Chez Aregjan!

aregjan @ 2008-05-16T13:33:00

2008-05-16T19:33:30Z

Народ, вы будете смеятся, но у нас снег выпал.

Jews in Armenia

2008-05-12T17:36:32Z

The Jewish community of Armenia dates back almost 2,000 years. Many historians date the arrival of the first Jewish settlement in Armenia back to the destruction of the First Temple. During the conquest of King Tigranes II the Great, Tigranes brought with him 10,000 Jewish captives to Armenia when he retreated from Palestine, because of the Roman attack on Armenia (69 B.C.E.). By 360-370 C.E., there was a massive increase in Jewish Hellenistic immigration into Armenia; many Armenian towns became predominately Jewish. During this period, however, the Persian Shapur II began deporting thousands of Jews to Iran.

Halakhic studies never prospered in Armenia, although there are a few references to the region in Jewish Hellenistic sources. During Medieval times, most of Armenian Jewry vanished as a distinct entity in the region, although many historians believe they became a part of the Kurdish Jewry. There is an ancient Jewish cemetery located in the region of Vayots Dzor, in the city of Eghegis, south and west of Yerevan. There are more than 40 tombstones dating back to the 13th century, 16 tombstones with Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions.

Jews from Poland and Persia first began arriving in Armenia in the early 19th century. Since 1840, Jewish settlers established both Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities in Yerevan. Up to 1924, the Sephardic synagogue, Shiek Mordechai, was a leading institution among the Jewish community.

The rest can be found here: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/armenia.html

aregjan @ 2008-05-12T11:20:00

2008-05-12T17:28:11Z

Sendler, Savior Of Warsaw Ghetto Children, Dies.

"The term 'hero' irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little," Sendler said in one of her last interviews.

After having read this, I looked up the list of the Righteous Among the Nations, to find out that
10 Armenians are included in this list. This number seems very small (compared to, say 6000 of Poland),
however if one takes into account that Armenia was never occupied by the Nazis, and the fact that
Armenia's wartime population was only 2mln, you realize that this number is, actually, very large.

aregjan @ 2008-05-05T23:27:00

2008-05-06T05:29:50Z

The dinosaurs are the vogue among the growing generation. I have already been told a number
of insightful reinterpretations of the classics, such as "The Cinderella and the T-Rex",
"The Beauty, the beast and the brontosaur."

aregjan @ 2008-05-05T21:27:00

2008-05-06T03:29:44Z

I don't know if this is an example of nascent humor or a honest mistake,
however Alessia calls the character of the famous cartoon as
"Stoopy-doo."

aregjan @ 2008-05-04T00:00:00

2008-05-04T06:01:18Z

aregjan @ 2008-05-03T23:52:00

2008-05-04T05:58:12Z

Установил на машине Леопард (Мак ОС 10.5). Все здорово, и что круто –– наконец
сделали этот Multiple Desktop фича (что в линуксе этак 10 лет как стандартом
является –– ладно, лучше поздно чем никогда, вон Микрософт до сих пор тормозит).
Надо купить внешний винчестер и попробовать эту Машину Времени. Пару прикольных
финтифлюшек (типа, "трехмерный" превю директорий). И еще прочитал о неком
суперкрутом профайлоре под названием Шарк, надо попробовать, вроде очень
интуитивно и умно.

Пару проблем...раньше маунт нфс делался через нетинфо, а что теперь?
нфс работает, вроде, а как это программировать? Можно конечно через
отомаунт, но матчасть лень читать. И вот еще одна херня...после переустановки
оперативки, в фаерфоксе все окошки ввода (search, url) делают ???? при вводе
кириллицы (с армянским нормально), и та же самая херня со всеми кнопками там...
Это у меня и раньше было несколько раз, лечилось следующей версией фаерфокса...
но можт это никак не файрфокс?

"Go West..."

2008-04-29T23:58:02Z

leenercat posted and interesting description of
her first impressions of the West. Many of these remind me of my own...

