The Passion for Gold

Old people develope excentricities, so when I grow old and rich, you may find me enjoying my collection of hidden gold coins. When banks and the peso were insecure in Argentina, I had almost a kilo of different gold coins. I sold them when its price was 800 dollar a ounce. So I have good memories of gold, and people tend to repeat former successes. I shall start collecting some coins in this blog, later, when the occassion arises, I shall pass to the real thing.

Up there is a Lydian Stater, from the people who started all this craze. It is most mentioned as the thing used by Persians satraps to bribe Athenian politicians. Then is the One Kilo Gold Bar of the Rothschild London firm, which no one have ever seen but serves as a mythological standard measure of wealth.

In the Footsteps of Lysenko

I had a meeting scheduled in the Ministry of Health for the final approval of the Milch Goat Farm and other food producing projects, but I had no time to complete them, so instead I took the morning off.

I was remembering my consulting trip to Gansu, SouthWest China, the very steep mountains and valleys, and the very poor and isolated people I met in those remote mountains. The Chinese government had built for them stone reservoirs to collect rainwater for the dry season, each reservoir was near the road and had big red boards proclaiming the Government goodwill towards indigenous minority peoples (which I am convinced is sincere), but the reservoirs were useless as the water became undrinkable and fetid. Of course, the reservoirs had no cover nor protection, rodents were drawning in them and people was throwing cigarettes into them and even spitting (they seemed all to be sick).

The new policy of the Government was to protect the soil and stop clearing the 60-70% steep slopes for maice cultivation. The soil was very poor and much erosioned. People planted maice in every crook in the stones, in every pocket of soil among the stony cover. The rainless mountains were similar to those in Israel, in South Yehuda, and Jews in the Antiquity have used the stones to build terraces and trap the fertile soil. Those 2500 year old contour terraces are still in use.

I asked a toothless aged farmer, with muscles like hard wood, why they had cleared the nice pine tree slopes. Chairman Mao , he said, had ordered them to cut the fruitless trees to plant food crops everywhere. They were doing what the Government had told them to do. They used to plant more seed in the pockets but now they grow only one maice plant in each pocket of soil.

He didnt know it, but he was a late victim of Lysenko. Lysenko, an Ukrainian agronomist, had imposed his lunatic ideas on Stalin and Khrushchov, the leader of Soviet agriculture and later, on Mao. Millions died in all the Communist countries trying to implement his ideas. In China too there had been terrible times of hunger. My fat translator (She looked like a Moroccan Jewish woman) told me that his father, when he was in the University, was so weak of hunger that he had fainted several times.

From Catallarchy (May 1, 2006):

In Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine, Jasper Becker traces the influence of Lysenko’s insane agricultural doctrines to Maoist China. In the late 1950s, Chinese farmers were commanded by Mao to follow several Lysenkoist doctrines imported from the USSR – with predictably disastrous results.

Contrary to basic Darwinian logic and empirical evidence, Lysenkoist doctrine held that plants of the same species don’t compete for resources. Becker reports that farmers were ordered to quadruple the number of seeds they planted per acre in 1958, then in 1959 were ordered to double that number again. Naturally, the Malthusian competition induced by this meant that fewer seedlings survived after the initial germination phase; combined with the Lysenkoist ban on the use of chemical fertilizers, this resulted in China’s worst crop years ever.

Prevailing Lysenkoist doctrine also held that the root structures of plants would grow deeper in relation to how deeply the land was plowed, so farmers were ordered to plow 4-5 feet deep. Becker reports the example of Liaoning province in 1958, where 5 million people were forced to spend more than a month deep-plowing 3 million hectares of land, to no benefit whatsoever. At the other extreme, following the advice of Lysenkoist Vasily Williams, Mao ordered farmers to leave at least one-third of their land fallow. The end result, of course, was the greatest preventable famine the world has ever seen.

Next: Marathon

I sold Rothstein Optzia 2 with a 30% profit and bought Marathon for the same amount (after paying 20% taxes on the profit). Thus successfully completed my second stock exchange short-term speculation.

What is Marathon? I had never even heard of this stock, but someone mentioned it on a board and I checked it out. Marathon is a strange beast: starting as a bona fide industrial company rubber covered metal articles) ventured into three or four investments in hi tech startups. The stock has been very steadily increasing all the year and today it jumped 4.5%. I couldnt find anything on this small anonymous company to justify any movement, and less than anything a reason for its steady rise in price. Somebody seems to know something and accumulating. Probably the floating of one of the startups on the stock exchange or its acquisition by a foreign investor. A year-long rising price history cannot lie. Lets make another 30% and sell it.

Terror and Counterterror

Today, Israel suffered only two ineffective rocket attacks, so the media focussed on the real war that touches personally every man and woman. It is the war between genders. Tel Aviv women are in panic, because the "Anas Ha Sidrati" - the Serial Raper - has escaped. 1500 policemen have been detached to return him to prison and restore the tranquility of the female population. Women organisations are excited by the thought that the terrible, oversexed "Anas" is out there in the shadows, searching to make up for the years spent behind bars. The police is being ridiculed by the media, compared to the moronic policemen of Jewish folklore, such as the shtetl Chelm's police department and "Officer Azulay". In fact, the "Anas" is a skinny 40 kg "little person", but with that sinister look of a congenital criminal as described by Lombroso, that is, he doesnt stand out in a Tel Aviv crowd. I always wondered how such shadow of a man, unarmed, was able to physically subdue dozens of our aggressive Israeli women, many of which spend their waking hours in the gym, training in judo, karate and "krav maga".

Suddenly, the media is full of clips by the Prime Minister's Office, inciting Israel's female population to combat and to erradicate the violence against women. Since the Jewish male is traditionally a meek bookworm, disinclined to acts of violence and wife beating is unheard of among us, the feminist organisations had to find targets to combat against. The propaganda asks women not to be hesitant to denounce men who have talked to them loudly, or used offensive words, or acted with "rechishanut". That word means "a feeling of ownership" - which can be interpreted as patronizing attitude toward women, such as giving the impression that he thinks that the woman is his property. It is quite ironic, because the Hebrew word for husband is "baal", that is, owner. In Jewish religion, the marriage contract is in fact a commercial purchase agreement. Of course no one takes that literally, but the built-in linguistic approach is that females are property.

