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April 30, 2006

Bibi's birthday

Today is my brother Dalibor's 30th birthday (he's the second one from the right). He was born almost exactly two years after me, and our birthdays are ten days apart. Shortly after he was born I nicknamed him Bibi. I don't really know why, except that I was nicknaming everyone when I was that age.

The proximity of our birthdays made it easy for our parents to organize joint birthday parties while we were growing up. We only stopped doing that once we got a bit older and more self conscious. Even when we were having joint celebrations we got individualized birthday cakes. I still believe that our mom made the best birthday cakes that I ever tasted.

Brate, sretan ti rođendan.

April 29, 2006

Amazon book reviews

As I mentioned before, and as many of you know, I really like to read. I am usually reading several books at any given time. I am sort of promiscuous that way, I am unable to commit to any single book. Most of the time I am fairly confident in my own taste in books, and I hardly finish reading a book that I absolutely despise. Recently, I came across one such book, and I was compelled to write a review of it on Amazon to warn others about it. The experience of writing a review turned out to be a lot of fun, and I started writing more of them. You can read my Amazon reviews here.

April 28, 2006

'Burn again' Christians.

I like my coffee strong and my theology orthodox, is one of the ways that I describe myself in my Orkut profile. It may be read as somewhat flippant attitude towards theology, but I hope it also underlines the fact that although fairly orthodox, my beliefs are mine by the virtue of choice. These days orthodox Christian beliefs are under the attack from many different sides, and I feel called to stand up for them. Many times, however, the new attacks are not new, and the attackers are just, unbeknownst to them, re-hashing some of the heresies that are as old as the Christianity itself. I find the arguments that deemed these opinions heretical as convincing today as they were when they were first given, and I feel it's really pointless to go back over things that have been resolved millenia ago. Jokingly, I call for the heretics to be burnt on the stake, and call this 'burn again' Christianity. Not surprisingly, some people take this statement of mine too seriously. For my part, I don''t try to assuage their fears. They won't believe me anyways.

April 26, 2006

Chernobyl

We found out about it from listening to TV and the radio. People were excited and mildly frightened. The school was cancelled that day, which to us kids was always a welcome development. Everyone was told to stay indoors as much as possible and avoid contact with rain. There was a strong possibility that the produce was contaminated, and almost no one dared to buy any, resulting in massive losses to farmers. The year was 1986 and the event that caused all of this was the nuclear plant disaster at Chernobyl, Ukraine. Today is the 20th anniversary of that incident, an incident that become almost synonymous with the dangers lurking behind nusclear energy.

However, the incident should be a reminder of something much more sinister than the nuclear energy itself. It is a reminder of how totalitarian regimes put ideology ahead of the safety of their own citizens, and care even less about the potential global repercussions. The incident was reported many days after it actually happened, and then only because of the increased levels of radiation that were noticed by some Scandinavian scientists. The ensuing international outcry forced the secretive Soviet regime to finally come clean and admit to the disaster.

Something similar happened with the Asian flue a year or two ago. The Chinese government was silent about the outbreak until citizens of other countries became ill and started putting some pressure to find out more about the origin of that virus. In an increasingly interconnected world, when the truth gets suppressed in one corner of the globe, the consequences are felt thousands of miles away. Potentially everyone suffers because of it. Such secrecy comes at a heavy cost, and we are ever less able to afford it.

April 14, 2006

The Letter from Bojan to the Orkuthians

A lot of media attention has been focused on the recently discovered gnostic "Gospel of Judas", with some arguing that it could "profoundly undermine Christian faith". Well, if some heretical writings from the third century AD can have such an effect in the first place, then the faith that is being undermined was not that strong to begin with. Most people, however, took it in stride pointing out that writing a religious text in the fashion of the Gospels or other Biblical texts is actually not all that hard. In an online discussion group a friend of mine challenged me to such a task, and the result of which is The Letter from Bojan to the Orkuthians. I hope it doesn't undermine your faith, though.