Naval Battle near Gaza

The propaganda flotilla offered violent resistance to Israeli naval forces, including small arm fire, and the Israel Navy opened fire on the Marmora ship sailing for the Gaza Strip. The link leads to documentary video clips. I think our marine commandoes are very courageous to go down on a rope into a violent Muslim crowd. Between 10 and 15 people were killed, with over 60 wounded. The European peaceniks imagined they are going to play-act demonstrating in an Oslo or a San Francisco campus, forgetting that this war is for real. The pro-El-Quaida Turkish activists on the ships were less illusional and they tried to lynch our soldiers, but of course the got killed and/or arrested. Now we have a real problem with Turkey and a general malaise regarding our reputation.

Update: Interestingly, the comments on the European press are NOT totally negative. in El Pais (Spain), someone commented:

Gracias Israel por defendernos a todos de la maldicion del Islam. Del malvado profeta, del pederesta, del sanguinario Mahoma y sus fanaticos. Gracias por mantener a raya a Siria,Iran,y sus compiches de la Liga Arabe.

He is saying: Thanks Israel for defending all of us from the Islam.

Art and Nature

Netanya near the sea. The Segal house's gate. Wrought iron and natural intertwined. Nice.

Farming in Detroit

My old friends will witness that I independently and spontaneously arrived to the brilliant idea of transforming Detroit's abandoned neighborhoods into subsistance farms, providing productive work for the population (90% African). If Robert Mugabe was able to transform thousands of hi-tech mechanized farms into unproductive subsistance farms, all in less than ten years, then why it could not be done in Detroit? Then I discovered that the idea was already under implementation at a small, trial scale. Now a billionaire businessman is proposing to carry out the plan on a grand scale. He calls it Hantz Farms. "There'll be the traditional methods (aka hoe and machete), but there'll also be some exciting, forward-thinking ways about how to farm (yet to be discovered)." As said, the soil and the climate of the City of Detroit are rather poor from the agricultural point of view, but a pair of goats and a potato plot will produce enough for the subsistence of a typical Detroit farmer. Of course, soon will arrive those "exciting, forward-thinking" things, like they did in Zimbabwe.

Envy-based economy

I feel reinvicated because my favorite quant Eric Falkenstein got reviewed in the Globe and Mail. Eric maintains that risk is not rewarded in the market, and people is moved not by greed but by envy. The implications are revolutionary, but he is a much better writer than I am so go to his site (see blogroll to the right) and read it. Since I dont know what risk is (nor probability), all my savings are in so called super-risky assets (to the horror of my banker) and myself am living in the world most explosive hotpoint.

Outlaw Religion

The Animal Welfare movement is killing ancient rituals. I am not talking about human sacrifice as practiced by Europeans (read Cesar's War in Gallia) nor animal sacrifice as used to be practiced in the Temple of Jerusalem and is still practiced by the Muslims on Id-el-Fitr. Now, New Zealand has become the fourth country to outlaw kosher meat, after Iceland, Norway, and Sweden took similar measures in the past. Under the newly instated Animal Welfare Commercial Slaughter Code, kosher slaughter, or shchita, is illegal.

Enemy Propaganda

Salon has an article by Glenn Greenwald argueing that America's enemies are right and America is wrong and criminal. He has assembled a number of unrelated quotes from the New York Times in the last twenty years, pretending to demonstrate among other things that Al Qaida is an American creation (he almost implies that al Quaida's destruction of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon was a covert CIA operation) and that Pakistanis are right in hating America. I dont care about the factual correctness of what he writes, because fishing in a pool of twenty years of reporting American foreign activity you can find anything you want, but the tone of the article, which clearly adopts the enemy's perspective and justifies it. The bottom line is that Salon is publishing antiamerican propaganda. With such Americans, you need no enemies.

Shock therapy

Spain adopted severe antismoking legislation in 2006. El Pais reports that since then, the proportion of smokers increased slightly. Next year the cigarette packets will carry horrible pictures of cancerous lungs and so. I dont think it will work.

Sign

Netania on the Mediterranean. Another sandstormy day, visibility five meters.