Women exploit mercilessly the power that the law and State protection affords them. It is unnecessary to accuse a man of physical violence, it is enough to accuse him of verbal violence to land him in jail for several days. No witnesses nor "black eyes" are required. Her word is automatically accepted. Moreover, it appears that men have been already domesticated to the point that no one even dares to talk back to women, so the crime against women, which every woman believes true tothe point that needs no further evidence, has now been identified in a patronizing attitude.

I am not exaggerating. The Minister Haim Ramon is fighting for his political life, he had been sacked from his ministerial position by an accusation of kissing a secretary against her will. The story is that the cutie was flirting repeatedly with the tall, youngish (but not so young) politician, and had asked him to pose with her for a picture. They posed in the office, the girl fondled him and kissed him cheek-to-cheek for the picture, but Ramon misinterpreted her provocative behaviour and kissed her back. Mistake, big mistake, Mr Ramon! She went to the police and his political carreer, built up from his early fights as a leftist student leader, was destroyed. Many vicious political rivals from the left and from the right failed in their supreme efforts to make him bite the dust, he emerged victorious from the bloody arena, but this young cute human being made him bite the dust. This public process against a political leader generally considered a decent chap, not a bad person, is causing its impact on Israeli men. Definitely.

Girls cannot find partners. The Israeli man has disappeared. Went underground. This is how we live nowadays here.

Air Filter

The Ministry of Health demands that the Mall install a forced aireation system, first of all for the underground water closets and for the sewage pumping station. It is a reasonable demand, so I am designing an air filter. I was possibly the first engineer in Israel who introduced the regulation that all sewage pumping stations in populated areas must have air treatment. The preferred ones were activated carbon (coal granules) but they were supplanted by an invention of the Technion, of burning organic particles by high voltage electrodes. In the end, I recommended biological air treatment for the Haifa WWTP and they installed it, but its operation and maintenance is not easy. Now the Kfar Saba WWTP, after two successive failure with ozone generators (the grease in the air killed the electrodes) are building a biological bed like I originally planned. I saw similar facilities in Koln WWTP and they were extremely effective. They used a substratum a mixture of pine wood sticks, actually they had a nice perfume (maybe I was imagining it, but they looked very higienic and esthetic).

Regarding the sanitary complex in the lower level, I have to install Venta wall ventilators, but I want to add some treatment to the air. There are no add-on filters in the Israeli market, so I"ll have to think something.

A War That May Have Been Already Won

The idea that terrorists may one day explode an atomic weapon is considered almost a certainty by learned analysts. It is only a question of time, they say. I think differently.

The origin of the supposed weapons in hands of Bin Laden et al. is, so they say, the collapse of the Soviet Union. But it now appears that the collapse, in the military area at least, was much more orderly than chaotic. Not much material could have escaped accounting.

Second, atomic weapons are not passive on the shelf things. They require active high-tech maintenance. Maintenance is the most difficult thing to do (I worked in maintaining and operating a large WWTP, and wrote many articles on the subject), a thing where undeveloped peoples do not excel. Palestinians, for example, are unable to maintain the working water supply and irrigation systems we left them in Gaza. The hothouse agriculture that was so profitable in our hands, lays abandoned by the Palestinians. It is very sad, because the UN programs projected that they would give employment to tens of thousands of Palestinian 'refugees". BTW, the same thing happened to the flourishing cities like Yamit and its agricultural hinterland when "returned" to the Egyptians. I could write pages why maintenance of mechanical systems is so difficult (in fact, I did write books).

Say Bin Laden has bought nuclear weapons and has succeeded in hiding them somewhere in the Pakistani-Afgan border. He can't sit on these weapons for years. They require constant maintenance. At any given time, a nuclear weapon radiates a temperature in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. This means, among other things, that they are prone to oxidation and rust. Moreover, the triggers that emit large quantities of neutrons at high speeds decay rapidly and have short half-lives – most would become useless without maintenance in less than four months. The nuclear cores also are subject to decay and over the course of several years would fall below the critical mass threshold. Though the shells that encase the cores are the most durable parts of the weapons, they, too, are subject to contamination. The tritium used to compensate for the required amount of conventional explosives to compress the fissile core within the compact devices is less of an issue since it has a half-life of 12.3 years. Making a rapid head calculation, those Soviet weapons must be breathing their last. If they are not used soon, they will be chatarra in no time. Probably, already they are.

That war may have been already won. The illustrations show winged Nike, the goddess of victory.

The Search for Meaning

The internet is great, since it gave me free access to an important article in the New York Times. In it, Ray Kurzweil, describes the future of stock-picking. Artificial intelligence is becoming so deeply integrated into our economic ecostructure that some day computers will exceed human intelligence. Machines can observe billions of market transactions to see patterns we could never see.”“These ideas are the future,” said David Atkinson, a private investor. "They’re making some folks rich.”Complicated stock picking methods are nothing new. For decades, Wall Street firms and hedge funds have snapped up math and engineering Ph.D.s and assigned them to find hidden market patterns. When these analysts discover subtle relationships, like similarities in the price movements of Microsoft and I.B.M., investors seek profits by buying one stock and selling the other when their prices diverge, betting historical patterns will eventually push them back into synchronicity. Today, such methods have achieved a widespread use unimaginable just five years ago. The Internet has put almost every data source within easy reach. New software programs, like the Apama Algorithmic Trading Platform, have made it possible for day traders to build complicated trading algorithms almost as easily as they drag an icon across a digital desktop.

Studies estimate that a third of all stock trades in the United States were driven by automatic algorithms last year, contributing to an explosion in stock market activity. Between 1995 and 2005, the average daily volume of shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange increased to 1.6 billion from 346 million.But in recent years, as algorithms and traditional quantitative techniques have multiplied, their successes have slowed. “Now it’s an arms race,” said Andrew Lo, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering. “Everyone is building more sophisticated algorithms, and the more competition exists, the smaller the profits.”

