The European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students (ERASMUS) is an agreement between the countries of the European Community that allows students to attend a certain time period of their education (usually a semester) in a foreign university, in a country member of this agreement. It takes its name from the medieval philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam, who was known as an experienced traveler and polyglot. Created in 1987, the Erasmus Programme has become one of the most beloved rituals for university students from all over Europe. Why is it so successful? In an effort to answer this and many other questions, I interviewed Kamila Ishalina, third-year Bachelor student in Business Administration from Russia, recently returned from her exchange in Nottingham, United Kingdom. Here’s what I found out. The interview Why did you choose the United Kingdom as your destination? I have wanted to visit the United Kingdom for a long time: since elementary school, I have been reading a lot about the country, its rich history and customs, which I have always been fascinated by. When I was offered the chance to actually visit it, I had no doubt it would be my first preference: after all, visiting the Anglo-Saxon world is the reason why we learn English in the first place! The University of Nottingham was particularly appealing to me, as it allowed me to also take elective courses outside of my specialization, for example Spanish and Psychology. And did your experience reflect your expectations? Yes, I was really satisfied with the way the courses were structured. Universities in Britain focus on a group-like approach, which means that we worked on many projects as a team, and it was really interesting. In addition, I had the chance to undertake many other courses and activities, which I hadn’t thought about before. A few technical questions now: how did you apply for the exchange? I applied through the Erasmus Exchange Program at the University of Amsterdam. The procedure is mainly computer-based: you have to write a motivation letter and answer a few questions, such as: why you want to go on exchange, why you chose a specific destination and how it is going to contribute to your academic career. So what are the requirements, in order to be eligible for exchange? Your grades are important, but the main focus is on the motivation: it’s really important to show the recruiters that you are the one they should select, by stressing your enthusiasm for the programme and your internationally oriented attitude. About bureaucratic matters: did everything go smoothly? Did the university provide you with accommodation, for example? Yes, I was indeed assigned an accommodation via the university’s international office. It was very close to campus, which was convenient because that’s where most of the student facilities in Nottingham are. Some friends of mine actually lived on campus, which is very different from here in the Netherlands, where students live mostly in the city. The only issues I experienced were related to my visa for the United Kingdom, which delayed my arrival for a week, but everything else was just fine. Some interesting architecture on campus. What kind of accommodation was it: shared or private? I had a private room with shared facilities, so the bathroom and kitchen were in common with five more people. This was really cool, since it allowed me to meet my flatmates who came from all over the world: we had a girl from Chile, two from the United States, and the other two from Malaysia. Let’s get down to business now: what courses did you attend at the University of Nottingham? I followed six courses, all of which were included in my specialization, which is Business Administration: Entrepreneurship, Strategic Management, Tourism and Sustainability, Branding and Advertisement, plus two electives. That’s where I chose Spanish and Psychology. Did you feel the workload in the UK was heavier than that at UvA? The setup was quite different: for example, there is no such a thing as midterm exams, which I believe reduces the stress. Instead, there is just one set of finals, for which you have one month of preparation. However, to make up for the absence of the midterms, there are several assignments, which are included in the courses. Overall, I’d say it was somewhat easier. Was the relationship between students and professors friendlier or more reserved and professional? The professors were really passionate about their subjects, and they were always open to suggestions from students. What I found very interesting was the way they used different means of communication, even including social media, to keep in touch with the students. I believe this creates a very productive dialogue. Did your schedule leave you enough time for other activities? My schedule wasn’t that busy: for each course, I had around one/two lectures a week, which left plenty of time for extra-curricular activities. What I found the most exciting was the existence of so many different student societies within the university, which allowed to put people with similar interests in contact. In my case, I chose the Public Speakers’ Society, which was one of the best experiences I have ever had: I would have never thought of myself as a public speaker, but being part of this society helped me overcome my fears and insecurities, and now I feel much more confident when speaking in front of an audience. So was it easy to adapt to the new environment, overall? Well, the good thing about doing an exchange alone is that you are forced to move out of your comfort zone and meet new people, which exposes you to all sorts of new experiences. It was very easy to get along with my flatmates, but also with other exchange students: everyone is new, and everyone is open to making new friends. “Robin Hood is considered a symbol of the city.” Tell me something about Nottingham. Nottingham is a relatively small city, pretty much a student town. Since most young people in town are students, this creates a very lively environment, which means that many events are designed specifically for students. It also has a rich history, which has remained in the form of medieval buildings and churches. Fun fact: Robin Hood is considered a symbol of the city. Describe one memorable moment of your stay. It’s quite hard to recall one specific moment, since it was a pretty great experience overall, but there was this trip to Bath and Stonehenge that I really enjoyed. It was Halloween, so we also had a chance to see how it was celebrated in that area: apparently, pub crawling on Halloween is actually a thing in the United Kingdom. In conclusion, do you think your exchange made the difference? Would you recommend it to your fellow students? Yes, I definitely would. It was a real experience of personal growth, which made me more confident and open to new things, and I believe everyone should try it: apart from experiencing new approaches to education, it is a great opportunity to create long-lasting friendships from all over the world. So yes, I would strongly recommend it. If you also want to experience how it is to study at one of the European universities and come back with unforgettable memories, don’t miss the chance. Remember, the application deadline for an Erasmus exchange in 2016-2017 is the 1st of March, 2016 (before 10 p.m.)! #erasmusexchange #exchange #travel

News Recap: World of Economics – by Daniel Koudijs Over the past month, just as worries about China began to lose some of their clout, another familiar headache appeared: plummeting banks’ shares. Reminiscent of the crisis years, the European bank stock index fell drastically; close to 2012 levels when European banks were in deep trouble. Mario Draghi and the CEO of Deutsche Bank swiftly moved to remind the world of how things are different this time. They are right: the recent drop in bank shares largely follows from the trend of slowing global growth and the spreading climate of negative interest rates. Increased capital reserves and regulations have made banks of all sizes more apt to deal with negative shocks. Only in Italy do the banking problems for now seem a real issue. The Italian government appears indecisive between a bad-debt banking system and protecting individual savers. Yet aside from the troubled banking stocks, markets on both sides of the Atlantic started to recover from their traumatic start of the year. Reasons for this can be found in the surging oil prices (as oil producing countries have agreed on a deal) and there is increased evidence of the US showing robust growth. Inflation is likely to follow soon, just as Ms. Yellen expected and just why she lifted rates in the first place. But in the current fragile situation, inflation and in turn higher interest rates is exactly what nobody wants. Ms. Yellen must be starting to wish she was wrong. ‘No’ to the €500 note – by Michael van Rhee Several European finance ministers recently requested the European Central Bank to investigate the possibility of abolishing the €500 note, nicknamed ‘Bin Laden’ by the populace, as the presence and appearance of the notes are well-known, but the notes themselves are very difficult to find. The note is barely used in everyday life, with most companies rejecting it altogether, and it can’t be found in ATM’s either. Still, the total worth of €500 notes in circulation is over €300 billion, which is over 30% of the value of all the cash money. A million euros of €500 notes can easily be transported in a small briefcase — after all, you only need a mere 2,000 of them — and so it’s very sensitive to criminal or even terrorist activity. (Maybe ‘Bin Laden’ wasn’t such a bad nickname after all, huh?) This is also because it’s one of the most valuable notes of all the currencies worldwide. To compare: the most valuable dollar note is the $100 note, which is not even worth 100 euros in today’s world. Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, has agreed to investigate the possibility. Re-Appearance of the U.S-Cuba Commercial Flights – by Magdalena Wiśniewska On Tuesday morning, February the 16th, in iconic Havana’s Hotel Nacional, USA and Cuba have signed an agreement, which allows resuming the commercial air traffic between the countries for the first time in half a century. It is predicted that the connections will begin in fall and will count five as many flights as there are charters at the moment, reaching 110 flights daily. According to the U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Fox ‘It was a historic day in the relationship between Cuba and the U.S.” and ‘It represents a critically important milestone in the U.S. effort to engage with Cuba.’ Adel Rodriguez, Cuban Minister of Transport, has called it a ‘new era’. Indeed, this event constitutes the most momentous development in U.S-Cuban trade relations since 2014. News Recap: World of Business – by Michel Mijlof The most important thing that happened in the business environment in the Netherlands is the definite bankruptcy of the huge warehouse V&D. On the last day of the last year, the 31st of December 2015, the V&D was already declared bankrupt but there were a lot of efforts for a second beginning. Unfortunately, they failed. With this bankruptcy, a major part of the Dutch history in retail business will disappear. Furthermore, the Dutch stock market is again rising a little bit. At the end of January, the AEX was at around 380 points but now it is already above 400 points (414 points, to be precise). Another business change is that Ziggo and Vodafone, two major telecommunication businesses, started a joint venture in the Netherlands. With this joint venture, they will become a big competition for KPN, biggest Dutch telecommunication company. Also, the CEO of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, has been re-elected for another tenure. She was the only candidate but everyone sees her to be a good person to lead the IMF because she also played a major role within the IMF after the big financial crisis in 2008 and after Ben Bernanke quit the job of being the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States. At least, there is the deal with the European Union and the United Kingdom. It is a political issue but it could have a lot of impact on the economy if the United Kingdom leaves the European Union. Vodafone and Ziggo Merger – by Yoeri Min On the 16th of February, Vodafone the Netherlands and Ziggo announced they will merge and continue as one company. The new company will provide both a fixed and mobile network to customers, and, therefore, will be able to compete with KPN, T-Mobile and Tele2. According to Ed Achterberg, analyst at Telecompaper, the merger will most likely have an impact on the number of jobs at both companies. Companies could utilize each other’s infrastructure and IT-systems, while combining the marketing and website. The joint-venture will most likely save 3.5 billion Euros. The merger between Vodafone and Ziggo must be approved by the European Commission, which is expected to happen at the end of 2016. News Recap: World of Politics – by Raffaele Di Carlo Europe is still prey to the refugee crisis, consequences of which are shaking the very foundations and values of the European Union. Especially alarming are the measures taken by the EU to assign specific quotas of refugees to each member country: the result is that countries unused to such vast flows of immigration, such as the Scandinavian countries , are left in utter havoc. After the dramatic events of Cologne in January, more episodes of violence are taking place in Sweden and Austria, where the people are starting to cry for a strong reaction. In the meantime, Pope Francis, in the spirit of the Jubilee of Mercy, announced that the Catholic Church will soon revisit its position on hot topics such as contraception and abortion. “Abortion is a crime, it is like murder”, he stated firmly. “Preventing such a crime, for example via contraception, can be considered as a lesser evil.” He also took advantage of the situation to question Donald Trump’s Christianity: the idea of building a wall, is the argument, goes against the Christian values of brotherhood. The presidential candidate scolded the head of the Catholic Church, urging him to stay out of political matters. The debate caused very contrasting reactions throughout the Christian world. UK PM in EU Special Status Deal – by Antoine Steen UK Prime Minister David Cameron has struck a deal with EU leaders granting Britain a special status within the Union. Cameron sought the freedom to limit welfare benefits for citizens of other EU countries living in the UK. In the end he got a compromise – an “emergency brake” on such payments for a seven-year period. He also won protections for the City from new Eurozone regulations and an exemption from the EU’s ‘ever closer union’ ideal of further integration. Cameron was able to secure the deal with the threat of “Brexit” – he had promised voters a referendum on Britain’s membership in the union. The deal allows him to return to England and claim a victory, however, the British tabloids have slammed it. And within the governing Conservative Party there remain divisions, with several senior ministers expected to back calls for Britain to leave the union. Cold War in Making – by Artur Rymer Between the 12th and the 14th February, for the 52nd time, the German city of Munich hosted its annual Munich Security Conference. Each year, several hundred of leaders and senior officials from around the world gather there to discuss threats to security that affect the globe. This February, the main point of discussion was the Syrian Conflict. Although there have been many attempts before to end the war in Syria, they were all unsuccessful due to the fact that Western countries support the rebels fighting against Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, while Russia backs the President’s regime. The issue is straining diplomatic relations between the West and Russia, already cold after the Ukrainian Crisis. Already in the very beginning of the Conference, Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, said that Western countries are bringing Europe towards another Cold War. The response from politicians from the other side was that if there is anyone who is bringing Europe towards Cold War, it is Russia. The animosities have once again proved too strong and no solution to the Syrian conflict has been reached, despite ambitious plans to end fightings within a week. As a result, the Conference has been called a huge disappointment by many and it seems that putting an end to the war will not happen any time soon. This is bad news not only for the EU Member States, who are anticipating another influx of refugees in the spring but, more importantly, also for millions of Syrians who suffer, while big powers are unable to reach an agreement. Building Bridges Across Christendom – by Ioana Nicolau Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia met in Havana, Cuba on Friday, the 12th of February. The historic encounter consisted of a discussion which mainly regarded the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. The two religious leaders addressed the need of the global community coming together in order to stop this Christian genocide. The meeting was received as a surprise by the whole world. Nevertheless, it has been speculated that the encounter had been prepared for almost three years. The discussion culminated with a joint declaration signed by both the Pope and the Russian Patriarch. Beside the horrible crimes that happen in the Middle East, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill prove to be frightened by the destruction of religious values and the emerging modern pillars of the contemporary society. Specifically, they perceive abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriages and biomedical reproduction as challenges that are sometimes decaying human ethics and implicitly, Christianity. They pledge for the need of finding a “middle way” that would not hurt the freedom of people, as well as religious dogmas. Both religious leaders recognize the need for Orthodox and Catholic Christians joining their forces in order to end this whole phenomenon, regarded as a Christianity crisis.   In the end, the encounter is regarded as a milestone for the road towards global acceptance and cooperation. Since the Great Schism of 1054, which involved the separation of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, numerous attempts for establishing this type of meeting have been made, but none was successful. Zika Virus – by Olga Kowalska The epidemic of Zika virus is recently spreading across the continents. The virus, which is transmitted by mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti), was discovered in Uganda in 1947. The recent outbreak has its epicentre in Latin America and the Caribbean, with particularly high number of infected people in Brazil. The main symptoms of Zika are similar to those of flu (fever, rash, joint pain, headache etc.), but are usually quite mild. It has been reported that actually only about 1 in 5 people infected with the virus become ill. However, the Zika virus can be dangerous for pregnant women, since the virus is believed to cause microcephaly: children are born with small heads and often damaged brains. Since there is no vaccination against Zika and there is no medication against microcephaly, the problem is really severe. Brazil is trying to stop the spread of the virus before The 2016 Summer Olympics, but the fight against it seems to be very challenging.

The Internet has started to make people create their own virtual realities. Why is this? Because whatever you do or think of in your own time, helps you shape your reality. It does not really matter if you go out and enjoy the sun or browse Google.  Most of us are thankful to the World Wide Web for making our lives easier and our reality fuller. We feel now that any piece of information is just one click away. By having a computer with the Internet connection, we seem to rule this incredibly vast kingdom of information. However, how naive would we feel when we learn that actually just roughly 1 to 5% of the Internet is available on Google? Your question might be: “Then what and where is the rest?”. For those of you, who are not able to answer this question, I believe this article is worth reading. The Internet can be compared to an iceberg. The top of it, the visible part, is referred to as “the surface web”. It contains all public information, accessible to anybody, with a use of a search engine. However, not everything that exists on the Internet can be found that way. For example, you are aware that although you can check your own e-mail, messages and accounts online, the others do not have access to them. The hidden part of the Internet is the so-called “deep web”: it includes all kinds of databases and legal research platforms. As you cannot find the details of, for instance, your bank account on Google, you can consider the deep web part of the iceberg’s bottom: “the dark web”.  The dark web is the virtual space of the Internet where information is encrypted. It cannot be accessed by using common browsers and the links to websites do not have a classic format. But most importantly, the dark web represents the anonymous part of the World Wide Web, where the location and details of a person are almost impossible to trace down. Originally developed by the U.S Navy’s research laboratory, with the purpose of facilitating communication between governments, nowadays, a large share of the dark web mainly serves as a wide drugs and guns online market. It is controlled by the FBI and NSA, bodies which are currently principally involved in fighting dark web child exploitation and fund-raising for terrorism. Surprisingly, I would say, anybody is able to become active on the dark web. Tor is the most popular among the specific software that could get you surfing on the dark net.  You can think of Tor as an alternative web. It is literally its own network, where websites don’t have any domain (although .onion is pretty common) or IP addresses. From this reason, they are completely inaccessible to search engines. “Tor” is known as the “the onion router”. This is because it hides your identity by shifting your traffic throughout different Tor servers, encrypting your traffic so that it cannot be traced back to you. Nobody can see the traffic coming from your computer; the others would rather see it as coming from different nodes. Tor software is free, really easy to install and does not need any special configuration. A lot of normal people use Tor, but its big fans can be considered journalists (especially in China), law-enforcement officers, activists, IT professionals, business executives and militaries. Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, drug dealers, pedophiles, gun sellers, and not only, prove to be very active Tor users as well. You might wonder how people can shop for guns and drugs online without being tracked down. Well, it is quite obvious that in these cases, financial transactions are not done through online banking. These people are using bitcoins in order to avoid being caught. Bitcoins are really interesting: as you already know, they are a form of digital currency, created and held in the virtual space. They are produced through “mining”, by running computers’ software in order to solve mathematical problems. The bitcoin appreciates and depreciates like any other currency. Its price spiked at in mid-2013 when one bitcoin was valuing around $1,147. Since the beginning of this year, a bitcoin is worth around $375. The really dark side of this issue Since it seems to be not that complicated to do, you might now be tempted to access the dark web. Well, after reading the experiences of other people who were curious to surf on it, but entered some really shady websites and developed psychological traumas, I would advise you not to!  The saying “curiosity killed the cat” proves to be true in this sense. Most shocking is that many people sustain to have witnessed horrible live human tortures, child abuse and murders. People are even talking about finding porn featuring humans and animals, or websites where animals are tortured and then killed by sexually attractive women. They discuss about a price of $400 in order to watch these. Some others confess that they have found human organs for sale and hitmen for hire. The worst part is that some people, who were brought to those websites by their own curiosity, have finally been discovered and threatened. How intriguing is it that somebody who is really “bored” and does not mind spending half a million dollars, could easily buy the necessary equipment in order to take over a third world government through a coup d’état? There is this story of a man, who pretended to be interested in preparing a paramilitary group for overthrowing such a government. He addressed to different gun sellers in order to request weapons suitable for his aim. The answers he was given were surprising – buying a weapon seemed to be as easy as buying a candy. Bidders came with different suggestions for the guns needed and even went further, stating that they can obtain even more kinds of weapons than the ones initially presented. One would say that everything can be a joke and that the gun sellers could be offering a scam. In the end, you are lucky if you know the continent they are operating on. However, apparently these “bad” guys have a lot of reviews on their pages, fact which might incline us to think that what happens there can be true. The same person came across a man. who was getting tired of the business. He was putting an offer of selling his online gun business. If you want to amuse yourself, here is where I found the article. Further on, Michael Roger, director of the NSA, raised the concern of ISIS raising funds for a new terrorist attack on the dark web. Moreover, Ido Wulkan, senior analyst for a Singapore-based technology company, which creates dark web harvesting technologies, revealed to Israeli newspaper Haaretz that his company has found a number of websites raising funds for ISIS through bitcoin donations. With regards to privacy concerns, it is intuitive that the dark web is also used as an online place where fake identities and credit cards are sold. I know some people who are really scared about it and keep their personal details as far as possible from the online world. Some say that they are afraid to get arrested for something that somebody else has done using their ID. This is one of the examples why you should be a bit more cautious of where you share your personal information online.

