Silver

Newton, when managed the Royal Mint, fixed the relation between gold and silver as 1:15 but now it is 1:66. That is, gold became relatively more valuable while silver got demonetized and became an industrial metal. Silver was China's currency till 1935, and absorbed all the silver mined in Potosi and Mexico. Upon receipt of a trade coin, the Chinese merchant would judge the weight and purity of the coin. If the coin was deemed acceptable, the merchant would add his chop – his unique mark of satisfaction – to the piece. An iron punch bearing the chop was used to mark each approved coin. In this way, a merchant invested not only his funds, but his reputation.

Since paper money fluctuates, the newly rich Chinese will crave, once more, their traditional store of wealth - silver. Silver has a fantastic potential to regain its former monetary position. I'll start to follow what happens to silver. Maybe I should buy sterling silver Shabbath candlesticks and Pessach plates.

Please No!

Israeli "greens" are focused on what the EPA does or plans to do. Everything that the EPA is doing, will be aped eventually by Israel, and being Jews, we do "as the EPA does but more so." So I appeal to the EPA, please dont do it! Dont apply spilled oil regulations to spilled milk! I dont want to design aquifer protection structures against spilled milk contamination (see pic for what EPA's regulation may mean at field level).

This is not from The Onion:

New Environmental Protection Agency regulations treat spilled milk like oil, requiring farmers to build extra storage tanks and form emergency spill plans. Local farming advocates says it’s ridiculous to regulate a liquid with a small percentage of butter fat the same way as the now-infamous BP oil spill. “It’s just another, unnecessary over-regulation by the government just lacking any common sense,” said Bill Robb, dairy educator for Michigan State University Extension.

The EPA regulations state that “milk typically contains a percentage of animal fat, which is a non-petroleum oil. Thus, containers storing milk are subject to the Oil Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure Program rule when they meet the applicability criteria ...”

Please, EPA, no!

TSEM, The Dream Continues

I bought shares of Tower Semiconductors (TSEM) today. I am following this company for several years, entering and exiting periodically. The company has stabilized and its sales are booming, yet it not profitable yet. In fact, its cumulative losses are reaching 300 million dollars and it is difficult to see paying it back in the near future. Yet large debts are meaningless if the company is a going concern and the banks are willing to recycle them, which is the case of TSEM. TSEM shares rised 50% in the year, maybe I am too late to enter now.

End-of-season Sale-Off

There is a ghost haunting stock exchanges: FEAR. People is fearing a renewed recession and are selling everything in anticipation of the coming collapse. Recession? Krugman says prolongued depression. Inflationary expectations - including my own - have proved wrong and have collapsed over the last few months. For instance in January core CPI was 1.48% from the prior year. By May core CPI was at 0.97. The dollar has strengthened with respect the shekel and things here are looking bad. Israel Chemicals paid a nice dividend but against my habits, I am not re-investing it immediately.

What is to be done?

Kraft durch Freude

Decades ago I had a sweet German girlfriend. My Father warned me that German girls get fat and grow big tuches. I didnt share his prejudices.

Macondo: 100 billion dollars of solitude

The Macondo well keeps leaking crude and British Petroleum keeps bleeding and weakening. According to WSJ,

BP shares dropped 6% in London on Friday, putting the drop the oil major's market capitalization at more than $100 billion since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill began.

Most shares are held by British savers, so if each one lost an average of 30,000 $, we have nearly half a million suddenly impoverished families in Britain. I estimate that about 10% of the British middle class is hurting by BP's loss of value. For the next three years, the London stock exchange will be about 5% lower than it would be.

Pettis: Germans forced Spain to accept Loans

Michael Pettis, a Spanish international economist currently working in China, accuses thrifty Germans of forcing Southern European countries like Greece and Spain, to get indebted over their capacity of ever repaying their debts. In fact, he says that Germany has enslaved these peoples by foul play. He blogs:

As I see it, domestic German policies, perhaps aimed at absorbing East German unemployment, forced a structural trade surplus. The strong euro, along with the automatic recycling of Germany’s large trade surplus within Europe, ensured the corresponding trade deficits in the rest of Europe – unless Europeans were willing to enact policies that raised unemployment in order to counter the deficits. As long as the ECB refused to raise interest rates, southern Europe had to accept asset bubbles and rapidly rising debt-fueled consumption.

This couldn’t go on forever, or even for very long. Now southern Europe is paying the inevitable price, and of course the moralists are accusing the south of being shiftless and lazy, confusing the automatic balancing mechanisms in the balance of payments with moral weakness.

I have heard this argument. President Correa offered to pay 30 cents on each dollar of Ecuador's sovereign debt because the debt was "immoral" and "forced on poor helpless Ecuador by powerful foreign banks". In the 19th Century, British banks were Latin America's favorite oppressors. Now the same argument is being recycled by Pettis. And many others.

How much costs Detroit's re-prairiezation?

