Three Suns and One Planet

Of course I am reading his books. Interesting. The man is not normal. He is a nervous wreck, full of involuntary ticks and rictuses. Sounds very intelligent. The woman too is very notable.

Reality and Dreams

Yesterday evening I went down to buy sour bread and the bald Yemeni behind the counter was flirting with a good looking woman I had been ogling, and he was making her to blush. The brown baker raised her hand across the counter to hit her - a gesture of good nature dominance. He noticed that I was looking and said "It is nothing, she is my neighbor". Then, to dissimulate, "Bye, sister". I left depressed.

Drank some wine and slept well. Had a beautiful happy dream, I was in high school, but not like the drab unisex Colegio Nacional Mariano Moreno but a colorful building with fresh bright-eyed girls.

These things should not happen to an over seventy fat Jewish man. I'll never be young again, the light flirting is finished for me. Now, what?

Outlasting the Syrian War

How will end the Syrian civil war? After a decade of conflict, half of the population has abandoned their homes and lands and businesses, and the per capita product is about 3000 US$. The army of some 200,000 has suffered 40,000 casualties. Yet there is still a functioning government in Damascus.

In the North, confused fighting goes on with foreign troops on the land: Russians, Turks, Iraqis and Iranians. And the new Kurdish nation. And American "advisers". The question: Is this prolonged armed conflict weakening and emptying the Syrian State? Or the continued fighting is hardening and strengthening the Syrian Army? Is Syrian territory being divided up among fractions and lead to independent statelets?

According to military doctrine (Hoover Institute) the winners will be those who enter the war in its final phase, those with strong nerves that stayed on the sides while the others bleed themselves white. An impoverished nation cannot support for long a fighting army, a famished army fast degrades to bandits. The result in twenty years will be a wealthy, stable and strong Israel surrounded by exhausted, overpopulated and very poor nations. Pic.: a 9000 skeleton mass grave in Lutzen,from the German Thirty Years War.

Grandaughter today.

 

The Crossness Pumping Station

I spent many hours in pumping stations, in Israel and other countries, and never saw a more beautiful and inventive sewage facility. This Victorian station was a revolution in it design, in the enormous iron wheels and gates. I am a fan of everything related to the British industrial revolution, and could spend another week in the Manchester Industrial Museum and roaming the old factories and kilns of North West England. I for one think the Industrial Revolution had an important esthetic element, the machines were elegant and much decorated, their products useful, cheap and beautiful. I had a dream of renting a boat or barge, and to explore England's network of canals, but my wife and daughters are not interested. Well, some dreams have to be left for the next life, not that there will be one.

The Kingdom of David

Lately I am seeing ambitious maps depicting an Israelite kingdom with extensive (possibly imaginary) borders. Contemporary Palestinians (Plishtim in Hebrew = Invaders) negate even the historicity of David and Solomon, they definitely do not like this map. Just to make it easier to mentally overlay it on today's political division, put your finger on Damascus, the capital of Syria. On the hand, the Mediterranean coastal strips north from Haifa and in Gaza are not included in the kingdom, they are Phoenician and Philistine respectively. Regarding the Phoenicians, they were Hebrew speaking Canaanites, a brother nation, so we may be their legitimate inheritors. Regarding Philistines, they disappeared and the solution to this mystery is that they were absorbed in the Israelite nation. 

Iranians in Western China

The whole of Western China was peopled by an Iranian people called Saka. One of their branches was the Tokarian that had a developed culture (pic) and spoke an Arian language similar to the Persian. Yet from the Tenth Century AD they lost to competing Turkish tribes and disappeared. The only remnant are the Uyghurs, that are thoroughly mixed and look Asian. Only a few of them have clear eyes and semi-European features.

In the vast space of Central Asia where the Iranian race encountered the Turkish/Chinese race, the result was a steady advance of the Asians toward the West, encroaching on Iranian lands, a progress that only stopped on the Mediterranean coast. The Iranians have been retreating for a millennium, even their central homeland on the Iranian plateau is being colonized by Azeri Turks.

The Iranians have much to offer to humanity, it should be a pity if they were to follow their brothers the Saka of China.

Israeli Police Putsch Against Netaniyahu

The Israeli Police opened a fourth case against Netaniyahu (Tik 4000) and already have signed up a court witness, Shlomo Filber, former adviser to the Ministry of Communications. The accusation is, apparently, that the Prime Minister tried to convince the media to be a bit fairer towards his wife Sarah and himself. They were ridiculing them and Kaya (pic) too. The White bitch had bitten the American Secretary of State Kerry.  

