Word: czech
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...drama that unfolded last Saturday night at the men's Olympic hockey final in Nagano, in which the Czech Republic beat Russia 1-0 in a hair-raising game, had symbolic meaning well beyond awarding the gold medal to the underdogs. It closely reflected the role the Czechs, armed only with their ideas, played in destroying the Soviet Union...
After the Soviet Union died, the Czechs once again were relied upon by decent-minded Russians to make sure communism never returned. The victorious Russians, fresh from overthrowing their Soviet overlords in 1991, realized that the best way to make sure the communists never returned was to quickly privatize all government-owned businesses and housing. This way, common citizens would have private property and an incentive to defend it. How do you privatize a Stalinist economy quickly? Well, the Czechs had been doing it for two years with the "voucher" system, devised by Jan Svejnar, a Czech-American economist...
Before the North American rivals get to that matchup, there will be four other Dream Teams to get through--Sweden, Russia, the Czech Republic and Finland--none of which will roll over. The "Big Sheet," the offense-friendly, Olympic-size playing surface that is 13 1/2 ft. wider than the NHL's, will help the smaller, speedier European teams, as should the stiff penalties against fighting. The Swedes took advantage of this in their first game, swirling around the Americans and winning 4-2. And because a hot goaltender can control a short series, the Czechs could take gold because...
...mosquitoes and black flies responsible for transmitting malaria and African river blindness. Although no definitive studies on resistant strains of head lice have been completed in the U.S. (results of a Harvard investigation won't be ready for several months), two recent papers from Israel and the Czech Republic seem to support the resistant-strain theory. Says Thomas Bell, health officer for three counties in Washington State: "How do you induce resistance among a population of insects, bacteria or whatever? You expose the population to a sublethal dose of the chemical you're trying to kill them with, and that...
...What Links Me With Ladislaus the Posthumous," Holub humorously recounts his successful attempt to pass his medical exams by flattering his examiners' egos. The cause of the death of King Ladislaus, an obscure fifteenth-century Czech monarch, is an unsolved mystery with political implications: a patriotic Czech is expected to agree with his nation's medical historians about the cause of Ladislaus' death (though no one is in agreement), rather than with the account of rival German historians. When Holub is quizzed on medical minutiae by his professors, he offhandedly conjectures that Ladislaus died from whatever ailment his examiner happens...