Mine!

NASA EDU

Looking Good

Berlin

Knut and Friend

Alina

from Le Figaro, 19.02.08

by Katia Clarens

ALINA, CASTRO'S DAUGHTER: "HE WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO TALK TO"

Today Alina Fernandez is 50 years old. Right after her tenth birthday, her mother announced to her she was Fidel Castro's daughter. Nonetheless she kept the name of the man who had been her father up to then. In 1993, with a false passeport, she managed to leave Cuba. She now lives in Miami, a public oppenent to her father's regime. "When the Revolution took over, I was a child. I used to watch American cartoons on television. Overnight, the bearded men started to appear, with their guns and bead necklaces. There was one, obviously a very important man, whom everyone applauded. A few days later, I saw this man enter our living room. It was Fidel Castro. He often came to the house at night. The emergence of the bearded men changed quite a few things in my life. We were forced to leave our house, my father and my sister left Cuba and, in this manner, joined the ranks of the 'worms'. The name which one gave to those who had betrayed the Revolution. Mickey Mouse was replaced by Russian cartoons.

One day, I was ten, my mother told me I was Fidel's daughter. I was almost relieved. Because, all of a sudden, I was no longer the daughter of a 'worm' but of a hero of the Revolution. Very soon, though, I felt uncomfortable with all the propaganda which insisted the Revolution was about making living condition better all the while having to wait in line for hours for a piece of bread. One day, I must have been 14, I told Fidel I wanted to leave. He told me this would create a political problem, which I didn't understand at the time. What I did take away from the discussion was that he was impossible to talk to. I remember a particular incident: on the Cathedral plaza in Havana, we had seen artisans set up stalls. They sold trinkets which made our lives easier. One day, all were grouped and taken away to prison. I asked Fidel why he had done that and he answered: 'The State must never loose control of commerce'.

Little by little, I became more distant. One day, I must have been 18, a journalist interviewed me and I offered a few criticisms. That was the end of my relationship with Fidel, my entry into the life of a dissident. But surprisingly I was not thrown in jail. Yet my desire to leave kept getting stronger. In December 1993, armed with a false Spanish passport which friends from an association for the liberation of political prisonners had got for me, I finally managed to escape. I landed in Europe like one lands on the moon! It dawned on me that the rest of the world did not wake up every morning thinking of the courageous little island struggling against imperialism. People around me were totally indifferent to it. This was a shock to me. And then, I discoverd the magic of money and airlines that will transport you anywhere in the world... Today I live in the United States, rather well. I speak in public and do radio shows. I long thought Fidel, thinking of how he should be replaced, would make arrangements. It now seems he will not. "Après moi le Déluge!" . Fidel was certainly an important figure in an era of personnal leadership. But there is no justification for the misery endured by our country. A revolution is meant to aid civil society, not ruin it".

Undies

BCam

Step Up 2 the Streets

Accompanying my favourite teen-ager to the cinema, for a screening of the long-awaited Step-Up 2 the Streets, I winced to a good part of the beginnings of the movie because I just knew the set-up - the excuse for great dancing called the story line - was going to be long-winded and painful. Bring on the dancing, will ya? In fact it wasn't too bad and I will spare my readers having to read about it and watch it if they ever make it to the film. They toyed with us, but good-naturedly. Just when one is about to get get discouraged, a bit of great dancing comes along. Fine, I'm hooked. I did not visit the rest room or candy shop once throughout the whole thing. They are that good. One doesn't sit through Traviata to find out how it ends; one can put up with the appreciative tear from the school director at the end. "It was avant-garde".

Where does dance go after hip-hop. That was my interest going into the movie. This is perhaps the digestive phase: the big production number at the end happens in the rain and not the polite little rain of Dancing in the Rain : it is night and pouring, the dancers plunge to do their figures, they lift themselves dripping water like the spirits of drowning men. They are a crew, a gang: West Side Story precision and group mouvement. The moves they do mix dance traditions, lyrical and athletic yet one never leaves musical theater: the dancers are characters in a story, with realtionships and lines.