Have you ever taken a good look at the enormous painting that enriches the E hall? What do you know about it? Hell, do you even know who painted it? If not, let’s change that right about now. The war years La Folie des Rues, as the painting is called, was painted by Dutch artist Karel Appel back in 1989. Appel, by many considered to have been an expressionist, was born and raised in Amsterdam. He knew that he wanted to become a painter from when he was very young, but ‘only’ produced his first real painting at the age of fourteen — a still life of a fruit basket. For his fifteenth birthday, his wealthy uncle Karel Chevalier gave him a paint set and an easel. An avid amateur painter himself, Chevalier gave his namesake some lessons in painting. However, his parents weren’t all too happy with this development; they wanted him to become a hairdresser instead, just like his father. In fact, Appel had already been working in his father’s barbershop for a few years when in 1942, he finally decided to go and study art — a choice made with the heart, and with the heart alone. His parents, unhappy with this decision, then kicked him out of the house. Yep, things were a lot tougher then! And that included the political situation, because this was all going on in the middle of the Second World War. At the start of the Dutch famine of 1944, Appel fled his house in fear of being caught by the German occupiers, whom he refused to work for. He spent a year traveling across the country, heading towards his brother, who lived in the East. This was no time for art; this was sheer survival. Luckily, survive is what he did. After the war, Appel returned to Amsterdam, but he was obviously weakened. He was practically back at square one, but he managed to fight his way back into the business. Inspired by other painters, such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, but particularly Jean Dubuffet, he started developing his own style: bright colours, sharp contours, and seemingly simple shapes. Furthermore, he started experimenting with materials other than paint. In 1947, he even started sculpting — that is, with all kinds of used materials. Sadly, his peers never gave him much credit for any of this work, not lastly because they didn’t think of them as sculptures to begin with. His funniest creation would have to be something that he once made in his attic, for which he used wood that once belonged to his attic’s windows, an old broom, and even a vacuum cleaner hose (!). Art? I suggest that you decide for yourself, but this was a man clearly not afraid of others’ opinions. The Cobra years In 1948, Appel co-created the Experimental Group in Holland with some of his closest friends from art school. This was essentially the predecessor of the Cobra movement, often stylised CoBrA (from Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam). While the group’s work was getting rather poor reviews within the Netherlands itself, the work was much higher acclaimed in Denmark, and so they focused their attention on Copenhagen. To the group’s own surprise, it then got a completely unexpected invitation from the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1949, but this would turn out to be a big failure. Appel, disappointed with the seemingly overly critical Dutch press, then moved to Paris in 1950, where his work got a much better response. He decided to settle there, and this is where he developed his international reputation. He did so by traveling to Brazil, Mexico, the United States, and the former Yugoslavia. His international breakthrough came in 1953, when his work was exhibited during the São Paolo Art Biennial, followed by solo exhibitions in New York and Paris. During this time, Cobra fell apart, and Appel slowly adopted an increasingly wilder impasto style in the process. This style is characterised by the use of very thick brushstrokes — or, in Appel’s case, by literally throwing the paint onto the canvas, producing big clots of paint. See the video below! CC: Folia The painting itself Although it wasn’t until a few decades later that Appel painted the monster that has been covering the wall of the E hall for almost two decades now, this style can still be seen in La Folie des Rues. As the title already suggests, it represents innovative movements that, according to Appel, initially always manifest themselves in the ‘frenzy of the streets’, as the painting depicts. It’s made up of two almost identical but contrasting halves, and at 4×14 metres, it takes up as much as 56 square metres in total. It actually seemed very unlikely that this painting would end up in our university’s hands at all. The aforementioned Stedelijk Museum was the first to show interest in the painting, but its sheer size proved to be too much of a problem for them. It was then transported to the Hague to put it up in the new town hall there, but alas, the same problem arose. Finally, the Parisian Opéra faced similar problems, and it was only at this point that the University of Amsterdam came into the picture. It’s not quite clear how much was paid for the painting, but it has been said that it was insured for one million Dutch guilders. Using the exact exchange rate, this represents 453,870 euros today, or just over 8,000 euros per square metre. If that isn’t a bargain, then I don’t know what is! The final years Interestingly, Appel once said that he was just “messing about” most of the time. While he wouldn’t have been the first Amsterdammer to be falsely modest, it does seem genuinely true when you see the man at work. In any case, it sure caused a lot of controversy at the time. However, it’s naive to think that Appel went about his work without preparing well. Although he usually painted in a very spontaneous way — he was an expressionist, after all — that doesn’t mean that he didn’t carefully select his paint and other materials before he started working. His critics often say that any random child in kindergarten could produce results similar to that of Appel’s, but this is an underestimation of the sophistication than can be found in his work. In order to prove that, I hereby cordially invite whoever is entitled to that opinion to our faculty’s main hall. Alternatively, they could pay a visit to the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague one day soon, where an exhibition about his work is being held until May 16th. It features 67 paintings, 12 sculptures, and more than 60 sketches, so it makes a great introduction to anyone who’s interested in learning more about the founding father of Cobra. Towards the end of his life, Appel’s work slowly but surely found its way into the bands of fellow Dutchmen after all. However, the rather elitist press always remained very critical of his work. Karel Appel died on May 3rd, 2006, aged 85. He suffered from a heart ailment. Years before his death, Appel established the Karel Appel Foundation, whose purpose is to preserve his artworks. Let’s cherish the fact that we can marvel at one such a painting every time we walk into our faculty’s main hall!

