Econlinks

• The top 100 global thinkers, according to Foreign Policy. With the usual caveats: some should clearly not be there, others are missing (even from the first 5 positions, say...) etc. Highly subjective, but well, a top...

• Terry Tao makes a nice and concise exposition of some of the most beautiful parts at the intersection of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (oh, nostalgia...), including quick reviews of classical and quantum mechanics.

• Some super nice games/quizzes via Steve Landsburg. Indeed be careful, some are highly addictive. For instance, The Paradoxion Express.

• Probably London's very first Indian restaurant (related, earlier- 2nd bullet point). With thanks to Daniel!

• The way forward for art: private funding with the right incentives for donors/funders. I think this ought to work also for universities, including public European ones... which are notoriously bad at this task, as we all know (with the important caveat that, especially in these European universities, the persons in charge of alumni networks and the like should really be the brains and not the (sub)mediocrities-- which seems to be the default in a lot of such places, even beyond the obvious fact that these are typically people with more /a lot more spare time; perhaps they/we should understand/decide that this is too important a job to leave to those with time to "spare" on it...-- only the brains can attract other brains and...their money).

Weekend Econlinks

• "Famous economists" easy quiz. In fact too easy, as presented, because you can see the questions before you start the clock. So, in order to seriously test yourselves, just start the clock and then read the questions (you have 3 minutes in total). Took me 1 min and 14 seconds to answer all questions correctly, because I needed three trials for one of them-- yes, yes, I admit I have not read at all that book :-). Cowen claims it took him only 49 seconds. By the way, in case you didn't know of it, here's a great resource on the history of economic thought.

• The Levitt vs. Heckman leitmotive (actually the rest of that Univ of Chicago Magazine article is more interesting; in general, I think people put too many resources into this sort of personalized academic fights). Earlier on the same topic (3rd bullet point). See also an essay on the economics-made-for-fun genre, kind of vague / unfocused, but some parts are well worth your time (such as the beginning summary of the books in this econ-made-for-fun area)

• The three (only?!) habits of highly irritating management gurus: very well written, welcome article from the Economist. We love it!

• A nice recap post of Terry Tao on the "no self-defeating object" argument in mathematical proofs.

• Kahn has an interesting argument, but I find him overly pessimistic. I also think Cowen is somewhat out of touch with what is really going on with academic Economics. Very briefly, here's what I think: nothing is amiss with the current direction of research in Economics (as long as these ideas/ forecasts do not turn into self-fulfilling prophecies...)

• Hwang got rather easily off this (un)scientific mess. The timeline of events and more. Sometimes the academe & research world in general are too forgiving, and wrong (/dangerous?) precedents are set.

• Battle of Agincourt (welcome) controversy.

• Best US cities for classical music, in '09. Worldwide, I would place London, Amsterdam and Vienna somewhere in top 5. Not sure about Tokyo yet, since I was for too little there (and still have to put my impressions on paper... well, blog).

• Pure selection of 100% go-getters, if you ask me.

• Don't forget about the Prediction Markets on the Romanian 2009 Presidential Elections-- some seem to be making already (fictitious) fortunes there! :-)

Test your Macroeconomics knowledge

...by doing this NYTimes 18 multiple-choice questions quiz (via Greg Mankiw).

This is obviously piece of cake if you did any (ok: any decent) introductory Economics courses (if you did not do any Econ but read frequently the economic news and understand some basics, you should still be able to answer correctly at least 10 of the 18 questions-- my own approximation here), but I still like the way they structured the multiple choices: I actually had to stay more than a few seconds for some of the questions :-).

Spelling quiz

Try it out.

I thought it would be piece of cake, but I only had 23 (out of 27) correct (though two mistakes had to do strictly with American English vs. British English differences...) . Grrrr!


Via Greg Mankiw.

The blue-eyed islanders puzzle

The morning pill: Terry Tao has just reminded me of the following famous logic puzzle. Obviously some of you have seen it before and might know the answer (disclaimer: I was confronted with this quite a while ago, in my first university year, as part of a challenge among Maths students), but many of you did not. Try to think about it on your own before checking the web for answers :-). Here's the puzzle in Tao's formulation:

There is an island upon which a tribe resides. The tribe consists of 1000 people, 100 of which are blue-eyed and 900 of which are brown-eyed. Yet, their religion forbids them to know their own eye color, or even to discuss the topic; thus, each resident can (and does) see the eye colors of all other residents, but has no way of discovering his own (there are no reflective surfaces). If a tribesperson does discover his or her own eye color, then their religion compels them to commit ritual suicide at noon the following day in the village square for all to witness. All the tribespeople are highly logical and highly devout, and they all know that each other is also highly logical and highly devout.