So investment firms have increasingly begun exploring mathematics’ furthest edges and turning to people like Mr. Kurzweil, who became an expert in pattern recognition building a reading machine for the blind. Kurzweil and others took a different tack: instead of creating sequential rules to instruct a computer to read, they thought, why not create thousands of random rules and let the computer figure out what works? The result was nonlinear decision making processes more akin to how a brain operates. So-called “neural networks” and “genetic algorithms” have become common in higher-level computer science. Neural networks permit computers to create new rules and automatically change underlying assumptions by experimenting with thousands of random sequences and processes. Genetic algorithms encourage software to “evolve” by letting different rules compete, and combining the most successful outcomes.Wall Street has rushed to mimic the techniques. Because arbitrage opportunities disappear so quickly now, neural networks have emerged that can consider thousands of scenarios at once. It is unlikely, for instance, that Microsoft will begin selling ice-cream or I.B.M. will declare bankruptcy, but a nonlinear system can consider such possibilities, and thousands of others, without overtaxing computers that must be ready to react in milliseconds.

“Most software fails in pattern recognition because there aren’t enough sequential rules in the world to teach a computer to discern between two faces, or to find almost imperceptible relationships between stocks,” said Orhan Karaali, a computer scientist and director at Advanced Investment Partners, a $1.7 billion hedge fund. “But a machine that can generate complicated rules a person would never have thought of, and that can learn from past mistakes is a powerful tool.”

Last year, the funds using Mr. Karaali’s model returned in excess of 20 percent by using nonlinear techniques, according to his company. Whereas older methods of stock analysis rely on certain assumptions — for instance, that market volatility always reverts to the mean — Mr. Karaali’s model calculates probabilities and generates assumptions on the fly, and might predict that during a panic, investors will sell Microsoft but, for seemingly irrational reasons, hold onto I.B.M.“Only an elite group of people are using these ideas, but a lot of people are thinking about them,” said Stacy Williams, director of quantitative strategies at HSBC Global Markets. HSBC is working with Cambridge University in using models based on how viruses spread to forecast foreign currency markets. “In the pursuit of previously undetectable patterns, hedge funds are racing to quantify things — like newspaper headlines — that were previously immune from number-crunching. Both Dow Jones Newswires and Reuters have transformed decades of news archives into numerical data for use in designing and testing algorithmic systems. The companies are beginning to structure news so it can be absorbed by quantitative models within milliseconds of release. Moreover, companies like Progress Software are working with news agencies to create computer programs that instantly translate news — for example, a headline regarding Microsoft’s earnings — into data. M.I.T. is examining, among other things, evaluating companies by seeing how many positive versus negative words are used in a newspaper article. Right now, everyone basically has access to the same data,” said John Bates, a Progress Software executive. “To get an edge, we want to give investors the ability to immediately turn news into numbers. We want to automate what before required human analysis.”

Unique Health Problems

Circulatory collapse is a major health problem in Germany. Indeed, only recently, former-German-politician-turned-television-dancer Heide Simonis recently hung up her dancing shoes because of suffering a Kreislaufzusammenbruch. The odd thing is that in its mild, irritating, I-need-to-skip-work-and-lie-down form, this is a uniquely German phenomenon. Elsewhere, if people suffer a circulatory collapse, they die.

And that's not the only uniquely German health problem. The Social Democrats -- Germany's leading center-left political party -- recently had to swap leaders because party chairman Matthias Platzeck suffered a Hörsturz. A what? In English, it's called Acute Hearing Loss -- but good luck finding much information on it. The German Wikipedia entry for Hörsturz is pages long and talks about how serious stress can lead to a sudden loss of hearing. Acute Hearing Loss doesn't even make an appearance in the English version of Wikipedia.

In other words, there also exist a variety of diseases you might catch in Germany that simply don't exist in your home country. Drafts in Germany can be particularly dangerous, being blamed for all manner of problems including a serious flu. And if you end up with a sore throat, be sure to keep in wrapped in a scarf -- even in super-hot summer temperatures. That helps in Germany -- if nowhere else.

From: Der Spiegel.

What is it with the Parsis?

We have no quarrel with the Parsis aka Iranians. I wonder why they are menacing us in Israel with total destruction. Iran has a fourth world economy, specializing in pistacchio and carpets. Since the Shah's megalomaniac projects, it had no nuclear ambition. Why are feeling now the urgent need to have nuclear weapons?

In 1997, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Agency (Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the former Oil Minister) announced that Iran would attempt to meet 20% of the country's electricity demand through nuclear power. Aghazadeh said that Iran had decided to build a second 1,000-MW unit at the Bushehr nuclear power complex as soon as work is completed on the current unit being built by the Russians. Currently, Iran has five small nuclear reactors, one in Tehran and four in Isfahan.

Work on Bushehr had begun in 1974, but was halted (80% complete) following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In January 1995, progress on Bushehr resumed when Russia signed a $780-million contract to complete the facility. The Russian deal calls for completion of the two 1,300-MW pressurized-light water units as well as the supply of two modern VVER-440 units. The United States strongly opposes the project and has in the past provided Russia with information pointing to Iranian nuclear weapons intention. The Russians have proceeded, although slowly, with work on Bushehr. A final completion date remains uncertain.

Now they are building centrifuges to produce weapons grade uranium and plutonium. Are Persians feeling that their country is disintegrating like Iraq and need to go nuclear to prevent foreign intervention? When I joined Tahal, its largest projects were in Iran. Our Israeli engineers did not praise Iranian capabilities. I have no idea why or how they are now our enemy. Jews, from Cyrus, always respected Persians.

Another Water Fund with no Projects

Shari Arison, Israel's richest person, has established a $100 million water technologies investment company. Former Mekorot National Water Company chairman Baruch (Booky) Oren will serve as CEO of the new venture. Oren will build a team to manage the venture and prepare a detailed business plan for investors. The plan will analyze the area of activity, and make an initial list of suitable companies and ventures for investment, including amounts, investment performance rates, and how investments will be made. Oren will also seek additional potential investment partners. Arison Holdings Ltd. said investments would likely begin a few months after approval of the business plan.

Oren and Waterfront - Israel Water Alliance chairman Uri Yogev have put water technologies at the forefront of Israeli investment and revolutionized the attitude of the county's technology and business sectors towards the water industry. While at Mekorot, Oren established the WaTech incubator, which (intends to) convert technological ideas into commercial applications.