Discussions about what should be changed at the UvA are only as frequent as discussions on what should not be changed at the UvA. Everyone is by now familiar with last year’s protests at several faculties, yet at the construction site known as Roeterseiland things have been quiet. Is there less to complain about or are the students just less rebellious? A few weeks ago, Marijn Kool, a teacher and former student at the Faculty of Economics, shared his opinion on the study in an article (in Dutch) for Folia called “Wake up, students of economics!” The article was not as much about students’ habit of being late as it was about the poor state of economic teaching at the FEB. Mr. Kool’s main argument is that the study of economics misses a connection with reality and does not promote critical thinking. According to Kool the curriculum of economics is still taught from an outdated and even harmful perspective that pays little attention to recent developments like climate change and inequality. In addition to this, students are not challenged to think critically about the material but just simply memorize and replicate the models and theories they are fed with. He blames this both on simple examination as well as the students’ uninspired attitude that is just aimed at passing. The study of economics could use a shake-up, which Kool believes should come from you and me: the sleeping students of economics. I agree with Kool for the most part. Critical thinking is notoriously absent in the current curriculum. Straightforward examination and students’ lacklustre attitude are named as reasons but there is another issue at the heart of both these problems. At the Faculty of Economics, generally every course starts and finishes within 8 (or 4) weeks. This implies that, including midterms, students never have more than only 4 weeks before their next round of exams. The courses are of a decent level, which means the lecturer has to dive in headfirst if students are to be fully submerged in the material by the end of week 6. Add to this the BSA-criteria that looms over all first and second-year students and the picture is complete. The current academic year resembles a race with 8-week laps, where students are constantly speeding towards exams. In this setting little time is left to stop, take a look in the back mirror and reflect on what is going on. This is not meant to demonstrate how miserable or difficult student life is; it is nothing short of amazing and does not require any pity at all. However, the current scheduling is not designed to cultivate critical thinking, regardless of the students’ attitude. The fast pace demotivates the aspiring critics and leaves the less motivated untouched. We are of course still free to expect that the truly dedicated students won’t let their critical minds be tempered by a busy schedule but, without sounding too economic, expectations should be rational. This brings me to Mr. Kool’s second point: the outdated, possibly even dangerous economic models that make up today’s curriculum. Firstly, the outdated argument seems like an exaggeration. Some of the models taught do have a long history and rest on many simplifying, extreme assumptions. This limits their validity but does not erase their usefulness. The theories that form the foundation of classical economics still have relevant conclusions today and still provide new students with a basic toolkit for understanding the economy. More relevant is the second issue: whether the theories are harmful. Kool argues the study is doing wrong by teaching future policy makers models where economic agents just act selfishly and maximize their own gains. This is a complicated point and one that troubles economics in general. Should economics describe the world as objectively as possible or should it provide value judgements about which policy is favourable? In other words: should economics aspire to be a positive or a normative science? This question has no simple answer but in the current Bachelor of Economics there is mainly teaching from a positive perspective – the emphasis is on understanding the world through theories and not on what is labelled as “right”. As I understand it, Mr. Kool believes the curriculum should shift to a more normative perspective with a stronger focus on the ethical side of theories. This is a fair point to make – the crisis showed what perverse incentives can do to a group of mostly well-educated people. As the role of economists in society is becoming more prominent, as well as controversial, adding a more ethical approach to the study is fitting. A particular theory put forward by Kool as being defective is the consumer choice theory, one of the cornerstones of microeconomics. The consumer choice theory, in its simplest version, is focused on consumers maximizing their utility by choosing a bundle of goods given an income constraint. Kool states that the theory is old and rests on wrong assumptions of people and firms being ignorantly selfish. Yet, similar to a hundred years ago, people are still maximizing utility and companies are still chasing profits. The decision economic agents face are without question more complex than “more-is-better” and do evolve over time, but are they essentially different? A hundred years ago people did not care much about the climate or eating “plofkip”, but does that imply their consuming behaviour has completely changed? Modern issues do not make our older theories worthless. Many of their applications and insights remain valuable, though on topics like inequality and global warming theoretical conclusions are often insufficient. In some cases models are adapted to better deal with these issues (for example, the externalities referred to by Kool) but staying inside the boundaries of models and equations remains too naive. Taking into account ethical considerations when discussing the conclusions and weaknesses of a model is crucial to good economic education. To a certain extent Mr. Kool’s critique refers to valid points for improvement. The study of economics needs a change. However, the emphasis on teaching from (older) economic models is not wrong in principle. It does leave room for improvement when dealing with several modern topics that challenge our economy. More time in lectures to expand on the flaws and limits of the theories discussed would benefit critical thinking and provide space for an ethical assessment of what the students are being taught. Central to these issues lies the current schedule that races through the material and does not encourage students to get more involved with the content of the studies. Kool is completely right in stating that: “critical thinking and a more broad mind-set are being suffocated” in today’s studies. The Bachelor of Economics should try and find a stronger balance between producing quantitatively capable economists and ethically responsible policy-makers.

Although we don’t often think that way, probably the biggest contributions that the Old Continent has ever made to human history were the European explorers and scientists. Columbus, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Polo, Vespucci – all of them looked beyond the horizon and into the stars and wondered how to reach them, how to cross frontier after frontier and learn the secrets of the universe. And that they did – if not by themselves, then with others who stood on their “giants’ shoulders”. And although humankind was finally able to cross “the final frontier” – the cosmos – it was the USA and Russia that really pioneered space research and exploration, while Europe seemed to have grown comfortable with our “pale blue dot”, not so eager to leave home anymore. As a result, when you hear of a new space launch, a new discovery, or a mission to Mars, the first thing that springs to mind is the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). But have you ever heard about its Atlantic sibling – the European Space Agency (ESA)? There is a chance you haven’t. And that has to change. The European Space Agency is an international organisation that currently has 22 member states across Europe and employs 2,200 people from different nationalities and specialisations. Its headquarters are located in Paris, but it has several sites in six other member states, including its base, the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. The beginnings of the organisation can be traced back to 1964, when its predecessors, the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) and the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) came into life. Eleven years later, in 1975, convention on the establishment of the European Space Agency had been signed. Since then, ESA has carried out and participated in countless projects aimed at space exploration and research. As they put it on their website: “The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.” But what does ESA actually do? “ESA’s job is to draw up the European space programme and carry it through. ESA’s programmes are designed to find out more about Earth, its immediate space environment, our Solar System and the Universe, as well as to develop satellite-based technologies and services, and to promote European industries. ESA also works closely with space organisations outside Europe.” What exactly does that entail? For such a big organisation it is impossible to describe all the numerous projects in a single article, especially since many (if not most) of ESA’s projects would require complicated scientific explanations. Still, a lot of their work can be extremely interesting and inspiring, even for “space amateurs” who do not hold a Ph.D in Advanced Physics. The focus of this article will be on three such examples. ESA’s most famous project was the Rosetta Mission. In March 2004, the Rosetta spacecraft was launched from Earth with the goal of being the first of its kind to land on a flying comet. Ten years later, on the 12th of November 2014, the scientific world and internauts from all around the globe held their breaths in anticipation of whether Rosetta’s robotic lander Philae would successfully touch the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Despite some technical problems, the operation was a huge success and for the first time ever, humanity could say it was able to land on a comet. Since then, Philae has sent invaluable information to Earth, including pictures and data on the internal, chemical composition of the cosmic body, which will help us learn more about the origins of the Solar System. If you want to find out more about the mission, click here. There is also a blog devoted to the Rosetta Mission and an interactive 3D Solar System map, which shows the locations of the Rosetta spacecraft and the comet on every day since the launch. The Galileo Project is ESA’s and the European Commission’s (EC) ongoing project that will make Europe join the group of players with their own global navigation satellite system. By 2020, ESA is supposed to have thirty fully operational navigation satellites in the Earth’s orbit, with accuracy up to centimeters due to a doubled amount of satellites that will take your position with coverage of high latitudes, allowing for the system’s use as far as the northern reaches of Norway! Since the 17th of December 2015, twelve satellites are already in place, and the first services are to commence by the end of 2016. According to the EC, the satellite navigation market will be worth 250 billion euros by the year 2022, and today 6% to 7% of the EU economy (around 950 billion euros) is dependent on navigation satellites. Therefore, Galileo’s goal is twofold: to make Europe independent of American and Russian satellite navigation systems, and to achieve social and economic gains from the project’s exploitation (about 90 billion euros in the first twenty years of operation, both directly from revenues and indirectly from improved system efficiencies). Additionally, Galileo’s cutting-edge technology will give Europe, aside from improved accuracy and coverage, the ability to compete and even outperform its American and Russian counterparts. If you want to find out more about Galileo Project, click here. Any proper space agency should, on top of all the research and science, try to send humans into space. On top of participation in the International Space Station (ISS) programme (check out this video by ESA to find out how the toilet on ISS works) and operating an extremely remote base in Antarctica that imitates life on other worlds, ESA is also helping NASA with its Orion spacecraft. Orion is a new spacecraft that is aimed at carrying humans further from home than ever before – beyond the Moon, to asteroids, and possibly even to Mars. ESA’s contribution to the project is the European Service Module, which they compare to a train engine; after launching it into the Earth’s orbit, it will pull the capsule with the astronauts and it will provide the crew with essentials such as power, water, air (oxygen and nitrogen), as well as a nice temperature. Thus, Europe is actively participating in mankind’s attempts to conquer space. If you want to find out more about Orion, go to ESA’s or NASA’s webpages about the project. An organisation that is involved with technological research and space exploration of the highest level certainly requires a lot of funds. With how much budget does ESA operate? In 2016, ESA’s budget is 5.25 billion euros. ESA’s member states contribute almost 70% to this amount, proportionally to their GDP. Although ESA is not part of the European Union, almost all of the agency’s member states are also members of the EU. On top of that, ESA cooperates closely with the EU on projects such as Galileo and, in turn, the EU provides about 20% of ESA’s budget. Of course, 5.25 billion euros seems like an astronomical amount (pun intended), but for a space agency it’s actually ridiculously little. Considering that ESA member states have about 500 million citizens in total, it’s about 10 euros from each citizen for an organisation that develops amazing new technologies, builds up staggering projects that lead us into the future, and really lets us touch the stars. In comparison, NASA’s budget for the year 2016 is 18.5 billion dollars (about 16.6 billion euros). With the United States’ population of about 320 million, that’s 58 dollars (about 52 euros) per person! At the same time, many scientists, such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson, have been arguing that NASA “isn’t as much an expenditure as it is an investment”, and should therefore receive much more federal funding that it currently is – not only because of its importance in exploring mankind’s future, but also because its innovation is crucial to the economy as a whole. Once again, Europe lags far behind when it comes to research, innovation, and forward-thinking. That is especially saddening since our economy really needs boost and innovation, and outer space is quite literally our (not too distant) future. We’d better be prepared when the time comes. The European Space Agency is certainly among the best projects that have happened to the European continent in the past century. Its effects, however, do and will continue to positively affect people all around the world. Through projects like the Rosetta Mission, ESA helps us learn about yesterday and understand today. Through Galileo, it improves today. Through Orion, it reaches towards tomorrow. ESA’s mission should be seen as an investment, and as such, no expense should be spared to further its projects. And this is not only about innovation, technology, or economy; this is also about the very survival of our species. Earth is our home, but it is a fragile home, and the only way of ensuring the continuation of mankind is to leave this planet and spread – or, in economic terms, to diversify the risk. And there isn’t much time! We should all realise what’s at stake here. We should stop marching and instead start running towards the future. Space programmes such as the European Space Agency are giving off the right example by doing exactly that and, therefore, they are something we should all be proud of – not just as Europeans, but as humans.

