Australian Firefighters With Puppies; We Repeat: Australian Firefighters With Puppies.

Full story at Queerty

Santa found alive and well

Santa found alive and well playing his didgeridoo in Dresden, accompanied by an Angel playing maracas.

Meetings

After my usual Red Lion Sunday roast, I trod the familiar path to the beer garden at the Playhouse Theatre. Unusually full it seemed to me. Had to interlope on a table where sat three people huddled around two Macs. The young man of the trio, c.25 was inscrutably handsome. I silently questioned his responsibility as a bearer of such beauty. And arrived at a title, The Duty of Beauty, which as Google reminds us, you can never be the first anymore. What to do with title? Not sure. Any suggestions?

Tother end of table, a chap reading. Just finishing a book called Environmental Philosophy. The question at hand being whether or not philosophy can be extended to the rest of the world, that is, the non-human part of it – plants and animals etc. As I was reading Wittgenstein's Poker at the same table, we got chatting. Lo! He's Australian and moved to UEA to do his masters. Conversation was choppy and he fled.

Do I scare them, bore them, or make them feel uncomfortable? I don't know what lessons I missed at charm school, but I certainly set all potentially interesting people in flight mode.

What do you see in this picture?

1. What country are they in?
2. Who is the woman?
3. Who is the boy?
4. What activity are they engaged in?
5. Where does this picture come from?

This picture comes from an article in aktuálně.cz, Reportáž z britské školy, kde excelují čeští Romové.

The answers to the five questions above: UK, Leicester to be precise. A muslim woman is teaching a Roma boy from Cz or Sl English pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.

It's difficult to even know where to start with this. ČR is not a multi-cultural country, and neither was England before WWII. If you click through this photo story (linked above), English school looks very very different from Czech schools. So do the teachers and students who show great involvement and commitment to what they are doing. I have accompanied groups of Italian and Spanish teachers on day visits through British schools and they were astounded, in ways that I am sure that Czech teachers would be. They were surprised by the physical classroom, its decoration, the self-directedness of the students, the individual help available, and the number of male teachers.

The attitudes of people towards Roma in society is reflected in their treatment in schools. One thing that fascinates me is that of the handful of languages that can be studied in Czech schools, the languages of the largest minorities, Roma and Vietnamese is not offered. Why is that? In Australia, which is supremely multi-cultural, there were until recently 42 foreign languages on the "maturita" menu, (school leaving exam syllabus). In these straightened times, this has been rationalised, as very few people studied Czech which was on this menu in Australia. I have sample papers for that exam.

See this article from the NY Times - also very enlightening.

I guess it's only a co-incidence that my previous blog entry here was about Czech people's wantonly negative attitude to foreigners.

Water reflects music

Priscilla Klaus

Just watched Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and a mighty fine bus she is too. I thought it untopable until I read Cesky rozhlas news just now.

The German press has reported that President Vaclav Klaus never received the Konrad Adenauer Prize, which he threatened to return last week. Mr Klaus wrote to the foundation last Thursday saying he would return the prize to protest their cancellation of a appearance by one of his former advisors at an upcoming conference. The president's website also says he received the award in 1993. However, the Frankfurter Algemeine has revealed that Mr Klaus never received the prize, and was only awarded an honorary diploma by the foundation's Prague branch, which it says was seeking good relations with then Prime Minister Klaus.

I think the President's website should read Wikipedia. It clearly states that the last prize was awarded in 2001, and its list of laureates unequivocally includes not one Vaclav.

Time I goed to New York to see Priscilla live on stage. What say you?

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