One day, a blue-eyed foreigner visits to the island and wins the complete trust of the tribe.

One evening, he addresses the entire tribe to thank them for their hospitality.

However, not knowing the customs, the foreigner makes the mistake of mentioning eye color in his address, remarking “how unusual it is to see another blue-eyed person like myself in this region of the world”.

What effect, if anything, does this faux pas have on the tribe?

If you give up (don't!) or simply want to check your reasoning, read Terry Tao's entire post and the subsequent comments. And if you still have problems understanding, you're welcome to drop a line :-).

Quiz: White to move and mate in 2 moves

Here's a quick chess quiz, the 'challenger number 10' from the Corus Chess Tournament. Quite a nice one, took me a bit more than 6 (far too much!) minutes to solve: I am becoming rusty :-). If you solve it before Jan 25th at 16:00, you might want to email the key move and maybe win something. Plus of course it helps focusing a bit, in general :-)

I also hope the Norwegian chess wonderkid wins this year's Corus Chess Top Tournament (only a few more rounds to go and he's still co-leader) from Wijk aan Zee, although he made some very surprinsing blunders in the previous match he lost to Leko (see here the full report for Round 9). Otherwise, I'd bet on the current chess world champ.

Romania gets a B for its flag. Think anthems, next...

With too much indulgence, I'd say. For one, lack of originality (compare us to Greece, same grade!) should not be rewarded... The full rankings are here (alphabetical order here). For the grading criteria see here (and feel free to disagree, of course...). I do love this bit in the 'methodology' though, subpart of the author's rule number 3-- no tricolours (unless we're Europeans, since then we obviously deserve special favours) :

"Eastern Europe is also a bad case. Many of the states there had a chance to change their flags when they were all busy seceding from each other, and the best they could do was go back to these horrible tricolours."

Though I will emphasize that I totally disagree with the way he closes the above paragraph:

"Probably the reason their neighbours annexed them in the first place was that they couldn't stand to see such vomitous colours just over the border in Armenia, Lithuania, or Bulgaria. "

Hmm, hmm... I wonder whether this fellow feels too safe down there in NZ; I wouldn't want to meet any serious yoghurt drinker if I were him :-).

HT to Tyler Cowen on MR.

PS. You should know what I am waiting for, next: a ranking of national anthems (though more professional, please...). I honestly don't think we'd be that lucky in there. And I suggest we deeply think about that before we get graded :-). I even have a first (serious!) proposal as an alternative (if this wouldn't make us original, nothing else would). Wouldn't you prefer that over this? That's what I thought. Anyway, let us come back to this issue in a future post. But comment away already, should you feel inspired!

Bet 1$ for your choice as this year's Economics Nobelist

This seems a serious thing- all funds go to charity and the winners of the pool select the precise charity destination. And there are only a few more days to go, so hurry up! This is via Greg Mankiw who also offers tips of favourite choices from last year... I'll place my forecast --which will obviously be the correct one :-)-- on my blog on October 14th, so that I do not influence others who might want to bet.

Best "Political Compass" so far. And where I stand on the left-right political-economic plan

You should do this 'politiquiz' (particularly if you are already a politician/ decision maker or consider a career in this direction :-)). There are lots of things that can still be improved in it, but it is the best "where you stand on the political/ economic dimensions" questionnaire I've encountered so far.

Here's a fragment from the intro to the 'Political Compass' to convince you:

Welcome to The Political Compass™.
There's abundant evidence for the need of it. The old one-dimensional categories of 'right' and 'left', established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today's complex political landscape. For example, who are the 'conservatives' in today's Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher ?
On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It's not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can't explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as 'right-wingers', yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook.
That's about as much as we should tell you for now. After you've responded to the following propositions during the next 3-5 minutes, all will be explained. In each instance, you're asked to choose the response that best describes your feeling: Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree or Strongly Agree. At the end of the test, you'll be given the compass, with your own special position on it.