The results from the Iowa caucus are in, with Hillary Clinton clinching a narrow victory over Bernie Sanders in the race for the Democratic nomination and Ted Cruz cruising to victory ahead of his rivals in the race for the Republican nomination. The biggest winner of the night was Marco Rubio, who signalled his credibility as a candidate for the GOP by finishing a strong third in a state in which he was expected to garner few votes. The biggest loser? Donald Trump, who once tweeted the phrase “No one remembers who came in second” and who, in the Iowa Republican caucus, came in second. With all the media attention focused on the theatre of the campaign – the ups and downs, the winners and losers – it is easy to forget what really matters: who actually has a chance of becoming the next president. The Contenders The Democratic nomination is a two-horse race between the “establishment” candidate – former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who narrowly lost the nomination to Barack Obama in 2004 – and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who only registered as a Democrat in 2015, having previously served as an independent. On many key issues the pair have similar views. Both want to see the overturning of Citizens United, a Supreme Court ruling that allows politicians to circumvent rules on maximum donations to political campaigns by raising unlimited sums of money through the use of political action committees. Both support an increase of the federal minimum wage from its current level of $7.25 an hour – Clinton to $12 an hour, Sanders to $15 – and both are opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. But Sanders seems to have captured the zeitgeist, much in the way Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn did in the UK, by promoting an unashamedly socialist platform that would normally be anathema to American voters. Much like Donald Trump, he has touted his independence from big money donors and Democratic voters are increasingly buying into his message, with the latest Democratic poll numbers showing Sanders on 45% to Clinton’s 48% – as narrow a lead as Clinton has had in the race so far. In contrast, the Republican field has been dominated by several characters who have had their moments in the media spotlight. Jeb Bush started his campaign as the strong favourite for the Republican nomination, in large part because of his family name and political connections. As of 1 February 2016, he had raised $155.6m – a sum that dwarfs the war chests of all other Republican candidates, his campaign having made use of the Bush family network to raise funds. But he has had little success in winning over other Republican donors. And it’s little wonder why – he ended up spending $5,000 for each vote received in Iowa, all the funding in the world not being able to make up for his lack of natural charisma and uninspiring message. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson – a strange man who has a painting of himself with Jesus, keeps a room in his home dedicated to his awards and certificates, and has been put in the uncomfortable position of having to defend the truth of his claims that he once tried to stab someone – has had his moment in the limelight as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, but failed to capitalise on the media attention and faded into obscurity. Throughout his campaign Donald Trump has been making the headlines, with each controversial comment inexplicably boosting his poll ratings. In his speech announcing his candidacy, Trump said of Mexican immigrants, “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people”, the qualifier seemingly expressing some doubt over whether it is possible that there might be some decent Mexican immigrants out there. His proposed solution to the issue is to build a “great wall” on the border and make Mexico pay for it. Other wild policies include a complete shutdown on all Muslims entering the U.S. and a plan to “cut the head off ISIS and take their oil”. Despite polling higher than all other Republican candidates, the Iowa caucus results suggest that his supporters haven’t been turning up to vote. The world breathes a sigh of relief. Like Trump, the second-highest polling Republican candidate, Ted Cruz, is running on a platform of fear and is despised by the Republican establishment. But unlike Trump, his devout Christianity endears him to the Evangelicals who make up much of the Republican base. And it is this appeal that won Cruz the highest number of votes in Iowa and is expected to propel his campaign. In order to win the nomination, however, Cruz will have to show how he can win over swing voters who don’t share his socially conservative views. Enter Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the darling of the GOP establishment, who many on the Right consider to be the best “mainstream” candidate in the field. Young and charismatic, he stands out among the Republican candidates – in image, not ideology. He hails from Florida, a key swing state in presidential elections that carries a huge number of electoral votes due to its high population (click here for an explanation of the Electoral College system). And his Cuban-American heritage would be an asset when courting the Latino community, who make up 12% of the electorate. Rubio would likely present the strongest opponent to Clinton but he is not hugely popular with the Republican base, his most recent poll average being just 13.8% – way behind Trump’s 36%. Why this Election REALLY Matters It is difficult to ever admit during a presidential campaign that that particular juncture is any less critical than any other. Threats are unending. But there is one huge reason to believe that this election really matters: the next president could appoint as many as four Supreme Court justices (out of a total of nine). What does this mean in practice? Well, a conservative-dominated Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1973 case that guaranteed women the constitutional right to abortion. It could reverse the recent ruling legalising same-sex marriage. It could block attempts to revisit the Citizens United ruling that allows corporations to spend unlimited sums of money influencing federal elections. And it could strike down the Affordable Care Act, which saw 17m uninsured people gain health coverage. So Who Will Win? Predicting who might win an election can be notoriously tricky. Over the years polling has become less accurate as it becomes increasingly difficult to reach people via phone at home. Political polls conducted by Pew Research had response rates of 35% in the 1990s, a number that has fallen to just 9% today. Estimating candidates’ popularity by looking at media coverage is also becoming less effective as people get their news from increasingly diverse sources. There is one method, however, that has shown great accuracy in forecasting who will win an election: prediction markets. Such markets, in which people place bets on certain outcomes, have the advantage of incorporating new information in real-time, much in the way a publicly-known event is immediately incorporated into a company’s share price. And the markets benefit from a phenomenon called the wisdom of crowds, whereby the collective opinion of a group of individuals is more accurate than that of a single expert. Unlike political commentators and pollsters, people who bet on political outcomes put their money where their mouth is. If you are convinced Sanders is going to win the Democratic nomination, you can bet on it, and with pretty good odds, too. If you are certain that Trump could never be voted into office, you would be wise to bet on his opponents. Using odds from Betfair, Election Betting Odds estimates the probability of each candidate winning their primary and the presidency. Accurate at the time of writing, Clinton is estimated to have an 80% chance of winning the Democratic nomination to Sanders’ 18%. Rubio has a 39% chance of winning the Republican primary, Trump has a 30% chance, Cruz has a 13% chance, and Bush has an 8% chance. Carson trails way behind with a 0.2% chance. As for who will be the next president, the odds suggest Clinton has a 51% chance, Rubio has a 19% chance, and Trump and Sanders – despite capturing so much media attention – have only a 10% chance and a 7% chance respectively. So there it is. No doubt there will be twists and turns but the most likely scenario appears to be a Clinton–Rubio matchup. As for who will be the president? At those odds, my money is on Clinton.