I am still obsessing about Detroit's abandonment and regression to prairie. It is a large American city completely equipped with all the infrastructure, built up in three centuries, that has been given up by its owners and inhabitants. How many billions are being lost by destroying Detroit and returning it to "Nature"?

I know that in Israel, each new dwelling is charged about 50,000 dollars for municipal development. It includes pavement, and water and sewage connections. But this is not the real cost - the Municipalities calculate their "agrat pituach" (development tax) according to what the market will bear. Moreover, most of the infrastructure is built by the central government, such as the water supply system, water purification plants, the wastewater treatment plants, the connecting roads. Telephone, electricity, gas, etc. are built by private companies. The planning of the infrastructure costs about 8% of the total costs. All in all, I think you could not have the infrastructure of city like Detroit for less than 200,000 dollars per dwelling.

This sum does not include the cost of urban infrastructure such as schools, libraries, parks, cult buildings, theaters, markets, and other public buildings, which in Israel is about 15% of the surface and the total cost. Then it is the cost of the dwellings themselves, which in urban areas (at least in Israel) is equally divided between the cost of the land, and the cost of the building. I presume that the land's worth - of undeveloped prairieland - is less than 1000 dollars per hectare, although it is obvious that a block of real estate in Detroit Downtown in its peak must have been worth many millions.

Presuming that Detroit has/had 400,000 dwellings, and the sunken cost of each one is 500,000 dollars, the prairiezation of Detroit destroys 200 Billion dollars. It is not a terrible loss for a rich country like the USA, which reminds me Edward Teller's dictum that nuclear wars are thinkable and fightible, since the worth of the infrastructure is equivalent of only ten years GNP, so in less than a generation, the country could rebuild itself. Germany post WWII is a good example, by 1955 it was prospering. Of course Germany was not totally destroyed, far from it.

My calculation takes into account the sunk cost of Detroit, and not the commercial value of a working, inhabited, prosperous city. A large office building in Manhattan can easily fetch 100 million dollars, and Detroit in the fifties may have been no less valuable, but I am considering only the physical infrastructure. So please have in mind that I am talking about the cost of the building, irrespective if it is in Manhattan or central Ougadougou.

My conclusion is that the abandonment of Detroit means the loss of an investment of about 200 billion dollars. This loss is the consequence of the collapse of the original owners and inhabitants's faith in their right to own and inhabit the city. Like wars, Detroit was lost because of moral collapse - that of the natives's inner convincement that they were living in their city by right and they had the moral right to defend it.

The Mirror reports from South Africa

Here's three lions putting the fear of God into Germany…

The quivering stars watch from a caged truck on safari yesterday.

Koko The Gorilla is Distracted

Lately, Koko is not following the international financial action. She is distracted by the computer dating world. I'm not making this up. She is actually checking out mates at various zoos and institutes around the world as possible "significant others". Her mind is not on mining shares.

Detroit's Rebirth as Urban Prairie

I hope Detroit today is an aberration and not America in the next generation. I cant get over what is happening in that large city. In my days, it symbolized America and its industrial power. A recent documentary, Principal Asenath Andrews who is teaching Detroit’s single mothers to become farmers, describes how the city is changing. Pic: The Northern Flicker, an endangered species that has received a new chance of life in the renewed Detroit prairie. Detroit 2010 looked brighter in 1930.

The secrets of Doctor Rasputin

Shkrobius writes that meat is cooked best at temperatures between 50 and 70 Celsius. At higher temperatures the proteins unfold into indigestible rigid fibriles, and the water and the tasty aromatic molecules go into the broth. So Dr Rasputin order of boiling the meat a long time and throwing out the broth (he says it contains the hormones and toxins fed to the animal) has only one point: to make meat as tasteless and indigestible as possible. So the 200 gram meat allowed is, from the point of view of this gourmet (food-addict, in Rasputinsky), disgusting vomit. And THAT is his goal, to make his voodoo-dolls hate food.

Eagle 6 takes over

In 2003, Major General David H. Petraeus ("Eagle 6") led the Screaming Eagles to war during the 2003 invasion of Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom). General Petraeus led the division into Iraq saying, "Guidons, Guidons. This is Eagle 6. The 101st Airborne Division's next Rendezvous with Destiny is North to Baghdad. Op-Ord Desert Eagle 2 is now in effect. Godspeed. Air Assault. Out." He is a very good general, Al-Quaida in Afganistan/Pakistan is doomed. Pity he had to leave the Middle East Command. The pic is the 101st Airborne trapping Saddam Hussein sons, Udi and Kusi.

Antisemite Jewish Joke

How do you say "fuck you" in Jewish?

Trust me.

