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When you subscribe to many journals and magazines these days (at least in the US) you have to take it for granted that most of them will share your name and address with groups and institutions that are interested in getting your business based on your reading interests. This, at least, is why I believe I get a fair share of solicitations for donation from various Catholic organizations – they probably got my name from my subscription to the First Things. I usually ignore most of them, not because I am uncharitable (I support many Catholic causes through my local church), but because I don't have the time or interest to go through all the pleading literature that they provided in order to make the case for their own specific cause. Some of these causes may indeed be very close to my mind, but for now I don't have the time to figure out which ones are which.

Last week, however, I got one of those soliciting letters that immediately grabbed my attention. It was sent from Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute and was asking right at the envelope to "help our Catholic youth crusade fight the influence of Satan at the UN." Well, a tagline like that really grabbed my attention. A few years ago when I had visited New York I went over to the UN and took some pictures. I posted those pictures online on my Facebook profile, and had named the album "Devil's Lair." I am glad to see that the good folks at Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute understand who they are dealing with. I would be more than happy to help such a worthy cause.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So the day has finally come: after a decade as Croatia's president, Stjepan Mesić has stepped down and Ivo Josipović has assumed the control of the state. This was in fact the first transition of power for a democratically elected Croatian president, as first Croatian president Dr. Franjo Tuđman died in office. I did not get a chance to watch the inauguration, being seven time zones away and all. From what I hear I did not miss on much, and since the president has more or less just ceremonial function in Croatian politics, it is hard to imagine any significant political upheavals in the next five years. Unfortunately, we will not be expecting any more corny jokes, which were the highlight of Mesić's presidency. The days of boring politics may have finally arrived in Croatia.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 04:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been reading St. Mark's Gospel over the last couple of weeks. The shortest of Gospels, it was probably the first one to have been written, probably just a couple of decades after Jesus' death and resurrection. The narrative in the Gospel is pretty raw, without many embellishments. The reader is taken from one event in Jesus' ministry to another, with nary a pause in between. The original Greek of the gospel is pretty unsophisticated too, according to those who are more familiar with 1^st century Greek. The very events in Jesus' ministry too are very raw: He uses spit and dirt to restore sight in a blind person, He rebukes His disciples (multiple times) in the harshest and unrestrained language, and He saves His worst condemnations for Pharisees and others who opposed His message. These are not acts of some passive, transcendental guru. The Jesus of St. Mark's Gospel is not an enlightened "spiritual" leader, in the New-Age understanding of the term. He is very much involved in the hubbub of the daily life, with all its immediacy and unvarnished reality.

It is with these thoughts that I approach the message of this year's Ash Wednesday. The Church calls us to repent, reorient our lives, and remember the fundamental things about our existence. We are part of the material world, with both ends of our lives fixed in inanimate matter. We are dust, and to dust we return. The ashes on our foreheads, immediate, unvarnished and raw, remind us of this simple message in a very graphic way. It is only when we fully appreciate this reality that we can completely open ourselves to the transforming power of Easter. But before we get there, we need to spend forty days in our own little piece of spiritual desert, contemplating the message that we had just received, and preparing ourselves for even the bigger one at the end.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't like winter much. The cold weather, short days and long nights, constant fear of snowstorms – all of these don't really commend that season as something to be enjoyed. At best, I try to endure it. Every once in a while when mention this to some new person that I meet they would ask me something like "well, was it cold where you grew up?," or something to that effect. The ready-made answer that I would provide would point out the fact that my hometown was a host to Winter Olympics, which would somehow imply that I do know a thing or two about more about winter than most people. Or at least it would certify my bona-fides when it comes to having to endure cold weather growing up. Fortunately or unfortunately though, my stint in California definitely spoiled me for life, so I will never again think of winter as a natural state of affairs, something that not much can be done about. I am a big skeptic when it comes to all the tall-tales of global warming, but a really big part of me wishes that those tales would in fact be true.

My family and I were not all that into winter sports, and thought of the entire 1984 Olympic craze to be over the top, so in a typical contrarian fashion we set out to spend better part of the Olympics vacationing in Dubrovnik. Afterwards, however, winter sports became all the rage in Sarajevo, so my dear parents decided to invest in some ski equipment for us kids, so we can enjoy all the wonderful skiing venues that had now become available. It turned out that the only thing that I disliked more than winter was winter spent with these big things strapped to my feet, making me unable to move freely unless I was going straight down a hill. So the experiment with skiing turned out into a mild disaster, and I have not had any desire whatsoever to indulge in that pastime ever since.