Those of us who do a lot of homework know things: slavery for France ended in 1848, at the time of the Paris Commune, France's second revolution. Yet the bro thing is ever-present in this movie. It includes the heroine, a white orphan, which is perhaps an opening. Commercial reviewers on the Net have castigated this movie for being innocent on issues of race and class. I beg to differ. The uneducated black leader gets wiped off the mat. He looses, big time. And the nerdy little white kid, Something or other the Third, ends up being a great dancer after all. Nonsence. He is a skinny runt: great dancers are athletes.

Our household is going to own this movie, when it finally comes out on dvd. I already know some of the moves myself.

Winter Notes

I actually felt sorry for the ravenous black birds in the neighborhood this morning and put out a bag of sugarless granola my daughter has been snubbing on a cardboard sheet. The birds won't touch it either, which makes it unanimous, including Mouffe the cat, who has a taste for cereal and will eat crackers and cookies ( in the evening).

Indeed, winters are pretty long, and increasingly monotonous and temperature oscillates between artic cold and puffs of rain quality humidity, sometimes in 24-hour cycles. I remember quite different winters of biting cold for days on end but there were rewards as well, sparkling snow rising in whirling clouds, blinding sun when one went outdoor- skating. We haven't missed for snow, and the city snow removal crews come soaring in the night with a rattle that makes one suspect road rage. It all quickly turns to mush, humid mush.

Skimming through Figaro Madame, I came across a review of a new device called Wii-Fit by Nintendo, which has just become available in France. It looks like a bathroom scale and it acts as one, but also as an exercise mat, game interface, fun for the whole family in fact. One can see if one is balancing one's body properly from readings on the machine. It had to come - exercise on a scale - but it is also a little crazy. I'm not the only one loosing it from cabin fever. Lyse is sure to howl for one if I tell her about it. They don't sell them here yet, so there.

I'm also getting a little dizzy from following all the fashion shows available on the Net. The industry plans ahead so one is actually seeing what will be available next winter mixed in with what is coming for spring. They try for effect by layering disparate elements on models. I sleep in layers of day-wear this time of year. Take it easy on me.

I've pretty much given up on the hope of deploying the neat mathematical animations I can now make on the Web. Video is a category, as are images, but animation is a no-man's land. I'm tempted to call my internet provider to find out how to do it but it is the phone company and, everyone knows, they don't answer the phone but rely on computerized voice systems. I think I'll go out for a walk in the slush and buy some blank C-Ds. Maybe I'm on to something!

Casual Clothes

Permafrost

Valentine

So Far!

Web History

Appeared in Le Monde 03.02.08
by Cécile Décourtieux

CREATED BY MMr. FILO AND YANG, YAHOO REMAINS AN ICON FOR SILICON VALLEY

With its Internet browser Netscape and the commerce site Amazon, Yahoo! was during the Internet boom one of the most brilliant stars of Nasdaq, the American exchange for new technologies.

Its beginnings were a classic. In 1994, like many others at Stanford, the Silicon Valley university, students Jerry Yang and David Filo, top computer students, became interested in the Internet and the possibilities offered by this new medium. They had the idea to create online an inventory of the sites they found most interesting. Their directory, which quickly became immensely popular, was named Yahoo!, acronym for "yet another hierarchical officious oracle".
Marc Andreessen, one of the founders of Netscape, gave the two a decisive help by lending them computers. Michael Moritz, another Silicon Valley figure and representative for the investment firm Sequoia became interested as well. He invested 2 million dollars in the duo (Yahoo! going to the Stock Market will bring in to his firm 32 billion dollars in 1996...). Management help comes from Tim Koogle, known as the Net "papy", an ex from telecommunications equipment provider Motorola, since our two students don't add up to age 50 between them.

Thus the incredible developement of this modest start-up can begin. Yahoo! literally invents the notion of a "portal": the site works to attract the maximum numbers of Internet users by offering them just about everything they might be looking for on the Web. Information(Yahoo! Yahoo! Finance, Sport, etc)...In order to finances its services, Yahoo! bets on the notion of using publicity. Sponsors will pay for these services indirectly, by buying on-line publicity space.