Wiping them one by one

Thus spoke Dear Leader:

If the south Korean puppet forces show any sign of the slightest provocation, political, military and economic, against the DPRK, backed by the U.S. imperialists, we will immediately react to them by the just tactics of wiping out one by one, eliminate all rubbish of the nation from the Korean Peninsula and build on it rich and powerful reunified Korea where all Koreans enjoy prosperity.

This dear leader guy sounds like a nice fellow, does he?

0.4% of the MSCI Index

TASE has been reclassified as a developed stock market. Its weight is 0.4% of the world. It is humbling to see how insignificant we are. From now, we are also exposed to sudden movements of international speculative capital. Its all for good.

The Communist Party of Korea

The Communist Party of Korea is Mr Kim Jong Il's private business property, that he inherited from his father. The Secretary General (his official title) was born on the top of sacred Mount Baekdu. When he was born, two rainbows split the clouds, a new star appeared in the sky and a monster appeared out of the ocean and sang the Korean national anthem. The country is in permanent state of war with the USA (see pic) nd his allies.

Korean Caviar Sushi

On the other end of the phone, they are waiting for my answer. Here I am wasting time and dreaming of exotic foods. You there, J, back to work!

Panic II

Worldwide panic, repeat performance. This time, the trigger was fear of Greece's sovereign default. Germany built up the suspense fraying the nerves of money managers world over. The buffalo herd is stampeding and falling off the cliff, the indians are waiting below to slaughter them. This, too, shall pass.

Korea: Jitters

The Kospi, South Korea's stock index, slumped 3.2 percent, with investors’ jitters worsened by tensions after North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has ordered his military to be ready for combat. This week also looks very bad.

Water Intensive industry

A water intensive industry in the Sharon area. How to recycle its water and reduce its wastewater outflow? I am working on it.

The Best Reflection Competition

On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 7:01 AM, VICTOR NIEDERHOFFER, the well-known trader, writer and blogger, published the following competition:

"The sage likes to compare the stimulus bill to taking 1/2 a tablet of viagra and then diluting it with candy. We need more he said. What are the natural reflections engendered by such an utterance? I'll give a prize at the annual spec party for the best such reflection. vic"

Wow! Taking half tablet of Viagra! and the diluting it with candy! Unfortunately I have no idea what happens with half a Viagra. I have even less idea what happens if it is diluted with candy. Does candy reduce the potency of Viagra (I mean of the Viagra-taker)? Dilute is used for liquids, what is the Sage saying? Is he comparing the stimulus bill to a male organ used by Obama to fuck American public? And saying Obama needs more Viagra to do the job? Candy is dandy, but liquer is quicker? I need to reflect deeper.

PS (next day): What did Warren Buffet REALLY say? He called for a second stimulus continue.

"I think that a second one may well be called for," Warren Buffett said Thursday morning on ABC's "Good Morning America." "Our first stimulus bill... was sort of like taking half a tablet of Viagra and having also a bunch of candy mixed in," he said, "as if everybody was putting in enough for their own constituents." Indeed, the money from the $787 billion economic stimulus package is being doled out unevenly.

He did not say that Viagra was being diluted with candy. He said that part of the stimulus money was being spread around as candies to Obama's friends and not fulfilling its goal of stimulating the economy. He meant that an entire tablet of Viagra applied only to the economic organism and not shared by Obama's friends, would have produced a fully powerful socio-economic erection. These reflections need to be refined if I want to participate in the competition. I hope it comes with air tickets.

Fully invested in TASE

TASE, the Israeli STock Exchange, has been reclassified to Developed Market. On May 26 we expect an inflow of net 1 - 2 billion dollars from passive funds. TASE is expected to benefit and the shekel to harden. I am investing everything I have and also that I dont have in TASE.

Is there such a thing as Conditional Probability?

Andrew Gelman says "no". I have been using conditional probability for ever and even teaching it. Now this individual alleges that taking a measurement mixes up everything, that there is some kind of uncertainty principle (Heisenfeld? Eisenburg? Eygenfuck? I am not certain), so conditional probability is false.