P.S.: The Police has arrested dozens of executives and officers with the idea of identifying those who can be intimidated to testify against Netaniyahu. This is the typical Russian strategy: Arrest a million and some dirt will surface. Ugly.

Meeting the Effendi

Gas stations are required to submit periodically drawings and certificates to be granted permits. I submitted the required drawing of an existing gas station to the Ministry and the company submitted separately the certificates that had to be renewed each year. The submittal was rejected without giving reasons. After several inquiries they deigned to talk to me and understood that my drawing did not agree with the certificates submitted by the petrol company. Since I had not seen what they had submitted, and the Ministry did not condescend to let me see them, I had to ask the petrol company (my employer) to mail me copies and check the whole thing.

After I saw the certificates, I identified two of them pertaining to backflow valves but the third one referred to a nonexistent fixture. I went back to the Ministry and explained that there had been a confusion and the two valid certificates are all what is needed and nothing else. "Dear J, we already have sent the case to a higher instance, so please do not call us again because we are not dealing with it anymore. (... notice how generous we are...) we have not rejected it officially but just refused to deal with it."

I have large experience with these government official aka bureaucrats, locally called "Effendi" (a legacy of the Turkish Empire). They feel that talking to their "Clients" (their web site calls us, the public - "Clients") is below their dignity. The whole case reminds me of Theodor Herzl's trying to get a "Charter" from the Sultan. To be able to talk someone of the Divan, he had to find an intermediary. Armin Vambery, the Jewish-Hungarian genius linguist and Orientalist, who knew everybody in the Court while teaching French to the girls of the seraglio, facilitated the first contact. Then came a prolonged negotiation about the size of the bribe the Zionist Organization would deliver to be granted an interview with the Sultan. The gold was discretely delivered in a silk pouch with red cord.  As Vambery had vaticinated, the Turk resulted a greedy bastard who demanded more bribes and never delivered.

I am not suggesting that Israeli effendis and pashas may be softened by presents, anyway, I am in engineering and not in the effendi business. As Herzl learnt a hundred years ago, you cannot buy an effendi.  

Should we eliminate the concept of reality?

I am following a general discussion on the probability function, because probability fascinates me from very early age. How the space between 1 and 0 collapses to one or the other? Apparently it is all an illusion because in fact it does not collapse.

Mathematician (pic)  Ulrich Mutze wrote: "I don't advocate to eliminate the concept of reality but we certainly have to modify it in an intelligent way that allows it to coexist with quantum mechanics." Is he aware of what he is saying? Modify reality? I hate metaphysics but is it the real thing while physics is just an illusion created by our imperfect senses? I shall never solve this thing.

Why you should never cross a bridge designed by a Purdue U engineer

Donna Riley (pic), the head of the engineering department at Purdue, argues that academic “rigor” is merely a blind for “white male heterosexual privilege.”

“The term,” she writes, “has a historical lineage of being about hardness, stiffness, and erectness; its sexual connotations—and links to masculinity in particular—are undeniable.”

There follows a truly surreal meditation on the existential and sexist depredations of slide rules—those hard, straight instruments that have traditionally been deployed by men—and periodic eructations like this:

Rigor may be a defining tool, revealing how structural forces of power and privilege operate to exclude men of color and women, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ [love the plus sign!] people, first-generation and low-income students, and non-traditionally-aged students.

Of course, it is not just rigor that upsets Professor Riley. There is also “Scientific knowledge itself,” which, according to Professor Riley, “is gendered, raced, and colonizing.” What should we do about this outrageous behavior on the part of nature? We must abandon the whole machinery of rigorous analysis for something freer, more “creative.” Engineering programs, Professor Riley suggests, should “do away with” the ideal of academic rigor. “This is not about reinventing rigor for everyone, it is about doing away with the concept altogether so we can welcome other ways of knowing. Other ways of being. It is about criticality and reflexivity.”

Her essay appears not in a science fiction journal or a publication intended for the denizens of a sanatorium but a journal concerned with science. This woman is the head of a department of engineering in an institution of higher education. The moral is that things are worse than they appear.

Lifted from: New Criterion. 

Russian Conspiracy

I read the indictment against a Russian political organization intended to defeat Hillary Clinton's candidacy. It is probable that I had seen some of their posts and articles, but I do not think it was effective. Anyway, their activities were hostile to America. 

