makes that mistake more than a couple of times has a realistic shot at being a world leader, that's legitimate cause for really massive concern.
So let's elect a clueless child. Good thinking. My personal appraoch is to vote for the one likely to die the quickest and give us a second shot.
I am certainly not going to vote for the guy who thinks we are just dilly dallying about OBL because we won't invade a soveriegn nuclear Pakistan.
"The Czech Republic has been the Czech Republic since nineteen ninety [juvenile, meaningless, pointless expletive deleted] two."
Well, that certainly is the most important issue in _MY_ life.
An interesting question occurs to me:
Is it true or false that the folks in that part of the country went to some considerable bother to get out from under a form of government that seems certain to be in our future now?
By the way. Does your Senator know the name of the State he or she represents? Does he or she know the names of the adjacent States?
Can your senator pronounce the state that he lived in while attending Harvard Law School? Can your favorite presidential candidate?
So far as I know, they didn't attend Harvard, they were educated.
Obama, on the other had does not know what states adjoin Illinois.
Which seems to me different from letting an old habit of speech yield the wrong name for an unstable Balkan state.
Return now to the non sequiters, how many Purple Heart medals do your Senators have?
You can't expect him to remember all 57, now.
There will onl be ne when he gets through, I guess.
At least he doesn't think there are 57 states (as another presidential candidate does), and he knew it was Russia, and not the Soviet Union.
To native New Yorkers there is "Sixth Avenue", there is no such thing as "Avenue of the Americas"
To my father there was never a "Leningrad",only St. Petersburg.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/
...on_Pearl_Harbor
"There will onl be ne when he gets through, I guess."
At one point in the process that said There will only be one when he gets through, I guess."
Have any of you entertained the possibility that one can be very well aware that Czechoslovakia split in two and still utter "Czechoslovakia" when referring to Czech Republic.
LM: I have. But I am not sure whether this maverick conservative terminology would be a good idea for a presidential candidate. I am using the word "Czechoslovakia" all the time - both because I know it is comprehensible to Americans; and because I often talk about things that are unified for Czechia and Slovakia, such as history. But Slovakia has really nothing to do with the oil shortages or the missile defense radar!
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