Slovak author Pavel Vilikovský has passed away; see, for example, the Slovak Spectator report, Pavel Vilikovský, one of Slovakia's biggest writers, dies.
Several of his works have been translated into English, with Ever Green Is ... published in the great Northwestern University Press 'Writings From An Unbound Europe'-series (see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com orAmazon.co.uk) and Fleeting Snow recently out from Istros (see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com orAmazon.co.uk).
Slovak writer Pavel Vilikovský died Monday at 78. He was one of Slovakia’s most prominent contemporary writers and his profile in English was getting a lift with the recent translation of his novel Fleeting Snow. Previously, his Ever Green Is …: Collected Prose, translated by Charles Sabatos, was his only available work in English from 2002.
I first met Vilikovský in 2011 in Prague and it was the brilliantly-titled story “All I Know about Central Europeanism (with a bit of friendly help from Olomouc and Camus)” that got him talking about what I assumed was a bit of magical realist invention of a writer-judged beauty contest in which he, Milan Kundera and Josef Škvorecký were the judges. But no, plain old realism.
You can read the interview here
We published Vilikovský in B O D Y twice.
Read an excerpt from his still to be published in English Autobiography of Evil translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood
Read an excerpt from Fleeting Snow translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood for Istros Books
Julian Assange Wins 2020 Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award Consortium News
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Psychologist Explains Why Economists—and Liberals—Get Human Nature Wrong
Why moral psychology can help us see ourselves and each other more clearly than economists’ homo economicus.
FASTER, PLEASE: Laser LiFi Could Send Data Speeds Soaring
Beaked whales observed coordinating deep dives. “In all cases the pairs of whales dove in extreme synchrony.”
Julian Assange Wins 2020 Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award Consortium News
Statement of ABA President Judy Perry Martinez Re: Judicial Independence and Sound Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion – WASHINGTON, Feb. 12, 2020 – “The American Bar Association steadfastly supports judicial independence and the sound exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Public officials who personally attack judges or prosecutors can create a perception that the system is serving a political or other purpose rather than the fair administration of justice. It is incumbent upon public officials and members of the legal profession, whose sworn duty it is to uphold the law, to do everything in their power to preserve the integrity of the justice system.”
See also – The Atlantic: “The Senate’s acquittal of Donald Trump elicited predictions that the president would now be “unleashed,” freed to do as he pleased. His actions over the past few days offer a first glimpse of what that might look like. With the threat of accountability gone, or at least diminished, Trump is bestowing favor on his loyal defenders, and visiting revenge on those he feels have betrayed him. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who testified in the impeachment hearings, was sacked from his post on the National Security Council, in what presidential aides made very clear was revenge. For good measure, so was his twin brother, a lawyer at the NSC and a fellow Army officer. Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, was asked to resign, and when he refused, he was fired Friday night. Elaine McCusker, who had been tapped to be Pentagon comptroller but clashed with the White House over freezing military aid to Ukraine, will have her nomination withdrawn, according to the New York Post…a day after prosecutors requested seven to nine years in prison for Roger Stone, the Justice Department suddenly intervened and announced that it would withdraw the recommendation in favor of a lighter sentence, a highly irregular move…”
And NBCNews – Barr takes control of legal matters of interest to Trump, including Stone sentencing – “Attorney General William Barr’s intervention in Roger Stone’s case wasn’t the first time senior political appointees reached into a case involving an ex-Trump aide, officials say…”
For Aeon, historian Jamie Kreiner writes about what advice medieval monks might have for us on avoiding the distractions of our phones, social media, and Netflix.
Medieval monks had a terrible time concentrating. And concentration was their lifelong work! Their tech was obviously different from ours. But their anxiety about distraction was not. They complained about being overloaded with information, and about how, even once you finally settled on something to read, it was easy to get bored and turn to something else. They were frustrated by their desire to stare out of the window, or to constantly check on the time (in their case, with the Sun as their clock), or to think about food or sex when they were supposed to be thinking about God. They even worried about getting distracted in their dreams.John Cassian, an influential figure in early Christian monasticism, wrote about how to fortify yourself against these sorts of distractions.
Some of these strategies were tough. Renunciation, for instance. Monks and nuns were supposed to give up the things that most people loved — families, properties, businesses, day-to-day drama — not only to erode their sense of individual entitlement but also to ensure that they wouldn’t be preoccupied by that stuff in their professional lives of prayer. When the mind wanders, the monastic theorists observed, it usually veers off into recent events. Cut back your commitments to serious stuff, and you’ll have fewer thoughts competing for your attention.
Restraint had to work on a physiological level, too. There were many theories in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages about the connection between the mind and body. Most Christians agreed that the body was a needy creature whose bottomless appetite for food, sex and comfort held back the mind from what mattered most. That didn’t mean that the body must be rejected, only that it needed tough love. For all monks and nuns, since the very start of monasticism in the 4th century, this meant a moderate diet and no sex. Many of them also added regular manual labour to the regimen. They found it easier to concentrate when their bodies were moving, whether they were baking or farming or weaving.
Easter at Chateau de Wideville
I have about a 1,000 photos from Charleston to edit and a travel guide to create but until they are ready, I leave you with Easter weekend images from Chateau de Wideville in France.
"How Google Got Its Employees to Eat Their Vegetables" (OneZero, 18 minutes, February 2020). Honestly, this article could be about a three-minute read -- the way Google did this was pretty straightforward. But like most under-the-hood looks into things, it's pretty interesting to take the deep dive.
