Jay

Swapped the 20 inches of snow in Columbus for the 20° F in New Hampshire. How awesome...

I have this habit of googling myself (or other people :P) once in a while, and I am sure a lot of you do this as well. Well, apparently you don't even have to do that much trouble to stalk people. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you http://spock.com.

Here's what popped up in a google search, to my amazement:

http://www.spock.com/Jordan-Marvakov-jSK5s1vD

Just to clarify, I haven't been associated with this place in any way up to now. Apparently, it had autonomously picked up the relevant tags from the Internet. Apparently, there are other crawlers that do similar things: http://www.zoominfo.com, for one.

Уверен съм, че всички с роден език български ще оценят комичния потенциал на копираната по долу статия македонския вестник "Вест":

Без превод: „Манијак штипе за цицки и бега"
http://news.ibox.bg/news/id_384457570

Манијак на возраст од околу триесет и пет години, среде бел ден ги напаѓа девојките и жените низ центарот на Скопје, ги фаќа за интимните делови од телото и во секунда бега назад.

Изминатите две недели голем број припаднички на понежниот пол се пожалија дека релативно млад маж со костенлива кратко истрижена коса, ги фаќа за градите или за задникот, ги стиска до болка и бега со голема брзина.
Оние што го сретнале, велат дека често е облечен во бел дрес, се движи многу брзо и прави големи чекори.

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1 hour and 4 dead nerves later I am the proud owner of my second root canal. I am at least happy I was recommended a good dentist. The emergeny one, who treated me initially, took a phone call while working on my tooth and put the temporary fillin in place with this thumb *shiver*

One can find funny things scouring around the Internet. Here is something eltirno, among others, will appreciate, a reminder of the once-glorious Reverend Ostap ibn Ibrahim Suleiman Berta-Maria Benderbey, Jr.


To Those Who Try To Save Me

by Ostap Bender Jr.


Dear potential saviours,

I would like to inform you that at the moment I cannot satisfy your kind request to join your denomination. I understand that you might be disappointed by my decision, but I have several compelling reasons that do not allow me to be saved just yet.

First, in your highly commendable attempt to show me the Truth, you must have overlooked the lack of any factual evidence to support your version of it. Sadly, the referrences to your Holy Scripture proved to be nothing but a circular argument. You claim that they have a divine origin, and support it with statements from the Books themselves. The only proof of the truth of these statements from the Books is the alleged infallibility of the Book, since it is of divine origin. Unfortunately, this is not acceptable to a reasonable mind of the end of the 20th century.

Second, you failed to bring any proof of validity of your particular denomination over any other faiths and beliefs, whose representatives also contacted me with regard to my salvation. All religious sources claim supernatural events having happened, thus proving their and only their correctness. Should these be true, which is doubtful (see previous paragraph), they obviously cancel each other, or overlap. Therefore, either ALL religions are true, which gives me no reason to prefer your denomination over others, or none of the applicant faiths are valid, which forces me to reject all Salvation attempts.

Third, I have noticed a strong disagreement between the values your religion apparently holds important and the practices followed by adepts of your faith. Sadly, there appears to be no difference in crime rate, prejudices, and intolerance levels among various religious groups. Therefore, no claims of superior morality by one religion or other are valid.

These are just some of the reasons why your application to save my soul has been found unsatisfactory. I do hope that in time you will improve your standing by adding feasibility to your beliefs. I would recommend to remove a supreme being as a notion that cannot be reasonably proven; to be more tolerant toward people and groups who do not share your beliefs; and to include provisions about respecting others' freedom of mind. Unfortunately, such improvements to your religion will cause it to stop being one, and will make proselytising a totally useless occupation.

I remain truly yours,

Ostap Bender Jr.

The Jesus will save you! Today!

The funeral of Uladzimir Katkouski, a Belarussian journalist, and as fine a young man as you can meet, was held yesterday in Minsk. In LJ, he was known as rydel23 and baleslau.

It feels weird. We used to drink our Thursday beer in the same bar not so long ago. Even though he wasn't as close friend as he might have been to others, it is hard not to appreciate what he has done for his native Belarus in the last 6 or 7 years. His two major projects, http://www.pravapis.org and recently http://www.svaboda.org are major hubs of the Belarusian Internet community. He also kept a popular blog at http://www.br23.net.

He was injured as a bystander of a collision between a fire truck and a tram last June in Prague, an accident in which his wife Jonada, also an AUBG graduate, lost a leg. Life is cruel and random sometimes.

Rest in peace, Vova.

You know you're an economist when... you look at the menu and think, "This place has become cheaper - the prices haven't changed."

I figured out maybe an update is due, even though I haven't even read anything here for a while. Either way, I am in Luxembourg for a year, on an internship. You get pictures whenever I manage to figure out that web album creation tool, and if you're in the area - come visit.

I am solving problems from previous qualifying examinations in Microeconomics. We have an Economic historian in the department, who likes to put his problems seriously in perspective, which means I often end up reading a story about something going on in Ireland in the 1840, for example.

Today I ran into the following statement:

The farmer has homothetic, strictly convex preferences over two goods: leisure (working less than 300 days) and potatoes.

I'll have two hours of leisure for that potato, thankyouverymuch :)

Убива ме такава пустота.
Една и съща вечно топла къща.
И никой не отива по света,
и никой от света не се завръща.

My Ukraininan roommate, Leo, left for DC tonight. My other roomie Ladislav is gone for half a week already. I happen to have departures of any sort, and I just figured out why I love the Internet so much. It doesn't go anywere.

(Bonus points for Bulgarian speakers who recognize the author of the stanza above... without Google help)

Long ago, in a galaxy far-far away... erm, I mean on some website different from this one, benevg wrote the following about me:

if anything goes wrong in your part of the world, blame that guy. he would not only gladly take the blame, he would also most likely really be the cause of the disturbance. the force is just not really with him. that, however, makes him one hell of a funny guy to be around. when his PHD in economics is complete (i have faith in you, my friend!), i can't help but wonder which way the world will start turning... ;)

I thought a lot of it is spot on, so more power to you, my friend :)

I can't understand folks who cry havoc at Dan Brown because he made millions by selling a tall-tale. The balance sheet of any organized denomination, and especially the Christian one, will seriously dwarf his earings.

I am not entirely sure why, but recently I am getting dizzy in the end of the day sitting in front of the computer. I've no idea where this is coming from, might be a good idea to see a doctor once I get home.

In other news, my eyesight has worsened a bit to the extent to which it is probaby a good idea to wear my glasses on a regular basis. Just as soon as I get them fixed...

Gah. I can no longer find how to change my journal or friends list title. Any hints?

Student assistants in Career Services get to use a shared account to do their work. Today, thanks to the fact that Internet Explorer caches things such as Google searches, I made the hilarious discovery that someone searched for "george bush sex" and "george bush horny". Come on, guys, there must be something better than this to spend the idle hours on.

The Bruce Dickinson Fan Radio at http://music.yahoo.com is running Glory to the Brave for the third time within the last 1 hour. It's not like I don't like Hammerfall, but I think their randomizer needs some work :)

I caught a glimpse of a video of the Russian ultra-nationalist Vladimir Jirinovski speaking in Iraq. This thing had an unparallelled comedic value. Too bad there is no English translation of any sort that I know of.

I am dipping my toes into latent variable modelling (don't feel bad if you don't know what this means, right now you are probably at par with me). To the handful of economists on my list, any suggestions will be appreciated. The purpose of the "excercise" is estimating shadow economy.