Critical Raw Materials

The last time critical raw materials were mentioned was in WWII. The European Union has resuscitated the concept and lists critical materials in short supply:

Antimony
Indium
Beryllium
Magnesium
Cobalt
Niobium
Fluorspar
PGMs (Platinum Group Metals): platinum, palladium, iridium, rhodium, ruthenium and osmium.
Rare earths: yttrium, scandium, lanthanum and the so-called lanthanides (cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, rebium, thulium, ytterbium and lutetium)
Gallium
Germanium
Tantalum
Graphite
Tungsten

Well, blue monkeys notwithstanding, we shall have to keep mining on Pandora... What was the name of that large mining corporation? Its stock is sure to be a good long term investment.

PS: Mining shares are rocketing, as my friend Anon predicted. The reason, they say, is Australia's political change. A nice young lady is the new Chief and she is less inclined to tax mining companies.

The Astonishing Sidis Story

It is agreed that WJ Sidis had the highest known IQ. He lived an unfocused and unproductive life. I have known many like him. He looked exactly like a childhood friend of mine who signs his emails Osiris (lately only the Egyptian symbol of that god). He has the same expression. But it is not William James Sidis whom I find astonishing, but his mother. Her autobiography is on the web. It is short, to the point and readable.

She was born in a godforsaken Ukranian shtetl in an ultraortodox family (We were all ulraorthodox then, so it would be ebough to sya that they were Jewish). Her parents married while he was at the yeshive (at 17) and had fifteen children. Then the Tzarist regime started the pogrom program (progrom IS program with Russian pronunciation) and they had to run and take refuge in America. She went to the university and became a doctor, which was unusual for girls of her generation. All in all, the Sidis story is the typical Russian Jewish story. Why, then, astonishing?

Because in her autobiography she gives not even the smallest indication that she is a Jew, that all her family is Jewish, that they spoke Yiddish and kept kosher at home, that they had to escape Russia because they were Jews, in fact, she forgets to mention (that is, she hides) the most basic, most defining facts of her life. Amazing.

The Sidis were idealists/Socialists/Communists and so, atheists. They believed that their own tribal past is irrelevant - that they were essencial human beings without any other - atavistic - identity.

These were the most intelligent people ever born. They hated themselves. Unfortunately, the world agreed with them. They hated them. Sidis the son had problems all his short life - was sent to jail, was beaten by his collegues at Harvard, was sacked from his job and could never keep one. They wanted passionately be only human beings, to forget that they were Jews, but the world would not let them.

Update (June 28, 2010): I retract my former opinion that he spent his life irrationally. The man learned very early that he could earn a living without problems, so he looked for jobs suited to him - undemanding jobs he could navigate effortlessly and leave him much free time to pursue his own interests. He got a calculating job on Wall Street, but he escaped as soon as people discovered who he was and expected more from him. This lifestyle is more or less the one I adopted - I am designing systems that are ridiculously simple for me, so I would have time to study the market. Unfortunately I accept too much work and spend less than necessary time on the market. I dreamed spending days on the Ehad HaAm street coffees paying attention to what people was saying, yet not once I got there.

Secondly, Sidis spent time thinking about the transfer problem, how to reach from one point in a big city to another point using the minimum transportation transfers and minimum time and/or money. It is a diabolically complex calculation, which was solved only after the invention of cheap computing. People is doing this mental calculation all the time, so an universal/general solution would have been very useful.

Sidis's problem was that surviving was no challenge for him, and he felt no need to conquest any difficult goal that would occupy his forces. In Wall Street he could have applied himself to make a fortune, but he didnt feel like he needed it. My case was very different, coming from the post-war generation that had no relatives nor money nor security, I always forced myself to pursue long term very difficult projects. Which I completed (and that is another problem).

Salt

Today I worked in a new winery in Arad. I didnt want to accept the job because Arad is about 2 1/2 hour drive from Kever Benjamin, so asked more than usual. But it was accepted and even received a down payment. So I started early in the morning and arrived before the heat wave. They are two religious boys who started a winery in an abandoned hangar in the Artist's Quarter. The architect botched the plans and they were rejected by the regulators and worse, they started to build and it is a disaster. So we redesigned the whole place.

There was a hot dry wind with yellow dust that filled my eyes with tear. Then I felt a burning feeling in the face and found grains like sand. I tasted them and they were salty. I have not tasted anything salty in the last two monts, so I ate all the salt of my own tears. It was good.


The Negev has changed in the last five years. Many non-pregnant Beduin girls in shiny black long dresses, with reflecting mirrors worked in. The Arad - Beer Sheba road used to be full of wandering beduin sheep and goats. Today, a clean highway. There is a new police station in Shoqet and I crossed at least ten police cars patrolling these 40 km. It appears that the Beduins are being integrated into Israeli society. I also had a meeting in the Kyriat Hamemshala, the Government House, in Beer Sheba. It is a striking new building, with luxurious offices. I read the nameplates - many of the bureaucrats wasting time in that fantastic airconditioned building are Beduins.

