Thursday, March 26, 2009

Xavier Sala-i-Martin's Home Page




























It's opposite day here on TOTI, and so instead of best thing on the interwebs today, the TOTI winner is the worst.

Xavier Sala-i-Martin's Home Page wins.  It starts with an incoherent warning:

"Over the years, I have observed an annoying tendency for people to bother the flies in my website. In order to prevent this from happening, I decided to keep an eye (actually, two eyes!) on your mouse. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I had no alternative." Right.
First of all, there's a gloat splash page from circa 2006.  If you click through, you step into vintage web from the 1990s.  Is this the personal web-page of your fourteen-old-cousin? No.  A zebra-hide wearing pimp? No, but closer. It belongs to Xavier Sala-i-Martin, professor of economics at Columbia University.  

According to wikipedia, Xavier  "was recognized with a 'Distinguished Teacher in Graduate Economics' award 3 times, both at Columbia and at Yale, with the King Juan Carlos I prize 2004 (a biannual prize given to the best economist in Spain and Latin America), and the Lenfest Prize 2006 awarded to the best teacher at Columbia University." According to his site, he was also president of FĂștbol Club Barcelona. 

 He is likely under consideration for a Nobel prize in economics, and also, for worst sustained use of gifs and layout on a professional web page.  Congrats.  Please hire someone to fix this, Xavier.

(From T.J. and Archana. Blame them.)

3 comments:

Jen K said...

Worst??? This is defiantly the best thing on the internet today.

I'm blaming the lack of organization and craziness of the website on him being Catalan. :P
m'agrada molt!

He must be a great professor.

Libby said...

Yep, it "DEFIANTLY" is the best (chuckle chuckle). Alas, the link no longer works. Maybe ol' Xavier took the hint?

W. E. B. Du Blag said...

Oof I definitely defiantly messed up the link. It's now fixed!

Be sure to click through the splash picture!