The bottom line is that Buky Oren will search for water related bankable projects and
if and when he finds one, Shari Arison will finance it. Which is where we were before the announcement was published in Globes. The pic shows my kitchen wall, what is I am looking at in this moment.

My New Sex Object

AZIMUTH Technologies Ltd. is firstly a stock that is starting to move upwards on Tel Aviv Stock Exchange so I bought a small amount. It is also a world leader in target acquisition, fire coordination, navigation, and orientation solutions for defense. Azimuth’s solutions are used by artillery, armor, mortar, intelligence, special forces and mounted infantry units. The systems deliver added value in combat training and mission debriefing. Azimuth products are in wide use in the Israeli Defense Forces.

95% of the stock is owned by Shlomi Reisman who was my officer in one very nice miluim service, near Tzfat, in a beautiful pine forest. He was very friendly and explained what he was doing, and blasted the Army as we all did. He just had buyers from a foreign army visiting Israel and he could not be with them because he was called into reserve service, as we all had been, to do ... almost nothing. We were guarding a Hawk battery near Tzfat. He was then just building up the business.

The company is consistently losing money but there are rumors that the next report will be good, with announcements of new orders. Well, lets hope the best, wars are forever and military suppliers have their prosperity well assured...So I am buying this thing.

TSEM 's turnover in Nasdaq over 1,000,000 $

American investors are starting to buy TSEM. The turnover about 1,200,000 $ and 2% rise in stock price. There is a strong upward momentum. Russel Ellwanger is a magician.

Overdoing It

Having worked nonstop the last three days and nights, sleepless and anxious, this morning I submitted my Mall designs. They were absurdly overdone, they have never seen such a large "garmoshka" and reacted with horror (of the idea of having to study it). The Min. of Health engineer found something, I promised to submit a drawing as he wanted and stopped looking at me and talking to me. I had drawn the "rosh maarechet" the head of the water supply system in a vertical line, he wanted it drawn as a "gamal" - a camel. And to indicate that backflow preventer is situated at OO.60 m height.

The fire protection engineer looked at my large drawing and said: I am not interested in the sprinkler system and the calculations. I only want to make sure that the water outlets where the firefighters will draw their water are in fact connected to the supply. I showed him that it was indicated among many other things on the drawing, he did not want look at the drawing so full of lines and symbols and so complicated. He asked if I had signed the dwg and when he saw the stamp, said, OK and ran to a meeting about biogas.

Conclusion, as always, I overdo it. Uberchochem, clever by one half.

TSEM at 2.05 $

TSEM closed Friday on NASDAQ at 2.05 $ from about 1.85 $ at the start of the week. I estimate that 1,000,000 shares changed hand, with an average increase of 3%, so the net money inflow should be around 1,000,000 X 2.1 X .03 = 63,000 $ this week. This 63,000 $ investment increased TSEM's market capitalization about 20,000,000 $. If I am right in my estimate, it means that I have understood the Chaikin Money Flow idea. It happened after yesterday wass thinking about it and could not understand it, late night I went to sleep with some Romanian Cabernet Sauvugnon, and this morning I have a clear idea what Chaikin was saying. Never despair, lt your brain work for you while you enjoy the cool black wine.

TSEM has hired a PR company in the USA to increase investor interest. On the other hand, the semi market is cyclical and we are at the end of the cycle, while many foundries are investing in production facilities. TSEM is betting that there will be demand for its specialized products, and it seems there is a market. One commenter on Yahoo wrote that the fate of TSEM is to be eater by bigger fish. Maybe, but it always means a premium on the stock's price. To this moment everything is fine, as said the man in the air while falling from the Twin Towers. Now, arbeit.

Tower dreams of New York

Tower wants to grow and needs more capital. Israeli capital markets have been pumped dry by Tower, and needs new suckers aka investors. So NASDAQ, he she goes. EET journal writes:

"The company hopes to parlay the improved financial performance from the capacity into another round of investment late next year that will allow even further expansion. But the next round will be different in that Tower will try to attract American investors. "Up until now something like 70 percent of our investors are in Israel," said vice president and CTO Rafi Nave in an interview here. "In 2007, we want to go into Wall Street." Tower is also looking at possibly expanding by acquiring an existing fabrication facility. The U.S. investment and additional fab could together or separately raise Tower's profile.

Coming off a five-year fab ramp that involved an $800 million equipment investment that hampered financial performance, Tower's near-term goal is to be cash positive. As for acquiring an existing fab, "most of those we are discussing are no cash down deals," Nave said. "We've made it clear up front that we don't have cash."

The capacity coming online now cost about $130 million and will be available to customers in the first quarter. It will increase Tower's output in 130-nm and 180-nm process technology from 15,000 to 24,000 wafer starts per month and raise its revenue generating capability. The company's quarterly sales " currently about $50 million per quarter -- are still about $20 million short of consistent profitability, Nave said. "At the end of 2007 we'll need to raise more money, another $100 to $150 million." That round will raise monthly output by mid-2009 by 10,000 wafers to 34,000 wafers per month, a level at which Tower can be profitable, Nave said.

Tower doesn't expect to take on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., the world's largest chip foundry, once capacity reaches 34,000 wafers. Nor will it compete with low-priced China-based foundries, Nave said. It will continue to serve second-tier customers, while keeping SanDisk Corp. as a tier-one customer. Tower will concentrate on several areas of specialization beyond vanilla CMOS " image sensors, RF, and power management ICs " and on extending its reach.

One (among many) things I have difficulty of understanding is that diluting the stock by emmitting additional stocks does not in fact reduce its price, but increases the market cap of the company. This happened, against my opinion, in Tower, when sold options at market price (1.8 $). The literature says that what happened is exactly what was supposed to happen: Issuing additional stock should not devalue the current stock price as long as the company issues the new stock at roughly the current market price. For example, assume that a firm has a market cap of $500 million, a stock price of $50 per share and 10 million shares are outstanding. If the firm wants to issue an additional 10 million shares at $50 per share, this would mean the total number of share outstanding would double, market cap would increase to $1 billion ($500 million + (10 million x $50)) and the stock price would remain at $50 per share. If the stock price was only $40 per share (meaning a market cap of only $400 million), then the firm could only raise an additional $400 million ($40 x 10 million), which would make the firm's market cap increase to $800 million. The share price would remain the same in both cases, but the firm could only make $400 million on a new issue if the stock price was $40 per share, instead of $50 per share.Still I dont understand.

