Israel Preparing for War

Israel's foreign currency reserves reached the excessive level of $42.5 billion at the end of 2008. By now it must be around 60 billion and Bank of Israel is currently buying $100 million per day Monday-Thursday, and $50 million on Fridays.

What is the meaning of this forced accumulation of reserves? We are preparing for a war. That is my interpretation, have not seen it anywhere.

Iran is developing long range missiles as well nuclear weapons. From Europe to India everyone is in range and exposed to Iranian attack. Iran is like a man with a bomb in a cinema, it makes everybody extremely nervous. Iran feels strong and important, and possibly at this stage all that is seeking, but it is a very unstable situation.

Our Future has Improved

Change. Something dramatic has happened to the world’s birthrates. Defying predictions of demographic decline, northern Europeans have started having more babies. Apparently, all demographic scenarios we know are false, and the future is not what we used to imagine. For one thing, the growth and renewed domination by European peoples is gathering steam. China and India, two menacing giants, are due to fade into their past colonial insignificance.

Non PC Message

Gustav Klimt: Danae

Is time analogous to heat dissipation?

Decoherence is a process with an inherent arrow of time that makes it analogous to friction, heat dissipation, and other thermodynamic processes with an arrow of time; the effects are related, the arrows inevitably agree with one another, and decoherence is as real as the other processes (that increase the entropy); the time-reversal asymmetry of decoherence is inevitable because the environment can't be assumed to be non-locally entangled with the system in the far past, but it can be shown to be correlated in the future because of the evolution (and one can't ever assume anything about the future or impose "final" boundary conditions by the very definition of the future which is yet to be seen.

I am trying to work out a heat sink, and look what I found. It is the Feast of Shavuot here, and I should be studying the Book of Ruth with the other Jews in the synagogue, where Boaz, the rich landowner of Beth Lechem, blesses Ruth the Moabite:

The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.

The story ends with miscegenation, and David being crowned King of Israel.

The Beautiful Country

"...the real goal is to promote government at the expense of civil society and to create a one-party state in which business success is based on political favoritism. Thus, the stimulus is working exactly as intended." (Misquoted from Arnold Kling).

Where Kevin MacDonald Makes Me Vote for Sotomayor

I am not an American citizen and I dont vote in American elections. However, America rules the world and in many senses, only America matters. All my natural predispositions and preferences are against Obama, I really hate the community economic development ideology - appropriate technology nonsense - embraced by the World Bank (his mother's employer) and himself. I am a fanatic of the "The Bell Curve" and its proposals, and disagree with the racial quota system. I think over-regulation and equalitarianism will stiffle American (and therefore, human) dynamism and progress. But lately it has been maturing and hardening in my mind the idea that in a world where Kevin Macdonald exists and is non-stop venomously slandering the Jewish people and promoting virulent hate against us, preparing in fact - so I see it - the foundations for our expulsion and/or assessination, I have no choice but to be strongly in favor of Obama. Obama means fighting and silencing racists and antisemites everywhere, including moral perverts like Kevin MacDonald, Obama means creating a public environment where their teachings are unpopular, illegal and liable to send them to jail. MacDonald has been fighting Obama and his choice for the Supreme Court employing the classic antisemite weapon of calling her a "Jewess" in the sense of associating her with Jews. I am sure someone is now feverishly looking into her genealogy to find a tiny drop of "Jewish blood" among her Portorrican genes (as if that made her a Jewess) or she has friends and supporters identifiable as influential Jews. In fact, I have no idea who Sotomayor is, till yesterday I had never heard of her, but by her looks I judge that she is organically incapable of ever accepting MacDonald and his ilk's line, to the point that - so I hope - she represents an immediate danger for MacDonald personally. If so, every Jew must consider her an ally in our unceasing battle for survival. Although I am a natural, visceral opponent of Obama's ideology, and I cant suffer unmarried neurotic female lawyers, Kevin MacDonald has succeeded in turning me into a supporter of Obama and his choice for the Supreme Court, Sotomayor.

Just as in my parents generation after the Holocaust in Hungary, Jews had no rational choice but favor the most reliable anti-Nazi champion, which was the Hungarian Social Democratic (aka Communist) Party, in our days we have no rational choice other than support the most reliable enemy of MacDonald. Obama and Sotomayor can be relied on that they will combat antisemites, not because care about Jews, but because they cannot jump out of their skins and do otherwise. American Jews may have felt this instinctively; for me, it took a long thinking process to arrive to this conclusion. Tremble, MacDonald!

Post Scriptum: The New York Times writes today on Sotomayor's nomination.

In Princeton... she become the outspoken leader of a Puerto Rican students group, Acción Puertoricaño, leading Hispanics to file a complaint against Princeton with the federal government to force the hiring of Hispanic faculty members and administrators. “She was very passionate about affirmative action for women and minorities,” said Charles Hey, another Puerto Rican student.

At Yale Law School, she was co-chairman of a group for Latin, Asian and Native American students — a catchall group for nonblack minorities. There she led fellow students in meetings with the dean to push for the hiring of more Hispanic faculty members at the law school. And, friends say, she shared the alarm of others in the group when the Supreme Court prohibited the use of quotas in university admissions in its 1978 decision Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

As a lawyer, she joined the National Council of La Raza and the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund, two Hispanic civil rights groups that advocate for vigorous affirmative action. As a judge, she has repeatedly argued for diversity on the bench by alluding to the insights she gleaned from her Latina background.