ONE OF THE MOST VISITED SITES

Visitors and sponsors materialize as planned: at the end of the 1990s, Yahoo! is one of the most visited sites in the world and one of the rare money-making "dotcoms", along with Ebay, the on-line auctioneer. Investors are also confident: in 1998, the firm has a 203 million dollar income, but its market capitalization reaches to 38 billion dollars...As is the case with Google, a neighbor a few kilometers away, the home office of Yahoo! in Sunnyvale California is known for a relaxed work atmosphere and numerous social advantages for its employees.

The Internet bubble bursts, in march 2000. Publicity is not so forthcoming. Analysts have second thoughts about the "100% publicity" strategy of the portal. Yahoo! profits disappear, share price drops to 4 dollars, Mr Koogle is forced to leave, early 2001. Yahoo! has never recovered its growth rates of the 1990s. Yet the firm remains a veritable icone, very respected in Silicon Valley for the innovations it has introduced.

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CHRONOLOGY

2000: Web portal AmericaOnline makes an ofer to buy out Time Warner, for an initial 150 billion dollars. The two groups will eventually merge by an exchange of shares.
2005 Media group News Corp., owned by Robert Murdoch, buys the on-line social network MySpace, for 580 million dollars. EBay buys out the internet telephone group Skype, for 2,5 billion dollars.
2006: Google acquires YouTube, a site for sharing amateur video for 1,65 billion dollars, in shares.
2007: Microsoft gifts itself with on-line publicity player aQuantive for 6 billion dollars.

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Sea Level

Paris Traders

From Le Monde 03.02.08.
by Raphaëlle Bacqué and Calire Gatinois

THOSE PURE-BRED MARKET TRADERS

It is 19:45 h, London time. Alexander Capez, 34, City trader, the business district of the British capital, goes home. A bit stressed-out. 'This evening, the Fed lowered its rates, and the Market went up 1,2%', he explains. For a trader, 1,2% at Wall Street, the New York Exchange, represents thousands, perhaps millions of dollars. In gains or losses. 'In one day', he points out, ' one can end up or down 100 000 dollars, perhaps 10 or 20 million in a volatile market.'

Alexander Capez has been working for ten years as a trader. Ten years of buying and selling shares, index derivatives, options, "swaps", "strikes", futures. Ten years of arriving every morning at 6:30 h at the desk of the multinational investment bank where he works. At 7, in the markets room, will be the "morning meeting", where each outlines the market situation and his own investments. Ten years of working till 21 h, on a good day. Ten years of not going out for lunch. Ten years of his adrenaline fluctuatuing as a function of Market indices.

Ten years is pretty much a limit. 'More than that, a trader is burnt out' believes Vincent Riotte, from Demos, a finance teaching institute,'the majority only sleep four hours a day'. How can it be other when, somewhere in the world, an Exchange is still open? By day in Europe, by night in the U.S., Asia in the early dawn. In this wakeful universe, a screen is always running with the number-filled tables proferred by Bloomberg or Reuters.

In an illusory window on the world, on sees the prices of primary materials, and the encrypted signs of the great upheavals of the world economy. 'Why not pretend to predict the future', joke the financiers among themselves. Finally at home for the evening, one still has the Blackberry which no one would do without. 'It is a day and night obsession', says a smiling Philippe P., a Paris trader who wishes to remain anonymous 'because bonuses can plunge and this is no time to make a bad move'.

Drunk with success, or anihilated. At that game, family life can hardly compete. One answers the phone hurriedly, with a 'make it short!' Week-ends at Méribel may well be luxurious, but are often cut short. Youth is wasted at work. There are no old traders in market rooms: the average age is 28. There are few women. A measly 10%. They generally prefer working in the "back office", giving administrative and logistical support to the operations of the "front office". 'Among the underlings', maintain the more arrogant traders.

'Week-ends, in the evening, during vacations, these financiers are cogitating all the time', adds Vincent Riotte. A change in orientation from the Fed is greatly more important than a cabinet shuffle. An interview given by Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, is commented on more ardently than a presidential election in France. Because an economic decision, monetary, a grain of sand, are sometimes enough to provoque a krach. And for the trader, a 'major bad one', an operation that means a heavy lost for the portfolio he is managing in figures that would horrify the average man.