In another place he proposes that a large number of measurements do not arrange themselves in a gaussian distribution, so a probability calculation operates as an attractor that destroys information, ergo, the results are false.

Should we be in the Soviet Union in 1938 and I was Stalin in my current mood, he would find himself mining coal in Vorkuta (pic). People who puts in doubt the established believes of an old man should be punished. Next somebody will write that the vodka I am drinking is no good for the circulation.

What is this?

After so many days of fasting, this thing seems hauntingly familiar, but I just cant remember what it is. May be some kind of gift table decoration made of plastic.

Caligula: A Visionary

The Spanish Government announced that it will investigate the "vejaciones y torturas" (indignities and tortures) caused to hogs.

"...investigará la denuncia pública de la organización Igualdad Animal, que asegura que los cerdos de las más de 99.500 granjas españolas sufren "de forma generalizada" trato vejatorio, hacinamiento, torturas, estrés, problemas psicológicos, castraciones, enfermedades tumorales e infecciosas."

I think that "problemas psicologicos" needs no translation.

Something has happened to the Spanish people. These are not the Spaniards I knew. Then I remembered that great Spanish Emperor, Caligula, who was a true believer in Animal Equality, to the point of granting citizenship to his horse Incitatus. The horse legally married his mare called Penelope, and was even elected to the Senate. He was an early visionary of AA, marriage for everybody, and total equality.

Is Israel a Banana Republic?

Not yet, but we are almost there. Our model seems to be Ecuador, that suddenly declared its contracts with American Oil Companies as not valid, and demanded more royalties. Some companies complied, others like Mobil left the country. Mobil was hit with an absurd demand of compensations for crimes again the jungle, submitted by an ad-hoc Indian tribe. Ecuador is the world largest banana exporter - the Banana Republic par excellance.

Israel's Minister of Finance Yuval Steinitz's decided to follow Ecuador's example and decided to revise royalties collected by the state from oil and gas discoveries. At issue are investments by US company Noble Energy Inc. (NYSE: NBL) in the Tamar well and its oil and gas exploration in adjacent leases. Noble Energy is considering to suspend its relations with Israel.

Shame!

About Show Off Ascets

Its my 23rd day of fasting (now I am eating 200 gr boiled fish every two days). Ascetism is forbidden in contemporary Judaism, yet in the past it was widespread, so much that Isaias and Jesus predicated against the practice of doing it in public. Apparently, the Jews desisted from exhibitionist fasting, but the practice persisted among Christians.

Simeon Stylites was a Christian ascetic who did a profession of fasting in public. The wiki tells us that he started with a severe regimen of fasting for Great Lent. Later, to get away from the ever increasing number of people who came to see him, he moved to the top of a pillar. This first pillar was little more than four meters high, but his last was over 15 meters from the ground.

Simeon's fame spread throughout the Empire. The Emperor Theodosius and his wife Eudocia greatly respected the saint and listened to his counsels, while the Emperor Leo paid respectful attention to a letter he sent in favour of the Council of Chalcedon.

The pic shows Saint Simeon on his pillar, Christ in the mandonla above and the serpent with its temptations below. Anyone knows about a suitable pillar with internet access in Kever Benjamin city?

Important Israeli Water Initiative

Israel-China investment fund Infinity I-China announced today a $5 million investment in United Water Corporation (UW). Blue Ridge China Partners L.P., one of the most active funds in China, also participated. The financing will be used to merge new water facilities. Infinity’s involvement is also intended to create opportunities in the Chinese market for Israeli water tech technologies. (The pic is decoration).

How to fast

From Moses on Jews always loved fasting and "torturing their souls". The prophets like Isaias chastised the Jews because they publicized their fasting, to better impress their suffering on the public. Even Jesus echoes this sentiment, for example in Matthew 6:16 "When ye fast, be not, as the Pharisees, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward." Now verily Dr Rasputin ordered me to tell no one that I am fasting, not because the danger of displeasing God with my vanity, but because people will offer me food and try to force me to eat. Fasting, apparently has no trascendental meaning in our godless days, the inexistent god cares not if you eat or stuff yourself. It is a hygienic practice. I am into day 22 and no one yet tempted me to turn stones into bread. Pity.

