For some time, I have wanted to post about “crises are natural preludes to wars”. I am definitely not that qualified to say that, so I am glad these guys (LEAP experts) are. They predicted quite well the crisis, they invented the word “global systemic crisis” back in 2006. What they say is very scary. Even if they do their best not to mention “war”, they speak about “global geopolitical dislocation”, “tragic consequences” and say “the world will look more like Europe in 1913 rather than our world in 2007”. However, as I am an optimistic guy, let me remind you that I have good news about the crisis and that controls and that genius can save us.

You will want to join the Control Theory group on Facebook if, or you know you are a Control theorist when:

• For you, Vibration Control is not only a Sex toy.

• Finding the good frequency is not only the problem of your girlfriend.

• “Slower, Faster, now it is good” reminds you your work.

He is from a minority. He is American, lives in the US but has a dual culture. He studied in the best universities. He is one of the smartest guys on Earth. He had many awards for his outstanding work along his long and brilliant career. He has always fought received ideas. He is not afraid of complexity but knows to recognize simplicity in the middle of intricated systems that most people consider as infinitely complex. He is not afraid of telling people when they are wrong. He is not afraid of telling them what to do. He does not hesitate to fight alone against the majority but definitely prefers to be with the majority. If listened to earlier, many casualties would have been avoided. He wants to change the world and he has a plan.
No, I am not speaking about Barack Obama. Let me continue. He is Franco-American. He studied aeronautics. He deserves a Nobel prize in all categories: economy, physics, medecine (biology), chemistry, and even litterature and peace, because his work helped describing and understanding the geometry of nature. His work can indeed be applied to stock market, natural borders, lungs description, fluid mechanics, animal population evolution, clouds. He wrote many inspiring books. If more listened to the world would be way more peaceful because better understood and less submitted to crisis.
Yes, I am speaking about Benoit Mandelbrot and the good news is: his work on finance is slowly being recognized by the media and by economists.

Listen to Mandelbrot and global warming, crisis and wars will just be bad memories. OK I am exaggerating, but I am not sure how much ;-).

PS If you know which conferences Mandelbrot is going to attend this year, please let me know in the comments because he is definitely the celebrity I would love most to meet.

In my 2009 wishes, I wished that people better understand the world. For this purpose, I suggested they read The (Mis)behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward by Benoit Mandelbrot.
Actually, for one year and a half we have been inside this growing up crisis I have been appalled by the small number of articles in the media about Mandelbrot’s work on Finance and more generally by the small number of articles about chaos theory and economy. Indeed more than ten years ago, Mandelbrot explained why the finance world was walking on its head. To make it short, it is because financial theory fundamental principles are wrong and over-optimistic. These principles state that the hazard involved in the market theory is regular enough to be smoothed by the big numbers law. This hazard is “benign”. Basically, with the standard theory, crisis can’t happen. So yes, you must be dreaming, there is no crisis, unless you listen to Mandelbrot that tells you that the hazard is actually “savage” and potentially leading to a collapse of the market: a crash.

So where is the good news ?

Organized by Ruby France and Sun Microsystems, the second RailsCamp Paris will take place on March 7th 2009 at the Sun Customer Briefing Center, 42 avenue d’Iéna, Paris (16th), France.

Due to the Rails/Merb merge, on of the main themes of this event will be Merb. Other themes are up to you.

This event is free and open to everyone, newbies to gurus. You just need to sign up here. Beware the event is limited to 100 participants and 85 people (as of writing) have already subscribed.

Resources:

• Wiki
• Home page
• Mailing list (mostly in French)
• RSS flow of Ruby France(Sometimes in English)
• Huh, but what is a BarCamp ?

By the way, I have added the RSS flow of Ruby France to my Rails reading list.

I’ll be there and I am really looking forward to it as I do not know Merb and am willing to learn what all the buzz around it is about.

See you there.

Ruby on Rails is moving fast. So you need to stay tuned to Rails news. What is best than reading RoR heroes’ blogs ? Yep, nothing.
To help you, Railsinside has on its home page a list of Rails heroes. Unfortunately, as the links link toward their blogs and not towards their RSS flow, it might be tedious to add all the flows to your reader. And sometimes it is not immediate to understand where the flow is hidden.
It is only recently that I have added all these flows to my reader. In order to facilitate you the work, here is the Railsinside list of Rails heroes with links to their RSS flow. For some of them, I have not found the flow. If you know their address, please leave it in the comments. A few more flows will be suggested as a bonus. All these flows are added to my public netvibes page. Check it to have a look at what it looks like to be so close to all these minds.

I have just added the “forgot password” function on ThinkoSphere. It was seriously lacking !
Just click the link close to the login button. An email will be sent to you. Follow the link to define a new password.

By the way, I also changed the login box design to make it clearer. This was a suggestion from Guillaume, an estimated alpha user. Thanks to him.