Killer Anxiety

Michael Jackson was so frenetically anxious that he filled himself with tranquillizers. A tremendous combination of drugs was found in his body: the anesthetic propofol, the anxiolytic lorazepam, as well as midazolam, diazepam, lidocaine and ephedrine. He had a personal doctor administer his addiction. His arms were covered with punctures and his face and neck were scarred. He cut his nose and mutilated his body by a dozen surgical operations. He scratched out his skin's basal cells to grew a scarified, depigmented skin. I wonder if anything is worth such a suffering life (and death).

Israel as a Capital-Exporting Country

The Bank of Israel reduced the interest rate to 2.5% while the rates in Europe are rocketing (Italy pays 7.5%). One could take a loan in Israel and buy Euro bonds - financing in fact Europe. I remember the times when Israel needed American Jewish charity.

Hungarian (Non-Jewish) Humor

Sent by a non-Jewish friend from Budapest. What do you see? If you a see a nude lady with a big "tuches", obviously you are a superb observer: you have X-ray vision (like Superman and myself forty years ago). If you see that the lady wears a tanga underpant, you are mature, careful and reflective urban-anthropology geographer. If you wonder where she bought that blouse, well, you know. Is she crossing the street in a red light? - you are or should be a policeman. Do you recognize the taxi (it is a Russian-made Lada)? A person of your phenomenal powers of observation must be a detective or a spy. But if the first thing you see is that the taxi driver is a dog, well, I didnt see it either.

Steady As She Goes

Reading the morning papers, one gets the impression that Israel is in crisis and the children "piden pan y no le dan, piden queso, le dan hueso". The fishwrap HaAretz accuses Netaniyahu of failure and the Finance Ministry of causing doom. The alarmist media has convinced the bourse, and most stocks are selling below their capitals and some even for less the cash. Banks are selling at 70% of capital. Yet Israel is booming: GNP growth over 5% and increasing currency reserves. I feel it in my bones: the work pressure is unbearable, small businesses are expanding and investing and the regulators have no time to process the mountains of submissions on their desks. Mey Avivim needs six months to authorize a new 4" water connection.

KADIMA KOOR !

KOOR registered last week a loss of 1 billion dollars in its Credit Suisse speculation. Today announced further large purchases of Credit Suisse stock. The owner, Nochi Dankner, invests following the Rav Pinto's advice. I have some KOOR.

KADIMA means Forward, from the Semitic root K.D.M. = the East. In the bible one faces East and going forward is going eastward. To progress is going East להתקדם. To be promoted לקדם is to be sent to the East. Going West is going back, so the Mediterranean is called ים התחתון the sea behind. South is ימין - the right hand, North is שמל - left hand. The concept of "Orientation" also comes from finding the East. Funny.

Hungarian Jewish Humor

A friend sent me an old book called "Laughing in the Jail" (in Hungarian). Let me translate the first two paragraph of its Introduction:

In 1949 I was being followed night and day by detectives. I had no doubt what was to follow. In order to ready myself for my future, I read all available Hungarian jail journals. From Kazinczy I learnt how one can write with one's blood (I could not use the information, my blood was enough only for a few lines). The 1849 Hungarian freedom fighters's jail memories put me in a melancholic mood. They were sent to Josephstadt and other Austrian prisons, where they spent the time in card games, playing chess and smoking their pipes. When they wanted to smoke, the jailer filled their pipes and produced the fire.

Nineteen century tyrannies were so different from twentieth century totalitarian dictatorships that I was seized by a feeling of nostalgy. I had the same feeling reading Vas Zoltan's story of his years in the penitenciary of Vac; the petty bad will of the officials, the attorneys, the judges and the jail's director were, in my opinion, bagatelles, small things only too human, and the whole ambience was totally out of place in Hungary 1949. After 1949 even more so. In the times of Admiral Horthy it could have never happened that a prisioner sentenced to ten years was simply hanged like Deszkas, or beaten to death like Havas Bandi. There was no precedent that a 16 years old boy was sentenced to death and held in jail till his 18th birthday, when he was hanged, as was done in Kadar's "socialist legality" after the 1956 revolution.

Water Recycling in Tal Shahar

Yesterday I went to Tal Shahar moshav (named after Roosevelt's adviser Morgenthau: Morgen - morning = shahar; Thau - dew = tal) to some water design project. The gas station at the entrance of the moshav has solved the disposal of its wastewaters (pic). In our extreme concern for groundwater resource contamination, gas stations are monitored and severely punished for any drop of motor oil or gas that reaches the aquifer. Now this station has no connection to the municipal sewage system. The problem has been solved by recycling the water in irrigation of two basins made of polyethilene sheets (pic) and filled with volcanic stones. The plants are healthy but there is also an irrigation system with drinking water. So I cant know if it is real 100% recycling or it is a show for the benefit of "green" customers or regulators. May be age makes me too skeptical of this ecologycal business.

Culturally Biased IQ Tests

Someone commented on my Hebrew so I took an old grammar book (see scan) to the club to refresh it. Shockingly, there were words I could not understand! ולהלם - how do you read that? Then I realized that this old book had been written in the nineteen forties for immigrants from Germany and was not culturally neutral but strongly biased to implant in the minds of the "Yekkes" the doctrines of the socialist MAPAM party.