And you can see below where I stand: somewhat more libertarian and much closer in longitude to the center than the far (economic) rightist Milton Friedman; but a (moderate) libertarian rightist I am indeed, as you can see from the picture (click on it to enlarge). Among the examples of personalities discussed at the above link, good old professor Friedman is my only quadrant neighbour :-).

Update, some minutes later: I am being notified that my political/economic position is very close to Tchaikovsky's and Chopin's, among the 'grande musique' composers. So this is it, now you have it, I've just discovered myself: I am a complex combination of Tchaikovsky and Chopin. Unfortunately, in terms of their economic and politic views and not their music. But still...

Econlinks for 13-05-'07

• an excellent (wide-audience targeted) article on the upside of income inequality, by Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy. Greg Mankiw also writes about it (and singles out exactly the fragment I wanted to single out).

• a clear KO administered by Steven Levitt to some 'journalist' who tried to criticise him and made a mess of himself, rather... That was nice (don't upset Levitt if you're not a pro and particularly don't do it if you have no clue what you're talking about...), but I think Levitt is wasting his time with answering such nonsense in such detail, and he'd rather give some reactions to the interesting part of the criticisms raised, for instance, by Rubinstein (Rust and Heckman are other heavyweights that criticised Levitt in the past). I summarized a bit of all that on this blog, a while ago.

• one very interesting piece of Paul Rubin in the Washington Post, on the link between evolution and (some) people's wrong opinions on immigration and trade. I cannot agree more with one of his conclusions: "A deeper understanding of economics is like reading- it must be taught". Via Greg Mankiw (though I can't really see this as 'Darwin versus Smith'...).

• an older entry of Bernard Salanié (who's recently decided to take a break from blogging: I hope it won't be for very long...) on Maths prodigy Terence Tao (you can read a short description of Tao's work- and of the other recent Fields medal laureates- that got him the recent Fields medal, in the March number of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society; in the same number there is also an interview with him and with the other two Fields medalists who did not decline the honour, like Perelman) . The bottom line is that you should take the Terence Tao Test (TTT) as well- and don't forget that he had solved it perfectly before he was 8 years old :-).

New Blog Contest: Best Blog Entry on Inter-Ethnical Matters in Transylvania

As announced, I restate below the second part of the my previous post. Looking forward for a big number of enthusiastic participants!

Sebi Buhai (in collaboration with Dan, Lolka and Tihi, my colleagues from PhoenixTransylvania, who do not yet know about this, but I am sure will have nothing against it :-) ) is launching a new (smaller scale) blog contest. And absolutely all the material prizes Sebi won at the Clujblogfest will be used as funds for this new blog contest (more details follow below). So what is this about? This blog contest will be under the logo of PhoenixTransilvania and will reward the best blog entry (essay) on any ethnical aspects in Transylvania, from any perspective (more details follow below). The candidate blog entries have to be submitted between the 7th of May and the 7th of June (they could have been written before or within this time range) and all that needs to be done, logistically, to this end, is to submit the address of that blog entry as comment to this post or to the previous post I had on this new contest or to the blog entry that will soon introduce the contest also on PhoenixTransylvania. There won't be any "popular" vote, but solely the decision of a jury composed of myself, Dan, Lolka and Tihi. The first three places will be decided and the decision will be argumented in a post from the jury members, by June 15th, or as soon as possible thereafter. All three best entries will be also published, with the name of their authors, on PhoenixTransilvania. Some further, more detailed, information follows. Please send your questions/suggestions as comments to this post (or the previous post introducing this contest or the post on PhoenixTransilvania soon announcing this competition).

Details:

• the candidate blog entry cannot be longer than 2000 words and can be as short as you want it to be (strong preference for short and concise entries)
• the theme of the blog entry can be anything linked to ethnicity in Transylvania and this includes (but does not exhaust the entire list of possibilities!) the normative perspective (how you'd like things to be); the historical perspective; the very personal perspective; the socio/economic/political perspective; very concrete topics; connection to ethnical relations in other parts of the world etc. Think of your own topics, maybe you can come up with something extremely original!
• the entries can be written in English or Romanian, with English preferred (but the language of the post will not play a crucial part in the evaluation): the reason for preferring English is because we'd like to "market" the eventually winning texts also outside the country. Foreigners can thus also participate (though, obviously, they might need some link to Transylvania- not necessarily entailing that they should have been or be living here-; I know a few potential participants, already). Needless to say, all potential candidates have to understand the rules in English- don't worry: if you've got this far, you're fine :-).
• the judgment on the quality of the submission will be mainly based on the following factors: topic relevance, originality, creativity, organization and coherence, expression and communication style, language use, usage and interpretation of references, conclusion. The jury (Sebi, Dan, Tihi, Lolka) may take the liberty to also consult other specialists if they think it necessary. The final decision, regarding the best three, will be argumented in a small essay to be posted on the blog(s).
• in case you'd really like to participate but you do not yet have a blog and you do not know/do not want to start one, contact me, we'll figure something out. In any case all essays will be posted online somewhere, by the deadline
• I'd like to use this as an incentive to raise some interest around the inter-ethnical issues in Transylvania and, also, to raise the civic attitude in general. Not to mention that this is a test of whether incentives matter in such contexts :-).
• about the prizes of this new contest (so far; if anybody wants to supplement them in a way or another, nobody will mind:-)): the 3rd prize will be my third prize won at the Clujblogfest for the "most informative blog" category; the 2nd prize will be one of my second prizes won at either the "best analysis blog" or "best personal blog"; the 1st prize will be the other of the 2nd prizes mentioned before, supplemented with my share of the third prize that we won with PhoenixTransylvania at the "best collective blog" (and maybe my colleagues in PhoenixTransilvania will like to sponsor with their shares as well here, but that is not mandatory, of course :-)). Given that the Clujblogfest had quite some interesting sponsors, I am sure you will appreciate the prizes!
• what is not certain, but the idea is here already: I'll also try to arrange some space in Cluj-Napoca somewhere so that the three winners can actually present their essays in front of a (small, but very interested) audience and discuss and debate them afterwards and- needless to say :-)- dinner, drinks and possibly accomodation for the contest winners- are all on me, though you'd have to make it to Cluj-Napoca on your own, somehow . The date for this is to be decided later, together with the three would-be winners.
• everybody is encouraged to participate ( in particular feel free to advertise this among pupils and students as well) and all possible views are welcome, as long as you do your best in discussing and argumenting them
• submission starts May 7 and ends June 7th, 24h GMT+2 (Romanian time). Entries might have been written already or, more likely, should be written before the deadline above. The submission per se will consist in sending the address of your candidate post as comment to one of my (Sebi's) posts on my blog or on PhoenixTransylvania (a post will also appear there, soon).
• all submitted entries require a list of all eventually used references and the proper citation of all these in the text (this is not going to be counted in the 2000 words limit). Any detected plagiarism will be made public and the entry consequently disqualified.
• should there be no submission whatsoever or should the jury decide that none of the eventual entries are worth a prize, the prizes will remain in the hands of the-now-sponsor of this contest, Sebi: so don't let that happen! :-). After all, think of it as contributing an opinion to our discussions (or future discussions!) on PhoenixTransylvania
• Success, everybody!

Update: now the announcement is also on PhoenixTransylvania.

This blog is more popular than I thought. And a new blog contest!

Popularity is not at all something I am after (though I could start considering my running for the Romanian Presidency in the future- after all, so far, all you need for that is to be very popular:-)), as I immediately made clear when I was nominated to this "Clujblogfest", a blog "competition" in my native city, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. At that moment I announced, publicly, my desire to withdraw from the blog contest, but, to my enormous surprise, that was not possible: once nominated, you participate whether you want or not. This is but one of the absurdities of this blogfest (no role for a competent jury whatsoever and, respectively, no properly defined, narrow enough, categories in the contest are the two major problems). My opinion is that any such contest promotes excessive popularity and not necessarily (or not, period, this is happening in Romania...) quality... And that's when and where I suddenly lost (and would always lose) any interest in something that, had it been done/were it done properly, could have been/could be a very interesting and more than welcome endeavour.... But there'll be a next time: next time I am sure this will come out much better. The first thing one needs to do for that to happen is to throw away this old format, inherited unchanged (incredibly enough, there was no learning whatsoever!) from the first edition, the national one, of the same contest (edition which, by the way, also rewarded some blogs that cannot induce anything but nausea; at least we're insulated from such feelings in this second one and this is not because I am biased pro my blogger colleagues from Cluj...).