Bad Week (cont.)

It is Wednesday - this bad week is not over yet. Germany imposed financial regulations to defend the Euro. "It is about no more and no less than the preservation of the European idea," Chancellor Merkel told the Parliament. "That is our historic task; if the euro fails, then Europe fails." World markets fell and the mood changed to a orange panic.

Update: Thursday and it is a really bad week. People getting rid of everything.

Shavuot Peregrination to the Tomb of Ruth

It is Shavuot, the feast of the new harvest in Israel, the best weather of the year. This is the time when Ruth the Moabite slept in the fields and happened to call the attention of Boaz, her wealthy employer, so the King David dynasty was born. Ruth's Tomb is on a hill overlooking Hebron, and a cult has developed in the last twenty years: converts from all the nations, who adopted the Jewish people as their own like Ruth did, visit the tomb during this time of the year. The tomb itself consists of a number of underground chambers and the entrance is the ruin shown on the pic. The tomb is on asmall hill between Tel Rumeyda (the Jewish settlement) and the city of Hebron, near the old Jewish cemetery. On roof of the tomb there is a Zahal post guarding the entrance to the Jewish settlement.

Great Entertainment

I read extensively everything published on the web, from extreme Marxist and Fifth International blogs to Neonazi filth, but I always return to right wing intellectual blogs. They are most entertaining and enjoyable. Just now a tremendous debate is going on HBD Books regarding AltRight Manliness Chief Writer Jack Donovan (aka Rev. Malebranche, of the Church of Satan), a 32 y.o. androphile and former go-go dancer. Some people find it incongruous that a homosexual should be their mentor in Virtus (manliness, in Latin) and teach the White Warrior's Honor Code to them.

One of the recent complaints of the right wing press is why the media deals interminably with the Nazis and scarcely about the no-less-evil Communists. They say it is a Jewish conspiracy (of course). They are wrong. The fact is that Marxism is deadly boring, and all their blogs write about is the historic crisis of capitalism: overaccumulation and reglobalization. As individuals, they cannot be less impressive: No class, they dont know how to dress. Nazis, on the other hand, are all class and style: their look of black-leather gangsters from the twenties (well, they ARE gangsters from the twenties), their gutural vocalizations and death cries soundng like Heavy Metal rock stars, their sinister black 1938 Mercedes Benzes. Even this Jew has to concede the undisputable: sartorially, they are superior. And they all seem to have some fascinating sexual quirk.

One can spend hours imagining those get-together castle balls organized by Himmler for SS officers and Nordic volunteer "Hitler mothers"... Or one of Captain Rohm's Rocky Horror style congresses... Khruschov may have killed millions of fellow Ucrainians, but he had no life (I am discounting his fat, ugly, stupid wife). One has no choice but to read rightist blogs to learn something as interesting as Rev. Malebranche preaching Virtue.

The Real Rima

My Mistake! The real beauty queen Rima is this one, and not the one shown below ! I knew something was wrong ! Thanks Anonymous for correcting me.

I, The Hunger Artist

I am in my 21st.day of water + 200 gram boiled chicken or fish diet. My blood pressure went down to normal: 120/80 and I have lost 15 kilos.

The pic illustrates Kafka’s 1922 story “The Hunger Artist.” Greatly admired in his youth, the artist is now aging and interest in his art is waning. As he grows despondent over this lack of interest he decides to break the forty day “rule” and just keep going. As he is about to die from starvation, the artist explains his real reason for being a hunger artist wasn’t to be the best hunger artist there was but rather, “Because I couldn’t find the food that I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else”. Unconvincing, I say.

Addenda: It ocurred to me, could I charge the public for watching me? I need an impresario.

Muslim Beauty Queens

Rima Fakih was elected Miss USA (NOT this pic! This girl is some other American beauty queen! I have been corrected.). May I suspect the objectivity of the judges? In female beauty I am, as most sapiens males, quite indiscriminate. Having grown up in Buenos Aires's worst neighborhood, I have a particularly low standard in female attractiveness. My street friends in the barrio applied simple criterions: Does she walk on two legs? Does she weight more than 40 kg? Then she is attractive. But even these standards are violated by America's recent Muslims beauty queens. No doubt they are wonderful persons, high IQ, excellent bridge partners, super chefs, etc., but beauty queens - in my opinion - are not. Prejudice? Call it prejudice, I dont care.