When I arrived in this country, there many Yekkes speaking grammatically refined Hebrew with comically German accent. Already there were rumors about the Yemenite Jewish children that had been secretly given in adoption to childless European families while their biological parents were told that they had died of disease. Talking to a Yekke acquantaince, she not only knew the facts but strongly defended what had happened. In those times, Israel wanted to be ruled by science and its first President was a scientist, Chaim Weizmann (Einstein had refused). All children were vacunated and scientifically treated (some irradiated - it was believed to be beneficial) and their IQ tested. The test had shown that Yemenite children were all retarded, with IQs well under the level considered (by European science of the time) "normal". The results amazed the political leadership of the country and it had consequences that is better to forget. My acquaintance was convinced that those poor children were "retarded" because of lack of modern education and a healthy socialist environment, so she justified their bringing up in good European families. By the way, exactly the same thing happened in Australia with aborigenes, and I believe it was a common practice all over the civilized world. Later, in the army, I met more than one Shapira and Goldstein who looked (and behaved) everything but Ashkenazim.

Why I am bringing this up? Because of this grammar book. Imagine a Yemenite child who only yesterday was playing in the dirt of some savage, isolated mountain village in Yemen, and today is subjected to a IQ questionnaire with Wilhelms and atomic submarines in the North Pole. Of course he is classified as shockingly retarded and sent to a special school.

However, I cant explain why many of them continue to fail also in modern culturally neutral IQ tests.

All Chiefs and No Indians

Cape Town. - The South African Army currently has about 122 generals and only 50 second lieutenants. The rank of second lieutenant is the entry level for new officers. Genl. Vusi Masondo, Chief of the Army, said that the quality of the candidates is so low that few pass the officers course. Pic: Shaka. The Zulu tribe was only 2000 strong when he won its leadership (by killing his brother.)

Dishonorable Hungary

Prof. Randolph Braham, the eminent historian of Hungarian Jewry and its extintion, observed that Hungary will not be able to regain its honor and the respect of the nations if they continue to lie to themselves and to everybody. Building a country on the foundation of lies can only produce a corrupt, fascist, failed country. Hungary, as other Eastern European countries like Ucraine, Poland, Slovakia, etc. have convinced themselves that they are totally innocent of the extermination of their Jewish population, that it was done by the Nazis alone and against their heroic but futile resistance.

Moreover, the myth that the assessination of all the Jews is somehow balanced off by the bad things that the Jews supposedly did to them, is now generally accepted. The myth is based on the lie that the Communist Party's dictatorship was, in fact, the rule of the Jews over those countries. Having lived under the Communist rule in Hungary, my parents and uncles risked their lives (and mine) to escape that regime, so I know from first hand that Communism in Hungary was not a dictatorship of the Jews, on the contrary, Jews - mostly middle class - were branded as "burgeois" and enemies of the Proletarian regime. Jews suffered under Communism, and when it became possible to escape, those countries suddenly emptied of Jews.

Braham's observation is that current East European regimes are built on a foundation of lies, they continue to lie and they will be unable to form a legitimate government all the time they keep dissimulating, falsifying the past (and consequently, the present), and they keep lying and necessary, adding more lies to their lies. They will not recover their honor and the respect of the nations without facing the truth. They have to purify themselves by a truth process like the Germans (the Holocaust), the South Africans (the excesses of the apartheid regime) and the Americans (the enslaving millions of human beings) did before.

Pic.: Shoes on the Danube. My uncle Jóska, the eldest brother of my father, was shot there and thrown into the river. By Hungarians.

Having Fun in England

The 2011 snail racing champion is a snail called Zoomer owned by 6 year old Anton Lucas of Ashwicken near King's Lynn. Zoomer won the finals in a time of 3 minutes 23 seconds. The world snail racing championships were held at Congham on 16th July 2011. Foreign snails are not allowed.

Next month I'll be there and sharing all that excitement!

Pederast Ring

I am reading Classical Greek literature and feel like an idiot. Take "Charmides" by Platon, which is universally considered a deep philosophical dialogue on the soul and on moderation. For me it is more about a band of degenerate pederasts. Judge by yourself: The story opens with Socrates returning from his Army service shortly after the Battle of Potidaea, and the first thing he does is to look at his old haunts.