Nevertheless- and here you discover another side of my very complex personality :-)- when placed into such a situation (even- or, I should say, especially- when- involuntarily, arbitrarily), I function contingent on the rule "whatever you do, don't be bored" . In fact I acknowledge that some epsilon amount of "electoral lobbying" has been going on (starting once the preliminary results , published about half-way into the voting period, showed that Sebi's blog was doing far better than most had predicted, including yours truly :-)) and that I've even received the voluntary services of a few enthusiastic- far more enthusiastic, and crucially, with far more time to spend on this than myself- "campaign managers", and all within the rules of the game! But anyways, to cut this saga short, many thanks to all my voters, the final results are here (and I'll emphasize below what exactly this blog won, so that you don't have to skim through all that list, unless you really have time to). I add the (ex-post) hope that most votes for my blog were based on more than just friendship, partisanship or whatever else that would have little to do (notwithstanding that they could be correlated) with the one and only attribute that should matter in this context: quality (and never mind, for now, that, given the way the categories were defined, "quality" itself can be cumbersome to assess). Also, sincere congratulations to all winners and participants at this Clujblogfest, after all we've been through this together :-).

But all this talk and no concrete results presented so far :-). So what on Earth did this blog win (keep however in mind the criticisms from above, on the definition of the blog categories, I will not repeat them) ? Here we go, quite some prizes actually:

• 2nd place in the category "best blog of socio-economic-political analysis" (subtitled, my free translation here, "best blog that gives us food for thought"...) with 74 votes (which make 38% of the total number of votes for this category). The winner had 78 votes (40%).
• 2nd place in the category "best personal blog" (subtitled "best blog 'the world is mine'") with 58 votes (20%). The winner had 73 votes (26%).
• 3rd place in the category "most informative blog" (subtitled- ad litteram translation- "best blog that gets you out of the fog") with 52 votes (16%). The first two places had 134 (41%) and 66 (20%) votes, respectively.
• In addition, this blogger also won, together with the rest of the team, composed of Dan, Lolka and Tihi, aka the (in)famous PhoenixTransylvania (the first inter-ethnic blog from Transylvania), the 3rd place for the "best collective blog" (subtitled "best blog team") with 25 votes (10%), with the first two places receiving 123 votes (49%) and 44 votes (18%), respectively. Again, a surprising prize and ex ante certainly undesired; however, you will see in a bit why, ex post, this prize will become quite useful, as all the other prizes mentioned above :-). Hence, my priors were not the best. I admit.

Let me also mention, finally, that this blog also received (but these are out of the "podium"): the 5th place in the "best blog" category (subtitled "the most popular and most appreciated" blog), with 59 votes (9%), where the winner had 167 votes (24%); and it even managed to get 3 votes (2%) in the "worst blog" category (subtitled "the blog that makes you break the monitor"), where the "winner" had 39 votes (23%).

Anyways, to the really important part of this post. Part which I will repeat in a new post as well. I was stating above that, a posteriori, all these prizes might actually bring quite some utility. And I mean a social, not an individual one (I wouldn't care about the latter under the circumstances). Hence, economically speaking, participating did not turn out such a bad move, after all. Why is that? Well, look what will happen with the prizes that this blog (and this blogger) won and just admit that this is a great idea :-). Here we go:

New Blog Contest: Best Blog Entry on Inter-Ethnical Matters in Transylvania

Sebi Buhai (in collaboration with Dan, Lolka and Tihi, my colleagues from PhoenixTransylvania, who do not yet know about this, but I am sure will have nothing against it :-) ) is launching a new (smaller scale) blog contest. And absolutely all the material prizes Sebi won at the clujblogfest will be used as funds for this new blog contest (more details follow below). So what is this about? This blog contest will be under the logo of PhoenixTransilvania and will reward the best blog entry (essay) on any ethnical aspects in Transylvania, from any perspective (more details follow below). The candidate blog entries have to be submitted between the 7th of May and the 7th of June (they could have been written before or within this time range) and all that needs to be done, logistically, to this end, is to submit the address of that blog entry as comment to this post or to my future post on the blog contest or to the blog entry that will soon introduce the contest also on PhoenixTransylvania. There won't be any "popular" vote, but solely the decision of a jury composed of myself, Dan, Lolka and Tihi. The first three places will be decided and the decision will be argumented in a post from the jury members, by June 15th, or as soon as possible thereafter. All three best entries will be also published, with the name of their authors, on PhoenixTransilvania. Some further, more detailed, information follows. Please send your questions/suggestions as comments to this post (or the future post repeating this info or the post on PhoenixTransilvania announcing this competition).