I am still wondering what is the health condition of Hillary. I do not think her passing out was staged (pic). I remember a convincing short film explaining that she suffered from Parkinson disease. Was it true? The internet lost interest in her and the truth will emerge only some years from now.

Also I am sure the Russians had nothing to do with the Flint water scandal. I followed the affair from its very beginning. The media presented it as a textbook case of racists poisoning poor blacks, which was totally untrue, and made me lose all confidence in American media.

O amigo da onça

Dois caçadores conversam em seu acampamento:
— O que você faria se estivesse agora na selva e uma onça aparecesse na sua frente?
— Ora, dava um tiro nela.
— Mas se você não tivesse nenhuma arma de fogo?
— Bom, então eu matava ela com meu facão.
— E se você estivesse sem o facão?
— Apanhava um pedaço de pau.
— E se não tivesse nenhum pedaço de pau?
— Subiria na árvore mais próxima!
— E se não tivesse nenhuma árvore?
— Sairia correndo.
— E se você estivesse paralisado pelo medo?
Então, o outro, já irritado, retruca:
— Mas, afinal, você é meu amigo ou amigo da onça?

Above an old and famous Brazilian joke. Two hunters talk about shooting an  onça, a painted or spotted jaguar. One of them is constantly proposing hypothetical situations, what if you have no ammunition, what if the animal attacks, etc. The bottom line: Tell me, are you my friend or the friend of the onça?

The cartoon: "Imagine, ten years of friendship and he never told me he was married".

This apropo a letter published in the fishwrap HaAretz, one Zvi Kaphtory defending Yakov Peri, ex Chief of the Secret Services, that lied about his military service (see former note). Kaphtory writes that he was a friend of Peri even before he was Yakov Peri (who knew that he had changed his name?), when both were starting in the service. Kaphtory describes the shaming ranks of those times: the elite were Parachutists, below them the tankists, and at the bottom the Kaf-Lamedim and then, the untouchable, leprous ב.כ.ת. (rejected) - Peri.

Kaphtory apparently explains and justifies Peri's lies about his service, but effectively has shamed him publicly. He is a typical friend of the onça, the painted jaguar. 

Intelligence from the Enemy

'Lizards with the ability to "attract atomic waves" were reportedly used by Western spies to gain intelligence on Iran's nuclear program, a high-ranking Tehran official has claimed.

Hassan Firuzabadi, senior military advisor to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told local media on Tuesday that he became aware of the sqamate reptiles "several years ago."

Firuzabadi referred to one case involving foreigners who were in the Islamic Republic on an aid mission. They possessed lizards and chameleons whose skin attracted atomic waves, he said, adding that the foreigners were "nuclear spies" who wanted information on Tehran's uranium mines and atomic activities.'

I did not make this up. Some lizards do have a photosensory organ on the top of their heads called the parietal eye which can detect changes in radiation in the visible spectrum. The Persian general may felt these Buddha-like creatures with a third eye had to be Israeli spies. This follows the famous Israeli vulture case in Saudi Arabia, the Israeli sharks sabotaging Egyptian tourist industry, and the Israeli eagle spying on Sudan. 
 

Crypto Craze

There is no rational argument for the price of bitcoin or any other crypto currency. Any price.  A good article in the NYT effectively pulverizes the crypto, yet the Chicago Futures Market (pic) shows that most players think that the current price will be maintained at least till June. And they are ready to bet their money on it.

The solution of this mystery is the irrationality of the market, of the investors, of the economic theory. The Dutch tulip craze is the model, or pyramid schemes. Once more, I understand that planning for the future is almost impossible, values and resources are based on the existence of stable groups of organized people, like Britain and America. And Israel. 

Sykes-Picot Again

Anatoly Karlin has an interesting graphic explanation of what is going on in Syria: It is being partitioned again. Once there was a French zone and a British zone; now we have other actors. Syria is being vivisected because cannot govern itself. The Assad regime is lasting too long, it is not sustainable, the Alawite minority cannot rule forever a population ten times larger.

The map shows that, in that small corner, we too are sitting at the table among the new Sykes-Picot masters. We have made a long way in these last hundred years. The next century will be even better.  

Britain Re-Nationalizes Water

According to Labor shadow chancellor, the coming Labor government will re-nationalize the water industry.

