My Life on this planet.

I hereby wish everyone a happy new year . Best wishes for 2013. A good health , a great job and all you wish in life. Pascal

The Tower of Babylon Almost everyone knows the story about the Tower of Babylon, if not because they heard the story then because they saw paintings or photos illustrating the unfinished building. The story tells about people coming from the East after the flood to a plain in Babylonia to build a city with an enormous tower that would reach the sky so they could all live together. Of course, God interfered and confused the people so they started speaking many languages and the tower was never completed and collapsed. As in a dream, the tallest building ever. I can imagine many people were needed to build the tower and the people from the East used the local people to build the city with tower (today in the Middle East poor foreigners are used as cheap labour to build their new cities and towers). The local people spoke different languages (in the chapter before the tower story the Bible mentions many languages were spoken) and thus they misunderstood the architect or incorpora...

President Obama is still hopeful he can reach a deal with the Republicans to avoid the fiscal cliff. I fear he may be too optimistic (although I hope I am wrong). The problem is the Republicans didn't win the presidential elections and are still furious. See how some responded after they lost. A black man from another party, their enemy, won the elections, that while he hardly achieved anything during his first term in office (according to them). They blocked so much that he wanted to do, and still he won (maybe that is why people voted for Mr Obama, because the Republicans were unreasonable when they blocked almost everything from the president). I fear the Republicans may have decided they no longer will make compromises. Many people may think the opposite, that the Republicans will be more willing to work together with the president as their opposition in the past didn't help them. I think they will become even harder and will no longer grant President Obama any "vi...

There is a real hype going on: it is almost 21/12/2012, the Maya calender. E.g. in China 500 followers of the Almighty God Christian group were arrested for spreading doomsday fear while some people were attacked; the shooting in America may have links to someone who flipped over that date. Even at work people speak about it. Will it happen or will it not? If it happens then there is kind of proof more than one god exist because even the gods of the Mayans knew the date (not the most friendly gods). If it doesn't happen, many will be disappointed. What I find unbelievable is that many people focus on certain days: e.g. the year 2000, people calculating when doomsday may be and when nothing happens, they calculate another day and so on until a disaster may happen. Some of these people are dangerous: people who are hopeful it will happen may indeed become very angry when things don't happen and try to make it happen, kind of self-fulfilling prophesy. Of course, one day an eart...

Twenty children between five and ten years old and six adults were killed by a madman at a school in Newton, Connecticut. The madman killed himself. America is in shock after this new tragedy, indeed one in a long list. I feel sad for the families and friends. What can be said if words are insufficient? We hope people learn from this tragedy as so many young children were killed. Why can these things happen? Because people are allowed to have weapons to defend themselves, and thus some people can use those weapons against others. One would thus expect Americans start to demand restriction on weapons, certainly as elsewhere fewer of these dramas happen because there are more restrictions about carrying weapons. That does not mean these dramas can't happen. E.g. a few years ago a madman in Belgium killed two children and a teacher at a school using a knife, but it would probably have been worse if he had a gun. But it seems opinion is moving in the opposite direction. According ...

Over the weekend I read ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi may have brought down the Italian government. It seems Prime Minister (PM) Mario Monti will try to pass a budget and financial stability law before announcing his resignation after Mr Berlusconi's PDL party withdrew its support for the government. PM Monti governs a non-elected government of technocrats after the fall of the previous government, headed by then PM Berlusconi. PM Monti's government tried to revert the downfall of Italy and as a consequence of Europe and the world. As I predicted earlier , it seems ex-PM Berlusconi plans to lead his party during the elections (although a few month ago he said he would not) because he claims PM Monti made the country worse off by following policies which benefited Berlin. However, in October Mr Berlusconi was convicted for tax fraud and sentenced to four years in prison although that was later reduced to one year; in addition he faces other trials. Although he appealed against the c...

Nurse Saldanha died over the weekend. She was the receiving end of the hoax phone call from Australia where two radio DJs, working for Sydney radio station 2DayFM, pretended to be the Queen and Prince Charles. Mrs Saldanha answered the phone and passed the DJs through to the nurse who looked after the Duchess of Cambridge while she was recovering from morning sickness because of her pregnancy. Soon an inquest will investigate whether or not Mrs Saldanha committed suicide. The two DJs gave an interview, expressing their regrets. I don't know whether Mrs Saldanha committed suicide or not, that an inquiry will investigate. It is of course very sad if indeed she committed suicide for passing through the phone call, because it would expose even more dramatically the wrongs of what some media has become. In its struggle for more readers, listeners and viewers it lost its soul and started to invade people's lives, destroying nice people while making others angry. Indeed, that is wh...

It seems Mr Kweku Adoboli, originally from Ghana, was crying in October while he was giving evidence in an English court. In November, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud tied to a $2.3 billion loss, the largest from unauthorised trading in U.K. history. The bank was later fined 29.7 million pounds ($47.6 million) by a U.K. regulator for weaknesses in management systems and internal controls that allowed Mr Adoboli to make risky trades. A few of his direct colleagues and manager also left or were fired by USB because of their incompetence as they didn't see what was going on. I read Mr Adoboli and his fellow trader, Mr Hughes, aged respectively 27 and 24 years, were in charge of a $50bn portfolio by the bank UBS. And this without previous experience. In comparison, I was allowed to spend a few thousands of pounds in a previous job, or I had to ask permission from my boss because maybe money was needed for something more urgently, and this forced us to think about...

More than a week ago, the Anglican Church, also known as the Church of England (CofE, although it has members around the world) voted narrowly at its General Synod (the church's governing body) against female bishops (i.e. s ix votes short for approval while before 42 out of the 44 Church of England dioceses approved female bishops). The defeat not only came in spite of large supports of its members but even the present but almost past (Dr Rowan Williams) and the next (Justin Welby) archbishop of Canterbury (=Head of Anglican Church) were in favour. Even politicians (e.g. Mrs Maria Miller, culture secretary and minister for equalities) interfere and urge the Church to review its internal democracy and ask for a new vote so the General Synod would reflect the voice of the majority of the church. Indeed, what is the existence of the CofE if its members speak as the Roman Catholic Church? But politicians and the general public should know that bishops will argue that democracy at l...