Homo sapiens are a strange lot, move a rat's tail and Venus blocks the Sun

We homo sapiens are a strange lot aren't we. No one blinks when ten thousands of civilians are slaughtered with guns, bombs and mortar attacks. A couple of hundred die in a gas attack and the world calls it monstrous and suddenly some countries happily switch to the punishing mode under the motto: 'let us stop the killing with gas by bombing them'. Did anyone, anyone, actually come up with a plan to stop the bloodshed? Or am I too naive and is that not the intent. And whatever happened to learning from history or from past mistakes? Those with their fingers at the button should realise by now that you can't bomb a country into democracy. At least the UK Parliament put a stop to it for now.
With many great thinkers and philosophers contemplating if the democratic system has passed its expiry date, let me remind you all that the UK's vote is the second time in a year that a national Parliament has stopped (at least for some time), what seemed to be an multi-national given. The first time was when the Cyprus parliament voted down the first full bail-in proposal that all Cypriots should pass on part of their savings to save the banks and the country. My respect to those Parliaments who vote using their common sense and not their political agendas.

Those who want to understand the Middle East, see attached summary by KN Al-Sabah published this week in the FT:

Now over to something completely different. This is a headline from Wednesday in the New York Times:
"Researcher Controls Another Person’s Brain Over the Internet".

Que????
Yes indeed. Researchers at the University of Washington have successfully connected two human brains over the internet. One researcher moved the hand of the other researcher by just thinking about it whilst their brains were, via EEG's, connected to each other through the internet. It's the first time they experimented from human to human, but it worked before between rats and it worked from a human to a rat (a human moved the rat's tail just by thinking about it, the article doesn't say what the rat's retaliation was...). Read the full article here: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/researcher-controls-another-persons-brain-over-the-internet/?smid=tw-share&_r=0
I'm sure this can lead to wonderful applications that can dramatically improve the life of paralysed patients but would I want my brain to be connected, let alone controlled, by someone else's brain? No thank you. My thoughts are purely my own. This world is getting crazy.

Whilst listening to the news this week I couldn't help thinking about a song from The Machines back in the eighties. The Machines were a Belgian band (don't worry they sing in English). The song that I've been humming all week is: 'I See the Lies in Your Eyes' (only the title is relevant as it is actually a love song).

And now we need something beautiful to offset these dark thoughts. How about a picture of a Venus eclipse of the Sun? Courtesy of NASA we have this amazing photo with the Sun imaged in three colours of ultraviolet light by the Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, with the black circle being Venus. Enjoy it as the next Venusian solar eclipse will occur in 2117.

Failing nations, they spotted me and a dramatic low pass

I just finished reading 'Why nations fail'. A bit of a struggle I must admit.
If you are into history: read it. Bear in mind however that history is being told from a very Anglo-Saxon world-view. If that bothers you (like it did with me), still read it but try not to be too irritated by it. There is some good food for thought in the thesis they propose as to why nations fail. Summarised in one sentence it would be something line: extractive economic institutions that are structured to extract resources from the many by the few and are synergistically linked to extractive political institutions which concentrate power in the hands of few.
A bit of a mouthful isn't it (now you know why the read was such a struggle). But it does make some sense. Even though the authors say several times that prosperity is not eternal in a given nation, they do give the impression that in our western world we will prosper on for the next century. And that's what worries me. The authors seem not to have grasped the idea that established democracies with inclusive political and economic institutions can fail too (when they become too top-down heavy). If you want to understand really why nations fail and ignore the sort of colonial Anglo-Saxon speak of this book, I can recommend the very intelligent book 'The collapse of complex societies' by Tainter. I'm not going to spoil it for you by explaining here what it says, but if, no when!, you read it, you will better understand what is happening in our world today.










Since this Summer, the Belgian Airforce seems to have put a low level flying route above my village. It coincides with me starting this blog. Is the Belgian military keeping, NSA-wise, an eye on me ;-)? It is fun though, I used to watch Starfighters, Mirage V's and F-16's on low level flying above my parents place when I was a kid, and now they seem to have found me again! Well the F-16's at least... Just for fun a picture of an F-16 at the 20102 airshow in Beauvechain. Whenever I catch one above my house I'll post it as well.

Talking about low level flying... I came across some fascinating video's of low passes. I know what you are thinking: we've all seen it, all of us who fly have done it (admit it, it is fun). But these are just mind boggling. You remember that TAP A300 routine from a couple of years ago (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26H-WzIe858)? That was impressive. Here is another one unknown to me before. This time a 747-300 from Aerosur, and honestly, when it banks away, it would have scared the living daylights out of me : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6s0pBqIriw

Caveat creditor and a human rocket

In my blog of July 3 (The news you may have missed, debt and a walk on Mars) I spoke to you about the BIS (Bank of International Settlements which is like the central bank of central banks). In their annual report they said that all the extra money created through quantitative easing (by the US, UK and Japan), and the long term refinancing operations (by the ECB) has not solved anything, but just kicked the can further down the road. And that the can got a whole lot bigger (global debt has risen with 23000 billion euro).