"Water bills had risen by 40% in real terms since privatisation of the industry in 1989. In 2016-17, the forecast average for water bills was £389 per household. McDonnell claimed that in 2017, privatised water companies paid out a total £1.6bn to their shareholders. Since 2010, the total was £13.5bn.

Michael Roberts, the chief executive of Water UK, which represents private water companies, said McDonnell was completely mistaken: “It’s wrong for Labour to suggest that our water system is broken. Water companies secure capital provided by lenders and shareholders, who need water companies to make a return in order to finance significant improvements to the industry."

Less than a decade ago, British water industry was totally re-organized. Now again they want to expropriate the water companies. Britain is rich in water but if they keep playing with it, they will drink - once more - sewage. 

My interpretation: Britain is seriously disoriented, zigzagging and confused. It pains me because I am a lifelong Anglophile.

The City of Kekrops

The Peloponnese war concluded with Athen's loss. The Spartans erected at the Greek national sanctuary at Delphi statues of the trierarchs who had fought in the battle. The inscriptions said:

These men, sailing with Lysander in the swift ships, humbled the might of the city of Cecrops
And made Lacedaemon of the beautiful choruses the high city of Hellas.

It is interesting that the Spartans, a community dedicated to war and slaving, describes itself as the city of beautiful choruses. Apparently they considered their singing as their highest cultural achievement.

The Spartans did not name their enemy Athens, a city dedicated to the Goddess Athena. Athena was an all-Hellenic deity, and they possibly considered Athens appropriating her as shameless usurpation. To humiliate her they call it the City of Cecrops, the name of the city's mythological first king, a Barbarian. Cecrops (pronounced Keck-ropps) literally means "face of tail" which refers to the ancient serpent cult in the caves of Acropolis. They represented Kekrops with a loose female dress (pic).

The Spartans were great at Laconisms.

Head of Israeli Secret Service: Impostor

Yaakov Peri, former head of the Shin Beth (the Israeli Secret Service)  did not serve in the Army and lied about it, according to the TV show “Uvda” aired Wednesday night, hours after the ex-Shin Bet chief resigned from the Knesset.


There is no evidence of Peri serving in the IDF, and that the listed reason for his exemption is that he is “permanently unfit.”


On the Knesset website, Peri, 74, is listed as having served as a paratrooper, and has talked about his IDF service in interviews and his biography.

Now, what does this information mean? Peri went through life (and reached the top) on the basis of a lie. I cannot believe that this was unknown to his bosses and environment. He must have a real health problem and tried to hide it from the public. I try to understand him, yet he was a definite security risk for the organization he served, and for the country. We are lucky that our enemies are so incompetent.

What happens on Day Zero?

No one is sure what will happen in Cape Town on Day Zero, except that the city will shut off the people’s taps.  Day Zero is when the last of the reservoirs dries up and the South African city of five millions stops the pumps and no water will flow from the taps. Day Zero is expected to arrive at end of April.

Prof. Thompson from Stanford U. has imagined that scenario. "Residents will then be able to pick up 6.6 gallons of water per day at one of 200 distribution sites that the city is setting up.  (By comparison, Americans use 80-100 gallons per day.)  If Cape Town is successful, it will have pulled off an amazing administrative feat.  One observer has estimated that each site will need to dispense water to people at the amazing clip of eight households per hour for 12 hours every day."

Africans are not noted for their social discipline. What happens when hundreds of thousands of people descend on each site for their daily water supplies? The military will have to protect the distribution sites.

Money that has nowhere to go

Tyler Cowen writes in Bloomberg that "There's a lot of wealth being created and not enough safe places to store it."  There are no enough instruments to transfer wealth from the present to the future. US bonds pay nothing and the dollar devaluates.  Gold keeps is worth, more or less. It is the most primitive safe heaven. So the money goes to American blue chips and real estate in London, New York and Tel Aviv. Can't somebody invent some kind of bank or financial institution better than gold?

Israeli bureaucracy: Invincible

In 2014 the whole Israeli gas industry was about to crash because Nobel wanted to leave the country. The reason was that the regulation and taxing rules were changing all the time. Netaniyahu promised to intervene and moderate and stabilize the regulation, but that did not happen. Last week the Commerce and Industry Chamber had a meeting to protest bureaucracy, and the facts revealed are shocking. Ten percent of the food cost is the cost of compliance with the paperwork required, and examples were given of large foreign companies that went back on their plans to enter the Israel market. It is impossible to open a small shop without violating some of the hundred rules and requirements. I am depressed. My designs get rejected by ignorant young women with dictatorial regulatory powers for capricious reasons, such as the scale is inexact, the lines are too thin and of wrong color, the position of the hot water tank is misplaced a few centimeters, spelling mistakes.