We thought the crisis was fading out. We thought we had suppressed a financial crisis, a global economic crisis, a debt crisis and a Eurozone crisis. After all, economic growth rates were starting to increase, world trade starting to recover and unemployment rates starting to fall. But November 2013 Lawrence Summers made it very clear that we were too optimistic. Summers, former Secretary of Treasury under the Clinton administration and Director of the National Economic Council under the Obama administration, held a famous speech in Washington DC at the 14th Annual IMF Research Conference. Some considered it in the light of Summers’ failure becoming the successor of Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Fed. But the speech was much more than that. Summers’ speech was a very clear statement that one cannot count on economic regularities to conclude that the crisis will ebb away automatically after some time. Things might be very different. The economy could turn in a state of secular stagnation Summers’ speech was about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of monetary policies. That the economy turned into depression in 2008 was not a unique event. The drop in output levels and the rise in unemployment rates were in a sense unique as they were larger than experienced in earlier crises. But Summers’ point was a different one. He argued that monetary policies had turned so expansionary that interest rates had hit the zero lower bound. At this bound, interest rates cannot be lowered any further, reducing the effectiveness of monetary expansionary policies. His judgement is confirmed by the move in industrialized countries towards quantitative easing, a new form of monetary policies. The consequence of this reduced effectiveness of monetary policies is that the government should employ other types of policies in order to start the economy growing again. And that the economy could turn in a state of secular stagnation if more adverse economic shocks would follow and governments would fail to reinvent their economic policies. Growth of consumption per capita could structurally fall below 0.5 percent per year The scenario of more adverse economic shocks hitting the world economy echoes an analysis that Robert Gordon made one year earlier. Gordon claimed that we should not expect the same numbers of economic growth as in the past decades. He claimed that we should not expect a new industrial revolution; there was not that much left to be invented. He claimed instead that the world economy was facing strong headwinds in the decennia to come. Changes in demography (the ageing of the population), education, inequality, globalization, energy and the overhang of debt would all contribute to lower rates of economic growth for a long period of time. According to Gordon, growth of consumption per capita could structurally fall below 0.5 percent per year for the majority of the population. Robotics is now starting to change dramatically our patterns of consumption, production, work and leisure Now, it is important to note that these are possibilities; things could turn different. Indeed, today would not be the first time in history that future economic scenarios are formulated that later on turn out to have been too pessimistic. Moreover, there are more and more signals that robotics is now starting to change dramatically our patterns of consumption, production, work and leisure. Many consider it to be a new digital revolution that may significantly upgrade the levels of productivity. One could add to this that in today’s world economy that is so heavily globalized, technological innovations may spread much faster over the globe than they did in the past. In other words, globalization could act as a multiplier, aggravating the economic changes that the technologically leading countries in the world will bring about. In addition, there are more factors that may speed up the pace of technological change. Population ageing is a well-known example. In an aged society in which labour is scarce, wage rates will be high, inducing entrepreneurs to seek for innovations that will economize on the labour factor. Increasing longevity is another factor. This will contribute to a large and increasing market for technological innovations that increase the quality of life for people that are in some way physically handicapped. Climate change may be an even more important factor. Increased attention for the world climate and the perhaps irreversible changes that may occur in it if our consumption and production habits fail to change calls for a wave of technological innovations. The end of a perhaps exceptionally long period of a quite standard economic crisis In the end, the current episode may turn out not to have been the beginning of a period of secular stagnation, but rather the end of a perhaps exceptionally long period of a quite standard economic crisis. This is the view held by Kenneth Rogoff, co-author of the ironically titled book ‘This time is different’. Rogoff has pointed out several times that previous financial crises, in different time episodes and in different parts of the world, feature a large number of similarities. These similarities pertain to the build-up of a crisis, its course (in general a very sudden drop in some financial economic variables) and its follow up, as regards the private and the public sector of the economy. Particularly, the behaviour of housing prices, equity prices, unemployment, output and the public debt is not too far away from what earlier crises have showed. He argues that forecasters were generally too optimistic that the recovery from the crisis would be V-shaped. That the recovery was more U-shaped could have been derived from the experience with earlier financial economic crises in the world. Hence, Rogoff warns not to conclude too fast that this time is different and to take seriously the scenario in which economic growth will return to what can be considered normal in a historical sense. Unfortunately, Rogoff also admits that different crises all have their unique features as well. Hence, despite their similarities, historical experience cannot be used to come up with detailed forecasts of future economic developments. Eventually, it is time that will tell whether secular stagnation was a brilliant new insight or more of a red herring. #crisis #economicgrowth #secularstagnation #technologicalinnovation

Living abroad brings two major changes into the way you perceive what happens in your native country. First of all, you realise that things get serious when people around start asking you: hey, politics in Poland right now, what is it about? Second, internet becomes your main source of knowledge. This is exactly what happened to me lately when Law and Justice populist party (‘PiS- Prawo i Sprawiedliwość’ in Polish) won both Presidential and Parliamentary elections. How did it happen? Starting from the background points of clarification, Polish politics is for many years now dominated by two major players- aforementioned conservative Law and Justice party and the more liberal, centre-right Civic Platform (‘PO- Platforma Obywatelska’ in Polish). For eight years-long term of office, PO was leading the coalition in the Parliament and for five years had its member at the presidential post. Their reign was hailed by the public to be idle and deceitful. Moreover, their campaign during presidential elections was, putting it mildly, mediocre, which was caused by their overconfidence and arrogance. Meanwhile, strongly conservative PiS played all in during both elections: it acted as much more moderate than usual in their opinions and chose those candidates, which had the sympathy of the public – Andrzej Duda and Beata Szydło, instead of its infamous and distrusted leader, Jarosław Kaczyński. This, along with the failure of PO, let them attract the electorate broader than their usual agrarian or elderly, conservative supporters and gain the overall majority in the parliament and win presidential elections. What does this mean? This is the first time since the fall of the communism when a single party alone has the complete power to govern Poland. This fact itself seems not too appealing for anybody with balanced, moderate views. But what is even more worrying, PiS seems to had forgotten their moderate attitude right after the elections and got right back to what we remember from 2005-2007 (period in which PiS was previously in power): radical conservative and Christian attitudes, unconstitutional actions and a come back of badly remembered figures. Kaczyński seems to stand behind all the Prime Minister Szydło’s and President Duda’s actions and decisions. Constitutional Tribunal Sabotage President Duda has signed a law requiring the Polish Constitutional Tribunal to reach two-thirds agreement on verdicts, which will handicap reaching any agreement and court’s functioning. Moreover, PiS has dismissed five of the judges beforehand elected by PO, claiming them to be chosen unconstitutionally and appointing new ones. Those actions are claimed to be undertaken in order to prevent the Tribunal from intervening in PiS’s actions. This made people come into the streets and attracted the European Union’s attention, unfortunately with no real effect, besides belittling government’s reactions. Late Night Stands Discussions and voting on any significant issue in parliamentary sessions are now made during late night hours. PiS parliamentary deputies are not in majority in the chamber before 4 p.m. due to work in ministries, as they explain, therefore, no voting takes place earlier than that. Situation like this is highly inconvenient, as it hinders society’s ability to control parliament’s proceedings. Economy Wrecking During elections, PiS made some promises which they are desperate to hold. They have declared to lower the retirement age for both sexes, which can be disastrous in its outcomes for aging Polish society. They have promised as well to supply people over 65 with free medication and to install a monthly supplement for every kid in the family, in the amount of 500zlotys (about 100 euros). Gradually, the idea evlolved to be a supplement only for families with more than one child. Still, there is no plan on where the funds will come from. Also, they have boasted about the tax changes, which will put higher rates on banks, benefiting its customers. They did not take into account the fact that banks will just change its charges, therefore, ones to pay in the end will be the customers. What those ideas have in common is that they show not even a shadow of economic understanding and a lot of cheap populism. All of those made Poland fall in S&P ratings, with the forcast of even bigger degradation. A come back of surveillance and state-media One of PiS deputies, Mrs Pawłowicz, has written lately that demand for the public media to be apolitical is a damaging, idealised myth, impeding the control over the country and every legitimate government has a right to dispose of them. However radical it sounds, this is exactly what PiS’s actions would be if they were translated into words. They have put into power a media law, which has purged public media of all journalists critical towards the government. As PiS did with the Tribunal – they substituted those publicists with their own people. If the freedom of media wasn’t enough of a Communism era comeback, an online surveillance law had come into life, which allows the officials to access private online data with no clear constraints or court’s permissions. EU-independent wannabee Even though Poland is one of the countries, which gained the most from the EU membership, now when Brussels is calling us to come to senses, PiS tends to ignore. They pay no attention to EU’s warnings and condemn their actions, especially when migration crisis is concerned. Even during the debate in European Parliament, Prime Minister Szydło blamed the entire fault of constitutional violations on the Civic Platform Party and made no real explanation of PiS’s actions. If we continue that way, we may end up to be the first country in the EU history to have its vote in the European Council taken away on the basis of regulations’ breaches. Is there anything to laugh about? Besides noticing seriousness of the situation, thanks to the existence of surrounding interest, the second thing that changes after emigrating is the fact that the Internet becomes the main source of your information. Not newspapers, not television. It is online platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, that supply you with the facts and public’s reactions to them. And when it gets bad and there is nothing you can do about it, Internet is always one of the largest supporters of the theory that laughing at a situation is always better than crying. And PiS has supplied the online mockers with a lot of material to work with. The vice minister of health has proposed wearing ‘loose pantaloons’ as an alternative for public funding of in vitro and as a means to counteract sterility. The leader of PiS has called citizens who went out to streets in protest against constitution breaches ‘a worse sort of Poles’. He also said that immigrants carry contagious diseases, which reminds me too much of Nazi statements about Jews back in the 20th century. Minister of Foreign Affairs has stated that being vegetarian, cycling and using renewable energy sources is against traditional, Polish values. All of those have caused a wave of memes, Facebook groups and hashtags. But has it caused also enough scepticism and second thoughts? Being a country with a rich history of tolerance, Poland has started to slowly drift towards radical attitudes in all the aspects. Radical Christian values are being imposed, even though the country is claimed to be religion-neutral. Surveillance is being introduced, media’s freedom of speech is being limited and xenophobia is being praised. We are really close to cross the line behind which there is no option of coming back. We might have all been desperate for change and tired with PO’s reign. Okay, let’s admit it, we might have been even fooled by PiS’s campaign and fake change of attitudes. We might have hoped for new to come and had too much faith into the phrase that ‘people change’. But there is also saying that ‘people make mistakes’ and I believe that this is the one we should stick to right now. We, Polish people, should admit that we made a mistake giving PiS all the power and we should try to stop the situation from getting worse. Because if we let it continue with its own pace, it will soon be too late to catch on.