Observation: Recent genetic research indicates that we Ashkenazi Jews and the Beduin share a common genotype. I dont believe it. In Beer Sheba one can see Russian Jews in close proximity with Beduins. No one can mistake one for the other, not in sunlight nor in the dark. I always thought that we Ashkenazi are like the people from Northern Italy, Firenze or Milano. Beduins? No way.

Israel and the Surrender of the West

The Wall Street Journal editorial calls for the West to wake up. Reading it, one understands how badly this evil Erdogan screwed us with his flotilla. Netanyahu and Barak made a big mistake, out of lack of intelligence and arrogance. It is difficult to understand because Netanyahu is an expert in international public relations, having grown up in America, and Barak is one of the smartest leaders we have. They are already half hanged.

On the other hand, TASE is only 10% below its highest level and rising.

Building Permitting Reform Stalled

Netanyahu spoke against the bureacratic obstacles to build in Israel and one level of the three-levelled permitting system was to be eliminated. That was a year ago and nothing is happening. Maybe there are bureaucratic obstacles to improve bureacracy. Since many contractors and developers and regulators are being investigated by the police for irregularities, the system has became frozen and impassable. Since people didnt stop being born, marrying and having children, the demand for housing has grown and prices have increased to absurd levels. A three-room second hand apartment in Kever Benjamin costs about 1.6 million shekels, that is about 450,000 US dollars. Triple than three years ago.

Offshoreable Occupations

All the occupations related to mathematics, statistics, etc. are offshoreable. 14 of the 23 occupations related to architecture and engineering are offshorable. That means that most of the actual calculations and drawing could be done by Indians and Chinese in their countries. Yet programming as an occupation has not disappeared in the US or Europe, only the salaries descended to normal levels.

The Hayward Disaster

Hayward, the good looking BP CEO, failed absolutely. I think the accident that caused the death of eleven BP workers in the Gulf was avoidable, as BP is known for its lax occupational safety. The interminable bungling and technical incapability demonstrated is bad, but the CEO's testimony in the Congress was a total disaster. "I dont know" - something a CEO should never say - was repeated 66 times (!), convincing me that BP was led by an idiot.

In his testimony yesterday, Hayward not only failed to convince lawmakers he was committed to making BP safer, he may have deepened suspicion of the company by repeatedly pleading ignorance to events that took place under his command. Mr. Hayward’s comments today, saying ‘I don’t know’ 66 times, evaporated any feeling of responsibility,” Eventoff said. “Any goodwill that the company bought back yesterday eroded today with his testimony.”

BP had lost half of its worth and thousands of Britain's small investors and retirees have been hurt.

Drunken Sailor

"Racism" in Israel

There is a large demonstration in Jerusalem against the jailing of Slonim haredi parents for refusing to send their daughters to school with non-Slonim girls. I happen to be familiar with Emmanuel, their village in Samaria, because I did a few water projects there and also wanted to be their permanent water referent (they hired somebody else).

The place is a total failure: since it was built in the eighties, the "better kind" of population has been leaving it, and the price of houses has plunged. I was surprised to see nice large houses offered for 20 - 30,000 dollars. The people who moved in are mostly lumpen housed free by the Ministry of Welfare, and a group of dirt-poor haredi religious people. Since no one is able to pay the "arnona" (municipal tax), the whole city lives of Government subsidies.

The problem is the incompatibility of the religious group, mostly Slonim hassidim, and the Oriental lumpen. The Slonim hassidim were founded by a carismatic rabbi in BieloRussia 170 years ago. The second Slonim rebbe sent his grandson with a few willing followers to settle in Eretz Israel, and they formed a small community in Tiberias. The SS Sonderkommando exterminated the Jews of the Bielo Russia and a survivors joined the Slonim community in Tiberias. Sixty years have passed and the Slonim have grown and grown puritanical and intransigent, and they are now several feuding communities in Israel.

Apparently the Oriental daughters of Emmanuel are less puritanical than the Slonim daughters, so their parents dont want them to even talk to the Orientals. They dont want them to socialize with bad girls in school. Bad influence, they say. May be.

Now, this country is under a worldwide defamation campaign. The world is accusing us of racism and racist separation walls. Our leftwing idiots jumped to the opportunity to clean themselves of the accusation of racism, and what better than to accuse someone else of racism? So they invented that the Slonim hassidim refuse to send their daughters to the same school than the daughters of lumpen families dumped in Emmanuel public housing no because of differences in lifestyle, intelligence, religion, etc. but because they were Oriental. That is - blacks. It is irrelevant that the Slonim have black beards and having intermarried with Orientals, they are not pure Ashkenazim. Many Orientals are blond and blue-eyed, because they too are much mixed. But skin color is in the mind. We dont have real blacks, so the leftists had to invent them and make from Oriental Jews - Blacks, and to import real Blacks from Ethiopia. Moreover, the Slonim have intermarried with Haredi Oriental Jews, and about 20 - 30% of their blood is "Oriental". It worked! We have a sensational case of racial discrimination in Israel! Wonderful!