The Endangered Soreq Smelt

California has the Delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) which is a small sardine infesting the freshwater-saltwater mixing zone of the Sacramento river estuary. California is suffering from very severe water scarcity but environmentalists have declared the smelt an endangered species (although it is indistinguishable from billions of other sardines) and forced the water authorities to spill good fresh water into the sea to support the ecosystem of this uneatable pest.

Lately I am hearing that the Soreq river carries less water to the Mediterranean (the drought, remember?) and there is a pressing need to restore the "delta". Our marine biologists are feverishly searching for the Israeli equivalent of the California smelt, so we too can be shamed to spill precious, expensive drinking water to the sea. Hereby I am baptizing this yet undiscovered but essential sardine - "the Soreq smelt". It is possible that by this time it is extinguished, and we need to import the California Delta smelt and acclimatize it, or to resuscitate it recombining ordinary sardine genes.

Growing Drought in Iran

Iran is an arid country and suffering from climate change as we do:  there is a 1.2 millimeters annual decrease of precipitation in Iran during last 20 years. The mean precipitation in Iran during September 23, 2017 to January 27, 2018 has been just 40 millimeters, despite the fact that the average precipitation in long run during the same period is 101 millimeters, said the director for drought and crisis management department of Iran’s Meteorological Organization.

Pic: Lake Urmiah.

Iran will follow Israel's path of seawater desalination and saving efforts; in fact, we are two countries complementing each other. It is a pity we are not friends.

Tension in Ethiopia/Sudan border

The war in Syria has exhausted the people and is slowly winding down. The next conflict is building up between Sudan and Ethiopia, with Egypt as would be mediator. All three countries sharing the big river Nile are nervous, the Renaissance dam will change the river's regime, and no one is sure how. These are big, poor, heavily militarized  countries.

The Next Generation

Sunny winter morning in the Holy City of Binyamin Ben Ya'akov Tomb (we are on Google Map) . Noia in the Neighborhood Communal Garden.  Apparently, they are growing beets.


Right: Family PicNic in the Rosh Ha-Ayin "Forest". Grandson Arbel.



Below: Geffen. 

Which was more advanced: The Roman Empire or the Chinese Empire?

Putting side by side technologies of the two contemporary empires, the Romans appear much more advanced and productive. Lets compare metallurgy: Roman mines produced copper, lead, gold and silver and iron by thousands of tons. Roman aqueducts and lead pressure pipes were unequaled till the 19th Century. And they drank wine like the Mediterraneans they were (Pic.:wine strainer).  In civil engineering, the Romans were the world's first major bridge builders. A list of Roman bridges compiled by the engineer Colin O'Connor features 330 Roman stone bridges for traffic, 34 timber bridges and 54 aqueduct bridges, a substantial part still standing and even used to carry vehicles. Another list by the Italian scholar Galliazzo gives even 931 Roman bridges, the majority of which were arch bridges.

"These bridges were part of the Roman road system. This spanned more than 250,000 miles (400,000 km) of roads, including more than 50,000 miles (80,500 km) of paved roads.^[56][57] When Rome reached the height of her supremacy, no fewer than 29 great military highways radiated from the city.^[58] Hills were cut through and deep ravines filled in.^[58] At one point, the Roman Empire was divided into 113 provinces traversed by 372 great road links.^[58] By comparison, in Han China, there were two known arch bridges, referred to in Han literature,^[59] while a single Han relief sculpture in Sichuan depicts another arch bridge.^[60] The Han road system, mostly unpaved, was 22,000 miles.^[61]"  And Roma had a larger population than China.

Romans, as all White peoples, took decisions by public assemblies, where good speakers became the leaders. In America it was the City Hall meetings, in Israel the kibbutz meetings in the communal dining room. The Chinese had no formal meetings and decisions were taken by strict hierarchy. Even today, Chinese assemblies uniformly vote for the leadership's proposals and applaud for long minutes, while real debate - if there is - is hidden and solved by intrigues of underground factions. The Soviet Union had the same type of governance.  Romans had extensive and public (transparent, codified) legislation, the Chinese had no enforceable laws nor lawyers.

Extrapolating history to the future, I reach the conclusion that the West needs not to fear China, and that co-operation is possible and fruitful. Nixon and Kissinger were right.