So I went into the palaestra of Taureas and there I found a number of persons, most of whom I knew, but not all. My visit was unexpected, and no sooner did they see me entering than they saluted me from afar on all sides; and Chaerephon, who is a kind of madman, started up and ran to me, seizing my hand, and saying, How did you escape, Socrates?
You see, I replied, that here I am.
There was a report, he said, that the engagement was very severe, and that many of our acquaintance had fallen.
That, I replied, was not far from the truth.
I suppose, he said, that you were present.
I was.
I took the place which he assigned to me, and I told them the news from the army, and answered their several enquiries.
Then, in my turn, began to make enquiries about matters at home - about the state of philosophy, and about any new young boys. I asked whether any of them were remarkable for wisdom or beauty, or both. Critias, glancing at the door, invited my attention to some boys who were coming in, and talking noisily to one another, followed by a crowd. Of the beauties, Socrates, he said, I fancy that you will soon be able to form a judgment. For those who are just entering are the advanced guard of the great beauty, as he is thought to be, of the day, and he is likely to be not far off himself. ...at that moment, when I saw him coming in, I confess that I was quite astonished at his beauty and stature; all the world seemed to be enamoured of him; amazement and confusion reigned when he entered; and a troop of lovers followed him. That grown-up men like ourselves should have been affected in this way was not surprising, but I observed that there was the same feeling among the boys; all of them, down to the very least child, turned and looked at him, as if he had been a statue.
Chaerephon called me and said: What do you think of him, Socrates? Has he not a beautiful face?
Most beautiful, I said.
But you would think nothing of his face, he replied, if you could see his naked form: he is absolutely perfect.
...Call Charmides, and tell him that I want him to come and see a physician about the illness of which he spoke to me the day before yesterday. Then again addressing me, he added: He has been complaining lately of having a headache when he rises in the morning: now why should you not make him believe that you know a cure for the headache?
Why not, I said; but will he come?

What? Socrates de wisest man on Earth loitering in the sports field with old pederasts and impersonating a medical doctor to get into talk and seduce a beautiful boy? In the end, Alitos got so mad at Socrates for having seduced his son that took the risk of sueing Socrates for corrupting the youth (should Socrates been found innocent, Alitos would have been severely punished). The 500 man jury condemned Socrates to death. I would have cast my vote with the majority.

Out of the Blue

I fasted and worked 24 hs in a stretch. It worked: My blue days are gone.

Kiko The Non-Talking Gorilla

Koko the Talking Gorilla, a permanent star in this blog's universe, has engendered a dubious character called Kiko, the Israeli male. Kiko the Non-Talking Gorilla is happily married to Yamit, a typical Israeli much-talking wife.  Kiko is a reactionary brute, caring nothing for convention and PCness, to the desperation of Yamit. The couple has a teenage son who has inherited Kiko's hairstyle and weltauschauung. I dont  know his name yet.

The Blue Period

The Absinthe Drinker by Pablo Picasso. What is he doing? He is preparing the absinthe (a strong alcoholic herbal drink) by placing a sugar cube on top of a slotted spoon and then placing the spoon on the glass which has been filled with a shot of absinthe. Ice-cold water is then poured over the sugar cube so that the water is slowly and evenly displaced into the absinthe. During this process, components not soluble in water (mainly those from anise, fennel, and star anise) come out of solution and cloud the drink. The resulting milky opalescence is called the louche (Fr. "opaque"). Releasing these components allows herbal aromas and flavours to "blossom" or "bloom" and brings out subtleties originally over-powered by the anise. (from the wiki)

Goal: To Drink like a Chinaman

Chechs drink the most, followed by Russians (red). I belong in the 4 to 5 liter per year category (palid green). I knew I could not hold my own against the Argentines (one bottle of red wine per meal) but never realized that even those (faux) abstemious Chinese drink more. I'll have to do more.

Feeling Blue

New World Order Emerging

One can already see the profile of the new world order.

(1) America is emerging from the recession and slowly growing once more. The dollar is the ultimate refuge and America is flooded with easy money once more.

(2) Europe is coalescing into a German-Dutch co-dominion. The democratic referendum in Greece was annuled, old leader replaced by a reliable former EU comissar. German "advisers" sit in every ministry, monitoring. Italy was driven to near bankrupcy by playing the bond markets and Silvio replaced by ... a reliable former EU comissar. Wolfgang Shauble is strengthening the Euro so the weaker countries will be one by one forced to accept German-Dutch rule.

(3) Israel is enjoying unprecedented window of peace. “The Middle East is currently facing a major crisis,” said Steinitz. “Arab states around us are weaker, militarily and certainly economically, to the extent that their ability to enter into an arms race with us will be very limited over at least the next 5 to 10 years."

(4) China has grown to such magnitude that its neighbors feel menaced and an alliance is forming around it (Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Australia).

We shall survive another generation.

Saving water

An early poster urging the population to save water. Jerusalem was under siege and water was scarce.

Haredim

There is a shocking ignorance about Orthodox Jews (Haredim). The fishwrap we read at home, HaAretz, treats them as an alien race, barely human and formed from a different clay than the secular Israeli. Being from another generation, I remember how thin and aleatory was the fate that made one man a Haredi and his brother a kibbutznik. Example: Dov Lior. After the war he found himself an orphan and attempted to board the Exodus, eventually arriving on the Negba. He Hebraized his galuth name Leibland to the Zionist Lior. By sheer chance he "was cought" by a yeshive, while his two brothers joined the communist Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz HaMa'apilim (in post-war Germany, the pic shows Kibbutz Buchenwald). It could have easily been different. Today, he has eleven children and over fifty grandchildren; his brothers the kibbutzniks, less if any. When I made aliyah, I could have easily settled in Meah Shearim with my uncle, but got a good job in Tahal in Tel Aviv.