In a few days, the whole leftist establishment became excited with the case and the Supreme Court of Justice, no less, condemned the racist hassidim to jail. Israel is aping America - 50 years ago. This is very bad, because the world is watching us and they will believe that there is real racial discrimination in Israel and that Jews really are racists. They needed no real cases to equate Zionism with Racism, but now we are supplying them sensational demonstrations - free of charge.

Another confusing point is the fact that the Slonim hassidim are not Zionists. They are rabious anti-Zionists, they hate Israel (because it is a sacrilege, Zionism is rebelling against God, we should wait till God sends us his Messiah). It is all very confusing, so the BBC will simplify it to its basics, you know, Judaism = Racism. Ill name, half hanged, the English say. We are so talented that we are hanging ourselves without help from our enemies.

Birthright Israel Project

The Birthright Project brings young Jews from the Diaspora to two weeks free vacation in Israel. The pic shows them in the Dead Sea. A study finds that

...the interaction of tour participants with one another is discouraging: Like all American teenagers, American Jewish teenagers tend to be ignorant about the world and saturated with pop culture, they call the intifada - “the enchilada.” Birthright do not indoctrinate because the teenagers aren’t paying attention - they are more interested in sex and drinking than in politics and religion. The program is practically designed to encourage hooking up among the participants. No wonder it has earned the nickname “Birthrate Israel”— which is, come to think of it, not a bad description of the program’s ultimate goal.

The son of a friend in Hungary arrived with the program and I invited him to spend a weekend with us and gave him a personal VIP tour. He enjoyed so much the company that he moved to Israel. My idea was to "hook" him to one of my daughters, because he is from a very good family, has a Ph.D. and looks extremely well. When I applied pressure to make him invite her to go out, his face turned grey and disgusted, as if he was going to vomit. He bacame a very happy member of Jerusalem homosexual community and mails me pictures of picnics and demonstrations. This nice Jewish boy will not increase Israel's birthrate.

Sicarios

A new business line is developing in Ecuador and Colombia. Flyers and internet announcement offer to eliminate your enemy or faithless lover for a 400 to 3000 dollar fee. From La Hora:

"Contratar asesinos a sueldo hasta por 400 dólares, que ofrecen sus servicios por Internet para resolver problemas como infidelidad o enemistades, se está convirtiendo en una práctica común en Ecuador, cuyas autoridades están en vilo ante los asesinatos."

Economic Theories

The university libary was throwing out thousands of books, and I took a few. In the history of Spain it is interesting to note that the economic theory was to forbid the export of many categories, in order to ensure local supply. For example, the export of horses was prohibited - the king wanted to קensure the availability of enough horses to fight the moors. Money was in short supply, thus silver could not be sent abroad. Salt, sheep, grain, etc. could not be exported to avoid local shortages. People lived centuries convinced that this was perfectly logical and necessary.

Economic consequences of the Holocaust

A new paper of the MIT studies the economic status of the places in Russia where the Jews were murdered and the places where part of the Jewish population survived the war. I dont need a MIT study to observe that Ucraine, which before the Holocaust was one of the more prosperous agricultural and industrial regions in Eastern Europe, is now - anno domine 2010 - a very poor and underdeveloped country. Its GNP per capita is lower than some African countries. If you dont believe it, see the CIA's country profiles. Bielorrusia ibidem. Hungary is in a bit better shape because "only" about 60% of its Jewish population was murdered in Auschwitz, but since then there is a gradual loss of Jews by natural decrease, assimilation and emigration. In one generation more Hungary too will sink to the Romanian/Moldavian/Ucranian level. I'm tempted to write that they fully deserve living at African standards, but I know many decent Hungarians and as in the Biblical story of Sodoma and Gomorrah, even one just person is enough to spare a city. And they are just Hungarians.

Spain: Bankrupt

No one is lending money to Spanish banks, which means that sooner or later Spain has to borrow emergency funds from the newly established European stabilisation fund. Since the Euro will not be devaluated, Spain will have to reduce prices to export and remain solvent. When prices are going down it is called deflation. Spanish people will have to re-learn to work.

Something, maybe the Spanish situation, frightened today TASE investors. It started rising 2% and ended the day plunging 2%. Expletive deleted.

Minced Meat

Next project: a local competitor of McDonald hamburgers. Instead of plastic clowns they have pics of blonde girls in the door.

Sex just isn't worth the trouble

At age 16-17 I learned the mechanics of sex, from there on I had no difficulty to find willing, attractive partners. Much later, I started to restrict myself to my marital duties and then gradually, the burning interest in sex started to dissipate. I let myself grow flabby and obese.