In one of the cases dealing with the subject that she helped decide on the federal appeals court, Ricci v. New Haven, she ruled in favor of the city’s ’s decision to discard the results of an exam to select firefighters for promotion because too few minority firefighters scored high enough to advance. White firefighters who had scored well on the discarded test sued, and the Supreme Court heard arguments on the case in April.

Clearly, she is passionate in the issue of racial preferences. MacDonald and White Nationalists in general have a good reason to dislike her, but why on Earth he has to involve us, the Jews, in this bloody dispute? Doesnt he understand that by doing so he is forcing me and others like me to pray for the lesser evil, which is not Prof. MacDonald?

Addenda: Why I think Sonia Sotomayor should not be US Supreme Judge. Although female Judges are known in Jewish history and religion, in general we dont favour putting women in positions of power over men, and specially old spinsters with no sex and family lives. They tend to be embittered, vengative and sadistic.

V'ger: Learn everything learnable

Uzi Landau: Call the Learning Engineer!

"I have no real authority. We hold meetings, I'm brought a cup of coffee, everything is all very nice, and that's it," said Minister of National Infrastructures Uzi Landau yesterday in response to a question of what was preventing him from intervening more effectively in the water market. He made the comment to the state investigative committee on the management of the water economy.

Dr. Uzi Landau is the Minister of Infrastructures of Israel, personally in charge of the Water Authority. His political outlook is Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel, that is, he is right. He has been fighting for a very long time in the right wing of the Israeli political jungle, yet he seems yet to be unaware that he has reached a very important position. He seems to have no idea that the POWER is now in his hands, nor how to make any use of it. He urgently needs an experienced water sector adviser like me. He doesnt know yet that he needs me. Somebody tell him please. Hurry!

Alarm in the East

North Korea created alarm today when it accused South Korea of declaring war, just two days after testing a nuclear bomb. North Korean officials said the country no longer sees itself as bound by the 1953 armistice.

Obama: They are talking to you.

The paper is six decades old. Could be from tomorrow.

California's Water Shortage

I have been following California's water shortage difficulties when came to an unbelievable (for an Israli Water Engineer), astonishing fact. They have no water meters! In the arid San Joaquin Valley, south of Sacramento, 55 percent of residents are currently not metered. Fresno, the region's largest city, charges single-family households a flat rate, regardless of how much water they use.

Can you imagine what our energy consumption would be like if electricity was at a flat rate?.

Only for the Aficionados

What force is necessary to lift a very thin wire ring 55 mm in diameter from a water surface at a temperature of 20 Centigrades? Neglect the weight of the wire.



OK, that was easy. Now, can you do this?

Jewish Tank in Moscow

The Jewish Tank is a mobile synagogue that roams Moscow's streets, asks people if they are Jewish and invites them inside to pray.

Organic Prosperity

Organic food demand is growing 30% per year in Israel and it is becoming an important sector of the industry. I was involved in the early development of the sector, when "organic" recycling of wastewater for irrigation was considered and planned. I was very skeptical of the whole organic craze, I thought it a passing craze, unscientific and mystical. Yet, from an objective point of view, I was wrong, I didnt see it coming.

For the record. Learning Engineer: Learn!

America and the Korean Bomb

WSJ headline: North Korean Blast Draws Outrage

Outrage? That is all? I remember President Clinton saying that America would level North Korea should they go on developing nuclear weapons. Or am I imagining?

Building and Destroying in Yehudah and Samaria

Obama demanded to destroy Jewish communities to show the Arabs that he is not favouring the Jews. The situation reminds me German demands to the local "Judenrath" to deliver a certain number of Jews to save the rest. Like the negotiations between Kastner and Eichman. Like Gans delivering the children to avoid the liquidation of the Guetto of Lodz. I dont blame the Netaniyahu government for negotiating and carrying out this terrible task. The communities facing destruction are Havat Gilad, Chazon David, Migron, Havat Shaked, Givat Assaf, southeast Ofra, eastern Ofra, Mitzpeh Yitzhar, Yitzhar Darom, western Shalhevet, Mevo Horon, Givat Salfit, Ohel Orna, Mitzpeh Lachish, Aynot Kedem, Ashael, Givat Avigayil, Givat Haroeh, Givat Hadegel, Keidah, northern Neve Daniel, southwest Yatir, Maaleh Rechavam, Nofei Nechemia, and northern Susia. (Pic: Water Infrastructure in Samaria).

Something Never to Forget

To give some sense of just where “average” is, the author provides this question from the federal government’s National Assessment of Educational Progress for 8th graders:

Example 1. There were 90 employees in a company last year. This year the number of employees increased by 10 percent. How many employees are in the company this year?

(A) 9 (B) 81 (C) 91 (D) 99 (E) 100

Guess what percentage of 8th graders got this one wrong?

62 percent.

And it’s actually worse than that, because a sizable fraction of the right responses were likely eenie-meenie-minie-moe guesses.