Investing in KOOR

Yesterday I had some spare coins and bought KOOR shares on TASE. KOOR is a holding company with large investment in Credit Suisse. Two years ago they sold some of it with a profit of 1 billion US$ that was paid out as dividend. Since then, CS lost 50% of its worth and KOOR is technically in red. Recently, KOOR sold Machteshim to the Chinese and after paying back the interests due on the CS speculation (which is done on credit), they are buying more CS stock. Since technically all European banks are broke (their holdings of sovereign debt are worthless), it is a bold move. It presumes that Angela Merkel and her Prussian schoolmasters will impose discipline on Southern Europeans, teach them to work and heal their finances. Pic.: The main banking hall of Credit Suisse (Zurich) in the eighteen sixties.

Adi Neumann

Israeli model.

Toward the Big Bang

I believe that the universe was created spontaneously from nothing in the Big Bang picosecond event aka when God said "Let be light". How physical things can appear from nothing? They can. Physicists in Gothenburg, Sweden, have managed to turn "virtual" light particles, flickering in and out of existence in a vacuum, into measurable, material particles.

The experiment was based on quantum mechanics: empty space is a seething ocean of infinitesimal particles that fluctuate in and out of existence, defying the laws of classical physics because they only exist for the briefest of moments. The team succeeded in getting photons to leave their virtual state and become real photons, e.g. measurable light. (from Nature).

Brahmapura-Tsangpo Water Diversion Project

China's agricultural potential is in the almost empty West China, and the only problem is water. The irrigation of these vast area would more than double China's agricultural lands and production, solving the overconcentration of its population in the Pacific seabord.

On the other hand, China's rivers are drying up and the water supply to its cities is in danger. Tientsin and Beijing are being supplied partly by overpumping of aquifers, which is unsustainable.

The solution is to bring water from the mountains. China has traditionally solved its geopolitical problems by gigantic public works, and that is what I think is going to do in the next decades.

There is untapped water resources in the Tibetan Plateau, consisting in many rivers and lakes. But the most attractive project is the damming of the Brahmaputra-Tsangpo river at the Great Bend (pic) for electricity production, and the channeling of its flow towards the NorthWest instead its "natural" course towards the South East. These civil engineering works face tremendous problems in the frozen Himalaya highlands without roads or communications. Yet the Chinese, throughout their long history, have demonstrated their superb ability specifically in this kind of projects. In my opinion, the Chinese love mobilizing tens of millions in building grandiose projects. This is the kind of bombastic project they would die to have.

Of course, the water gained by China will be on account of India and Bangladesh. India is so nervious about the mere mention of projects regarding the upper Brahmaputra that the Chinese government maintains a demostrative lack of interest in them. I dont know if it is because of censure or what, but the Chinese are not talking about it.

Yet it is there all the time.

Apple Stock

Dont laugh but at long last I discovered Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL). This company has 20% of its market cap in cash (81.4$ billion collecting dust), trades at a P/E of 13.8 (10.6 when adjusted for cash), and the new CEO Tim Cook says will pay dividends.

Making fun

Ehud Barak said in an interview that if he would be in Ahmedenijad's shoes, he too would want to have nuclear weapons.

A few days before he said that if he would be living in Gaza, he would be a member of Hamas, a terrorist organization.

We are lucky he is not an Israeli, because he would like to be the Minister of Defense. (Overheard in the Knesset)

The Prayer Machine

Prayer is universal and every people does it. Basically it is a monologue trying to convince an invisible and incommunicative Father in the Heaven to do something for one. Many say it is effective, or at least improves one's spirits.

The technology of prayer has not changed in thousands of years. The question is if it could be improved and made more cost-effective. The Tibetans have made a large step forward inventing mechanical prayer wheels, that can be operated by hand and produce dozens of simultaneous prayers. They have also automated the wheels, operating them by wind power. A real Earth-friendly technology.

Could modern computer science add something to it? This fascinating area is open for innovation and start-ups.

Kosher Water Meter

For the record: Kosher water meter. An amazing combination of high tech and wildest superstition. If we ever get to space, our ships will be be equipped with shabbath lifts.

"The Torah commands us to rest on Shabbat, along with our families, workers, and animals. There's nothing on that list about digital water meters, but the halachic issue is indeed there. And that's a big problem (my emphasis) in the modern world: Digital meters measuring electricity, water and gas are essential to the infrastructure of smart homes and smart cities that are becoming more and more common.

The halachic issue of “closing a circuit” (segirat ma'agal) is one of the reasons that digital meters are not more common in Israel. A Sabbath observant person cannot open the water tap on Shabbat, because the information in the meter is updated, as is its display, with every drop. This is not the case with mechanical meters, which measure usage indirectly (as water flows it drives piston or disk that moves a magnet which in turn drives the register.

MTR's meter has received a "Shabbat kashrut certificate" from the Tzomet Institute, which works to develop electronic products that observant Jews can use on Shabbat. The product works indirectly, measuring changes in a magnetic field that are caused by water usage. The system stores information in its memory and uploads it after Shabbat. And the device's screen remains “silent” over Shabbat or the screen displays a “Shabbat Shalom” message. Awesome! Electronic praying water meters a-la-Tibetan praying wheels operated by the wind may not be too far away.

