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Usually I almost always the skip the headlines in the newspapers where it says "New study .. New survey.." because you never know who paid for the study. It's not surprising that you will get totally different results in two studies that are dealing with the same topic .. always depending on who was the "financier" of the study. It's the same with opinion polls before an election.
Just recently I stumbled upon a headline that read something like "tell me what car you're driving and i'll tell you how you look". Ok when it comes to cars it's hard for me to skip a headline even if it's dealing with a study or survey. Expekt to read something interesting I thought. However, I got pretty dissapointed because the "shocking" findings of this study were that people who are driving a Mini, Porsche or Audi are supposed to be good looking while drivers of a Mercedes Benz carry some sort of grandfather image. Furthermore the study revealed that Volkswagen drivers are seen as smart and that Fiat, Mini and Smart are "girly cars". So to sum it up there is really nothing new in this study. Who paid for this survey? I don't know but the thing is that all of this is common knowledge or common sense.
About one week ago the world's financial markets were in a deep depression (and they still are) and it seemed as if we are gonna have a lot of job hunting stockbrockers soon. Some stock exchanges lost more than after 9-11 and while some people were very/are concerned about the near future of the world econonomy others thought that a correction was long overdue. Some economic theories teach us that in capitalism there is no such thing as everlasting growth; well .. for a couple of years it seemed that it does exist. After the big crash and the troubles of Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Freddie Mac and others suddenly the US government jumped in and pumped 300 billion dollars into the financial system in order to "save the world".
History repeats itself and and those who are not able to learn from the mistakes of the past are destined to to repeat them. It's true .. but the big problem is that they can repeat the same mistakes over and over again without having to take the resposibility for it because there is always the regular tax payer who has to pay for the greed of the stock markets. We've already had stock market crashes in the past and we will have them in the future and I guess that's pretty normal, but I'm deeply concerned about the tendency that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the middle class gets smaller and smaller.
In your job .. when your boss tells you that you have been late for work for the last two weeks and that he won't accept another lateness ... what would happen if you come late again? Well yes ... you would probably get fired and there wouldn't be any reason to complain about it because you have been warned. In the financial world it seems to be different .. because usually there are many warnings before a big crash happens. However,while "regular people" have to live with the consequences of their shortcomings this rule doesn't seem to be applicable when it comes to stock market crashes because there is always somebody else who will have to answer for the greed of the financial markets.
If you are intested in how our financial system really works .. watch this video .. and you will never look at money the same way again
The first matchday of the Champions League season 2008/2009 brought two big surprises.
- AS Roma lost to Champions League newcomer CFR Cluj from Romania. Panucci scored first for AS Roma but it was Culio who scored the equalizer for the Romanians. Although the half time score was a tie few people doubted that Roma will win the game. However, in the 49. minute Cluj opened the scoring of the second halftime and Roma was not able to fight back.
Roma 1 : Cluj 2 - Werder Bremen was held to a goalless draw by the second Champions League newcomer, Anorthosis Famagusta from Cyprus.
Bremen 0 : Famagusta 0
Other results:
FC Barcelona - Sporting Club de Portugal | 3:1 (1:0)
FC Basel - Donezk | 1:2 (0:2)
Chelsea - Girondins Bordeaux | 4:0 (2:0)
Olympique Marseille - Liverpool | 1:2 (1:2)
Panathinaikos - Inter Milan | 0:2 (0:1)
PSV Eindhoven - Atletico Madrid | 0:3 (0:2)
Gone are the times when almost everybody was downloading music, movies, software and so on from Napster, Kazaa and all the other p2p networks. Listening to the newest releases will never be that easy again. With the rise of YouTube many pretty quickly realised that it's not only a great site for watching videos but also a replacement of all the p2p networks.
Just recently I watched a rerun of Knight Rider and after the episode I desperately wanted to listen to the Knight Rider theme (the best tv series theme ever!) again. Well .. of course I went to Youtube but the problem with YouTube is, that you just can't stop clicking on the right sidebar where it says "related videos". Wow .. so from listening to the Knight Rider theme I jumped to some episode teasers, theme remixes, videos of KITT replicas (I need to get one of those *lol*) and so further on so on. Finally I realized that I've spent more than two hours on YouTube and basically just wasted my time.
Is there any medicine against the YouTube effect? :-)
Wow this was some exciting news this morning. Lance Armstrong wants to participate in the Tour de France 2009; officialy it's supposed to be a symbol in the fight against cancer but to be honest I think that Lance was a little bored during the last years. Don't get me wrong .. I believe that he put a lot of energy into his Lance Armstrong Foundation but I also think that nothing on this earth can give him a bigger motivation boost than to do the Tour de France again. In a couple of days he turns 37 but looking at the current state of professional cycling I think that even with this age Lance will be more than just a dangerous outsider at the Tour de France 2009.
Do you remember "The Look"?
It's been almost 40 years since Apollo 11 touched ground on the moon. Well, of course I wasn't born back then but I have always been fascinated by everything that is connected to the Apollo missions. Probably this is also why I have chosen the "moon look" for this blog.
Did I ever believe the various conspiracy theories that are still surrounding the moon landings? Not really but to be honest there was a time when I was a little in doubt. Recently I've read that 40% of the American population believe that no human has ever set foot on the moon. I was pretty shocked about that but probably the percentage of the "non believers" varies considerably .. depending on which tabloid is publishing the moon hoax story. There are even theories that the moon doesn't exist ... Come On!