Most 8th graders can figure out what 10 percent of 90 is. And even more can add 90 and 9. What the majority can’t do is put to cognitively analyze the problem and put the steps together.

(From Steve Sailer's VDare column. I copy this golden paragraph in my Learning Blog, although I know that this is so, but I always forget. Order of the Day to Myself: Never, never let get it out of sight to whom you are talking to.).

Water Saving Products in Demand in Israel

The water crisis is causing dramatic changes in the building industry. Contractors and individuals are putting in showers instead of bathtubs. The number of bathtubs is falling and the number of showers is rising, as is awareness of environmental issues among contractors. There are valves and flow regulators for almost all products.

There are also greywater-to-irrigation systems. This is taking up steam. I saw it coming but had no time (or no energy) to promote myself in this field.

The New California Peso

Paul Krugman: "California, it has long been claimed, is where the future happens first. But is that still true? If it is, God help America."

The shekel strengthened 10% last week. No, on the contrary. The dollar weakened 10%.

African Genes in Ancient Greece

I am following for years the controversy about African genes in the original Greek population, which is rather common in contemporary Greek and Southern Italian populations. The controversy has political meaning, as the Greek Republic does not recognize Macedonia as the "real" Macedonia of Alexander The Great, but a late Slavic settlement. Another issue is that the Ancient Greeks created - almost from nothing - the first real civilization and rational political system, an amazing explosion of intelligence that emerges from the dark animal past of humanity. The Nazi race "scientists" tried to attribute this miracle to the Dorian "Nordic" invasion, since Greeks speak an Arian language. They attributed the late dullness of Greeks to mixing with Blacks. But the picture is much more complicated.

The Greeks themselves thought they came from upper Egypt - Ethiopia. The idea that they should have arrived from the cold North never passed by their minds, as they considered the Northern peoples savage Barbarians. Greeks themselves were not Nordic looking at all, but swarthy and black haired, as self-reported on the illustration above. HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks (2001) was a study conducted by Dr. Arniaz and other scholars in a top flying Spanish University. This study uses HLA genes to establish the African dimension of the roots of ancient Greece.

According to the Arniaz study, …..Greeks are found to have a substantial relatedness to sub-Saharan (Ethiopian) people, which separate them from other Mediterranean groups. Both Greeks and Ethiopians share quasi-specific DRB1 alleles, such as *0305, *0307, *0411, *0413, *0416, *0417, *0420, *1110, *1112, *1304 and *1310. Genetic distances are closer between Greeks and Ethiopian/sub-Saharan groups than to any other Mediterranean group and finally Greeks cluster with Ethiopians/sub-Saharans in both neighbour joining dendrograms and correspondence analyses. The time period when these relationships might have occurred was ancient but uncertain and might be related to the displacement of Egyptian-Ethiopian people living in pharaonic Egypt. See Arnaiz-Villena A,et.al: HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks. Tissue Antigens. 2001 Feb;57(2):118-27

Conclusion: We are all Africans, as the modern human race came out of Africa, Ethiopia to be precise, some 70,000 years ago. In that sense, ancient Greeks were right; moreover, they had no racial neurosis about it. They were a very notable people. Ultimately, we are all from Africa. The rest of the story is strives within the family.

London Real Estate: An Opportunity?

The richest Roman real estate speculator was Marcus Licinius Crassus. He made his fortune burning old Roman buildings and having his 500 strong clients ready to salvage the neighboring properties. Then he made an offer that was impossible to refuse to the owners: you take my offer or I let it burn down. He also bought up holdings expropriated from his political enemies. Having no access to his working tools, I am thinking on investing through PTBL (נכסים)

Property and Building Ltd. (TASE: PTBL) reported increased revenue by 7%, compared with the corresponding quarter of 2008, to NIS 130 million for the first quarter. Net profit, however, fell 35%, compared with the corresponding quarter, to NIS 51.3 million for the first quarter. The company's shareholders' equity was NIS 3.2 billion at the end of March, 27% of its balance sheet total, and it had NIS 2.2 billion in liquid assets. Cash flow from operations was NIS 109.4 million for the first quarter.

Property and Building chairman Rafael Bisker (pic) said, "The company carefully and responsibly weighed market opportunities created by the crisis in order to carry out transactions that will ensure growth in the coming years." CEO Sagi Eitan added, "The company's financial soundness and its cash surplus enables it to consider new business opportunities in Israel and overseas."

Property and Building's share rose 2.4% today to NIS 236.80. The share has doubled since the beginning of the year.

Increasing Productivity

I tend to procrastinate and leave tasks until the very last moment. As a consequence, I always feel as though I could have done more and that my potential has been somewhat unfulfilled. However, I find I concentrate much better and am more prolific with a deadline dangerously close.

The answer is obvious: make sure you always have a deadline to hand, and you will always be prolific. That, at least, is the logical implication. It is also backed up by research.

The behavioural economists Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch conducted an instructive study of procrastination with three groups of students at MIT. Each group had to complete three assignments over the course of the 12-week course. The first group had a separate deadline for each paper, after four, eight and 12 weeks. The second group had no intermediate deadlines: all three papers were due at the end of the course. Students in the third group were asked to impose their own deadlines.