My first exposure to the West happened when I lived in France, for a period of 1.5 years, between 1991-92. I later
made the big mistake of extrapolating about USA based on what I saw and experienced in France. One of the first
things that hit me at the Charles de Gaule airport was not the abundance of consumer products (we watched TV
and knew what to expect), but the amazing cleanness and almost religious shine of everything around us. People
who smiled to you for no reason, and excused themselves over every triviality. Everything clean and polite, everything
beautiful, everything tasteful. Then came our shock of gastronomic standards. In France, everything tastes good.
Including McDonalds food. Even junk food. You buy a bottle of wine for the equivalent of $2, and while it's not
the finest, it's pretty good. At some point my father decided to "break us" into real French food, and
made us try raw oysters. The first try was absolutely disgusting -- the "treat" looked like mucus from one's nose.
The second try actually tasted not bad. And by the third one we were consuming oysters with the
mania of true quiche eating surrender monkeys! It took us somewhat longer to get used to the fart-smelling cheeses...

Once our taste buds well entertained and our stomachs full, we started looking around us. All kinds of polite people,
however by now we started noticing all kinds of things that were inconceivable for us: homeless people, punks,
girls whose buttocks vibrated visibly from under <20cm long skirts, young couples making out passionately at every corner,
central Africans with their exotic dresses and terrifying-looking piercings and ear-holes, people of every color and
style...and of course the French bourgeois, who inhabited our well kept and artistically decorated apartment building.
It really felt like we landed on the Moon. In the good sense...however some things did either bother us (punks, homeless,
smoking 14 year old girls) or tremendously confuse/amuse us (gratuicious expression of public sexuality, vibrating buttocks, 60 year old women dressed like sex bombs, people of color and culture that was very different from ours, Centre George Pompidou, Tour Eiffel). Not that I had never seen people of other races before arriving
to Paris, however it was so rare, that seeing an African or an Asian for me was as sensational as seeing an
extraterrestrial: I just had this terrible urge to stare at them, observe their amazingly non-white color, the shape
of their lips, noses, eyes, hair (!!). Just as you would observe an extraterrestrial.

As far as architecture and city planning was concerned, we couldn't get enough of that cleanness, of that taste in every
brick of every house. The apartment where we lived was a very comfortable 2bedroom, with many what we at the time considered
exotic appliances, and a view onto a beautiful 19th century chateau set in a beautiful forest. Paris was simply not
understandable to us: crazy structures and buildings on the background of 19th century architecture. Oh yes, my father,
a big aficionado of fine arts, made a habit of dragging us to Louvre and Musee d'Orsay
and other museums and galleries every weekend, thoroughly boring the hell out of me and my 13 year old sister..

Finally we started looking at ourselves. Our clothes were chosen not based on the criteria of taste, but on the criteria of
bare availability. Grey, black, brown. We felt like some mamoth-fur-covered Neanderthals in this crowd of cheerfully colored folks. So we organized a trip to one of the central stores of C&A, where
we completely changed our appearance within an hour or so. We breathed in relief, and went on to live for another 1.5 years
in one of the most beautiful cities of the world, making friends among French, Arabs, Indonesians, Portuguese, Africans and yes,
even Armenians.

aregjan @ 2008-04-25T10:45:00

2008-04-25T21:01:37Z

For very long time I used to think that horror stories about CPA (Child Protection Agencies) abuse of power
are, if not exaggerated, then at least statistically insignificant -- more of an exception rather than the rule.
However, a recent discussion on a friend journal inclined me to think that this is not really the case.
Not because I consider a single person's opinion to be any more statistically significant, but that
I know the author personally as a rational, educated and otherwise a reasonable individual. Because if
she thinks like this, then a questions arises: how about the rest who work at CPA, that are NOT reasonable,
educated and rational like her. These are people who make the decisions on breaking families apart, and
their opinions sometimes are treated like the holly gospel in court. People, who dismiss the trauma and the horror of a
mistaken child-parent separation as some trifle, an example of selfish bourgeois sentimentality.

The irony is that the post was written to debunk myths about CPA being some sort of a Stalinist organization which
controls people's lives and wrenches their children from them. However, its
callous attitude towards the possibility of one of us having our children being taken away from us,
and statements along the lines of "all is done with your good in mind" and "only ~~people's enemies~~
child abusers should be worried by CPA" created the impression of a precisely Stalinist
system. Put in the fact that a CPA representative's opinion in court can easily outweigh
even scientific evidence (see reports below), and the fact that the parents are almost by default guilty
until proven innocent -- and the analogy with a Stalinist judicial system is complete. All that's
missing is a judge-jury-CPA in one person.