"Investing" in Water

TAHAL, the Israeli water planning company, has been searching for capital to expand in the global water infrastructure market. Today it was announced that investment fund FIMI will lend Tahal $50 million. The loan is to be repaid in four years and bears an interest of six month Libor plus 3%. On the basis of the letter of intent, Tahal will issue warrants to FIMI, which allow FIMI to purchase shares in Tahal.

Is that an investment or a LIBOR + 3% loan? It seems expensive. I take it as a sign that the water business in the Third World is not such an attractive business. The fact is that TAHAL is unprofitable.

At 85, Shlomo Graduates

Shlomo Peleg, 85, a fellow Israeli water engineer, completed his doctorate in history from Haifa University. His Ph.D. thesis: “Emperor Friedrich the Second and his Relations with the Military Orders.” "Had to do something."

Another Credit Crunch?

LIBOR, the interest rate charged by banks to lend money to each other, is an important measure of confidence in the future. This morning it has lifted to almost 0.7% and people is talking once more about the coming credit crunch.

In 2008 it was 5% (three month sterling rate) but then the Bank of England launched its programme of quantitative easing - electronic money creation. With the flow of newly printed money coming into the financial system confidence was boosted and banks encouraged to lend to each other again at more favourable rates. The LIBOR fell to 0.5%.

Investors are once more being seized by a panic mood. This lack of faith can surely end in a self-caused rout. The world desperately needs a center of gravity that can maintain its mental stability while weak-nerved humanity has its periodical nervious breakdown.

Bracing for a Bad Week

The bourses fell strongly last Friday and we are expecting a bad week. I am losing more than 15% since 1/1/10. Not happy.

Pic.: Jan Eyck. The Fall of Phaeton.

Sharing the Nile

The Nile flows through several countries and it is vital for the existence of Egypt and Sudan. While signing a multinational agreement for peaceful sharing the waters of the Nile, the Egyptian media is talking about war. Although Ancient Egyptians invented the Nilometer and kept rigorous historical records of its flow, today's Egyptians are unaware of the quantitative aspects of its hydrology. Cairo papers are inciting to war against ... Israel and the United States. The reasoning is absolutely crazy: they say we are building irrigation projects in the Upper Nile to reduce the water reaching Egypt and/or preparing secret plans to steal its waters. Absolutely crazy.

Europe in Turmoil

The world bourses are all falling. The Euro may disappear, Europe may revert to national states. The Union is in danger of failing. Europe will become cheaper.

Crazy Behavior among Chinese

Following the crazy knife attacks on kindergarten, mental disorders are becoming a major public health issue in China. A national survey suggests that about 17.5 percent of Chinese adults suffer different forms of mental disorders. Mental disorders include mood disorders, anxiety disorders and substance abuse.

The data is based on personal interviews of 110 million Chinese (!). I am not sure it has comparative value, since alcoholics, depressed and lazy people are regularly labelled crazy in China. My impression is that the Chinese are an uniformly rational and industrious people. Yet they appear to suffer from periodical attacks of mass hysteria like the Cultural Revolution, which has clear mental health aspects. Slowly also these things are being studied.

Evolutionary Explanation of Stupidity

Once and again I am surprised by people's profound ignorance of how things work. Take water: people take for granted that water flows out of the wall and they show indignation when it does not. I thought that this attitude was a pose but this week I started to understand that it is not, they simply do no conceive that the water-from-the-wall is not a natural phenomenon like a spring in the rock, they cannot imagine that there is an intricate man-made system behind it. In other words, they are not posing or pretending stupidity - they ARE stupid. Why?