Students with well-spaced deadlines – those in the first group and a subset in the third who had spaced out their deadlines – tended to achieve the highest grades. Students who had assigned themselves no intermediate deadlines, or had been assigned none, fared poorly.

You must learn this lesson. Ensure that a binding deadline is always looming. Chop up large tasks into smaller ones and assign a deadline for each one. If you do not have a professor willing to make these deadlines meaningful, you can do so yourself. Make firm commitments to your colleagues or clients. Alternatively, write out a schedule and make bets with a few friends that you’ll stick to it. If “the very last moment” is always “now”, you’ll be the world’s most productive procrastinator. (Lifted from economist@ft.com)

Next Venture

The KOOR investment has been successful and on May 27 I am expected to collect a 10% dividend neto. I am already seeking the next venture. Nochi Dankner said his next movement will be in the London quality real estate market, and he will use his PBC company in partnership with the Schimmel family. Property and Building Corporation LTD (PBC) was founded in 1961 and operates in Israel and abroad especially in the field of income producing properties.PBC is already involved in England and has three Hilton hotels with a built-up area of 126,000 sq. m. located in the cities of London and Birmingham and Cardiff (share in the properties 20%). The Hilton chain will manage the hotels in a contract for 20-30 years.

Hilton Metropole Hotel in London: Comprises 1,050 rooms and suites and about 5,000 sq. m. of areas for congresses and conferences. It is the largest business hotel in Englandand the second largest in Europe. The location of the hotel is in the heart of the city of London close to Oxford Street.

Hilton Metropole Hotel in Birmingham: Comprises 800 rooms and suites and about 6,000 sq. m. of areas for congresses and conferences. The hotel is the largest hotel in Englandoutside of London. The hotel is located in the heart of the largest congresses and conferences centers in Englandand the second largest in Europe.

Hilton Cardiff Hotel: Comprises 200 rooms and suites, congress and conference areas.

I was learning PBC's annual reports, that are like no other I ever saw. It is mmostly concentrated on risk analysis, as the company operates wuth long term loans and rents. One interesting table is a sensitivity analysis of what happens to the different parameters if the British Pound loses relative value: Apparently, and I confess I had no time to study it in depth, it is very bad for the company. It is the first Israeli company that has named a risk officer.

Kosher Fritters

Terrorists killed somebody this morning in Eli, near Ariel, in the Shomron. Terrible. Just to distract my distress, I imagine eating hot kosher pear fritters.

Follow Up: The man, apparently, killed himself. A suicide. No terrorists involved. We Jews consider suicide a sin, and try to avoid marrying into a family with a suicide in it. Suicides are not buried in a Jewish cemetery, but outside, or near the outer wall. It is a family shame, a family secret, better attribute it to something else.

Professional Tour

I took the class to a professional tour in a Kever Benjamin wastewater pumping station (pic below, these are the Arab students), and two treatment plants: one in Barkan and the other in the neighboring city of the Phoenician Glass Factory (uppe pic, these are the Jewish students. They didnt mix much). In the middle: the traditional class pic.

Maoz Esther Lives!

The first order given by Netanyahu landing in Israel from his meeting with Obama was to destroy some Jewish settlement in Samaria. Maoz Esther was selected and duely levelled. Once the Army left, rebuilding started (pic).

Marylin Monroe (IV)

Stanley Fisher Is Managing Israel

Bloomberg has published a strangely positive note on Israel's economy and the shekel has jumped ipso facto 10%, making every Israeli saver 10% richer. Ha ha ha. Keep writing, Bloomberg, and thanks to good old Stanley Fisher (pic). Thanks also to Zimbabwe's rulers who caused Stanley (and many other precious Rhodesians) to make aliyah to Kever Benjamin City and environs. Thanks also to the United States for choosing Ben Bernanke instead of Stanley, making him so angry that he burned (figuratively) his American passport.

The Bank of Israel’s reserves have grown to the equivalent of 27.5 percent of gross domestic product, 1 percentage point more than the average for OPEC nations and 23 percentage points higher than the average of G-7 governments, according to Bloomberg data. Israeli holdings increased 53.4 percent in the year to April 30, the fastest growth for any country with annual gross domestic product above $150 billion, the data show.
As of last month, the Bank of Israel had enough reserves to cover the nation’s $33 billion of short-term debt, said Caroline Grady, a London-based economist at Deutsche Bank AG, Germany’s biggest bank. “If you’re a foreign investor and you see a country has increasing foreign reserves, you say this country looks sound,” said Vered Dar, chief economist at Psagot Ofek Investment House in Tel Aviv, which manages 106 billion shekels ($26.4 billion). “If worst comes to worst, this country will pay out their debt from their own pocket.” The shekel has become the most stable emerging-market currency in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. (What about the USA?)

Next Speculation: London Real Estate

Nochi Dankner speculated successfully taking a large loan from Goldman Sachs to buy Credit Suisse shares, which he is selling with large profit. He has been searching for the next opportunity and it is London Real Estate. He says you can buy high quality properties in London real cheap. Apparently, he will use IDB (the bank of my mentor Benno Gitter) as his vehicle, in partnership with the Simmel family, that operates a real estate business in London (Rock Real Estate). The pic shows the Hilton Hotel in London, already owned by the partnership. Maybe I can piggyback on this one too.

