Ivan Cherevko

There are quite a few books I would love to read. Out of them, there is this chunk that I would love to, but I can’t, for they have never been written.

You see, most authors don’t like to observe their art, and my humble self also abhors going into contact with anything I’ve created — I just never like it enough. Yet, sometimes on my computer I find pieces of writing by my own pen I genuinely enjoy — but I never went beyond few pages.

4 A4 pages, more or less a limit of what I can write in one sitting, is the most common size of my started “novels” and “novellas” — exposition, and then just puff. Why? Laziness? Lack of talent? Lack of time? Oh my dears, this would easily produce a dozen unfinished, or more appropriately to say, unstarted  products — I’m pretty sure I have close to a hundred.

It takes an art to fail at delivering an actual product to do this. An art of never finishing.

Am I proud of it? Should I be? I don’t know. What I know, though, is that you shouldn’t respect people who laugh at product and honor an idea. Ideas are worthless. I have a hundred, you have a hundred. Making a product is great. Making a product out of a shitty idea is greater still. How often do you catch yourself appraising a success of some company or individual, thinking, “damn, I could have that idea as well!” or even “damn, I had this idea!”? I do this all the time.

How often do you do “damn, I could have run Apple [Google, Microsoft, Exxon, Goldman Sachs] so much better!”? I almost never do.

The art of never finishing is important if you’re a professional do-nothing scumbag. For the rest of us, it’s a burden we work to weed out.

I got my Bachelor’s and Specialist’s (a Soviet-style degree; one-year degree above the bachelor, usually in engineering and related fields) in Environmental Science. Contrary to what many think, it wasn’t a random or spurious choice — while that’s not apparent or not know to most people who know me, I’ve been doing those or that researches in envsci (mostly, municipal solid waste handling research) for the last eleven years.

Comrades who know that I do environmental science work, unerringly think that I should be some kind of a valiant green knight, tree-hugger extraordinaire, an eco-activist with a flawlessly green past record.

Well, I’m sorry, I apologize. I am an environmental scientist, not an environmentalist!

A mixture of the ideology and the science, a witch potion of ecoactivism, a movement first of all lifestyle and political, and environmental science, a holistic earth science akin to meteorology or oceanology, is a vile poison to my cognitively-sensitive mind.

Having an “approved” agenda is a norm in many social sciences (liberal capitalism in economics; Western-styled democracy-based approach in history; etc.) — yet in no other field a deviation from the norm is so unusual. It seems that people only become env scientists to feed their ecoactivist spirit, which is odd — after all, you don’t see vegetarians studying nutrition science just because it’s an “obvious” choice for a vegetarian.

I don’t drive a hybrid car, and I don’t particularly watch my electricity consumption. I don’t think my (or society’s) conscious actions are going to change anything, in my research I focus on ways to subvert primary human emotions (greed, laziness, etc.) for more efficient municipal solid waste handling, not preaching an agenda.

It’s just funny just how fringe this worldview is in environmental science.

Do you have a little kid or a couple? That’s great, because you have a scientist living in your house.

Do you know a scientist? Like a real one, a pro, probably working at some university doing serious, mind-boggling research? That’s great, because you know one more (or couple) more kids than you thought you have.

It’s logical if you think of it — because tasting different kinds of crayons to see whether they taste different is doing actual, practical science. Being curious about why people’s hair turns grey is scientific interest; wondering why some men go gray and why some go bald is even a higher level of scientific curiosity.

Up until certain age, all kids possess this intricate ability to work real science most grown-ups have lost (I can assert than even most real scientists lost this ability; and had to regain it back, painfully, when older). Girls tend to lose this gist faster, due to societal pressures of over-the-top consumerism and Western values of “girl things” and “boy things” to do. Disassembling gadgets, trinketing with bugs or examining weird twigs are invariably boy things to do.

Infinite curiosity, the feeling of obligation to understand how things work, almost infinite capacity to absorb new, desire to have a hands-on experience with important things and issues — this is pretty much every, every three-year old. It’s hard to kill the talent of an adult scientist; we all know stories how they keep up with their research despite all odds. Yet, very little is needed to kill your kid researcher — do you remember being harsh to your kid for asking a question you couldn’t quite manage to answer? Scolded your kid for mingling with something on the ground because it’s dirty, and, ergo, dangerous? Denied a toy your kid actually wants in exchange for nothing (not the worst case) or some shiny gizmo that’s utterly pointless yet you will think will keep them occupied (worst case)? No?

Well, I do. I watch you on the streets, in the commute, in toy shops and kid stores, and I see you, mothers and fathers, doing these things every day, all the time. Screw you.

I beg all parents that read me or can potentially read me — whatever you do, don’t let this spark fade, don’t let it with all your might. If you kid is average, this spark is the most important gift she has; if your kid is special, though, this is the most important gift he might have.

Your child is a scientist — and you are supposed to treat scientists with respect.

My first recollection of Wikipedia dates back to April 2004, when it was hardly a mainstream phenomenon; our local university forum had a message posted celebrating Ukrainian Wikipedia‘s 1000th article. I’m pretty sure that was the first time I’ve ever heard of it, yet, I distinctly remember having quite a clear idea of what it was back then.