The evolutionary answer is that people evolved in a natural system, where water was a natural phenomenon and never man-made or man-controlled. Rain, springwater, rivers, all existed and proceeded in the natural or divine realm, out of the human sphere. In that situation, the mental module to understand a non-natural thing like a faucet - simply could not have been evolved. People has the module to identify the faucet as a natural spring, and they cannot understand that it is not. They evolved in an environment where understand water supply was not necessary for survival, so they lack the mental tools to deal with it. For them, the water from the wall is and always will be a spring in the rock.

The attitude of the Palestinians regarding water is the same: they simply cannot understand that the water flowing from the pipes in Israel is not a natural thing, that it a human creation that takes place in desalination plants built with much effort and investment. When they demand equal division of resources, they are thinking of a well in the desert, a well unjustly monopolized by Israelis and not shared on an equal basis with them. And it is not a pose of misunderstanding, they truly misunderstand it because they had not evolved the mental tool for understanding something different from what exists in nature. If we call stupidity this inability to deal intellectually with a modern society, then we can call them stupid. It is not their fault. The evolved in an environment where intelligence was not needed for survival and reproduction.

I realize that people goes through life in a city without ever realizing that it is not a natural environment. They think (without ever thinking about it) that the tall buildings are natural formations, that walls are natural rocks, that water flow out of the walls, that cars move as animals move, that streetlights appear at night like the moon, and so on. They are stupid and it is not their fault.

For the great mass of the people the goodies the government provides them is a gift of nature, and if they dont receive them it is because bad spirits or bad people are against them. When people rules, they will tax profitable enterprises to death, they will nationalize foreign-owned industries (like oil companies in Ecuador) without understanding that things are not natural, that by expropriating an oil well and taking physical posession of it, it will not make them "owners" of the oil that has been - apparently effortlessly - sprouting from earth. Stupid people cannot understand how things work and like children, they will always try to take them away from others and when they see that it is not working, throw it away and forget it.

Illustration: Bocassa, President of the Central African Republic. The pic is unrelated to the note, I just liked it.

Surprise: Clal Insurance on Sale

The Government has decided that financial power in Israel was too concentrated. Nochi Dankner, feeling he was a target, decided to sell Clal Insurance before being forced to, and has approached Goldman Sachs to handle the deal, that has been code-named Cougar. GS already approached a number of U.S. financial and strategic investors to interest them in Clal. Apparently the publication of its EV (yesterday) was part of the sales campaign. I should have bought more of it. This time I did the right thing, but too temptatively.

PS: Today bought some more. I paid 8% more than yesterday early morning. Still it is not expensive, it will rise more, so I hope.

"Spengler" at Ariel University of Samaria

He spoke in the University and said something like this (not literally):

Sociopath is too nice a word to describe Obama. The difference is the magnitude and depth of the deception. In July 2008, the press was full of reports of Obama's anti-Israel connections, including the fact that his foreign policy advisor was the odious Samantha Power. Obama gave assurances to the Jewish community he was reliable as, say, Bill Clinton. Obama has extraordinary gifts of persuasion, and has been profligate about employing them. He persuaded some very wealthy and sophisticated people that he was on their side, and then turned on them.

Not nice to see one's premonitions to turn true.

Zim's Banana Stock Exchange

Black marketeers were exchanging wads of local paper for US dollars. Guys selling bananas on the street congregated in ZSE's foyer to discuss stock prices.

That was the Harare of yesteryear. Today Zim has a double currency, that is, the dollar is king. The governing coalition is holding. Hotels are full of foreign businessmen.

Green Sustainable Clock

Somebody spent much money on developing practical recycling ideas. Probably it was a grant-funded research project.

The idea: clocks and watches run on electricity, something very polluting and un-green by definition. An Earth-conscious person will use sustainable sand clocks built from recycled plastic bottles.

Kenya with No Water (ergo No Electricity)

Kenya is suffering a prolongued drought and its hydroelectrical projects are (not) running dry. Its cause may or may not be climate change, but the land has lost its vegetative cover which stored water and released it gradually. Without it the rainfall runs off fast. Rivers flow almost empty most of the year.

While waiting for rain, they have contracted KenGen to supply the juice by temporary diesel generators at an exhorbitant expense. KenGen plans to add another 120 MW of diesel-thermal to the grid by 2012. Diesel generation could cost $780 million a year.