Warning: Sie sollten sich daher nicht auf diese verlassen oder gar auf eine eigene Recherche verzichten; insbesondere für spekulative Zwecke. Es gibt bisher auch keine Evidenz für eine verstärkt spekulative Tendenz auf dem Londoner Immobilienmarkt.

UPDATE (1230 AM Kever Benjamin Time): Things are developing real fast and taking me by suprise. The English Pound is sinking, the FTSE is collapsing. There may be a run developing on the UK. Wow! From the Financial Times:

Sterling tumbled on Thursday as the outlook for the UK economy was thrown into doubt as its credit ratings were revised from stable to negative by Standard & Poor’s over worries about the build up of government debt.

The pound fell 1.2 per cent against the dollar to $1.5529 and 1.4 per cent against the euro to £0.8866.

”We have revised the outlook on the UK to negative due to our view that, even assuming additional fiscal tightening, the net general government debt burden could approach 100 per cent of GDP and remain near that level in the medium term,” Standard & Poor’s credit analyst David Beers said in a statement.

Drying Off Iraq

Iraq is a rainless country that depends for its existence on two rivers flowing down from Turkish mountains. The Turks have built several large dams and their effect is beginning tobe felt on Iraq. The Euphrates river carries currently 230 cubic metres per second, down from the 2000 level of 950 cubic metres per second. It is still a vast amount of water, but the Iraqis are not used to saving water, so they cant manage with this amount. At their traditional water use, the available flow means that more than half of the irrigated area will stay dry this summer.

The negative impact on farming is already being felt in some provinces, including Najaf in the south that has banned its farmers from planting rice because it requires heavy irrigation. The marshes of Nasiriyah farther south are becoming saline. The Iraqis themselves are disorganized and barely aware of what is happening to them. Turkey is indifferent. In twenty years more, Iraq will become a desert country dependant on oil, like Saudi Arabia. Pic and footnote from NASA site (The Engineer says Thanks America):

The top image is a false-color composite made from data collected by the Multi-Spectral Scanner (MSS) aboard Landsat from 1973-76. Four Landsat scenes were stitched together to make an image of the whole region. In this scene, dense marsh vegetation (mainly phragmites, or marsh grass) appears as dark red patches. The elongated red patches along the banks of the Shatt-al-Arab River are Date Palm groves. The Shatt-al-Arab begins where the Tigris and Euphrates meet and carries their waters southeastward into the Persian Gulf.

The bottom image is a false-color composite of data from the Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), acquired on March 26 and May 4, 2000. In this scene, most of the Central Marshes appear as olive to greyish-brown patches indicating low vegetation cover on moist to dry ground. The very light to grey patches are areas of exposed ground with no vegetation, which may actually be salt flats where before there were lakes. The Al Hawizeh Marsh (straddling the Iran-Iraq border just east of the Tigris River) appears to be all that remains of the region's natural wetlands, and it has been reduced in size by about half.

Today, river flow into the Mesopotamian marshlands has been cut by 20-50 percent, and the spring floods that sustained the marshlands have been eliminated. The end result is what was once a lush wetland environment roughly the size of the state of New Jersey has been reduced by about 85 percent in area to roughly the size of the small island nation of the Bahamas. What was once a vast, interconnected mosaic of densely-vegetated marshlands and lakes, teeming with life, is now mostly lifeless desert and salt-encrusted lakebeds and riverbeds.

Even for the 1,270 square km (490 square miles) of marshlands that still remain, quality of life has been adversely impacted by a decline in water quality. Human irrigation practices render the Tigris and Euphrates waters saltier than they originally were. All of these negative trends point to the inevitable demise of the Mesopotamian ecosystem ... dating back to ancient Sumeria about 5,000 years ago.

The above refers to the situation in the year 2,000. I have no access to current Landsat pics, but I presume that by now the Marsh Arabs have returned to their original status of Desert Arabs.

Prof. Kevin MacDonald Sees His Future

Prof. Kevin MacDonald's latest article foresees a future where the next Supreme Judge may be of Jewish extraction. He finds little joy in that scenario. He writes:

I suspect that this temptation to restrict speech will be increasingly irresistible in the future. And if Kagan is on the Supreme Court, we can certainly expect that she would vote for such restrictions. Her heart, as I am sure Obama must know, is definitely in the right place.

The world will certainly be a better place without the obsessive attacks of MacDonald on the Jewish people. (Pic.: MacDonald arrested.)

Europeans vs Asiatics

You have the large Eurasian continent, some 9,000 Km from England to South Korea. At the Western end, we find White, clear eyed and blond populations, on the Eastern end, we have Asiatic, black haired people. These two human groups diverged about 40,000 years ago and they have been competing for the domination of the continent. Who is winning?

Apparently, on the long term, the Asiatics are displacing Europeans and pushing the division line further and further Westward. I copy from Dienekes:

Human Genetics doi:10.1007/s00439-009-0683-0 Ancient DNA provides new insights into the history of south Siberian Kurgan people. Keyser C. et al.