Minority Fighting for Its Life

What is going on in Syria, our Northern neighbor? If you go by the papers, popular forces are fighting to overthrow a dynastic dictatorship to impose democracy. I see it differently. A persecuted minority, the Alawis, 12% of the population, seized the country fifty years ago and rules it with iron fist. The Alawis are aware of the fate of another Middle Eastern minority that lost the power -- the Christians in Lebanon -- they were decimated and had to emigrate. Should Assad jr. fall from power, a terrible bloodbath awaits the whole ethnic group and permanent discrimination forever. You dont have to be a Jew to know the fate awaiting hated, unarmed, powerless minorities. I mean in Europe, in the Middle East, and maybe, America.

Who are the Alawis? They are an inbred mountain ethnia, like the Druze, and like them, follow a secretive religion. They practice the taqiyya -- dissimulation. The English missionary Samuel Lyde describes them in 1860: "Heathen of whom St Paul wrote: filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness.” In 1925, the French set up an Alawi state, they overprinted Syrian stamps (pictured) “ALAOUITES”.

In short, Assad cannot and will not leave Syria. He and his Alawite army are fighting to death and will kill as many as necessary. They are our enemies but as we say in the barrio: Mejor mal conocido que mejor por conocer" -- A known evil is preferible to a better but unknown. But we will not help them, since Ariel Sharon's disastrous alliance with the Lebanese Christians we know to avoid intervening in inter-Arab conflicts.

Peretz Dar against Desalinated Water

Dr Peretz Dar published a large article in Ynet about the dangers of the current plan that calls for supplying Israel's population with desalinated sea water instead of "natural" water. He starts storying the Otzar (the Treasury)'s sabotaging water saving campaigns and its (successful) policy of privatization. In the near future all of Israel's drinking water will come from six private desalination plants and "natural" water will be used in agriculture.

His argument is that reducing water consumption would have made desalination (and the need to erect a new large power plant) unnecessary, that desalinated water is bad for human health because it does not contain calcium, magnesium and boron, and that exposes Israel to war risks.

I met Peretz Dar when we worked in TAHAL. He is a bona fide water professional (aka he knows the subject) but I think his arguments are all wrong. Saving water has its limits and at certain point, it becomes inconvenient and an obstacle for economic activity. The water saving strategy (as producing illimited quantities of drinking water at a low price) is "green", although he is too old to use the current environmental, New Age, "Save the Earth" images.

The lack of minerals in "artificial" water is untrue because they are added to it and "natural" calcium from the hills of the Shomron is the same as the calcium carbonate added to the water by grounded Shomron stone. Regarding privatization, the former situation of Mekorot Water Corporation monopoly, it worked (and I worked) because Israel was a young socialist country, with a homogeneous population, but times have changed and Mekorot cannot be remade as the wonderful group of idealists "with a national mission" that it was.

Regarding war risks, the destruction of all desalination plants would only throw us back to natural water, which is being channelled to the agriculture. In case of destruction, it is the agriculture that would suffer. Israel is growing and cannot stay the pastoral countryside envisioned by Ben Gurion. We are forced to become a high-tech society, with all its risks.

Béla Kádár

Last time in Budapest I saw paintings by Béla Kádár for 200 dollars. I looked at them, went out of the gallery and walked a block and came back but in the end bought none. Today his paintings even aquarells are selling for 2000 to 3000 dollars each. Béla Kádár (1877-1956) was a Hungarian Jewish painter influenced by Der Blaue Reiter, Cubism, Futurism, Neo-Primitivism, Constructivism, and Metaphysical painting.

The EU is a German project, after all

The German project is to form a political union or federation from the two dozen small nationalities of Europe. They are trying to do it without violence and in a very gradual way. Now this long-term project is in danger:

The sovereign debt crisis that has spread to eurozone’s periphery represents Europe’s “toughest hour since World War II,” according to Angela Merkel. Addressing thousands of delegates from the Christian Democrat Union (CDU), Merkel said that Germany will have to make more sacrifices.

“The challenge of our generation is to finish what we started in Europe, and that is to bring about, step by step, a political union,” Reuters quoted Merkel as saying. “Europe is in one of its toughest, perhaps the toughest hour since World War II.”

Juan Domingo Peron used to say: "El año dos mil nos encontrará unidos o dominados" meaning that the year 2000 will find an united Latin America or a colonized one. Yet all projects to unite or federate Latin American countries failed.

Social Justice or Entitlement?

"In a world where there’s plenty of food for everyone, hunger is not only unnecessary – it is unjust.

This injustice seems maddeningly obvious, doesn’t it? Everyone has the right to live, no? Everyone needs food to live, right? Then everyone has a right to food, no?

That’s what FAO, and the entire United Nations, believes. Every country in the world has endorsed the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Here’s what article 25 of the Declaration says:

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services…”

Sounds like a good idea doesn’t it?"

Sure. But who pays?