Now that I have lost about 25 kg and regained my decided macho walk, I am facing a new situation. Fifty years old women are being too friendly and inviting to me, tempting me with gastronomical and other delights. This morning, a light-grey eyed aging beauty trapped me in her intimate office and engaged me in an interminable, rambling chat on everything (I couldnt cut her dry because I came to collect a cheque and she is the accountant). I am a friendly, sociable person, but this struck me as bizarre. I understood she was divorced and lonely. As one gets older, the number of healthy, presentable men relative to the number of healthy and lonely women grows exponentially. My estimate is that there are at least seven "desperate housewives" searching for me. Given my low level of interest, some other man is having to deal with fourteen healthy, attractive, dynamic ladies out there.

Fear

Econobrowser (Prof. Hamilton, see link on the right side) has noticed the gold phenomenon. Its price is rising while all other commodities are falling. A commenter writes:

Gold production is increasing rapidly and the cost of production is about half the current price. When this falls, it will fall just like the 1980s. But without the 5-12% inflation they had then, it will likely fall even faster.

But I don't doubt it could hit $2,000 before then.

The pic is the first known gold coin. (Update: Read also Dennis Mangan's comment below).

Dizziness

My last food was 200 gram boiled fish portion on Saturday afternoon, so I am now fasting for more than 48 hours. Yesterday night I received a phone call that one of my projects had a problem - a 30 cm difference between my plan and the real floor level. The factory manager was furiously demanding my immediate presence and so on. A total disaster, nothing can be done, we are going to hang the culprit. Me. I slept badly and this morning drove to the site. Arrived one hour late (somehow managed to lose my way - how Freudian...). I spent one hour running up and down after the manager, the contractor and his assistants - all young and athletic fellows. Then he stopped in a damp hot dark corridor, the electrician produced a small light and we debated what to do. Here in the Middle East the summer is very hot ("hamsin") and I felt very tired, dizzy and almost fainted. I am an old man and on a water fast now for seventh week (I lost 24 kg). Cold sodawasser revived me.

The web-experts say that

standing or moving quickly from a resting position will cause the blood to flow to the legs. For a few seconds, the brain may not get enough oxygen, causing blackouts and dizziness. To stop a blackout, get down on one knee or sit. Lowering your center of gravity will instantly stop a blackout. Blackouts are more frequent during water fasting. On longer water fasts, breathing quickly for a few seconds before standing will stop all blackouts.

I can say something: it is frightening. Never happened to me. Tomorrow I have another hard day but I always drove myself to the extreme. I am planning to have my 200 gram fish in the afternoon, after 3 days of total fasting.

Americans Renouncing Their Citizenship

The trend has become so widespread that even the press has noticed it. The USA is demanding from banks to police their clients to avoid money laundering and taz evasion, so a number of banks decided that the concept of U.S. citizenship was too nebulous for them to police. They started rejecting foreign clients in 2001 but now a second wave of banks – especially in Switzerland but increasingly in the UK and the Channel Islands – are closing their doors to Americans because of the added burden of the HIRE Act. "Most, if not all, medium-sized brokers in the UK are conducting a review of their U.S. client policy."

The issue, more than repression, is the expensive reporting required from the banks on their clients, required by the new rules. The result? The Wall Street Journal says that a growing number of Americans have decided that the best way to avoid the rules is to hand in their passports. According to U.S. government figures, twice as many Americans renounced their citizenship in the last quarter of 2009 than in the whole of 2008. The new regulations cause many other unexpected side effects, which are yet evolving. The US is causing a revolution in world finance, and as always, fortunes are waiting to be made. Kornberg comes to my mind. But I am too old and tired for thinking anything.

Love

Hugo Chavez romancing Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, in Caracas.

I Hate Banks

Globes, today:

IBM Corporation (NYSE: IBM) is in talks to acquire data storage company Storwize Inc. at a company value of $140 million. Storwize has raised $38 million since it was founded in 2004, which means that the sale is a successful exit by the company's investors.

Storwize president Gal Naor and CTO Jonathan Amit founded the company, which develops real-time data compression software for handling data even before it is sent to storage systems. In recent years, data compression for storage systems has become a pressing need in view of the huge quantities of enterprise data, upgrades of communications infrastructures, and the need to save space and electricity costs. Storwize says that its systems can compress data at a ratio of up to 1:15, reducing storage space by up to 95%.

Storwize has held three financing rounds. Its investors include Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Capital, Pujo Zabludowicz's Tamares Group, Tenaya Capital (formerly the venture capital arm of Lehman Brothers), Tokyo Electron Device Ltd., Dutch private equity investor group Stichting Gemeenschappelijk Bezit, and Israeli private investors former Bank Hapoalim chairman Shlomo Nehama(pic), and Igal Ahouvi.

Why I hate Banks? Because a few years ago I bought shares of a special Startup Investment Fund. It was a very confidencial fund, only for their clients, because the fund was supposed to use their inside knowledge of the market to make successful investments. They HAD knowledge, as Mr Nehama's successful personal investment appears to demonstrate. The fund... the fund... (let me collect myself)... is worthless and liquidating.