To help unravel some of the early Eurasian steppe migration movements, we determined the Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial haplotypes and haplogroups of 26 ancient human specimens from the Krasnoyarsk area dated from between the middle of the second millennium BC. to the fourth century AD. ... Our data indicate that at the Bronze and Iron Age timeframe, south Siberians were blue (or green)-eyed, fair-skinned and light-haired people and that they might have played a role in the early development of the Tarim Basin civilization.

Nowadays South Siberia is solidly Asiatic. Bad news for White peoples, I presume.

Jordan Going Alone in the Red Sea Project

From the Jordanian Press: To help save the Dead Sea and generate water as of 2014, the Jordanian government also announced that it will implement the $10 billion Jordan National Red Sea Water Development Project. Officials said the project is separate from the Red-Dead Canal and is supported by the government.

Once implemented, the project is expected to spur an economic, industrial and agricultural boom in the Jordan Valley, as water conveyance from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, 400 metres below sea level, will generate electricity which will be used for the desalination process and other purposes.

The JRSP is projected to provide 120mcm of water annually by the year 2014 in its first phase, expanding to 700mcm annually in later phases.

Construction on the project, which entails five phases and will be built on a build-operate-transfer basis, is expected to be completed within 25-30 years.

The first phase, scheduled to start late next year, includes taking water from the Red Sea through pipelines to a desalination facility, which will be built in Aqaba. Later, water generated from the desalination plant will be distributed to Aqaba and development projects in the area.

In the meantime, the brine from the desalination plant will be discharged through pipelines into the Dead Sea to limit the decline in its water levels.

Skip Holland, senior vice president and managing executive of MWH Global, the company managing the project, said the water will eventually be connected with the Disi project water carrier to deliver water to Amman.

Despite the similarity between the goals of the JRSP and the Red-Dead Water Conveyance Project, which also seeks to generate freshwater and save the Dead Sea from shrinking, the two projects will be carried out simultaneously.

"The JRSP is planned so it can begin immediately, the project is Jordanian and will be built on Jordanian land… The World Bank environmental and feasibility studies of the Red-Dead Project are vital for our scheme," Ministry of Water and Irrigation Secretary General Maysoun Zu'bi said yesterday.

"The country's water situation is urgent; we cannot afford to wait," Zu'bi told The Jordan Times, underscoring that the JRSP "is not a replacement for the Red-Dead Project".

The Jordanians are not waiting for us, they are promoting a separate project to exploit the Red Sea - Dead Sea 400 m topographic difference. The financing will be a problem because the energy generated by the project will be more expensive than gas or oil. From a financial point of view, a conventional desalination plant is more attractive. But this is a complex, ecological scheme, maybe the World Bank will finance it. I have not heard any serious Israeli reaction yet. (Pic: The King of Jordan donating blood. I empathize with him because he is brother fat man.)

The Great World Crisis 2008 - 2023

"The next great depression will be from 2008 to 2023" p. 16 in "The Great Boom Ahead" by H.S Dent (1993) based on demographic data.

The Stupidest Arguments Against Desalination

The six-year long permitting of the Huntington Beach (Calif.) Poseidon desalination plant is being completed. It is time to review the arguments voiced against this iniciative. The most imbecile, I daresay, is that the capitalist financing the plant will be profiting from seawater, which is public property.

Federal and state laws, including the California Coastal Act, treat ocean water as a part of the public commons that must be used primarily for non consumptive uses. One purpose “does not necessarily impair its ability to be used for others,” according to a 2004 analysis by the California Coastal Commission’s research staff. In contrast, privatization advocates treat water as a commodity and more of a human need rather than a human right.

I can assure the persons who fear that Poseidon may be consuming too much sea water, a common property of all humanity, that their fear is without foundation. All the seawater consumed will eventually find their way back to the sea or the atmosphere. Poseidon will not dry up the oceans, and enough sea water will be available for any other use the Californian environmentalists may be entertaining in their minds.

The second stupidest argument is that Poseidon will cause the disminution of fish (see illustration) in the sea. The argument is absurd not only quantitatively, because humanity extracts from the oceans hundred xillions cubic meters of fish per year, with international treaties tightly regulating this industry. Of course Poseidon will do everything to exclude and filter out the fish from the water it needs. Anyway, Poseidon people thought it below their dignity to debate such stupid argument, and agreed to create an artificial wetland where the fish (see illustration once more) theoretically displaced could call home.

The qualitative argument is the one I never understood. Say that before the building and operating of the Poseidon plant, there were two xillion small fishes we call the schmietzsch. Say the schmietzsch likes sea water with 30,000 mg salt/lt and the plant will increase salinity in a 100 meter radius of its marine outfall. Some schmietzschen may have to emigrate. The overall number of schmietzschen may decrease to only one trillion and nine hundred billion, but a second species called "the saltwater schmietzsch" that looks exactly like the schmietzsch will colonize the newly underpopulated waters. The overall biomass will not suffer or even increase. Diversity will increase. By what law of nature there is a need for a fixed number of schmietzschen to exist? Every living population fluctuates, there are no fixed numbers at all. And the schmietzsch may even be a Central European immigrant species that arrived to California in 1946. What are its rights? Why Poseidon has to build an artificial schmietzsch paradise? All ecosystems are temporary and changing all the time, why should the one perturbed by desalination be considered eternal, holy, to be maintained forever? Forever? How long we have to be breeding and feeding schmietzschkes - 50 years, 100 years, or 1,000 years will be enough and then, what? The schmietzsch will never die out?

