"These kids today," you could just about hear reporters grumbling. "Have they got no revolutionary spirit left at all?" A few of those who showed up to dance to massive waves of bass-boosted bpms actually looked more like middle managers who'd come out mainly for curiosity's sake.

One stalwart hardcore techno fan, however, finally got fed up with the politesse being exercised on all sides and managed to get himself arrested by running across a field naked, shouting, "I am God."

The Czech weekly Týden seems equally concerned by a lack of interesting activity in Bohemia, so much so that it has come up with a theory: Countries in tropical zones rarely get anything done, the paper asserts, which must be due to the heat. After all, look what it's done to Czechs this summer during record-breaking July days.

If the heat wave continues, Týden suggests, "Czechs might have to start thinking about a change in lifestyle."

One local expat executive, upon hearing of the idea, expressed amazement at the suggestion that Prague workers might actually be able to move slower and do less.

Filmmaker Jan Hřebejk certainly has a notion of what folks should do to survive the baking summer, and it also involves slowing down — but only after arriving at his new film, Beauty in Trouble, and buying a ticket. Considering the air-conditioned comfort of the city's newest cinemas, it's not the worst idea The Lowdown has ever heard.