Victory

This is a drawing of a water connection request for a large supermarket in Tel Aviv. The request has to come with the drawing. It took three months and a dozen changes for the water company to approve the connection, for which they charged 6,000 dollars. I have a feeling of "Victory", which in my case lasts about half an hour. Now the water company has to lay the pipe, which may take another three months.

Stomach Ache

A family business paid more than ten penalties for infraction of the sewage discharge regulations. The municipal authority had been sampling its discharge and found excessive concentration of vegetable oils. Three years ago they decided to fight and hired a lawyer and me as expert. The preparatory meeting with the lawyer gave me stomach ache. We are going to negate the validity of environmental laws, something like fighting the EPA in the USA.

Our argument is that they didn't collect and preserve the samples following the "Standard Methods". They did not write protocols nor measured temperatures as required. They operated on a cozy, easygoing, relaxed manner.

My second argument is that the sampler does not know the apparatus. He had not read the instruction book (or its translation) and consequently he did not follow them. That machine was never maintained, calibrated, refrigerated and moreover, he testified that having internal isolation needed no refrigeration. Sewage samples change their composition after one hour if not preserved at 4 degree celsius as required. A thermos is no refrigerator.

If we win, all sewage infractions in Israel will have to be reconsidered or annuled and new, stricter methods will have to be applied. The judge (female) protects the authorities and its ignorant and lazy servants, so the lawyer (a 2 m tall 35 y.o. frightening female) drilled me very hard. She did not allow me to ramble around with anecdotes as I like but had to focus on specific points. Like Art. 5 says "4 degree Celsius" and they say on page 3 line 15 that the sample was 20 degrees." And so on. I am going to be hated.

KulturKanal

The German TV Culture Channel discovered that it was talking to the air. So they changed their content.

Birmingham Sewage Debacle

The Alabama city of Birmingham is bankrupt, mostly because of mismanagement of its sewage system. Trying to understand the technicalities of the problem, it appears that the wastewater treatment plant designed to treat 60 million gallons can treat only half of that volume. The city is filing a lawsuit against Hendon Engineering over its design of the Five Mile Creek plant. The flaw includes a pipe that is too small.

Having been in this situation myself, I believe improbable that a designer will design a plant so defficient. Generally they accuse the designer when the problem is in maintenance and operation. Probably they are unable to operate the plant.

Jefferson County corruption is on all levels. The financing of the works was corrupt - the banks paid to officials to include in the contracts (very) small letter penalty conditions, that doubled the debt. The contracting was inept as well corrupt. Many people involved is in jail. The 500 employees of the system average 60,000 dollar p.a. salaries, which seem excessive for the poorest State of the USA. The average national salary in public service is $41,000 per year plus benefits and job security. Yet one could argue that Alabama sewage workers are underpaid -- NYC trash collectors pull $67,000 per year not including overtime.

South Africans on Julius Malema

Jack: Where were you born?
Malema: South Africa …
Jack: Which part?
Malema: What ‘which part’? The whole body was born in South Africa .
———————–
Malema and his friend were fixing a bomb in a car:
Friend: What would you do if the bomb explodes while fixing?
Malema: Don’t worry, I have one more.
———————–
Malema: What is the name of your car?
Lady: I forgot the name, but is starts with ‘T’.
Malema: Oh, what a strange car, starts with Tea. All cars that I know start with petrol.
———————–
Museum Administrator: That’s a 500-year-old statue you’ve broken!!!
Malema: Thank God! I thought it was a new one!!
———————–
At the scene of an accident a man was crying: O God! I have lost my hand, oh!
Malema: Control yourself. Don’t cry. See that man. He has lost his head. Is he crying?
———————–
Tourist: Whose skeleton is that?
Malema: An old king’s skeleton.
Tourist: Who’s that smaller skeleton next to it?
Malema: That was same king’s skeleton when he was a child .

The Shabbes Klapper

The Shabbes Klapper: Saturday has arrived. Poland, 1920

新家孟城口
古木馀衰柳
来者复为谁
空悲昔人有。

The Chinese poet reflects on the new house near the Meng Wall. Old trees nearby are rotting and dying. Who will mourn for those who lived here before?

Anticapitalism at Harvard

The Harvard Crimsom writes about Prof Greg Mankiw's popular Ec 10 course being boycotted. The students’ criticism is that Ec 10 “espouses a specific - and limited - view of economics.” It failed to prevent the financial crisis and does nothing to narrow the gap between rich and poor. They’d like a more diverse course that includes exposure to more progressive economic frameworks. Mankiw is too conservative, having served as economic adviser to Bush.

A diverse, progressive, revolutionary framework? Maybe Marx?

That's All, Folks!

I love 周冬雨

We went to see the Chinese film "Call My Name Under the Hawthorne Tree". It is the Chinese version of Erich Segal's Love Story full of tear provoking unrealized love/horrible tragedy scenes in a Cultural Revolution environment. Who was the Western idiot that said that Chinese faces are unscrutable, unexpressive? Who said that Maoist patriotic dances are ugly? But the best are the children: delightful, beautiful, intelligent, funny.