And if it does, what?

Wastewater Treatment Plants Generate Superbugs

The biological reactor is a rich soup of everything liquid produced by a city, including hormones from anticonceptive pills, antibiotics and all kinds of biological stressors. Bacteria in this soup live and reproduce interchanging genetic material, and soon all the biomass becomes antibiotic resistant. In the first known study of its kind, Chuanwu Xi of the University of Michigan School of Public Health and his team sampled water containing the bacteria Acinetobacter at five sites in and near Ann Arbor's wastewater treatment plant.

They found the so-called superbugs—bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics—up to 100 yards downstream from the discharge point into the Huron River. The total number of bacteria left in the final discharge effluent declined dramatically after treatment, the remaining bacteria was significantly more likely to resist multiple antibiotics than bacteria in water samples upstream. Some strains resisted as many as seven of eight antibiotics tested. "Twenty or 30 years ago, antibiotics would have killed most of these strains, no problem," he said.

Multiple antibiotic-resistant bacteria has emerged as one of the top public health issues worldwide in the last few decades as the overuse of antibiotics and other factors have caused bacteria to become resistant to common drugs. Xi's group chose to study Acinetobacter because it is a growing cause of hospital-acquired infections and because of its ability to acquire antibiotic resistance. Pic: Kever Banjamin's Wastewater Plant in 1996.

Expecting Resistance

Eyal Gurevich (pic) expects resistance at the level of 12000 in Koor. He is one of the most important technical analyst gurus in TASE. Strange, but I see nothing of what he sees. I am betting Koor will raise straight to 20,000.

San Diego: Israeli Water Engineers Are Coming

San Diego's water board gave final approval Wednesday for construction of the largest water desalination plant in the Western hemisphere. The $320 million project proposed by Poseidon Resources will come online by 2012 in Carlsbad and produce 50 million gallons of drinking water a day, or 10 percent of the supply for San Diego County. Poseidon is a a joint venture of IDE (owned 50% by Israel Chemicals and Delek) and a local company. The pic shows IDE's Ashkelon plant.

"It's been six years of permitting, 14 public hearings and over 70 hours of public testimony and debate," company vice president Scott Maloni said. Six years is faster than a well-greased bullet in comparison with Israel.

And that is California. California bloggers are always "crying" (Wiki definition: feeling powerless or unable to influence what is happening.) They dont know how good they have it.

Why the NYT Cant Have A Better Economic Reporter?

EDMUND L. ANDREWS writes in the New York Times about his own personal economic catastrophe (May 14, 2009) and the blogosphere finds him guilty. He explains:

If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I. As an economics reporter for The New York Times, I have been the paper’s chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years. I watched Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, at close range. I wrote several early-warning articles in 2004 about the spike in go-go mortgage...

Mangan and his friends find it reprobable his divorcing his wife of two decades (at a cost of 4,000 dollars per month) to marry the girl (now 50 y.o.) he desired in high school. They presume that the exploitative bitch drove him to the fall. On the other hand, risk manager Falkenblog judges him morally guilty of failing to pay back his mortgage to the bank and feeling no shame. What these Americans dont know is that Andrews and 2nd wife are behaving in the typical worryless Argentine way. Dios es Argentino, we used to say, God will provide. Only an Argentine can live without a worry for months and years and be surprised by the cash machine telling him that he is broke.

But the bloggers are missing the most relevant part of Mr Andrews's saga. Which is that we all have been consuming economic reporting produced by a person who was, and is, it is so obvious, a total economic moron. The fact that this person could "pass" as an economic guru means that we all are morons. Sad.

Marylin Monroe (III)

Second Wave Coming

The moneymarket blog says that nothing is improving and that we are in for a second wave of stock exchange fall. Stronger than the previous one. If so, I should be reordering my portfolio and real fast.

Hungary Selling Its Profitable Water Company

Zsiga Daniel Karpat, a Hungarian Nationalist parlamentarian, blogs that he got wind that the Budapest Water Works will be sold in an accelerated operation to private interests. The company had 100 million forint profit last year. In the original:

...elképedve szerzett tudomást arról, hogy a kormányzat igényei szerint fellépő Nemzeti Vagyongazdálkodási Tanács döntése értelmében két hét múlva nemes egyszerűséggel feldarabolják a Duna Menti Regionális Vízművet

I visited its pipe system under the Danube, and its iron and manganese settling facilities. The water is super soft, so unlike our Israeli water. Why they are selling it? They must need the money.

The Battle of Halamish

Above the development plan of the Jewish Settlement of Chalamish in the Judean Hills. The industrial area to the north was permitted, not so the new houses (the red circled area). The drawing is from Peace Now's website: this is Jewish activist organization dedicated to dismantle Israel and if not possible, then at least to obstaculize its development. They are fighting against the building of every new home for Jews, kindergarden, school, synagogue, park, tree, flower. If not for this destructive self-hating Jews, a couple of young Jewish families would be living now in real houses and not in temporary sheds. Jews were always the worst enemies of Jews, from Torquemada of the Inquisition to Peace Now.