The pic shows Chava Alberstein, a beautiful Yiddish folk singer. Yiddisch folk music is not only "If I were a Rothschild". Her stetl songs, like Mame kooch varenike are about ... (1) The Yiddische Mame (2) The Yiddische Mame's cooking, and (3) Money (of which the Yidn never have enough).

The Mossad's Viejos Chotos (Chattering Old Fools)

I finished work very late and couldnt sleep, so watched late hour TV. Yoram Gaon was hosting old peensioned off Mossad hands that kidnapped Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to stand trial in Israel. Old and sick people, one of them even died the day before of the interview. They talked freely about (in fact, they were anxious to talk) the mechanics of the operation, how it was actually done, what they were wearing, who jumped first on Eichman and how, who held what member of the mass murderer, what were his words, and so on endlessly. And they talked about the petty office situations such as their private meetings with their boss, Isser Harel, (in the pic): "And Isser called me to his office and said to me Yankele, bla bla bla ..., and I said to Isser bla bla ... " etc. Chattering old fools, viejos chochos in my barrio mamelushen slang, they were having their pleasure remembering in company of their former collegues those glorious moments ... having an important chat with the big boss.

I had read that Eichman was found through a complex and prolonged covert operation, where a circle of old Nazis in Buenos Aires was infiltrated by covert Mossad agents and in an intimate moment of remembering old comrades, someone drunk spilled "Poor Eichman, he is living in a hut in San Isidro" or something like that. So they knew that Eichman was hiding in Buenos Aires and by superhuman intelligence work they found him. But the chief of operations of the Mossad at that times, now minister Rafi Eitan, eagerly told to the TV host another version: Eichman was delivered to them by a blind German living in Tucuman, an Argentine province, when his daughter asked a schoolmate her name, and the stupid daughter of Adolf Eichman told her that her real name was Eichmann. The blind German, presumably, volunteered the information to Jewish neighbors. Much less romantic than the official story.

Old Rafi Eitan also told that Eichman was living in a water and electricity less hut in a proletarian villa miseria, going to work each day by colectivo to the factory where he was a lowly mechanic. The old hands told that they had to buy special cheap run down worker garments, otherwise they would have been too much visible in that neighborhood. Israel in 1960 was a socialist, poor country, fashion was dictated by ATA - the socialist Histadrut's cloth factory in Kyriat Ata, so it can be understood that if they looked too elegant, Eichman must have been living in a real slum. We were living in Liniers at that time, a lower middle class neighborhood, but Eichman was living in a slum of newcomers from the country to the big city.

As soon as Eichman was lifted from the earth to introduce him into the waiting car, he stopped resisting. Once in the car, he said in German, "I have been waiting this and I am reconciled with my destiny". He behaved with the typical submissive attitude of an Austrian "assistant postman" (the figure used by one of old men) and he even signed a declaration that he was going by his free will to be judged in Israel. The Mossad imagined him a grand Nazi Master Criminal living in a remote farm in the jungle, defended by German sepherd dogs and athletic SS bodyguards. That is the image still prevalent in our collective mind. After all, it could not be imagined differently, Eichman was the man who had sent their parents and brothers to their death, the man who had tricked and destroyed half of Europe's Jewry. But the unimaginable and unacceptable reality was a humble "assistant postman" trying to make a living in a Buenos Aires slum. I was in Buenos Aires and in the University I met sons of real Nazis that took refuge after the war in Argentina, and the whole story of Eichman in Buenos Aires and the people who took him, look so ordinary and banal, that its fantastic banality impacts me. No Nazi Superman Criminal, no Jewish Mossad supermen, no special powers, no kryptonite. As time passes, I am learning about the world as it is, and growing up, and becoming somewhat dis-illusioned.

My First Sardine

My first encounter with sardines was in Vienna, January 1957. I was ten years old and had never seen a can of sardines. We arrived pennyless to Vienna and received some pocket money from American Charities, I think the Quakers, and my parents and uncles went to see what we could buy for lunch. Vienna 1957 was a very poor place but a paradise in comparison with Stalinist Hungary. My parents and uncles bought one can of Portuguese sardines, which opened it with ceremony and emotion. Four adults and one child, the two or three little fishes were cut up and I received my first taste of canned sardine. An unimaginable luxury only a few days ago, there we were eating Portuguese sardines. We were in the free world.

The Ugly Fat Schoolgirls in Bikini of Plaza Botero in Medellin

I like Botero, the Colombian painter. When in Medellin, I visited the Botero Museum (and bought nothing, everything was so expensive) and the central plaza of Medellin, adorned with about a dozen towering bronze sculptures by Botero. I'll post pictures of me and the sculptures, the fat toy horse, the general on horse, and so on, all grotesque and deformed. I also took pictures of the girl prostitutes sitting on the pedestals of Botero's sculptures, fat near-naked teenagers, very young, and unattractive and not sexy at all. Policemen were looking on to guard the safety of the cameras. My friends pointed me which houses overlooking the plaza belonged to drug dealers, bought in cash dollars, which were abundant in the town. There was nothing to buy, nowhere to invest their unlaundered money, that was their main problem. I found Medellin a very nice city, with a personality, with attractive and friendly girls. It is built on the sides of a steep valley of about 1000 meters height, they have no drainage nor sewage problems, all runs noisily into the river in the bottom of the valley, which looks exhuberantly verdant. Very special.

BAJA, Here I Come (to Potabilize)

It is 9 PM here and worked all day on that mall project. I only took off half an hour to write a proposal for a research grant - Potabilization of drinking water in Baja California. It seems that my fellow Latins, the Mexicans, feel they may have a problem of supply and they are waking up to the need of starting to think about it. If Mexicans are like Israelis, nothing will be done till hysteria and panic seizes the people on the street. Here we were able to focus on water only when the papers started to show on the front page the level of the Kinneret and the main aquifers and people on the street bought jerrycans and stored water at home. Could it be that Mexicans are thoughtfully taking early previsions for a future crisis or is it that the water problem is already killing them and their tourist industry? I dont know. I'll have to travel and investigate on site. When is it the surfing season? I have to start thinking on the timing of my research trip.




