Modus vivendi

Před pár týdny na DVTV vyšel rozhovor Daniely Drtinové s Mnislavem Zeleným, známým také pod indiánským jménem Atapana. Pro média je Atapana takový vděčný rebel, který té naší moderní civlizaci nastavuje zrcadlo. Nikdo bychom sice bez našich civlizačních výdobytků (třeba ty internety, ajfouny, Prigl, Feri a tekoucí horká voda) nepřežili víc jak dva dny, ale cosi se v nás hne, když slyšíme o tom, že někde na této zeměkouli ještě žije civilizací nezkažený domorodý kmen, který je schopný bez civlizačních výdobytků přežít a ještě je mnohem šťastnější než my. To ví přeci každý, že takový ušlechtilý divoch se nehoní za movitými statky, může celý den chytat lelky ve stínu palmoví, netrpí civilizačními chorobami a po čtyřicítce ho neklepne pepka kvůli krachu na akciovém trhu. Paroubkovsky řečeno: “Kdo z vás to má!?” Asi je to stará dobrá česká závist. Já totiž na rozdíl od Mnislava Zeleného jakožto vystudovaný sociokulturní antropolog svůj domorodý kmen nemám. Akademické okolí m...

The conference I attended and had written about earlier was odd. It was supposed to be an international conference but the only speaker from abroad was an Estonian Ph.D. candidate, Kaisa Kulasalu. Also, the conference was a witness to a real powerpoint hell - black letters on a dark background. But the colours did not matter. The letters were too small anyway. On the other hand I learned a lovely joke from Juraj Podoba about the current politics in Slovakia - Never make jokes on Boris Kollár, because he might be your children’s father . Self-censorship and continuity The best thing about the conference was its international element, Kaisa. After the conference she sent me her article titled  Immoral Obscenity: Censorship of Folklore Manuscript Collections in Late Stalinist Estonia . The article is basically about censorship of folklore collections in Estonia between 1945 and 1952. After Estonia became a socialist country, censors blackened some parts, glued paper over some p...

Czech students are divided by their teachers into two groups. Those who can write well and those who cannot. The first group does not need any further guidance, the second group does not deserve any time to be wasted on them. Regardless of what group you belong to, this post will tell you all you wanted to know about academic writing. My impression is that this side of becoming an academic is rather underestimated at Czech universities. There are suspiciously too many students who dislike writing and a considerable amount of those who are compulsive writers. This is too bad for the discipline. Either you have nothing to say, or you speak too much so that by the time you finish reading your paper, half of the lecture room is away and the other half deep asleep. I cannot deny myself a small comparison from my current work in domain-name dispute-resolution . While foreign panellists produce short, yet explicit decisions where nothing important is missing, Czech panellists like to...