They have just released another report titled 'Caveat Creditor'. Says it all really. Their claim this time is simple: if someone is overlending that is not only his mistake but also the responsibility of his creditor who granted all those loans. In this particular case: European banks gave too many loans to Southern states in "expectations of a bail-out". Well they weren't wrong on their expectations weren't they... It was not the first time banks fell into that trap either: "This failure of lenders is not a new phenomenon. A key lesson from a succession of emerging market crises in the 1980s and 1990s was that lenders –
particularly banks in the advanced economies – had been reckless." That's pretty straightforward language! The BIS concludes that "symmetry in adjustment between creditors and debtors" is necessary to get us out of the crisis. In common speak: be less gready - everyone. That is not what is happening today however with surplus states continuing giving loans to overdebted countries. The BIS finds this a "dangerous" structure and with capital flow reversals that can occur at any time it could have "devastating consequences". Uh-oh...
You can read the full report here: http://www.bis.org/publ/work419.pdf

I give in, I can't resist the pictures and feedback from Oshkosh any longer, it is too tempting.
I was right last week, they didn't have an Avro Shackleton, what they did have was a B17 formation flying with the Jetman. Yep indeed. Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUUYuvheS3M. Now that's what I call flying, if anyone has a spare set of wings and jet engines in his shed, let me know. The pictures are from the Breitling website and the B-17 Champaign Lady facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/B-17-Champaign-Lady/247176712036792).

And for those of you for whom it is not enough rocket-like, have a look at this video: a thundering video shot from the Space Shuttle boosters during launch. Watch it until the end and put your speakers on! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aCOyOvOw5c#at=490

A barometer takes the temperature (?), and distant memories to chilean halcones

I stumbled over a small article on Reuters that wasn't picked up in mainstream media. It's important nevertheless: the Cypriot bail-in has apparently been raised to 47,5% (up from 37,3% - see http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/07/28/uk-cyprus-bank-idUKBRE96R03Y20130728). Let me translate that for you: everyone in Cyprus who had > € 100000,- on an account, will be robbed of 47,5% of everything above that € 100000,- mark. Yes 'robbed'. How else do you call it when politicians and European institutions decide that you loose a big part of your money. And don't give me anything of that: "the rich can afford it" nonsense. This is not about the rich. It is confiscation of savings, something people have worked for all their lives. Just imagine you just sold your house to go and live in a retirement home! Or you were saving to guy a house! Thank you very much says the bank and the government. And Cypriots should still count their blessings because if it hadn't been for some brave parliamentarians who blocked the first proposal of going through, the confiscation would have applied to all deposit holders, without a minimum.
In the mean time in Greece the situation is so bad it is heart braking. Our national radio 1 sent a reporter to Greece and he gave a description from the war zone: people have no money for medication, those who are diagnosed with cancer actually get a dead sentence as they don't have the money for the therapy, infants are brought in underfed, a three month baby had not gained any weight since his birth,  people who still have some money for food and medicine try to share as much as they can with others who don't, voluntary organisations are set up  for the distribution of food and medicine. Does this read like a refugee camp on the border between Syria and Turkey? Well this is what is happening in Greece right now. To add insult to injury, the Troika published this week its third review on Greece's second economic adjustment program saying "Greece continues to make overall, albeit often slow, progress under the Second Economic Adjustment Programme..." (http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/occasional_paper/2013/pdf/ocp159_summary_en.pdf)
But Europe is fine,all is well, the politicians are enjoying their holidays taking a break from the eurocrisis that seems only like a bad nightmare to them. And then surprise on their (the politicians) faces when they see the results of the latest eurobarometer. You can read the full Eurobarometer report here: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb79/eb79_first_en.pdf
Dear Mr Van Rompuy and Mr Barroso, your little project doesn't look well:

As I write this, aviation's walhalla is located at N43°59.06’ W88°33.42’. Google it and you will see a map of Wittman Regional Airport the home of the EAA Airventure in Oshkosh. Nope, I am not going to put up some pictures of this year's event. It's too painful to look at these whilst being stuck in an office in Brussels. But by all means have a look on their website: http://www.airventure.org/

It did make me think about those very first airshows I went to. Of course nothing comparable to Oshkosh but still. One vivid memory is of the Leopoldsburg Sanicole airshow. These were the days when public was still allowed close up to the action (I'm showing my age here...). In fact in this case, the barriers were right on the edge of the grass strip. Which resulted in these pictures. You have to excuse me for the poor quality, in those days I had a cheap camera with no zoom and no possibility to tweak the exposure or shutter speed. A basic push-the-button-swing-the-handle-5-times-to-get-to-the-next-frame camera. Yes I know I am that old already. In case you are wondering what the blurs are on the pictures: a Pitss Special S-2A of the Chilean Halcones (isn't that exotic to see in Belgium!), a Let L-410 (just after rotation) and the venerable Avro Shackleton (do you remember that airplane!? - bet they don't have one of these in Oshkosh :-) ). Those were the days!