Coal Perspectives

If I am correct, Chinese demand of coal and the integration of global coal markets may allow (and will cause) the organization of a coal cartel and a dramatic rise in coal's price. And coal mining and transporting stock (Remember: Buffet has acquired most of American coal transport infrastructure). The Oil Drum blog publishes an astonishing (for me) article on the subject:

Until recently, coal has been a resource used mostly in the country of origin. Internationally traded coal was a fairly small percentage of the total amount consumed globally—a situation quite different from that with oil, over half of which is exported from the country of origin. However, there is an increasing trend toward the development of an integrated global coal market—and it appears that trend is about to go into overdrive.

This means that if Chinese and Indian demand for coal imports pushes up the price for export coal (as it almost certainly will, and probably quite dramatically), the result will be higher coal prices everywhere—even within nations that are self-sufficient in the resource. After all, if a coal mining company in the U.S. can get twice the price for its product by selling it abroad as opposed to selling it domestically, won't it opt to export? Unless governments implement export curbs or domestic price caps, the international export price of coal will end up being the domestic price for countries everywhere.

I dont buy the article's conclusion, which is that economic growth has to be stopped. Not that anyone can stop 1.5 billion Chinese's desire to live in an apartment with central heating. Winter is cold in Northern China and most houses are not heated.

Underpriced Stock

Clal Insurance company's Embedded Value is about 90% higher than its market capitalization. This insurance companies field is a new investment area for me and EV seems to be the basis to calculate worth. It is calculated as follows:

EV = PVFP + ANAV
where

EV = Embedded Value
PVFP = present value of future profits
ANAV = adjusted net asset value

Does market cap tend to equal EV? I googled around and apparently they tend to settle at similar levels. Ergo, since Israeli insurance companies are starting to publish their EV, their market cap will rise to the EV. Am I sure of this? Not the least.



PS: Bought some today morning. 4.30 and TASE closes: 3% gain. It started with the right foot.

My portion

My daily portion. 200 gram boiled fish. And a small cucumber. Total cost: 10 shekel (3 dollars). The ups and downs of NASDAQ make no difference for this fasting fakir.

Hell and Heaven in Kever Benjamin

Hell: I had to change my schedule and return to my airconditioned "studio". Outside, a strong sandstorm is raging, visibility zero, temperature unmeasurable, relative moisture of the air approaching zero. Kever Benjamin is an inferno.

Heaven: KOOR is up 9% and the rest of the portfolio between 4 to 6%. I am an idiot, I wrote a few days ago that blood is flowing on the streets and it was time to buy. I didnt. I waited. I am an idiot.

Hamsin in Israel

Hamsin means fifty in Arabic and refers to a steady dry very hot wind from the desert. It is impossible to work, I will do it at night when refreshes. Instead I daydream...

Egyptian authorities have banned a 92-year-old man from marrying a 17-year-old girl, invoking a law which says that the age gap should be maximum 35 years. It was an effort to prevent wealthy men from the Gulf states seeking young poor brides from the Egyptian countryside.

However, in special cases, the justice ministry does allow foreign old men to marry Egyptian pubescent women if they deposit 80,000 dollars at the Egyptian National Bank.

Although my advanced age qualifies according tothe the law, I would be reluctant to pay 80,000 dollars for an Egyptian bride. Also, my wife would disembowel me with the kitchen knife.

Judith

By Gustav Klimt.

Child abuse?

The Pope sacked Augsburg's bishop, Walter Mixa, who has been embroiled in a child abuse scandal. The 68-year-old bishop admitted that he had slapped children decades ago at a children's home when he was still a parish priest.

I dont know. When I was in school, teachers used to beat our fingers with a ruler. It was a ritualized punishment. Then, it was not child abuse.

