nation: Czech Republic

I am trying to re-enter society after several days being sick, so I’m going with something short and simple today. Eden H. sent in this chart, found at Business Insider, that compares hourly minimum wages in a number of European countries to the U.S.:

The European data are available from Eurostat (though note they report minimum wages in terms of Euros per month, not hour, so the data was converted for the chart).

An infographic accompanying an article at the New York Times reveals how “advanced economies” compare on various measures of equality, well-being, educational attainment, and more.  To illustrate this, for each measure countries that rank well are coded tan, countries that rank poorly and very poorly are coded orange and red respectively, and countries that are in the middle are grey.  The countries are then ranked from best to worst overall, with Australia coming in #1 and the United States coming in last.  You might be surprised how some of these countries measure up.

Thanks to Dmitriy T.M. for the link.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Katrin drew our attention to the Christmas character of the Christkind, found in regions as diverse as Austria, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Rebublic, Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and, according to Wikipedia, “…parts of Hispanic America, in certain areas of southern Brazil and in the Acadiana region of Louisiana.”

The Christkind was introduced by the German Protestant priest Martin Luther (1483-1546).  At the time, tradition held that gifts were given by St. Nicholas.  Protestants, however, didn’t acknowledge saints, so they needed an alternative mythological gift giver.  The Christkind was originally depicted as baby Jesus, but in many places today is instead an angelic blond child or adult woman.

In Nuremberg, Germany, a Christkind is chosen every two years in a pageant reminiscent of American beauty pageants (source).  This year the Christkind is Rebekka Volland (source):

More photographs of the Christkind:

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Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.


According to Melissa, the dialogue/voice-over in this Czech commercial roughly goes like this:

…basically the woman complaining about stuff, followed by the deflation, then a voiceover with a play on words about blowing off your wife to have a beer with the lads.