My Life on this planet.

In Belgium, Mr Luc Coene, governor of the National Bank of Belgium (should be Federal Bank as Belgium is a federal country) recently told the media (1) we are heading towards a new economic recession (while a report from the same Bank says the Belgian economy will grow) and (2) Dexia Holding, ones saved from bankruptcy, will need more money, otherwise it will still collapse (everyone with brains could have predicted more money is needed as the problems were and still are very big). These are serious warnings. But imagine the reaction of many of Belgium's politicians: Mr Coene should not say these things in public as it will damage the economy; he should not speak in public as he speaks as a politician and should not lecture politicians. Unbelievable for me, he informs the politicians about the coming dangers and they can only think he speaks as a politician and thus they tell him to shut up. That is why party politics should disappear (as mentioned in a previous post) because pol...

Unbelievable, the Republican Missouri Congressman Tod Akin believes that women who are really ("legitimate") raped have a mechanism that prevents them becoming pregnant and thus they do not need abortion to end pregnancy after rape (see my views on abortion in an earlier article) . Does this means that he thinks (without saying it out loud) that women who become pregnant during rape were not really raped but only had (rough?) sex. And it seems it was not the first time he found himself in troubles on issues about rape. At least he said that rapists should receive punishment (and probably he would be unforgiving). Presidential candidate Mr Romney and his running mate, the conservative Mr Ryan, both fellow Republicans and also against abortion as well as other Republicans all rebuked Mr Akin and some Republicans even called on Mr Akin to step down. Indeed, many Republicans believe that abortion in certain circumstances should be allowed and a spokesman for Mr Romney stresse...

This weekend, temperatures in Belgium are predicted to reach up to 37 °C and many other parts of Europe and the world also suffer from high temperatures (although many people in Belgium will disagree with the word "suffer" as most people will be happy summer finally arrived after the previous wet and cold months). Therefore, to lessen my thirst I decided to make my own ice tea and share the receipt so others who may read this article can also drink something refreshing that is differently from cold water and is quite cheap. As it is easy to prepare, children who should stay inside during this extreme hot weather, can make their own ice tea and thus will be less likely to get bored (parents should boil the water as this is too dangerous to be done by small children). The children can later experiment to prepare their own version of tea and that is even more exiting as they are now almost real chefs. I give a few examples what can be changed. Most of the ingredients (ex...

BBC, many thanks for this folder. More on their website. The final days of the dinosaurs , a very successful species of animals that lived on this planet for about 165 million years (from about 230 million (the Triassic area) until about 65 million years ago (the end of the Cretaceous period)) has fascinated people since the first discovery and recognition of their remains. It is still not known whether their disappearance happened quite abrupt or was spread over a longer period and thus people still wonder what caused their end. A number of possibilities are circulating, the best known too the public is that a comet crushed into the Earth and resulted in a quick disappearance from this planet. Others suggest increased volcanic activities or failure to adapt to changing environments caused a slower decline. (This article is partly a summary of what is known but to be better informed you should read more detailed articles. However, I am not sure whether scientists already thought ...

Today I heard the rating agencies are telling the world they consider to decrease the rating of Greece from triple C to D (default). Of course, they may threaten to do this so the ECB and Europe will "take their responsibilities" and give more money to Greece so that country can continue to repay the creditors and thus those who are for a large part to blame for the financial crisis. Of course, if some of those countries had well behaved, they would not have such large debts. But those claiming the money are equally guilty as they didn't demand good financial practices from those countries during good times. And thus I think the leaders of the Eurozone will meet and the financial sector and countries that are not a member of the Eurozone will advice the members to "save the Euro" or throw out Greek while they themselves will give nothing because they claim they are not part of the Euro. And thus more money will move from countries that behaved well towards poo...

The European Central Bank (ECB) made a decision and the financial sector is not happy. The ECB agrees to come up with ways to assist struggling Eurozone countries but without injecting already money in the countries. The markets hoped the ECB would already help failing countries and thus, as one can expect, the banks immediately increased the bonds for Spain and Italy because they want to punish the ECB for not doing what the financial sector think the ECB should do. The ECB told the markets it will help countries that ask for help. As the ECB didn't help those countries immediately, the markets decided to "help" those countries by increasing the bonds of those countries and thus making it more likely these countries need to ask for help as a higher bond (e.g. above 7% for Spain) means countries have to pay back more and thus their debts increase. As a result, it is more likely these countries need help from the EU and ECB and thus the European money paid to those count...