Yeah, no doubt, there is something in the water in Baja!

Option Trading

Yesterday traing day saw Rothstein Optzia 1 rise 35.89%. It is really rewarding to watch such a phenomenon. The underlying stock rised 23.59% so the relation is 1.52. It is yet unclear how this mechanism actually works.


I am also trying to learn the Chaikin Index, that purports to discover if money is flowing into the stock. The Stock Doctor Blogger uses that index and is able to identify situations where money is being pumped in while the stock price stagnates or declines - clearly indicating that an outbreak is imminent. It seems to work but I cannot find the Chaikin Index for Israeli stocks nor a clear explanation why and how it works.

Pumping Station designed in One Evening

Today it rained all day but George, the Palestinian Arab principal contractor of the Mall, worked without interruption and the Mall keeps growing from day to day. George, bendita sea su santa alma, looks like a typical Arab building contractor which of course he is. I wouldnt want to meet him in a solitary road at night, he is the incarnation of the legendary Arab caravan robber in the dessert. 1.65 m tall, big protruding nose, tremendous stomach, and that special swarthy look with the crooked smile showing his broken teeth, with curly black hairs sprouting from everywhere. His employees are all his close relatives, brothers and cousins. They are all friendly and as soon they see me they come with the tray with the mini-cup of hot and bitter/sweet kaffa. George, in fact, is very friendly and nice to work with.

Initially I had no much confidence in him so I advised to buy readymade prefabricated infrastructure, including the sewage pumping station. But the local producers, Wolfman and Ackerstein, demanded thousands of dollars. Other producers did not even answer my written request for a quotation. So I talked with my employer, the suspected Natania Gruzini maffia head, and offered him to design the pumping station so George can submit a proposal. Dicho y hecho. Said and done. I spent the whole afternoon designing on autocad the pumping station, made a printout and sent it to his secret maffia fax. The design is very cute and I am very satisfied with myself. Every day I am getting better. One evening. While working for the Ministry, I often paid 40 - 50,000 shekels for the design of a small pumping station.

After checking the going ons of the Nasdaq, I shall try to finish that hated hydraulic model for the bomberos.

From Hydraulic Models to Siffrey Yichussin

The erection of the Mall is advancing very fast and I have to submit the sprinkler system design to the Firemen. I was working with Meytav, the safety consultant of the project, but she is a very unfriendly woman and unwilling to talk and help me: she says that she knows nothing of water systems nor powders and gases, and that is my responsability alone. So I am doing alone, and it is not easy for me because the firefighters demand a complete hydraulic scheme of the thing with detailed calculations, etc. So I asked for a meeting with Tal, the person checking the models at the firemen station. Meytav is reluctant to be involved in the sprinkler thing, I feel from her behaviour that she is preparing her defense in case of accidents and safety issues, and especially for the incendiary issue of a fire and an insurance and/or criminal investigation that is sure to follow a fire, so she is preparing her defense of I was not involved. Many engineers much prefer to be lowly employees so they dont have to worry about buying professional insurance and to answer possible criminal negligence charges in case of a fire and damages.

And of course, we the independent consulting engineers live under the permanent harassment of Israeli tax authorities (social security, value added tax, income tax and what not). Today is 15 of the month, I had to spend half a morning with tax payment. It is not only that half of my income goes to the taxman, but half of my time is spent in dealing with them and their complicated forms. On an individual level, I find tax people helpful and rather friendly, but they administer a draconic set of laws that require permanent involvement and work from the small entrepreneur. In Israel, most people tries to have as little to do with the taxman as possible, and most tax loopholes and benefices go unexploited. During the first 20 years in Israel I knowlingly paid more taxes than I had to, just to avoid dealing with this bureacracy. Most people behaves in the same way. Only the rich people who have accountants and tax advisers takes advantage of the many legal tax possibilites available. I for one dont.

I was carried away by my painful tax condition, but there are other interesting things about fire protection. The pic above shows the remains after and unexplained fire of the archive of the Tel Aviv Chief Rabbanut. Of course, the Chief Rabbis are immersed in their humash and gemoyre and never thought of installing a fire protection system and/or an electronic backup. All their siffrey yichussin (genealogy registers) and lists of unmarriable mamzerim ("bastard" in the halachic - theological sense) were damaged or destroyed. It was a liberating fire, like a fire (that never came) that would have destroyed the KGB's archives. The Rabbis impose a nightmarish regime on the people living in Israel: for example, if a child is conceived by a technically married woman by a man who is not his husband, the child is declared mamzer and cannot marry in Israel. His existence is considered an abomination and is not accepted into the Jewish people. Now, many decent women cannot get a divorce because the husband's permission is required. Women with a vengative husband or abandoned by her husband can never marry again and any children she gives birth to will be mamzerim. These rules are aggravated by the fact that the Rabbanut does not accept genetics, which was unimagined by the Hazal (ancient rabbinical authorities) and they keep applying inductive methods based on hearsay. So a child's chances in life can be ruined by a rumor or doubt regarding the mother, even if modern genetics supplies 100% reliable proof. These tragedies will continue till people believe in the literalness of the Bible more than in science. (All in all, I am for the Jewish religion, I keep the commandments as I can, even knowing that they are baseless. Judaism is about what you do, not about what you think or believe, so one can be a Jew and an atheist. You can eat kosher without believing that it was commanded fom Heavens.) More in another opportunity.

TSEM Breaks the 2 $ Barrier

TSEM broke a few minutes ago the 2 $ barrier on the NASDAQ. The company has almost completed the turnaround. RAMCO, a Tel Aviv investment house, was the first analyst to give a positive review on Tower's perpectives. Two weeks ago they published a new report, advising to sell, because consecutive dilutions have made the stock overvalued. The market value of Tower had arrived to 150 - 200 million dollars, which was more than the "real" value of the firm or the present value of its future earnings. I called the firm (Rahimi the son) and asked if they had some inside information to advise selling the stock. They had none. I didn't sell and now I am enjoying the (virtual) profits.