During its history, mankind spent the vast majority of its time more or less in the same way: from the appearance of the first homo sapiens, around 200 000 years ago, to the Middle Ages, you would still see groups of people living in fortified villages, hunting, fishing and farming with their own bare hands, at the mercy of weather, occasionally meeting at the marketplace to trade their goods. Not to mention transportation: as a matter of fact, the horse has been the most efficient means of getting from point A to point B until the second half of the 19th century, when trains were invented. Then, suddenly, as if from some kind of collective frenzy, mankind started developing new technologies, one after another, in an astonishing race all over the last 500 years, up to the present day. There has been cumulatively more technological progress in the last 300 years alone than in all of the Bronze Age, Iron Age, Classical Age and Middle Age together, and the advances do not seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Nowadays, we enjoy services and commodities our ancestors could barely fathom, and the business of trade itself has evolved to fit what has been defined by the World Economic Forum as the “fourth industrial revolution”. If the first industrial revolution was triggered by Watt’s invention of the steam engine, the second one by Smith’s model for the division of labor and the third one by the invention of computers, the fourth industrial revolution owes its existence to the Internet, our world wide web whose potential is still unknown. The rise of a global network gave birth to a virtual arena where consumers and businesses can communicate even before hitting the marketplace, and in such a scenario filled with opportunities and risks alike, it wouldn’t take long for a brand new idea of business to be born: businesses which do not own assets, but data. The most outstanding example of this new approach is Facebook itself. As a social network, it does not create or sell any product: it just applies complex algorithms to put profiles in contact (the famous ‘people you might know’ section, as well as the pages that occasionally appear on your wall), and profits from advertisement. And yet, Facebook’s market capitalization is 267 billion dollars as of 2016, making Mark Zuckerberg’s firm the leader in the social networking sector. But the innovations brought by the Internet are not limited to contacts between people, and the most adventurous entrepreneurs have already taken advantage of it in other departments. Taxi drivers in London strike against Uber. It is the case of Uber, a San Francisco-based enterprise developed as a smartphone app designed to put people in search of a ride in contact with willing drivers, for a predetermined fare. Apparently a simple idea, Uber is gradually replacing taxis in their role of “chauffeurs for hire” all over the world and is now estimated to be worth around 62.5 billion dollars, more than Hertz and General Motors. However, this is not to the liking of taxi drivers themselves, who have more than once actually sued the company or organized strikes against their allegedly unfair competition, with alternate success. In the short stay business, AirBnB is the most widely used platform for temporary accommodation, connecting landlords and tenants searching for a room to spend a night or two in more than 190 countries around the globe. It doesn’t own a single hotel, and yet it is valued 8 billions dollars more than the Hilton group, that owns 4500 more or less luxurious residences. Finally, I would also like to draw your attention to Amazon, one of the most popular online marketplaces ever. Born as an online book store in 1995, in only two years it became listed on the stock exchange, and by the new millennium it had enriched its catalogue with all sorts of goods: from clothing to electronics, from cosmetics to food. There is little you cannot find on Amazon, and it also tends to come pretty cheap, if you search well. Many argue that the recent downfall of Walmart, which had to close 269 stores by the start of the new year, is due to the merciless competition by Amazon. Unable to keep up with its competitor’s prices and delivery service, Walmart is planning to also focus on e-commerce in the foreseeable future. So what is the secret behind the success of this new line of business? We are facing a real logic of “non-possession”: new firms do not focus on the physical, material aspect of their organization, but rather on their interaction with customers, specializing in intuitive interfaces and clever algorithms that allow users to find exactly what they’re looking for, at any time, anywhere in the world. It is a wise strategy, if you think of it: after all, the asset part of the company is usually the most expensive to set up, while the customer relations sector is considered the most profitable. By emancipating themselves from the former and embracing the latter, these companies have potential for immediate and impressive profit without actually providing any good themselves: their trade is to put you and the service provider you are looking for in contact! If we are really entering a new stage in the evolution of mankind, then we have to be ready for all sorts of wonders: soon cooking, cleaning, gardening and even looking after children might be a thing of the past. As this free market of “thin air” grows and develops, it really is only a matter of time, before somebody comes up with an app or a website for each and every one of these daily needs. But the real question is: will you take the challenge?