One thing should be clear. Aliska's opinions is strongly shaped by her interaction with abused kids. In a way it's more than understandable. There are two things that shock me, however. The fact that she interprets
our fears of an abusive CPA action against our families as a selfishnes and dismisses it as some sort of a triviality, to quote:
"it's going to happen within the framework [...] that really doesn't care about you or your privileged spawn shivering with terror of being separated". To me such an callous attitude is revolting. However what I find outright
terrifying, is that opinions of people with such a biased perception(due to interaction with abused children) of things are allowed to play a role in judicial decision making. I mean, it's like imposing a sentence on a rapist not based
on the opinion of an impartial and objective jury, but on the opinion of the rape victim and his/her relatives (torture,
dismemberment, and public hanging, right?). This is what I personally find crazy.

To extend this, I also find very strange the judicial procedures in cases of child abuse and subsequent
child adoptions. To illustrate, imagine that someone is accused of having raped and killed his/her neighbor.
The prosecution carries all the burden of the proof: as long as it has not proven beyond reasonable doubt
the guilt of the person, the defendant is assumed to be innocent. However, if that same person is accused of
having abused (and this may mean anything, from screaming to spanking) his/her child, then it's enough for
CPA's semi-educated psychologist to have a "gut feeling" that the defendant is guilty for him/her to be treated as
such. At that point it's up to the defendant to prove that he/she is innocent. And even if he/she does that (through
DNA testing, as in the example below), CPA in many cases reserves itself the right to dismiss it with some demagogic arguments.
Furthermore, my impression of reading such cases is that the defendant's attorney doesn't even get the chance
to cross-examine the CPA's representative. This to me is a clear contradiction with the concept of competitive
due process, where both sides argue their points and an impartial entity takes a decision.
Furthermore, this contradicts the age-old notion that it's always better to let a criminal walk free
rather than to lock up an innocent.

Here I want to stop and warn people against throwing straw man arguments at me, like "are you saying
that CPA should be disbanded?? They ARE, after all, helping some abused kids!" It's a bit like saying that our opposition
to police brutality means that we want police to be disbanded. An organization like CPA is needed, however
the one that we currently have has a too high of a rate of false positives and false negatives (a report below quotes
2/3 as the number of unsubstantiated accusations).

I am also going to bring a few headlines-making stories on the subject...

A child is taken away from a father because a CPA therapist is convinced that he raped her.
Evidence to the contrary: the child gives a detailed description of the offender, which doesn't match the
father; subsequent DNA tests indicate that the rapist was not a biological father, and was sterile.
CPA's responce -- so what, the kid is covering for the father, and there is no proof that the father is
biological...plus he may have reversed a vasectomy. (point: it's up to the father to prove that CPA's
ludicrous accusations are not true, not the other way around. Meanwhile, CPA is always right). It took
4 years and LOTS of public pressure before the child was finally returned with the parents.

This story, unfortunately, was never reported in American press. It has been limited to British
news media (The Guardian, and BBC). This is a BBC story of NY's social work authorities using
AIDS infected children in their custody for testing of highly toxic AIDS drugs, with some terrible
results.

A 17 year old autistic Nate is taken away from his parents because the authorities disagree with
the way he is treated. Not because he was abused, mind you, but because they thought that
their pump-them-up-with-chemicals approach was better than the one chosen by the parents.
While in state custody, Nate health worsened tremendously. His parents were not allowed any
say in his medical treatment.

Photo of the day

2008-04-17T21:00:50Z

Charles Aznavour singing for some Armenian priests (probably) at Echmiatsin. :)

aregjan @ 2008-04-14T21:54:00

2008-04-15T04:19:19Z

Недавно, в связи с моим увлечением историей танковых битв и технологий, посмотрел
фильм "На войне как на войне." Фильм довольно хороший. Что удивительно для такого
фильма так это отсутствие пропаганды...два исключение это замполит который цитирует Аристотеля
(ага, right), и второе это что мол десятка Т–34 и пару самоходок могли выбить из деревни
танковый батальон (этак 45 танков) Тигров, тогда как kill ratio Тигров к Т–34 был типа
1:5.