This is the first time that I visualize the Cultural Revolution, and it is not what I imagined by reading the stories of the Chinese intellectuals in English. The re-education in the countryside is a long vacation, the party's rule is paternal, equality is liked by the common people. The history of the Cultural Revolution in English was written by pretentious, class-conscious career-obsessed intellectuals, who felt deeply insulted and depressed by having to share with ignorant and dirty peasants; teachers and university students that feared being taken by common working class people. For Chinese "Tiger Mothers" (there seems to be no other variety) the re-education was, at best, a terrible waste of time that should have been spent on passing exams and getting promoted in the state hierarchy.

In the story, Jiang is a 17 y.o. high school student, daughter of a declasse family (mother a "rightist" teacher demoted to cleaning lady) and the only hope of the family to climb out of "black political background" and economic misery. When the mother discovers that she had fallen in love with the son of a high class Party mandarin, she forbids the relationship because it could ruin her daughter's carreer. That is the core conflict of the story and it reaches it dramatic resolution when the boy dies of leukemia. As in all Communist propaganda, the end must be uplifting, so the epilogue informs that the heroine succeeded in her social climbing project and eventually was sent to study in America - the acme of success for Chinese intellectuals of that generation.

48 dead in Manizales, Colombia

A whole barrio built on a mountain collapsed in the Colombian city of Manizales, with 48 people disappeared/dead. Days before, the inhabitants had reported strong underground noises similar to "water hammers", whose vibrations and shocks weakened the soil structure causing the "derrumbe". The water company says that they had extracted a 20 liter bucket cought in the 16 inch pipe that had obstructed the water flow and caused subsequent "explosion" of the pipe and the tragic mudslade.

Irreplaceable Loss

We lost Silvio. No more bunga-bunga parties with generously rewarded callgirls (pic). No more posts in the bunga-bunga category. We shall miss him. Only those humorless schoolmaster politicians in Berlin are breathing a sigh of relief. The Italian buffo had a long track record of gratuitously offending the Germans. After the initial panic, the markets reacted positively.

Can the circle be squared?

Barclay says "no" and Italy has been sentenced to insolvency. Next is France. Europe is repeating the crisis of the nineteen thirties. Germany says never again to inflation and the Euro will be renamed Deutsche Mark.

An Example of Whitening

Dienekes Pontikos writes about Bahamas population: "The higher frequency of M269 derived individuals in the Long Island population (55.8%), when compared with the other five Bahamian islands surveyed (ranging from 8.5% to 18.3%), suggests higher gene flow from European males (Saunders, 2003b). According to the 1851 census, Long Island possessed one of the smallest European components (13.1%) yet, by 1953, almost 50% of this population was of ‘‘mixed’’ ancestry (Craton, 1998)." I think something similar happened in Brasil.

Contramarcha

The wind in Israel has turned. Yesterday we were razing Teheran, today the voices in the air suggest that a nuclear Iran is not so terrible after all, we can live with it. One bomb will not destroy the country, not even one neighborhood. The psych teams analyzing and managing real time public sentiment have decided we need to be tranquillized.

Morning Fear

I think I solved the night and morning fears that I had. The cause is tiredness, excess work, excess worry. Valium and a good night's sleep solves it. I have to slow down. I have to realize that I am an old man, there is nowhere to run.

When Hungary Colonized China

Following the eight powers occupation of China (in which participated Austro-Hungary with 260 marines), an area near Tienjin became an Austro-Hungarian Colony and its 30,000 Chinese inhabitants received the k-und-k citizenship. The statue of Strauss from those times still decorates Tienjin's street. I can well imagine that the Austrian colonialists may have forced them to attend the garrison orchestra's performances of Strauss. I attest to Tianjin natives inordinate love of beer.

Yonah, a Jewish Prophet

Yonah the Prophet lived contentedly in New Jersey, when God called him.

Yonah, I have a job for you!

Oh, not again! said Yonah.

Yonah, the people of New York are sinning and doing evil!

Not my business! Go off!

Yonah, I'm angry and going to destroy them! Tell them to repent!

Find another prophet! I'm off to a cruise in the Caribbean.

The ship's crew, fearing God's vengeance, throw Yonah overboard. Next, he finds himself in Manhattan.

Yonah: People, God is angry with what you are doing. REPENT!

The people: We repent!

Yonah to God: Now what? Punish them as you said!

God: After they repented? No way.

Yonah: At least, rain on them sulphur! If not, how can I show myself in public after I promised hellfire and ... ... Nothing? I knew from the start that you were going to play a trick on me! I hate being a Jewish prophet!

Borohydride Fuel Cell Vehicle in Turkey

Turkey tested its sodium borohydride fuel-cell vehicle. The fuel cell consumes nearly 1 kilogram of borohydride per 35 kilometers and the vehicle can cover 100 kilometers road at a maximum speed of 80 kilometers per hour. Turkey owns 70 percent of the world’s boron reserves. Turkey is becoming an industrial state.

Condi and Muammar

"It's been well reported that Qaddafi took a shine to Rice; a entire photo album of pictures of the former secretary was found in the Libyan leader's compound. The late leader of Libya even had a song made for her called Black Flower in the White House and played it along with a videotape of her with various world leaders. "It was weird, but at least it wasn't raunchy," Rice wrote."