History is certainly an interesting thing and often also fun. Archimedes of Syracusa – yes, the guy with the trademark words “Eureka! Eureka!” (I found it! I found it!) – made the discovery, which bears his name (Archimede’s principle,) by accident when in the bath tub. Bluntly put, Penicilin was also discovered by accident, by Sir Alex Fleming in 1928, while carving into the mold around a bacteria culture he was growing. The PostIT notes were the result of a failed adhesive that turned to be a great business idea when applied in the right place. Morale? Many discoveries in the world’s history were made by mistake and/or as a result of a totally unrelated challenge. IBM’s Watson was no exception. In the previous article I highlighted the essentials of cognitive computing and IBM’s incredible breakthroughs. I have touched a bit of the hardware aspect and I have expressed my enthusiasm about its possible applications. I have also tried to point out the main differences between a conventional computer and a cognitive one: while a normal computer is programmed to do something, a CC is programmed to learn by itself how to do the exact same tasks. The WATSON project was started as a challenge. In the beginning of the 21st century, the American (very popular) TV quiz contest Jeopardy! needed a worthy non-human participant that could beat its all time record holders. And it did not take long before that became reality. About 3 years of thorough preparation and a team of 20 scientists from IBM Research were just enough to start the THIRD era of computing. “This is the third era of computing. The first age was mechanical computation, relying on punch cards. The second was programmable systems with input/output storage — what we use today. Now systems are trained or taught instead of programmed. From a developer’s standpoint, you have to get into teaching a computer.” – said Steven Abrams, director of technology for the Watson Ecosystem, in an interview with InformationWeek. Watson is now able to compete in the show at a human expert level in terms of precision, confidence and speed, after an insecure start. Its launch has revealed that the computer’s ability to input complicated sentences and to provide accurate outputs was one of the biggest difficulties to overcome, in all computing’s history. Years later, Watson was past that point and has beautifully managed to reach a level high enough to be able to filter natural language, now even in a couple of other tongues than English. Therefore, Watson’s strengths are: scale, the ability to process natural language and the capacity to always assimilate new information. Beautiful! Cognitive computers will enable us to understand the complexity of big data (in a market of trillion dollars), it will help us understand how the human brain works, it will help us integrate universal technology in our daily lives, it will save money and it will reveal patterns no one has observed before and only imagination is the boundary of this list. Data, data, data.  According to IBM, 80% of world’s data is unstructured. And Watson has the ability to filter it all at an unimaginable speed, to support its outputs with evidence and to offer context and insights. Just think of the business potential CC carries. CC’s capabilities will be used for analytical tasks and will help us make the right decisions at the right place and time. When brands are becoming more and more about experiences, with a computer picking up data about one’s customers (from social media, from the available literature, from computer-human interaction) and scaling it to such an extent, it would be crystal clear where and what to improve. Some may worry about safety, but let me offer you an example. Imagine world’s biggest hackers try to obtain sensitive governmental information. What will Watson do in case of an attack? It will use its abilities and its past experiences to almost immediately create a cure. It will not only defend itself (and us), but it will also add this just-solved problem to its skills set, continually improving. The technology can also be implemented on mobile phones, on self-driving cars and on… pretty much everything. Quantum Computers If everything was not already really promising, Quantum Computing has finally become reality as well. It is fair to say the technology has been there for already 15 years, but perfecting it and making it publicly available only happened recently. For a long time scientist have been struggling to figure out how to use the immensity of potential Quantum Mechanics have. The problem with today’s computers is that they have reached their top capabilities. For the average users, sending e-mails, watching movies and even coding, do not require extremely many high-end specifications. And even when they do, there is always the possibility to upgrade your memory or to add another unit. Finding a place (virtually) for deploying your work is not the real problem. It is the complexity of the tasks that has outrun the capacity of modern computers. As I was previously pointing out, computers retrieve, process and store data. This all happens in the same environment (well, almost, as they became significantly “smaller”) as compared to half a century ago: electrical circuits and bits. “Right now, regular computer chips store information as binary bits, which are either in a 0 or 1 state. This system works well, but it means that there’s a finite amount of data that can be processed. Qubits, on the other hand, can be in the state of 0, 1, or both at the same time, which gives quantum computers unprecedented processing power… if we can work out how to build them.” (Fiona MacDonald) Today’s computers use binary bits to store information, so values of either 0 or 1. Conversely, Quantum Computers use quantum bits or “qubits”, allowing a storing unit to take values of 0 and 1 at the same time. Just like an atom, they can virtually be in two different places at once. The Qubits are particles magnetically suspended in an unimaginably cold environment (just a couple fractions above absolute 0 or in fancier terms, 0 Kelvin ~ -273 degrees Celsius). The extreme temperatures keep the particles in a superposition that allows them to shift values instantly, creating a so-called quantum speed-up. This enables the machine’s computational power to grow exponentially with every added qubit. In fact, every extra qubit doubles the amount of numbers that the computer can process at once. While 10 Qubits can store 1024 numbers, 11 Qubits can store 2048. 100 Qubits enable the computer to store exactly 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376 numbers. Do you think this is a crazy fantasy? Well, just wait until I tell you that a dozen companies have already made progress in this field. D-Wave Systems (Canada) for instance, has already started selling out their supercomputers and companies just like Google or Microsoft invested heavily in the development of this madness. In fact, both of the abovementioned have been supplied with D-Wave’s technology and both are constantly trying to improve it. D-Wave’s products have already found applications in business and possibilities are still unlimited (just like with cognitive computers). Lockheed Martin, the US jet fighters company, has been implementing quantum computers on its aircrafts, creating one of the most complex and sophisticated weapon there is. Already known uses are in air traffic control, GPS technology, weather prediction, space exploration and even the stock exchange! World’s biggest dilemmas are just within of a stone’s throw away from being solved. It is being rumored that we are only a couple years away from permanently cracking the quantum computing code. I am looking forward and I am greatly excited about what future has reserved for us. I may be fast in judging, but I truly believe it is an amazing time to be alive. The opportunities are endless, imagination has no boundaries and the technology is available. I live with the hope that with the right mix of perseverance, dedication and education, we will be able to reverse some of the damage we have caused to Mother Earth and that we can turn what she’s offered us into a mean for achieving the greater good. Safely, sustainably and in peace. Bonus videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_-_H9eBte8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVChjHHy1w4 Other relevant literature: http://www.dwavesys.com/tutorials/background-reading-series/introduction-d-wave-quantum-hardware http://www.dwavesys.com/d-wave-two-system http://www.wired.com/2014/05/quantum-computing http://www.nas.nasa.gov/quantum/

When I woke up on a Monday morning a couple of weeks ago only to hear that David Bowie had just passed away, confusion was the feeling that overshadowed me. It was an odd thing to hear, because despite not being my idol, I’m enough of a music enthusiast to know that he had released his latest album, Blackstar, just a few days earlier. As it turns out, it would prove to be not only his latest album, but also his last — his parting gift to the world, as spectacular as it was surprising. Indeed, much like the man himself. Not only a musical innovator Bowie’s influence reached far beyond the impact of his music, which remained on the cutting edge throughout his 40-plus-year career. Believe it or not, he was also a financial innovator. In 1997, he introduced an unusual marriage between the rock scene and Wall Street, when he issued bonds backed by the future revenue of the 25 albums he had recorded before 1990, paying a generous 7.9% interest rate over their 10-year life. This essentially allowed him to borrow more money upfront, made possible by the fact that Bowie — unlike many other artists at the time — owned the rights to most of his songs. The bond issue earned him 55 million dollars, which he reportedly used to buy back songs from his own catalogue, owned by his former manager. The bonds were tied to future royalties from hits, including ‘Changes’, ‘Space Oddity’, and ‘Ziggy Stardust’. These royalties would generate the cash flow that secured the bonds’ interest payments — at least, that was the idea. It sounded like a good idea on paper, since securities backed by royalties allow artists to raise money without selling the rights to their work or waiting for years for payments to trickle in, but the value of the bonds began to decline as online file sharing and streaming services grew in popularity, thus decreasing album sales. This prompted a downgrade from A3 (the seventh-highest investment grade rank) to Baa3 (just one notch above ‘junk’ status). After 10 years, the bonds were paid off, the ratings were withdrawn, and the rights returned to Bowie. However, despite its limited success, it did actually kick-start the market for securitising intellectual property, which now includes film rights, pharmaceutical patents, and even restaurant franchises. Bowie Bonds represented one of the first instances of a bond that used intellectual property as the underlying collateral, and other artists soon followed Bowie’s lead, so it’s fair to say that he was a true innovator — not only in his music. Far ahead of his time You might argue that the timing of these bonds couldn’t possibly have been worse, since the 1990s saw the advent of the great age of the internet, but Bowie — being far ahead of his time — had already seen the bad weather coming. “I don’t even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don’t think it’s going to work by labels and distribution systems in the same way. The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years’ time, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing. Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it’s like: just take advantage of these last few years, because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring, because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting, but on the other hand, it doesn’t matter whether you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.” If you take out the bit about copyright no longer existing today, he was right on the spot. Other adventures Bowie’s financial adventures didn’t end with his bonds. In 1998, he launched his own internet service provider, called BowieNet. This was conceived as a proto-social network, giving you a grand total of 5 MB of web space to share songs and creations with. To illustrate: that’s not even one song in today’s standards! Users ‘even’ got access to the concert streaming service Rolling Stone Network. Then, in the year 2000, he launched his own online bank: BowieBanc. This came with a year’s worth of BowieNet service, so that fans who banked their money with Bowie were rewarded with checks and bank cards displaying his face. Some serious marketing right there, but this was nothing less than revolutionary! After all, the service was launched at a time when only 11 million people used online banking at all. Robert Goodale, his business partner at the time, was excited about the project, saying that it opened the door for future ventures. “We wouldn’t rule out ‘Bowie’s Trading Desk’ if someone came to us with a good proposal,” he said. This never materialised, and the BowieBanc was short-lived, but they remain emblematic of Bowie’s desire to experiment with technology and push the limits of the music industry. Finally, Bowie also explored technology in ways that seem more familiar today. In 1999, he became one of the first major artists to release a new album for download over the internet, giving way to a whole new industry. The rest is history… A work of art Bowie was last seen in public in December at the premiere of his musical Lazarus, which bears the name of the song in which he supposedly besings his impending death. Given the many different musical styles that he explored throughout his career, Bowie was often called a chameleon, adapting to his surroundings at will. However, I think it’s even more accurate to say that he didn’t just adapt to his surroundings; he sometimes changed the very surroundings himself. His adventures in the financial world, despite not always being successful, are yet another proof of that. As Tony Visconti (his producer and long-time friend) so rightfully pointed out recently: “His death was no different from his life — a work of art.” Ain’t that the truth. David Bowie, 1947-2016. May he rest in peace.