In Ciciolina's footsteps

2008-04-13T16:49:25Z

Milly D'Abbraccio is a socialist candidate to Italian Parliaments, in one of Rome's districts.
She is a former hard-core porn star. Her campaign poster portrays her bare bum, with the following
slogan -- "Basta Con Queste Facce da Culo" (literally, "Enough of these ass faces", meaning
enough of these shameless politicians).

The article in Corriere Della Sera: http://www.corriere.it/cronache/08_aprile_08/dabbraccio_manifesti_39911840-0594-11dd-8738-00144f486ba6.shtml

Italian politics at its best...

разное

2008-04-09T22:09:01Z

А у нас сегодня снег пошел, гыгыгы.

Лыжный сезон кстати, удался на ура. Длился с Рождества по 7ое Апреля.
За этот сезон вырос с зеленных по черные.

А еще, я просто обожаю GEANT 4. Прямо как конструктор
для физиков! Сюда поставил детектор, туда поставил пучек с мишенью. Включил
нужные процессы, отключил ненужные, все входит и выходит...
При том не какая нибудь черная коробка типа Матлабы, а что ни есть
hard core программирование в с++ –– все прозрачно, все делаешь сам,
все open source...

Это детектор abBA, который должен измерить несколько кинематических корреляций
при бета распаде нейтрона. Цель эксперимента –– проверить точность Стандартной Модели.

А это предлагаемый монитор для детектирования радиоактивных веществ(таких как плутоний и уран) в пограничных КПП и
в аэропортах.

aregjan @ 2008-04-08T14:10:00

2008-04-08T20:13:38Z

After reading that many delegates' decision to vote for Obama was due to their children's lobbying,
I came up with the following idea for a bumper sticker:

           GOOD KIDS DON'T LET THEIR PARENTS
                          ~~DRINK AND DRIVE~~
                         VOTE REPUBLICAN

Bon appétit, mes chers.

2008-04-05T15:04:08Z

through norayr

2008-03-31T23:19:10Z

ռա-ռա-ռա-ռա ռայկոմի քարտուղարի, պյիճուր տղեն,
սև իկրեն վիդրոներով կիրած պիրում ա տուն,
ընկերն էլ ռումինական կաստյումչիկ ա պիրել,
որ հավերս ծախեմ կարալ չէմ առնեմ:

Էս որ առաջին անգամ տեսա ծիծաղից վատացել էի:

aregjan @ 2008-03-24T17:01:00

2008-03-24T23:07:55Z

Իսկ ինձ այ թե ինչ բան ա հետաքրքրում...իրար "Քրիստոսն հարյավ ի մեռելոց" ասողներից քանի՞սն են իսկապես
հավատացյալ (այսինքն, հավատում և հետևում են ավետարանի խորհուրդներին ու խրատներին): Ու քանի՞սն են
դա ասում մոդայի համար:

How the Markets work.

2008-03-20T21:04:44Z

Просто отличная вещь... :))

What really happens on the market.

2008-03-19T17:00:07Z

This is why I sometimes like milonga more than club or saloon style

2008-03-19T15:56:46Z

Азнавур поет Высоцкого

2008-03-19T15:44:57Z

Сегодня наткнулся на вот это. Слова правда сильно отличаются от песни которую пел
Высоцкий.

salon style

2008-03-18T23:39:42Z

лыжи, опять

2008-03-17T18:00:08Z

Уже довольно безбольно (хоть и с очень ограниченным наслаждением) делаем
могулы. Все стало значительно проще когда наконец начал следить за тем чтоб торс всегда
смотрел вниз по склону, и чтоб центр тяжести был всегда впереди.
А еще очень помогает музыка Бреговича, особенно из фильма "Черная кошка белый кот." :)

"ответы" Сержа Саргсяна

2008-03-17T04:38:22Z

Disclaimer: these are NOT the actual answers of the President elect of Republic of Armenia.

"ответы" Сержа Саркисяна

2008-03-13T21:13:41Z

вышеприведенный ответ все еще на месте: http://serzhsargsyan.livejournal.com/1016.html?thread=162296#t162296

Disclaimer: this is a prank, these are not the real answers of the President of RA.