All similarity to a real person is accidental

I happened to meet Netanya's major (what is she called when she is female? majorette? majoretrix?). I expected the person shown in the city's website, but all similarity between the pic and any living person would be imaginary or accidental. No yellow and brown stripes in her hair, no friendly/seductive smile, no bright happy eyes.

Colleges Blogging

Angel

Just call me Angel by Juice Newton. I "jumped" twice in secondary school (finishing it in three years), and I used to study all night with this song. I couldnt understand the lyrics, which is about a one-night stand.

PPP

The Economist calculates the real value of each country's currency, and finds that the Israeli shekel is 9% overvalued (respective US$) while the Hungarian Forint is 13% undervalued. So I can buy 22% more stuff in Hungary than in Israel. But I could buy more in Poland (Zloty -37 %) or Russia (Rouble -40 %).

Jewish Humor

An Israeli arrives at London Heathrow passport control.
The immigration officer asks and the Israeli answers:
- Your name?
- Moshe.
- Family name?
- Cohen
- Citizenship?
- Israeli.
- Occupation?
- No, NO!!! Not occupation!! Just visiting!!!

War Diary

Quiet Friday afternoon and I am reading Hungarian blogs. Ethnic issues are their main subject. Racism in Hungary means hating Jews, which in practice means discussing the Jewish grand-grandmothers of leading politicians, and wishing ill to the Roma because they have children.This blogger ("Kurvannya") is anti-racist, but it is the war diary of his grandfather, which he is publishing, that is interesting.
Nagy Sandor was a Szekely (East Hungarian) engineer, who fought with the Romanian Army (possibly in Ucraine), changed sides to the Hungarian Army and ended in an American prisioner camp in Germany. He was elected by fellow prisioners to be the food receiver and distributor, so he writes a lot about the white bread (unknown in Eastern Europe) they were fed by the Americans, about the German meat conserves (that they were not eating for fear of hepatitis), and the black American guards. And God's Repasts, which may be some kind of religious ritual.


Apparently he had a good time in the camp, and the Americans even paid him for the time spent (see money certificate). 112 dollars in those times were a lot of money!

Officer's Mess

One of my daughters finished her army reserve service and I am stealing a pic of her collection. This is another generation. They eat with paper napkins. They collect the waste in plastic bags. They use a battle ration box as table - they wouldnt touch its contents, they are used to gourmet restaurants.

Hungarian Countryside

Now that the forint is weak, I'll am dreaming of a vacation in Hungary this autumn. Hungarian countryside has its little attractions and I speak the language.

Living in a contested space

There was something ironic in seeing Arab nationalism sinking off the shores of Gaza. At the heart of the romantic Arab narrative was the notion that the Arabs - united by an Arab identity - had been burning with a desire to emancipate themselves from the Turkish Empire's yoke. Lawrence of Arabia's fables of the Arab struggle against the Turks were, I always suspected, a British invention.

This not only has highlighted the shallowness of the Arab nationalist narrative, it also, at least conceptually, has restored what for centuries was the natural order of the region, which Arab nationalism was supposed to alter but did not. Just as Iran's Islamic Revolution was expansionist by definition, the AKP's "neo-Ottomanism" also posits a Turkish-dominated realm. As the potential for Iranian-Turkish competition grows and the Levant once again assumes its historical function as a contested space between more powerful nations vying for influence, the Arab states are becoming ever more secondary, their populations easily manipulated by populist leaders like Erdogan. (Based on an insight of Tony Badran).

Cartoneros in Buenos Aires

I should not be surprised that thousands are living under the bridges and highways in Buenos Aires, since it is something of a tradition even commented in old tangos. The slang word "atorrante", meaning petty criminal, originates from Torrent, the name of a public works minister in the early 20th Century. "Atorrantes" were those who lived in the large cement drainage pipes of Torrent's infrastructure works.

The atorrante tradition, which I knew only in tangos, has reappeared and is now called cartonero. Clarin writes on the "cartoneros" - people who lives in carton boxes under the highways:

El campamento más grande de los bajo-autopista es el de Caseros y General Hornos. “Son familias de cartoneros y no generan problemas. No tienen agua ni baños y hacen sus necesidades en la calle, a metros del hospital de niños Pedro Elizalde".

The largest camp is in Caseros, a suburb of Buenos Aires. They are cartonero families and create no problems. They have no running water and defecate on the street, near the Children's Hospital.

Big Mistake

A Turkish doctor treating a soldier on the Marmara. He says that they had small wounds and they were brought down for treatment. No one wanted to hurt them too much. The conclusion seems to be that one soldier misunderstood the situation and percieved that he had to rescue hostages and fired to kill. He caused a lot of harm. It should be investigated and Israel should apologize to Turkey.