Girls in the Army

In the Bible there are some female military leaders, and G-d had no problem with that. My own daughter was commanding a platoon or whatever in the Shomron. But now we are hearing more and more protests about the presence of girls in the Army: girls as entertainers, girls as commanders and girls as subordinates. "Modesty" is becoming an issue. Rabbi Dov Lior for example told his disciplines to avoid army posts in command of female soldiers. In my time, kashrut was the main religious issue in the Army. We had no problems with girls, we never saw them, as the Army in my times was careful to avoid mixing girls with married reserve soldiers.


هل تعلمون أنّ ثمّة فتيات مقاتلات؟ أنّ ثمّة وحدات قتاليّة في جيش الدفاع الإسرائيليّ، يخدم فيها البنون والبنات معًا؟ تعرّفوا على كتيبة "كَرَكَل" ("القطّ البرّيّ المفترس") - الوحدة الوحيدة في سلاح المشاة التابع لجيش الدفاع الإسرائيليّ الّتي تشكّل فيها ا

That is from Tzahal's website, trying to make Arab girls volunteer to the Karakal unit, a female fighting unit. My big daughter served in it. They never saw a boy.

Protalix (III)

A few months ago I bought Protalix on the rumor that the FDA was about to approve its product, some kind of human protein produced by carrot cells. The FDA demanded more tests and a second review was scheduled in February 2012, so Protalix lost 50% of its value. The platform has immense potential: no one is complaining yet about genetic engineering on plants. Now I read that the Chinese have been following a similar development path, but they are farther from a marketable product. This validates the approach and my investment.

The Mexicans Are Not Coming

According the latest figures, the situation I have foreseen has come: More Mexicans are leaving the USA than entering it. This results from stricter enforcement but also the American recession. Today population growth is lower in Mexico than in the USA. I have no bread in this matter, but the time will come when America (and Europe) will want to attract young, educated immigrants and there will be none coming. People is the ultimate source of wealth.

Hungarian Jewish Literature (Without Jews)

The assimilation of Hungarian Jewry created the phenomenon of a Jewish literature in Hungarian that described the Jewish experience and its actors are Jewish, yet masquerading as Hungarian literature describing ethnic Hungarian experience.

I remember the "A Pál utcai fiúk" children's book that I had to read in primary school. Molnar Ferenc, the author was Jewish although no one knew that in my time, told the story of a patriotic Budapest street gang defending the "grund", their sacred territory (see the street statues in today's Budapest). Three of the group can be easily identified as Jews, for example, little Weisz carries a Jewish name and tends to act as an antisemite caricature. Yet there is no doubt that the author describes his own experiences, only that he deforms and camouflages critical details to erase any Jewish identity. Only the leader of the gang is (exaggeratedly) pure ethnic Hungarian, fighting with his loyal crypto-Jewish troops to protect the grund, symbolizing sacred Hungarian homeland.

For more than a hundred years, Hungarian Jews tried to assimilate and hide their ethnic identity. No wonder that current antisemites are always searching for hidden Jews ruling their country and accuse every politician of being a crypto-Jew. But there are no Jewish street gangs in my old neighborhood.

Was Mao Good for China?

Seventy years have pased from Mao's Great Famine, so I can examine the question from afar. It was all started by Mao who proclaimed the Great Leap Forward plan, that China would overtake Britain in production of steel within 15 years. In pursuit of its goals, the government executed people who did not agree with the pace of radical change. The crackdown led to the deaths of 550,000 people by 1958.

People were mobilized to accomplish the goals of industrialization. They built backyard furnaces for iron and steel (pic) and worked together on massive infrastructure projects, including one undertaken during the winter of 1957-58 in which more than 100 million peasants were mobilized to build large-scale water-conservation works.

By comparing the number of deaths that could be expected under normal conditions with the number that occurred during the period of the Great Leap famine, scholars have estimated that somewhere between 16.5 million and 40 million people died before the experiment came to an end in 1961.

It was a giant national effort and it failed - it took China forty years more to reach British steel output. Yet, Mao started with a nation of 400 million and left one billion. Should China be a country of 400 million today, it would have no chance at all to become a large power, larger that the USA as it is today. Through famine and suffering Mao more than doubled China's population and destroyed the thousands years old social order. Good or bad, he shook up China in its roots and made it ready to become an advanced industrial society.

He has seen the future and it is the past

Greg Cochran explains how a group of humans stranded on a small island regressed to some kind of monkeys. Just as a dog regressed to become the infectious canine cancer, the Flores hobbit is a Homo sapiens that regressed to the ecological niche of monkeys. BTW our own group has been shedding brain material (10% over the past 25,000 years) and (presumably) intelligence. The trend is unmistakable.

Haifa Port

The streets behind Palmer's Gate were Israel's red light zone, dedicated to service British and later American mariners, but today the buildings have been declared historical monuments and the streets gentrified. One of my projects is an upscale coffee and cream-cake shop (pic).  



Many Haifa Port streets have British names: Palmer's Gate, Captain Jack and so on. There is a large industrial area behind the railway station, but it is semi-abandoned.