Details:

• the candidate blog entry cannot be longer than 2000 words and can be as short as you want it to be (strong preference for short and concise entries)
• the theme of the blog entry can be anything linked to ethnicity in Transylvania and this includes (but does not exhaust the entire list of possibilities!) the normative perspective (how you'd like things to be); the historical perspective; the very personal perspective; the socio/economic/political perspective; very concrete topics; connection to ethnical relations in other parts of the world etc. Think of your own topics, maybe you can come up with something extremely original!
• the entries can be written in English or Romanian, with English preferred (but the language of the post will not play a crucial part in the evaluation): the reason for preferring English is because we'd like to "market" the eventually winning texts also outside the country. Foreigners can thus also participate (though, obviously, they might need some link to Transylvania- not necessarily entailing that they should have been or be living here-; I know a few potential participants, already). Needless to say, all potential candidates have to understand the rules in English- don't worry: if you've got this far, you're fine :-).
• the judgment on the quality of the submission will be mainly based on the following factors: topic relevance, originality, creativity, organization and coherence, expression and communication style, language use, usage and interpretation of references, conclusion. The jury (Sebi, Dan, Tihi, Lolka) may take the liberty to also consult other specialists if they think it necessary. The final decision, regarding the best three, will be argumented in a small essay to be posted on the blog(s).
• in case you'd really like to participate but you do not yet have a blog and you do not know/do not want to start one, contact me, we'll figure something out. In any case all essays will be posted online somewhere, by the deadline
• I'd like to use this as an incentive to raise some interest around the inter-ethnical issues in Transylvania and, also, to raise the civic attitude in general. Not to mention that this is a test of whether incentives matter in such contexts :-).
• about the prizes of this new contest (so far; if anybody wants to supplement them in a way or another, nobody will mind:-)): the 3rd prize will be my third prize won at the Clujblogfest for the "most informative blog" category; the 2nd prize will be one of my second prizes won at either the "best analysis blog" or "best personal blog"; the 1st prize will be the other of the 2nd prizes mentioned before, supplemented with my share of the third prize that we won with PhoenixTransylvania at the "best collective blog" (and maybe my colleagues in PhoenixTransilvania will like to sponsor with their shares as well here, but that is not mandatory, of course :-)). Given that the Clujblogfest had quite some interesting sponsors, I am sure you will appreciate the prizes!
• what is not certain, but the idea is here already: I'll also try to arrange some space in Cluj-Napoca somewhere so that the three winners can actually present their essays in front of a (small, but very interested) audience and discuss and debate them afterwards and- needless to say :-)- dinner, drinks and possibly accomodation for the contest winners- are all on me, though you'd have to make it to Cluj-Napoca on your own, somehow . The date for this is to be decided later, together with the three would-be winners.
• everybody is encouraged to participate ( in particular feel free to advertise this among pupils and students as well) and all possible views are welcome, as long as you do your best in discussing and argumenting them
• submission starts May 7 and ends June 7th, 24h GMT+2 (Romanian time). Entries might have been written already or, more likely, should be written before the deadline above. The submission per se will consist in sending the address of your candidate post as comment to one of my (Sebi's) posts on my blog or on PhoenixTransylvania (a post will also appear there, soon).
• all submitted entries require a list of all eventually used references and the proper citation of all these in the text (this is not going to be counted in the 2000 words limit). Any detected plagiarism will be made public and the entry disqualified.
• should there be no submission whatsoever or should the jury decide that none of the eventual entries are worth a prize, the prizes will remain in the hands of the-now-sponsor of this contest, Sebi: so don't let that happen! :-). After all, think of it as contributing an opinion to our discussions (or future discussions!) on PhoenixTransylvania
• Success, everybody!

Your life story in 6 words (no more, no less)

Via the Freakonomics blog (entry by Dubner). And you might even win that Ipod if you choose to compete. Though I think it's hard to beat Stephen Dubner's "On the seventh word, he rested". I chose not to compete since it so happens that I seem to totally lack inspiration in this context and I don't think I can get much better before the deadline (I wonder how much time it took Dubner to come up with his story, that is brilliant!). The best two I could come up with (anything original was far below these...) are two very famous song lines that I know anytime (of course I can also sing the whole songs for you at any moment, should you wish for that :-)).