A pattern of two or three heavy losses and one knows it is the end of working on the floor. A masterly move and there is a bonus, negotiated in February, that can attain many millions of Euros. 'Those at the top of the profession earn in general 3 to 4 million Euros per year', informs us Vincent Riotte. Monetary gain is not the only incitement. 'Being a trader is a state of mind, one has to love money, certainly, but also enjoy the competition, wanting to be the best, leave the others behind', confides an ex-trader.

'Even if we all try to assert intelligence in the face of randomness, we are above all gamblers', insists Julien, a trader for a large French business bank. Uncertainty is at the heart of the profession. An analysis of quotes, betting on what is to come, a drug which forms the personality. Finishing the evening off with a game of poker is not uncommon, once having quit the market floor. Yet today's traders are very different from those of twenty-five years ago, when commercial paper dominated the profession. The golden boys of the 80s, washed out by market krach, have been replaced by mathematicians and their algorithms. These are the true lords of finance. Someone like Jérôme Kerviel, today accused by the Société Générale, coming from the "middle office", that is the control and supervision positions for floor operations, can rarely hope to attain such heights.

'Traders from small schools or from a university represent only 20% of overall forces and do not have the contacts in the network which, through cooptation, open the doors to the desks of the better banking establishments', according to Olivier Godeshot, a sociologist from the Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. The surprise, and sometimes contempt, created by the CV of the trader accused of having lost 4,9 billion Euros for the French bank, are testimony to the new face of today's traders.

Because being a trader, is also being a member of a caste. A world unto itself, dominated, in France, by the specialized schools (which recruit through rigorous exams), Polytechnique (engineers), Centale (engineers Lyon), Ensae (statistics), perhaps Hec or Essec(commerce). And, the best of the brightest, those who hold a master's in probability and finance under the direction of Nadine El-Karoui. The alumni of "El-Karoui", as they refer to each other in this enclave of excellence, are the most sought-after. The most expensive to recruit. The lady mathematician, professor at Polytechnique and Paris-VI, has formed generations of 'quants', quantitative analysts, specialists in those sophisticated products which are the derived products of shares or bonds. Those will join the ranks of Paris traders or better yet those of Wall Street or London, where salaries are highest but where one can easily spot them because at their desks, in spite of the obligatory anglosaxon jargon, the jokes are still in French.

Young and rich, it is sometimes difficult for them to keep a cool head. Of course, they can afford what they want,with luxury cars and wine cellars bought more often for the value than out of true taste or the product. But the true danger they have to face is on the floor itself. 'The traders who stay the course are those who know how to be reasonable', tells us Alexander Capez,'and go through fire without getting their wings burnt.' Taking a profit when it is time to do so. 'And keeping in mind', adds Philippe P.,'that the pleasure of winning is often less strong than the suffering of loosing.' In short, being able to resist a too promising transaction which can bring about disaster.

One hears legends, in trading rooms, of suicide traders who had their positions "cut off" by their bosses. 'At heart, to be a good trader one has to have gone through a krach and know one doesn't want to live through that again', jokes Bruno Petit, an ex-trader who has turned screen-writer for the television series "Scalp", which describes the Stock Market during the first Gulf War. It is not uncommon for traders to refer to each other as "survivors".

All the major banks know, the true danger is the excitement in front of these gigantic operations by the numbers involved and dematerialized by a wholly computerized system. They have psychologists on hiring boards as well as controllers meant to oversee transactions. But a room manager, whose own bonus depends on the performance of his team, can always ignore the advice of the Human Ressources Department if he wants to hire the best. And controllers are often despised.

In highly hierarchical operations rooms, where teams of Poly graduates might snob the centralists on the next desk, the "back office" meant to ask for explanations to traders and "front" vendors is easily mocked. Less well payed, considered underlings, controllers often have trouble understanding the complexity of transactions engaged in by the mathematically-gifted denizens of the "front office" who even refer to them as 'the broken arms'.

Thus the lords of finance pursue their lives on their own. Far, even, from bankers themselves, who tend to ignore the trading room. Later, when, having past 30, they will have survived the various crisis, they will invest their gains in wineries, or, more often in hedge funds. Just to keep the adrenaline going, although they could just as easily retire.