Buy a microscope, first harvest and I saw Joey

There you have it. The ECB lowered once again the interest rate so you can bet that banks will follow suit. So throw away that magnifying glass you used to look for your interest payments on your savings account and go find yourself a microscope. Before the crisis the public had no clue what "percentagepoint" meant. Now we are all too familiar. If the ECB and banks continue like this we will soon hear a new financial term "per mille". The overnight interest rate even goes into negative teritory for the first time in history. This means that when banks park cash with the ECB overnight, they have to PAY for it. If you have a savings account, do not expect any return soon (soon = years).

My former colleagues gave me a book voucher (much appreciated), and this is the first harvest.
I started off with "The theory that would not die". This book should be compulsory reading for anyone who wants to study mathematics and for anyone who hates mathematics. It reads like a "whodonnit" and shows with fascinating stories how Bayes rule helped in the cracking of the enigma code in Bletchley Park, how it helped in searches for U-boats during WWII and how it was used to locate the wreckage of AF447. Those who don't know Bayes rule here's a simple quote from the book "it's a logic for reasoning about the broad spectrum of life that lies in they grey areas between absolute truth and total uncertainty". The book also discusses who could claim the discovery of the mathemathical practice. Frankly I don't care but I did like how they described Laplace's important role in it. Wonderful reading, just wonderful.

And I saw Joey! In my blog of January 10 of this year, I mentioned the that Aurigny Air Services (the carrier operating from the Channel Islands) is considering the Dornier 228 as a replacement for their Britten Norman Trislander. As I was holidaying in Guernsey I wanted to at least get a glimpse of the Trislander (affectionately referred to as Joey by the islanders). And here you have it in final to EGJB (Guernsey airport).