1. I travelled each and every highway (Frank Sinatra, My Way)
2. Come on, baby, light my fire! (The Doors, Light my Fire)

And here's my best shot to get such a 'life story' in 6 words in Romanian. Fortunately I know again two famous quotes by heart, one is a thought by a famous Romanian poet, the other one the first verse of a Romanian song by a famous band, Phoenix):

1. Tot ceea ce are timp exista (Nichita Stanescu).
2. Imi simt sufletul mugur de fluier (Phoenix, 'Mugur de Fluier')

Your turn now, it is an interesting exercise for 5-10 minutes :-)

Provocarile lui Dan :-)

Dan are o idee foarte simpatica... Traduc chestionarul in romana (si raspund, in fuga) pentru ca tot ClujBlogRoll-ul sa poata raspunda (si astfel am deja clienti- mult mai multi decat 4- pentru ultima intrebare :-)).

1) Luati cartea cea mai la indemana, deschideti la pagina 18 si scrieti aici al 4-lea rand
"this contract gives bank shareholders an incentive to increase the risk of the" (Alexandre Ziegler: A Game Theory Analysis of Options. Corporate Finance and Financial Intermediation in Continous Time)

2) Fara sa verificati, cat e ora?
10:15

3) Verificati
10:56- shit!

4) Cum sunteti imbracat?
Casual.

5) Inainte de a raspunde la acest chestionar, la ce va uitati?
La un amarat de tabel in LaTex pe care nicicum nu reusesc sa il intorc in pagina...

6) Ce zgomot auziti in afara celui al calculatorului?
Keith Jarett- The Survivors' Suite

7) Cand ati iesit ultima data si ce ati facut cu ocazia respectiva?
Sambata seara. Cina, bere belgiana, blonda.

8) Ati visat ieri noapte?
Nope.

9) Cand ati ras ultima data?
Acum cateva minute, citind raspunsurile lui Dan la chestionarul de fata.

10) Ce aveti pe peretii incaperii unde sunteti?
Tablouri, rafturi pline de carti. In plus niste ferestre enorme (sunt la birou).

11) Daca ati deveni multimilionar peste noapte, care ar fi primul lucru pe care l-ati cumpara?
Just show me the money and let me worry about spending it afterwards...

12) Care este ultimul film pe care l-ati vazut?
The Game, mai bun decat am crezut initial (nu e chiar atat de previzibil), dar nu impresionant.

13) Ati vazut ceva neobisnuit astazi?
Nu ploua la Aarhus!

14) Ce parere aveti despre acest chestionar?
Ar putea fi nostim daca nu ar fi atat de luunnng...

15) Spuneti-ne ceva ce nu stim inca.
MEdC al nostru mi-a vizitat indelung atat website-ul cat si weblog-ul azi dimineata devreme. Sunt onorat, dragilor! Sper ca nu au prea multe resentimente ca nu au fost toti invitati in show pe moment, mai sunt ocazii...

16) Care ar fi prenumele copilului dvs. daca ar fi vorba de o fetita?
Ar fi culmea sa divulg asta, toata lumea ar prelua ideea :-)

17) Care ar fi prenumele copilului dvs. daca ar fi vorba de un baiat?
Idem 16).

18) V-ati gandit deja sa locuiti in strainatate?
Nu, deloc. Ma tem ca nu as rezista unei asemenea experiente :-).

19) Ce ati dori ca D-zeu sa va spuna cand intrati pe Portile Raiului?
Salut. Sunt Hugh Hefner si iti urez bun venit in Raiul meu!

20) Daca ati putea schimba ceva in lume in afara de politica, ce ati schimba?
Asta e clar: ciclul vietii ar trebui sa fie complet inversat, George Constanza a avut primul ideea.

21) Va place sa dansati?
Daca nu e vorba de Diskoteka Boom ca background (sau chestii inrudite care il scot din sarite si pe Johnny)

22) George Bush?
Orice ar fi, are un talent de a se inconjura de oameni foarte capabili (si ma refer la cei pe directia economica in particular). E singurul motiv pentru care nu a fost supus inca "impeachment-ului".

23) Care a fost ultima chestie pe care ati vazut-o la televizor?
Ieri seara, Nobel Peace Prize Concert. In particular, Sharon Stone arata bine si acum (pe de alta parte, din pacate, a scos cam multi porumbei pe gura, fraze fara backup, dar asta e numai vina organizatorilor)

24) Care sunt cele 4 persoane care ar trebui sa preia acest chestionar?
Nu doar 4: intreg ClujBlogRoll-ul.