Fascism Rising in Hungary

About 50% of the Hungarian youth voted for Jobbik (Movement for a Better Hungary), a neofascist movement revindicating Hungary's pre-Trianon borders. They are planning to annex areas of Slovakia, Croatia and other countries with ethnic Hungarian minorities. As consequence of growing fascism and warlike atmosphere, 20-30 thousand Hungarian Jews (including dependents) will immigrate to Israel during the coming years. I hope.

Way of Thinking

Some years ago, in a discussion with a Polish (Jewish) mathematician in Jerusalem, I proposed that the only way of knowing how things worked was by trying them in the extreme. Limits are unknowable until we trespass them. People do not even try to go the limit of anything, for fear of punishment. They live life too prudently.

Most problems of life are unsolvable by thinking. They are solvable only by trying and watching what happens. To illustrate my concept I quote from "Chance":

The so-called Monty Hall problem is a well-known puzzle named after the original host of the game show "Let's Make A Deal," who presented contestants with three doors, one of which held a prize, the other two only goats. The prize and the goats were placed randomly behind the doors beforehand, and stayed where they were throughout. After the contestant made a guess, Monty Hall would always open one of the remaining doors that he knew did not contain the prize. The player was then always given the option of staying with their initial guess or switching to the other unopened door.

Most people opted to stay with their initial guess, despite the fact that switching actually doubled the chances of winning.

I thought long about the Monty Hall problem and arrived to the conclusion that it is impossible to solve it mentally. By "impossible" I mean that I am unable. I know the theory of conditional probability but it does not come naturally to me. But pigeons, by picking on buttons, learned very fast that switching increased their chances and they switched. They had no preconceived ideas about how the thing worked, they watched and learned. There is a lesson here.

Post Scriptum: The difficulty in the Monty Hall problem is that it is stated wrongly. I'll try to state is clearly:

(1) There are three closed doors. Behind each door there is either a goat or a car. There is only one car, and two goats.

(2) The contestant has to choose one door, hoping that the car is behind it. He has 1/3 chances of being right.

(3) The spielmeister then goes behind the doors and has to choose a door with a goat. HE CANNOT CHOOSE THE DOOR THAT THE CONTESTANT HAS ALREADY RESERVED AS HIS CHOICE. The spielmeister can choose only between two doors and has to choose one that has a goat behind. He cannot choose the door with the car.

(4) If the contestant's door has a goat, the game-master has no options, has to choose the door with the other goat. He opens it and shows the goat.

(5) Now, the contestant faces two doors and knows that the car most probably (2/3 chance) is in the door that was not opened by the master of ceremonies. It makes sense for him to abandon his original choice and prefer the door other remaining door.

Spain Today

Irreality on the Mavi Mamara

The Israeli version of the killing of nine Turks on the Mavi Marmara says that soldiers were kidnapped into lower decks and they had to be freed. Two days ago I wrote that I am not convinced. Now a German by the name of El Sakka tells to Der Spiegel his version:

He fled to the lower deck when he noticed that live ammunition was being fired. The ship's sick bay was located next to the sleeping quarters. He observed that an increasing number of dead and wounded were being brought down, including three injured soldiers.

What happened? Each participant experienced reality in a different way. What is real?

Fiberglass Pipes for Seawater

In Israel, fiberglass pipes are fighting for survival. They are more expensive than poli ethylene pipes. They have a market niche for special applications like chemicals. The pic is publicity for the American Army.

Water in the Arizona Desert

Human Borders is an American group setting up drinking water points in the desert in the Arizona - Mexico border. They are motivated by humanitarian feelings, trying to reduce the number of migrants dying in the desert and to invite public discourse on migration issues. They put up maps in Mexican border towns, like this one in Nogales, with disaussive legends (in Spanish) but showing walking distances and directions, and how to prepare for the expedition. This is what I call "encountered sentiments" - pro and contra.
Its leadership is heavily religious: President, Felipe Lundin; President Emeritus, Rev. Robin Hoover; Faith Representative, Rev. Hal Cowart.

Americans are a generous people.

Tradition! Tradition!

The religion of the ancestors cannot be easily forgotten. The Aztec religion demanded a daily human sacrifice. The reasoning was that without a nice help of fresh human blood, the Sun would have no strength to rise. The idea is not unreasonable. The sacrifice was done extracting with a stone knife the heart of the living victim. The heart was eaten by the priests and other dignataries, the body was thrown down the pyramid for the prole.

It appears that the memory of the ritual was never forgotten. In Quintana Roo province, Mexico, two female and four male bodies were found without their hearts. The forensic explained: "Les habían abierto el pecho para sacarles el corazón". They opened the chests to extract the hearts. The operation was signed with a "Z" carved on the stomach - the signature not of Zorro but of the sanguinary Los Zetas, a drug gang.

TASE against The World

The Tel Aviv Stock EXchange TASE at 1400 local time suddenly changed direction and it rising. Apparently more oil was discovered "somewhere in the Mediterranean."