Also Rothstein Warrant 2 is a success, today rised 36%. During the day there was a peak of 45%. Nice.

Tower Appears on the Stockpickers's Radar

Today TSEM made 6% on the Nasdaq. And it appeared in the radar of Nasdaqpazzo by Ki$$ , a "State of Art" financial blog updated everyday which proposes itself to Scalpers, Daytraders and Short Term investor (1 month range). It's based on private algorithm and show Mid & Small Caps Stocks with breakout in progress, increasing volatility, rising price and short terms rising tendency.

Stock Pick for 14th November
Ticker Date/Time MARKET PRICE A/V 10d COMPANY %PRESS
NENG 13/11/2006 Nasdaq 2.24 252636 NETWORK ENGINES IN 31
CNTF 13/11/2006 Nasdaq 8.01 382459 CHINA TECHFAITH WIRE 26
TSEM 13/11/2006 Nasdaq 1.92 137672 TOWER SEMICONDUCTO 23
CHINA 13/11/2006 Nasdaq 7.21 2837510 CDC CORPORATION CL-A 19
PGIC 13/11/2006 Nasdaq 9.28 393996 PROGRESSIVE GAMING 13
RHA 13/11/2006 Nyse 2.95 184180 RHODIA ADS 10
GNVC 13/11/2006 Nasdaq 1.47 314560 GENVEC INC 8

Written by Ki$$ The Sphinx at 11/13/2006 11:06:00 PM

It is a very good sign.

Electric Companies Take Over the Water Industry

Siemens and General Electric are buying water technology companies and taking over the field. GE Water is active in Israel and is interested in buying Israeli water technology. There is demand, but I am such a shortsighted person that cannot see promising technologies here. “General Electric has invited 20 Israeli companies to a meeting at its offices in the US in order to examine options for cooperation and the use of their technologies,” said GE Water & Process Technologies president and CEO Jeff Garwood. GE Water is a unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE). GE entered the water sector six years ago, and has invested $4 billion to date in water, a negligible fraction of the company’s $160 billion turnover, but intends to invest far more because it views water as a strategic sector. In Israel, GE Water is a partner in the seawater desalination facility at Kibbutz Maagan Michael; its subsidiary Zenon Environmental Inc. is building a wastewater treatment facility in Ramat Hovav, and another subsidiary, Ionics participated in the Hadera desalination facility tender before withdrawing at the last moment.

The Zenon Seaweed hollow tube bioreactor (shown in the pic) is one of the technologies bought by GE.

Rothstein Optzia Looks Good To Me

Rothstein is a building company, one of a hundred similar kablanim, nothing special. Its stock exchange worth is lower than its book worth, but that can mean many different things. What is notable is that this stock did not participate in the general rise of the construction industry values in the TASE. Looking at the graph it seems that it is "nervious" and is "considering" a breakout and meteoric rise to a higher level. The optzia has a manof of 6 so its rise, if it rises, will be ballistic. It seems cheap, so first thing tomorrow - buy some.

Brackish Wastewater and Concentrates Disposal

The Ministry of Environment has forbidden the disposal of timlachot - brackish wastewaters of the food and fish industries into the Mediterranean. Probably it was because of its high content of organic material and the odor potential. I asked what to do with it, and the answer was that in this moment there is no solution, so design separate drainage system for the brackish wastewater and collection reservoir, and wait for orders. Till the solution is found, the water can be disposed into general sewage network.

I was thinking about the problem. Reverse osmosis is becoming the preferred water treatment method in Israel, including industrial waters. The byproduct is a highly brackish and toxic concentrate, that currently is being allowed to be disposed into the general network, one because there is no alternative and second by virtue of the argument that the user does not add salts to the water but disposes what he received. And there is no obligation of disposing purer sewage than the water he has purchased from the State.

The obvious solution is electrolysis, but it does not work. The problem is the capacitance of the porous electrodes and the need of a better carbon lattice type of electrode material. No is known nor have been developed.

It may have great commercial application.

Another way is to clean up the brackish wastewater from the organic odor-generating materials. The best is anaerobic bacterial degradation, since bacteria has no problems with salty water. Or aerobic reaction. Or some chemical precipitation. Or filtration through sand filter.

A contractor hauling and treating system would be feasible, but sea disposal permit would be a headache to achieve and to maintain. Just today a Kfar Saba judge ordered a penalty payment of 400,000 shekel (90,000 dollar) to a solid waste operator, who processed (compressed, I think) more raw material than allowed in its permit. The judge said that no environmental damage was caused but the insensibility and greed shown by the operator, and the violation of the terms of the permit (even if the permit was based on wrong presumptions) demands heavy and exemplary punishment.

The waste business has to be quite profitable to humour these ferocious environmental lawyers and judges. One also needs very good nerves. All the managers of wastewater treatment plants are in infraction and under investigation or judicial process. Amy from Haifa was spending more time with lawyers than managing the plant.

Looking Around

Slightly more than half of Iran's are 69 million people are Persians and the rest are ethnic Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, Baluchis and Lors. Kurds in the NorthWest are actively fighting for a Pan Kurd State. SouthWestern Arabs occupy the area where the oil industry is based and are excited by what is happening in neighboring Iraq. If the US retires from Iraq and it breakes up, Iran will be under strong centrifugal force. The civil war/communal strife going on in Iraq carries the potential of desintegrating the whole Middle East order. Why in Hell should such a fragile country want an atom bomb?

Argentina has published arrest warrants against the Iranian leaders that took part in the bombing of AMIA in Buenos Aires. They also want the Hizballah's overseas operations chief hiding in Tehran.

Political Musings

Stalin's Great Purge in the Thirties has a simple explanation, which I never read. Stalin had lost the Party's internal elections and was demoted from Secretary General to simple Secretary. He had lost to Kirov, an outspoken critic of Stalin who demanded democracy in the Party. Kirov was an ethnic Russian while Stalin was an Ossetian, an ethnic minority within the colonized Georgian nationality. Stalin spoke with heavy Georgian accent and was not well accepted by the fanatic Russian nationalists in the country and in the Party itself. The successful forced industrialization of Russia, turning it into a world power, has caused great sufferings to the ethnic Russian and Ukrainian peasant population. The NKDV, the political police run by ethnic minorities (Georgian, Armenian and Jewish), killed Kirov and 1100 of the 1700 Party delegates. Stalin and its faction survived to lead the approaching war against Germany.

