Here's a cool web log (and travelogue of sorts) of an Iranian guy currently traveling around Europe.

Subway comes to Prague. I think the teaser on Prague Daily Monitor says it all: "Now if we just had a Denny's..."

The funny thing about the Czech sandwich wars is that as little as five years ago, Czechs barely even knew what a sandwich was. You had your meat or cheese in one hand, your bread roll in another, and your just took turns taking bites off each.

It was also a business opportunity that many people saw coming. I remember about four years ago, the head of Leo Burnett in Prague (a Czech guy) ranted and raved about why nobody had opened a sandwich shop in Prague. This was pre-Paneria, and the teeming masses were starting to get sick of those bagels.

I few years ago I went to a restaurant with a Czech friend and ordered a sandwich, which was a big novelty at the time. She said, "Why do you go to a restaurant and order a sandwich? You could make that at home." I thought, um, right, as opposed to all the other things on the menu...

Wow. The following sentence appears in The Weekly Standard:

In return for perhaps a couple of divisions' worth of Turkish, Indian, or Pakistani troops, the administration has suggested it is willing to subject the reconstruction of Iraq to a threat more lethal than Baathism and bin Ladenism combined: a French veto.

That's amazing. Who's the threat more lethal than the terrorists directing suicide bombings and killing American soldiers in Iraq? Deadlier than Saddam and Bin Laden combined? You got it: It's the French. I'm speechless.

The author makes a number of good points, namely that Bush's reckless fiscal policy is damaging the prospects for success in Iraq. But it's difficult to take these points seriously when anti-UN and anti-French paranoia is raised to such clearly hysterical levels.

We've known about the loony left. But the loony right is now showing its true colors, and the hues are remarkably similar. Statements like these are on par with the nuttiest stuff that's ever come out of Noam Chomsky's pen.

Trivia: The late WarrenWarren Zevon (who died yesterday) was the Everly Brothers' band leader.

Somebody Googled "prince william circumcised" and got to this site. I suppose it's a reasonable question.

Via NicMoc: A former Czech coal miner from Ostrava, who speaks almost no English, has a video of both planes flying into the Twin Towers. (Oddly enough, I've never seen the only other known recording, taken by those French guys, of the first plane hitting the tower.) Due to the fact that his boss didn't want him to sell the tape, his lack of media savvy and his poor language skills ("Tower downstairs!" he says on the tape, in English, when one of them falls) we're only finding out about it now. Weird. And still, after all this time, pretty shocking.