An amusing nod to Aleski Vayner's philosophy on life

I like how the whites guys and Maoris are on the All Blacks team. In my limited travel to New Zealand, it appeared to me that there was a real bond between the two peoples. It was very refreshing on one particular day to see a mixed group of students performing the haka together for a public display.

If only Australia had managed the same with its local people.

Heya Theo,

I found this working link for your 'Aleksey Vayner Resume' post. Obviously a slippery one to keep a hold of, hopefully this'll stay up a while.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2PWO2Ed5_dk

In his 11-page resumé Vayner claims that he runs a charitable organization, is the CEO of an investment firm and has written a book on the Holocaust, among other things. Research by bloggers has shown many of these claims to be false:

* His investment firm's website lists a non-existent address, and the charitable organization is using an unauthorized Charity Navigator logo. The president of Charity Navigator publicly announced that he believed Vayner should be expelled from Yale for this.

* Excerpts of Vayner's self-published book, Women's Silent Tears, a "unique gender-focused perspective on the Holocaust in Eastern Europe" made available for free at Lulu.com show that at least some of its content had been plagiarized from an online Holocaust encyclopedia.

Before Vayner had even begun his freshman year his tendency to exaggerate was first discussed in an article in Rumpus, a Yale humor magazine. He apparently had visited as a high school senior, and told unbelievable stories about himself. Among his claims to people on campus, or to the public, since starting at Yale:

* He claimed that he "is one of four people in the state of Connecticut qualified to handle nuclear waste".
* He was employed by both the Mafia and the CIA during his childhood.
* He gave tennis lessons to Harrison Ford and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

In addition, Vayner apparently arranged for a film he had made about Zen Buddhism to be displayed in a Yale class on eastern philosophies. The film included a "b-roll of Vayner performing various physical feats of questionable veracity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksey_Vayner