After coming to the US I had discovered that outside of the Olympics proper there was absolutely no coverage of Olympic sports on TV. When it came to track and field, my biggest love, this was a disaster. But as far as winter Olympic sports were concerned, I couldn't have cared less. Winter Olympics themselves were not all that well covered on TV either, and for the most part I did not even notice this. The only exceptions were the 2002 and 2006 Olympics, and only because of Janica Kostelić, the greatest female winter Olympics athlete of all time. This feat is especially incredible considering that Croatia, while not exactly Jamaica is pretty much a winter sports backwater.

So yesterday was an opening ceremony for yet another winter Olympics, this time in Vancouver. I did not watch it although I hear the ceremony was pretty nice. Janica has retired from professional skiing, so even thought there are a few pretty good Croatian athletes, it is unlikely I'll watch any of the events. They will be yet another reminder that we have many more weeks of winter to get through.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 07:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The winter in Memphis has so far been one of the more pleasant surprises about this city. For the most part the weather has been extremely mild, on par maybe with the Northern California this time of year. However, when I was first interviewing for the Rhodes job I was warned that there will be one or two snowstorms a year, and that those snowstorms bring the whole city to a halt. A couple of weeks ago I found out that was no exaggeration. Memphis was covered in several inches of snow, in what would probably pass for a mild snowstorm in the Midwest. However, the combination of snow and ice rain made driving conditions extremely treacherous. School was cancelled at Rhodes, and I presume many other schools and businesses were closed in the community as well. Now I am no stranger to snow, and aside from driving around in conditions that make my windshield freeze (my poor car's heating is brokenL) I can handle this sort of predicament. Or so I had thought. It turns out that aside from the major interstate highways no other roads, pathways or parking spaces were cleared of snow. For days. This seems to be because the infrequent snow doesn't make it worthwhile for the city authorities to invest in snow-cleaning equipment. However, I am not sure if that is a very economically sound decision. After all, all the businesses and services that are closed are surely a net-loss in profits for those businesses at least, if not directly for the city. Anyways, because of all the snow and ice everywhere I was forced to drive very gingerly around one day when I absolutely had to leave my apartment. When I was coming back to my place, I was turning into the parking lot at a snail's pace of 5 miles/hour. Even so, my car slid on the frozen onramp and hit the median divider. I was stuck that way for a few minutes, but managed to get dislodged thanks to some friendly neighbors who pushed my car.

It is snowing again in Memphis today, and sure enough classes at Rhodes are cancelled. I don't teach on Mondays so this would not in principle affect me, except that I am flying into Memphis from Indiana later on this evening. I am not looking forward to my drive home from the airport, and have some serious trepidation about it. Hopefully I'll make it in one piece.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am a huge tennis fan, and I spent a better part of yesterday morning watching the finals of Australian Open. I was disappointed that Marin Čilić did not make it there, but playing in his first ever Grand Slam semifinal was already his best success to date. He is young and clearly on the rise, and I am confident that Croatia will once again have a player in the very top echelons of World tennis.

The final was between Andy Murray and Roger Federer. The former was seeking his first Grand Slam title and the first one for Britain in more than seventy years. The latter, on the other hand, already achieved everything that can be achieved in tennis and then some. With 15 Grand Slam titles under his belt, and still in his top form, it is unlikely that anyone will get even close to this level of dominance of the game any time soon, if ever. And sure enough, Federer managed to win this match in a very convincing fashion, without losing a set.

Some people find watching Federer play to be extremely boring, with the final outcome seldom in doubt. I, however, really enjoy his extremely elegant playing style. Everything he does on the court seems so effortless. His perfect technique has enabled him to exert himself much less than most other players on the tour, which has helped him stave-off injuries for all these years.

As he has sealed his name in all kinds of record books Federer has also become much more forthright and blunt in his public announcements. More often than he used to he would point out the difference in the amount of talent when asked about his domination over one top player or another in their mutual encounters. This has made commentators, especially the US ones, cringe. He is quietly and confidently demolishing one of the most cherished myths of American public ethos: if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything. It turns out that's not quite the case. For most of us, even if we had the tenacity and single-mindedness to work insane hours at some task, if this task is well outside of our range of abilities we will not be able to achieve success in it. As an educator, I have to deal with this unfortunate truth all the time. Most of the students are usually good about this, and they know their limits better than anyone else. But there are those cases where a student was pushed into a particular class or field of study despite their ability to succeed at it. In those instances reality check becomes very painful for both me as an instructor and the student in question. Hopefully, Federer will be able to erode a bit of that unfortunate myth of universal ability to achieve anything. That could in the long run prove to be his greatest legacy.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 08:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)