Ramen Review

I expect the DAX in the mean term to remain below 5600 ticks, or at least not to go freely above 6K.
Perhaps - but it used to be more likely 2 weeks ago - there will be a major crash soon. Say DAX 4-4.5K. But if so, a rebound to DAX 6Kish is almost a given.
In general I’d guess there will be a tendency to stay with high volatility and major swings, but remaining roughly in the DAX 5-5.5K corridor.
That … read more

So, revisiting the river valley overlooked by Hill 431, where two nights before the CinC[*] and his “publisher of a major newspaper” friend went to their little outing.
While the Minister was back in Berlin getting 80% of the major media pissed off mightily (and one Mr. Wonka of the Leipziger Volkszeitung[de:] presumably shitlisted — watch 1:20 to 1:32 and 1:50 here:)

some Afghan guy who presumably will forever remain nameless had decided to take matters in his own hands — alas, … read more

So, on May 20th, 2010, I said in a private conversation (that was duly noted down) regarding the economy:

the significant index values of the coming ?weeks:
dax 6500 and rising
djia 10000 and falling

Meaning that until one of these marks is breached, and robustly so, the global economy will remain in limbo, and other matters of concern may be leisurely regarded as utterly more important.
Almost 3.5 months later, I have no reason whatsoever to change my opinion on this issue.
The last week … read more

This year has had some funny weather that far. Not bad though. First decent winter since I moved here or so, >10 years ago. When the cold started to get obnoxious, spring broke out. Lasted for 3 weeks or so, unexpectedly turned into summer. April has been what you’d expect May to be. By now, it is colder again and wet, has been raining on and off again for the last few days. But again, the sun is coming thru.
The … read more

Last Saturday’s mass protests in Germany were not like this:

T. rex vs. Big Bad Bank Building
I was in Bankfurt, where around 20k ppl gathered, take a few thou, give a few thou; the official figures ran mostly between 15k and 30k. More — closer to around 30k, perhaps as much as 35k protested in Berlin.
The demonstrations were generally peaceful, to the point of being boring. In Berlin there was some aggro at the very end, when police charged into some … read more

The DAX made a brave attempt at recovery yesterday, but the DJIA was, for the time being, malade. So the N225’s attempt to pass on the hot potato and hope for a transatlantic recovery had not quite worked. Especially as it pulled itself above 7.5K, only for the DAX to come down in flames over the whole Opel and AIG and the Citi and whatnot mess.
(Note that to make up for a loss, you need to gain more percentiles than … read more

Whatever.
As it seems, Arnie is having a bit of a hard time. The Handelsblatt at least says so[de:], and they are usually pretty nonpartisan for the exuberant mouthpiece of Capitalism that they are. But I think we had this coming, with the State practically bankrupt for the last 4-6 months or so.

“The Terminator is an end-of-line model, little more fit for reality than Detroit’s Big Three.”
(Rüdiger Scheidges, loc. cit., 17th February 2009)

If you understand German, the article gives you … read more

At present, I am reading Mayr’s Konzepte (What makes biology unique?, etc). He probably was the last naturalist; he certainly was one of the dozen or so people who defined what we (scientists) think of as evolution today.
The general understanding of evolution is somewhat backwards and weaker than it need be — for the stuff is literally everywhere in your daily surroundings if you are a member of a human civilization — ; the cre-guys in particular have little … read more

When I cam home from that party yesterday, something interesting happened in the tube train.
All of a sudden, there was a ruckus, guys screaming around and everything. Some man had jumped up and was gesticulating at some adolescents and shouting at them furiously. He was Persian perhaps; he looked vaguely “Arab” (this is not to insult any Persians that might feel insulted by this ;-) ) but not quite; he certainly did not have the looks of a Maghrebi, but … read more