Kever Benjamin: Israel's Classical Music Capital

The Destroyer of Forests, the Ha Aretz newspaper, has a three page note on classical music in Kever Benjamin City. The obsession started with Dr. Franco, a child doctor, who established a fund for musical education in the town. Now we have 80 music teachers and 29 youth orchestras and 3,200 music students. And this is a city of only about 70,000. I am complete unaware of this hidden aspect of my hometown, as we are of the swimming persuasion.

On reading too much

I was always reading too much. Spent days in the library. I read everything. I am one of those persons who find a used piece of newpaper in a public latrine, cleans it and reads what is written on it. And I think this vice of reading too much is the secret why I am making money on the stock exchange. It appears to me that the stock exchange and in fact every market is full of undiscovered mistakes and disarmonies, which "jump" to my eyes but seem invisible to others. I dont look for them, they just appear and shout "Hey J, would you believe I am here? Pick me up!". Like a twenty dollar bill on the street. Ten years ago, I realized that I had made more money playing with my savings than by working my ass off as a salaried self important employee, I decided to shift the center of gravity to reading and thinking about the stock exchange. It didnt work out, I am asked to accept too many too easy projects so I get bogged down by them. I am taking the decision, once more, of working less and reading more. If possible.

Having Fun in Tijuana

Four California Latinos went down to Tijuana to have some fun and ended as dog ash. The body of the girls, Brianna Hernandez, who was either 18 or 19, tested positive for cocaine. Oscar Jorge Garcia, 23, had been apprehended in the San Diego area in January 2008 with six illegal immigrants in his car, but never charged. They were tortured and killed, but the Mexican government censured the news and the rumor says the bodies were incinerated in the Tijuana municipal stray dog crematorium.

el primo de un amigo me conto que los muertos desaparecidos por el gob del pan se los estan llevando a los incineradores de la perrera

Say cheese

One of those Iraq photos.

Guest Blogger

J has generously allowed me to guestblog here. This blog has badmouthed enough my cousin Koko, and it is time to remind you that your sand clock is running out. You can watch it in the documentary "The Planet of the Apes" I and II. And we are learning to swim, so this time Charlton Heston will not escape.

What was the Caveman thinking about?

Mark with X the correct answer.

(1)Mammoths

(2)Bisons

(3)Sex


Follow Up: Commenter Anon discovered, I think, the true nature of this object. I am proud of him. Obviously, it is a birthing charm to be hanged around the neck of a woman in advanced state of pregnancy. Shame on The Economist, GNPX, and all the other dirty minded vacuous opiniators. Me included.

Koko The Talking Gorilla

Koko is a wunder gorilla with a vocabulary of one thousand words, which compares favourably with most heavy metal singers. But intelligence does not come alone and Koko has a bad fixation with the female nipple. Being able to express her neurosis, she demands to see nipples, touch nipples, imagine what nipples. Three former caretakers for Koko contend in a lawsuit that they were ordered to flash their breasts at the ape to satisfy her nipple fetish. On one occasion, the lawsuit says, Gorilla Foundation president Francine "Penny" Patterson told the gorilla, "Koko, you see my nipples all the time. You are probably bored with my nipples. You need to see new nipples." And there is the famous internet conversation with Koko:

AOL: Tell us about the Maui preserve, what you're hoping to do?

KOKO: Mouth give-me.

PENNY: Our dream is to establish a preserve on 70 acres of . . .

KOKO: Give-me.

PENNY: . . . land donated on West Maui by Maui Land & Pineapple . . .

KOKO: Me.

PENNY: . . . Company . . .

KOKO: This nipple.

PENNY: This is something I'm talking about, but it hasn't happened...

KOKO: Give-me.

PENNY: . . . we're trying very hard to raise the money ...

KOKO: Hurry give-me mouth nipple.

Infrastructure under the White House, Washington

Aguablog led me to a Washington Post article about the unseen water and sewage infrastructure problems in Washington. It appears that the water mains serving the city are seventy years old and unmaintained. The White House was last renovated in 1950 under President Truman (see pic). As always, there are some intelligent comments:

boscobobb wrote:

It's not unique to WSSC. I had a garbage truck fall through the street by my house. The drivers mentioned it happens frequently.

A week later we also had the 90 year old 20" main go out while a neighbor was in the shower. He thought his kids were pulling a prank.

We've literally hollowed out our national infrastructure.

5/6/2009 11:50:07 PM

Some of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission's biggest pipes have been inspected just once or twice in the past three decades. The 66-inch main that exploded along River Road in the winter, forcing helicopter rescues of drivers stranded in the torrent, had not been inspected in 10 years. The WSSC had $130.6 million to replace 108 miles of water pipe over the past four fiscal years, it completed 81 miles. In one year, the utility replaced 16.6 miles of pipe, although it was budgeted for 27. The unspent money was returned to its general fund.

So we in Israel are not alone. Money is available, but the bureaucracy is unable to execute the job.