Sneh said that an Iran armed with atomic weapons was the end of the Zionist project, because all those able to will leave Israel and no one will immigrate, since people will not live with a chance to be burned if it can be avoided. The mere possession of this weapon is unbearable. Israel paints Iran leaders as mad religious fanatics dreaming of suicide, while Iran is attacking the very legitimacy of Israel and denying (while ridiculing) the Holocaust. May it be that the Death threats we exchange with Iran are noise and what is happening is that we are engaged in a competition for hegemony in the Middle East? I dont believe so. Israelis are not interested in the goat herding technologies of the Middle East, we are a hi tech country (25,000 $ GNP) strongly orientated to the US and Europe.

Israeli Business Needs a National Dress

My first impression of Central Asia/Western China comes from the autobiography of Arthur Koestler, who in the thirties travelled extensively in the Soviet Union. He is an intelligent observer, but it is more that he doesnt say than says. Those were the times of the great manmade famine and the times of Stalin's trials of the leaders of Central Asia's nationalist/muslim movement. He describes the trials as a lethargic, slow-moving, boring procedure, where the accused as the judges all seem uninterested in the happenings, while noting that the trials were a dramatic, sysmic, historical event in Central Asia politics. Thanks to the independence of these vast areas, and the energy resources found there, the area is alive again and vast fortunes are being made. The area had an important Jewish population, which went to the USA and Israel. In general, they had prospered among the Kazakhs and Tajiks, who look like the rosy cheeked Hungarian peasants I grew up among. The pic shows the Tajik Minister of Energy helping GAZPROM's leader Yevgeny Miller to put on the Tajik National Dress. This dressing up foreign leaders in one's national dress is catching up and in this area we are at an disadvantage: we have no national dress. The silk kaftan of Mea Shearim is the nearest we come to a Jewish vestiment, but it doesnt seem appropriate for foreign visitors. The upper pics show a Kazakh fashion review. Kazakh girls are famous for their beauty.

Daniel Molkendov & His Nova Star

Daniel Moldenkov (not to be confused with the friendly smiling girl to the left) is a 33 years old Jewboy from Rishon leTzion, who used to manage a most successful fund specialized in high risk optziot in Tel Aviv Stock Exchange called Nova Star. In April 2006 he was arrested by the police because he was accused of having transferred 2 million dollars to a private account through a fictitious company. His companies were Green Light and T A M Performance. His life got more complicated when he was understood as asking to neutralize somebody. The man was an undercover police informer working on the Harari crime family case, and he embellished and denounced him as having formally requested him to "liquidate" or "destroy" a newspaperman who had written about Moldenkov. He disentagled himself from this thing (after spending time in jail) thanks to the fact that the police (or anybody else) was unable to understand him, but they concluded that anything he may had said was not about killing anyone and not about a journalist. He didnt look like a "heavy" from the Harari crime family, in fact, the Moldenkovs are scientists from Russia, although unknown in the West.

His friends say he is the craziest man they know. He wrote a book on how to trade in options, "Shvil Hazahav" - the Golden Path, with simple rules on how to succeed in the dangerous trade. He established the Nova Star fund, which in the last year achieved the stunning yield of 250%, crowning the 150% achieved a year before. Googling his name appear mostly police reports and court snippets. TASE has retired his licence and he is working as advisor of Lev Hatamar fund, a new fund based in his theories.His method of work is shown in the graph, which shows NASDAQ's closing to yesterday. His handwriting says not to buy Nasdaq because the resistance line was not broken. He provides freely advise on hys system:

הב עיקשהל ךנוצרבש תפדעומ הינמ רחב :א
תונקל לכותש ידכ הובג רחסמ רוזחמ תלעב הינמ רוחבל גאד
רחסמה רוזחמש לככ,הרעש לע עיפשתש אלב התוא רוכמל וא
.תיספא דע רתוי החינז ךתריכמ וא ךתיינק תעפשה רתוי הובג

דע הכח,תודגמנתה וק רבעה, היוצרה הינמה תא תרחבש רחאל :ב
.תוריהמב הינמה תא רוכמ,5% -ל 2% - ןיב הטמ יפלכ וקה תצירפל

תאצמנ הינמה םא ןיחבת ויפלש םיענה םיעצוממה ףרגב רזעה :ג
.תינכט השלוח לש הפוקתב וא ינכט קזוח לש הפוקתב

םיחווטה לכ לש המגמב ןיחבת ויפלש היסרגירה ףרגב רזעה :ד
,P עופישב רזעהל ךילע ןאכ
.תופטעמהו ןקתה תויטסב

(a) Buy papers with enough movement that your actions will have no impact on the price.
(b) After buying the paper, trace a line and identify the point where the line of resistance breaks downward 2 to 5% and then sell.
(c) Use the moving averages to identify the technical strength of the stock
(d) Use regression graph to identify the P range, watch the slope and use statistical tools.

Moldenkov says that the TASE is persecuting him because of his success. The man has a brain, is talented, motivated and crazy. Wants to probe something. I shall follow his exploits, which are sure to come.

The pics are of Marilyn Monroe, when she was not yet her, at age 18, discovered by the mysterious Hungarian Jewish photographer Dezso.

Building the Mall in Kfar Yona

Today I was called to the site to inspect and advise the people building the project. They didnt understand the sewage pumping station drawing, so I did a simpler illustration which was more accesible. The concept is fluid and keeps evolving. The Southern lower patio was initially to be an open space, then they asked me to make preparations for water supply and a sanitary sewage outlet, and now, during the meeting, they decided to build a 40 sq m pizzeria. The project keeps developing and changing. The pizzeria needs two separate drainage systems and a grease interceptor. The work manager Eli (the friendly chap on the right) and the plumbing contractor Emil (center) and his laconic assistant (left) are working on the site almost without drawings. They trust that in the end all will be fine. Hope so. To this point they are very happy with me.