My Stettl Jaszbereny

The first Jew to settle in the Hungarian city of Jaszbereny was Buck Gabriel in 1850. The place is in the Hungarian wetlands, where the river Tisza meanders and is inundated most of the year. Jaszbereny is built on a sand dune and is crossed by the Zagyva river. The people are of the Jasz ethnia, originally nomadic pastoralists of Eastern Asia, who came in to Hungary with the Magyar hordes and assimilated to the Hungarian people (those who didnt join the Magyar became the Ossetians. Stalin was an Ossetian.) Around 1929, so informs us the online Magyar Zsido Lexikon, there were 741 Jews in Jaszbereny, that is about 250 organized (tax paying) families. 138 were shopkeepers (incl. my family), 5 teachers, 18 farmers, 10 lawyers, 9 medical doctors, 23 tradesman, 3 public employees, 18 employees of private firms, 21 "maganzo" meaning person of independent means or gentleman of leisure (a profession listed in the census. Surprisingly for me, pensioner was unknown). More than 100 participated in WWI (incl. my grandfather) and 23 died heroically (according to the Lexikon). Two Jews were killed by the Communist Regime of Bela Kun, the Judge Kondor Janos, and Kondor Jozsef, a 15 y.o. boy.

The Lexikon says that the community hold the registers of the Jews of 12 nearby, smaller villages. Someone had written a book with the history of the settlement, which featured a division into two rival communities, and later their re-union and building the pretentious synagogue in the center of the town. Under the Nazi occupation, a closed street was designated the "ghetto" and Jews had to leave their homes and move into the houses of that block. The moving was well organized and the Jews received detailed official receipts for everything. There was no looting. A few weeks later they were deported to Auschwitz, a train station in Poland nobody had heard of. It was the end of the war and at that stage Nazi extermination technique had been perfected to the point that the whole operation was executed with no violence and ununderstood both by the victims and the general population. In the Jewish cemetery today there is a signpost with the names and ages of the 550 or so persons who did not return from Auschwitz.

The pic show the Jaszbereny public library as it is now. Comparing it with the photo of the Jaszbereny synagogue from the Album of Hungarian Prewar Synagogues, I suspect it is the same building, it is my grandparents' synagogue. The circular window on the front, now showing two crossed bars, was originally occupied by the mogen dovid, the six pointed star of David. A few years ago when we toured Hungary, I enquired about the synagogue but no one could tell me where it was, only one person said it was the library. We tried to find the library but we were told that it has been destroyed and something else is in its place. I spent no time on the subject, it is painful for me. There in not one Jew living today in Jaszbereny.

PS: About ten years ago, the Hungarian State returned all Jewish property to the heirs that could be found. I too received a small amount. There are no Jewish material claims today in Hungary. Thus ended one hundred years of Jewish history in Jaszbereny.

Greedy Enemy of Earth

I am reading that a Public Hearing is being prepared for an 8000 hectares rice farm in the Province of Corrientes, Argentina. I am familiar with the area, it is near Mercedes and proposes to dam and use a stream called Ayui to flood the paddy fields. Argentine environmentalists arguments are the same as all over the world: Greedy Capitalists want to take possession of a river, destroying the habitat of natural fauna and flora, displacing the native carpincho. We used to hunt the carpincho and roast it - it is quite good. Since in my youth I participated (for money, of course) in several large rice growing projects in the area, I too must be considered a greedy enemy of Earth. I was not aware of it, in fact, we thought then that we were feeding the world.

Sex with Neander

Well, the issue if the Neanderthalers had sex with humans has been resolved. They had. More than once. John Hawk comments extensively, unfortunately with no pics.

Study Tour in Barkan Industrial WWTP

I took the class to a study tour today. In the background a 1,500 cu m biological reactor tank. It is built with vitrified steel pieces. British made, very successful.

Athens burns. Nerves are frayed. Time to Buy

Athens burns and blood flows in its streets. All over the world, nerves are frayed and panic is seizing the markets.

Time to buy Greek debt and stock and villas and islands.

Pech

My parents used the word "pech" to mean bad luck. Now, Deutsche Welle is teaching me the origin of this expression (which I thought was Yiddish): It comes from German Middle Ages, when people used to smear tar, or pitch, on trees to catch birds. Being caught in a tree and landing on the barbeque? What a "pech"! - bad luck. And the one cought is called "Pechvoegel" - a tar bird.