Whether it was true or not, by the end of 2004 I started contributing heavily to Wikipedia, first Ukrainian for a few articles, then English. I didn’t care to maintain any kind of personal “brand” or whatnot; I was creating accounts in bulk, for every field I was contributing to, every whim and novelty I had.

The thrill wasn’t in contributing to what soon would be the world’s largest source of knowledge; the thrill wasn’t in being appreciated by “peers” or whoever; it wasn’t in making a difference.

The thrills was in the unique among online societies (I haven’t found any others like this to this day) level of rigor and bureaucracy. The articles and actual content are only a tip of the iceberg — the rest in the layers and layers of rules, organizations, committees, votes, councils, laws and policies that make Wikipedia run. I swam like a shark in it. My grip in Wikipedia law was stronger than most real-world lawyers’ in the real-world law.

In late 2005, nearing Ukrainian parliamentary elections, I used that grip for the monetary gain — I approached most of the smaller-scale parties offering them the services of Wikipedia reputation management; surprisingly, a few agreed, kickstarting what later turned out to be my semi-career in Internet marketing.

I was cleaning up articles, using sockpuppets, outwitting and outbureaucrating my opponents; in the end, I was so disgusted with all that I stopped contributing to Wikipedia at all.

Obviously, I use it daily as a reference source; from time to time, I do a stray edit here and there to prove a point or on a whim; yet, after that, I never got back to living and breathing Wikipedia.

Well, well, well, it was a long one. I haven’t been running a full-fledged personal site since 2006… and a lot of things have changed since then. No empty promises, we’re together on this bumpy ride — I don’t plan to blog rigorously, but I wish to fill this site with all the projects, interesting tidbits, and curious things I have to share.

I guess not everyone seeing this actually knows who I am — and well, this is not a question I could answer. I find it deliciously hard to label my activities in any kind of singular way; in this blog, I’ll be using categorization based on the set of categories easiest for my use — Open Directory Project‘s wonderfully taxonomied set of categories.

Thus, by this approach, my interests and activities lie as follows:

• Arts — I started writing early (please refer to •2. The Story of My Writing for details), and unfortunately, that’s my only instance of real art auteurship. I shoot some photos (though, I wouldn’t call this art), and I’m an avid connoisseur for music and movies (footer contains links to my Last.fm and Criticker profiles which cover data for my musical and cinematographical taste quite thoroughly).
• Business — I am employed as a Internet marketing director for a major e-commerce operation, and thus consider myself to be qualified to share from time to time my opinions on achieving a financially successful Internet enterprise.
• Computers — I have done a fair share of (web) development in 2006-2009 (mostly Ruby, mostly Ruby on Rails), still available for consulting. I also do web usability, conversion rate optimisation, blah blah. Also, noncommercially, I’m fairly interested in functional programming and curious computing equipment applications.
• Games — I do not play much (when I do, it’s mostly Flash casuals on the computer); yet, I’ve been quite entrenched in the Debating community while in school, tabletop RPG community while in university and have a certain knack for fantasy worlds.
• Health — I wouldn’t call myself healthy, in fact, I’m somewhat overweight (though, working on it) — yet, I have quite an interest in healthy nutrition, mostly as a specific case of the knapsack problem in meal and diet planning. I support Atkins diet as the best way to lose weight, and United States Department of Agriculture’s food pyramid as the best approach to healthy eating.
• Home — What is this, I don’t even… in all seriousness, I’m not handy at home, I have no DIY spirit, and frankly I doubt very much this category will ever be used.
• Kids — From late 2005 till 2009 I worked on the premises of Ukrainian Ombudsman as the children’s rights representative. It was a wonderful experience, I have many stories to tell, and I have my own vision of children problems for society to solve.
• News — I don’t watch or read any.
• Recreation — I have developed quite a taste for some of the weirder humor you may find around.
• Reference — Reference tools such as Wikipedia, which I contributed to anonymously and semi-anonymously since 2005 (see •3. Wikipedia and Me) or Wolfram|Alpha shape the way I work or learn; they are a subject of my great fascination and a great share of my spare-time research projects.
• Regional — I am deeply into comparative economic geography / geographic economics, and have quite a deal of research outtakes in this. I hope I’ll get sooner than later to digitizing them and putting them here.
• Science — This is a tough one. Out of the lot of sciences I’ve been more or less into in my child years (see •4. Your Child, a Scientist), I’m still carrying some level of interest into all of them, yet only environmental science (see •5. I am an Environmental Scientist, not a Environmentalist!), which I major in, and economics, which I study in my free time as a social Science-To-Rule-Them-All, produce actual research results. I promise, I promise (*puppy eyes*) I’m going to share them here.
• Shopping — Maybe, just maybe, a gadget or a fashion item review will creep in from time to time here.
• Society — I hold fascinations, to a different degrees, in economics (surprise surprise!), statistical genealogy, ethnic studies, geohistory, linguistics and politics. I guess it will be a busy topic here at this site.
• Sports — I’m barely a sporty kind of person, yet some of my wild ideas have something to do with sportsmanship-like activities. You have no clue? Well, I guess before I post something about that (that is, if I do) you better not.
• World — I am the world. You are the world. We are the world.

Stay tuned.