Market data

Here are names of the major index of market places that should be known. Current values can be retrieved from e.g. here.

• the CAC40 now at 3600 (used to be above 4000). It includes the 40 best valued companies with headquarters in France. Peugeot recently lost its place from the top 40 places
• the FTSE100 (or Footsie one hundred) lists the top 100 British companies, and is currently at 6300.
• the Dow Jones concerns the 30 major American companies and is at 14000
• the Nasdaq concerns technological American companies and is at 3100

Economics got it all wrong?

Are mainstream economists able to withstand the massive blow on their credibility they received during the recent and still on-going world-wide crisis?
In response to Paul Krugman's article ("How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?"), one can read this article ("Who Are These Economists, Anyway?", translated into French here) by James Galbraith (not Kenneth) which is very insightful. For example, talking about the sub-prime credit market crisis, he writes "None of this was foreseen by mainstream economists, who generally find crime a topic beneath their dignity".
Still, economics is not a science based on hard-facts acquired by experiments. It has many flaws. There are two contradictory theories backing the same set of evidence. For each new crisis in the world, I am sure that one can find some economists who can pretend to have predicted it and say "I told you so".
Yet, a lesson which could be taken from basic physics is that, in order to prevent a dynamic system from becoming unstable, you need to put some dampening, aka regulations and taxes in economics.

Asteroids

Rather than worrying about horse-meat in the cow food chain, one pope replacing another, we should be more concerned with the fact that the sky is falling down. Well, bits of rocks are falling down, once in a while. Recently, an asteroid came quite close to falling on Earth. The largest recorded similar event happened in 1908 in Russia. It is thought that a massive asteroid is at the source of the extinction of dinosaurs about 65 millions years ago. Every cloud has a silver lining, the disappearance of dinosaurs allowed little mammals to thrive. They could then evolve in the tree of life toward human beings.

Man versus Robot

We send robots to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond with much success. If one or two fail, we have lost some money but no lives. We don't live on Everest, nor in the oceans. Neither can we live for long in space. The main problem for space is the cosmic rays. Each time, you hear a journalist, that manned space travel to Mars is for tomorrow, think that man is not made to live, except in this thin layer surrounding the Earth. This is the Darwinian selection. What is new is that we can send robot to extend our knowledge of the Solar System.

Grave concerns

Richard III has been turned in his grave. He was found in a car park in Leicester. His DNA has been identified on samples of his body. Each of us is unique in the DNA signature. This is more and more used in criminal affairs these days. But not only! Here it is used in Archaeology studies. Well, Richard may have committed some crime too.

Qui Mali pense

Hollande as a saviour in Timbuktu Mali (Latest). Who could have said that a year ago? The paradox is that Mali was a French colony for some time.

To know more about Mali see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali
Anyway a clean war does not exist. The death toll will rise and support for this war will dwindle in France. It is time for the Africans to help Mali and France to get out before Mali becomes Afghanistan.