Iran Bad Bad

Netaniyahu is a master in getting through his message. Simplify, simplify! is the motto.

He is a maestro.

Lactating in Ariel University of Samaria

The campus has been enriched with a Lactating Room for students with babies. I have worked years in TAU (Tel Aviv) and never heard about this facility. Ariel is different, in the student body there are many married religious women, with their turbans and long skirts. The management is very PC conscious and the image shows  a dark skinned mother and baby. The university website also shows many Africans, and truly, one finds many in the campus.

Iran's Nice Side

The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran is actively promoting art. Two new works of Iranian veteran artist, Mahmoud Farshchian (right), called Sham-e-Ghariban (The night of the dispossessed) and Aseman-e-Chaharom (The fourth heaven), were unveiled in a ceremony attended by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (left, in a typical gesture) and his wife. There was a time when we had excellent relations with Iran.

Darwin Award Candidate from Palestinian "March of Return" Riots

Interestingly, the Israeli left did not organize counter-protest demanding the border be opened and the Arabs let in. Imagine those thousands of angry, violent youth on the streets of Tel Aviv. We would suffer the fate of the Yazidis.

What was the Islamic State? It was the rebellion of the Sunni Muslims of Syria and Iraq to escape the rule of their Shi'ite masters. In the stress of the war, the Assad dynasty was revealed as a tribal Alawite dictatorship over the Sunni majority. The Alawites, while barely Muslim, allied themselves with Iran, the Shi'a patron of the Middle East. ISIS was strangely silent about Israel and never anti-Jewish, possibly exposing the underlying structure of the Middle East conflict: The Sunni peoples vs. isolated Shi'a pockets.

The Sunni are the Palestinians, Syrians, Jordan, Western Iraq, Saudia, the Gulf. The Shi'a are Iran, South Lebanon, the Alawite pocket, the Houthis in Yemen. Paradoxically, the Sunni seem to consider Israel as a not acknowledged ally, and semi-legitimate owner of Palestine. We shall overcome.

Gravitational waves

Humanity has detected the real existence of gravitational waves. The universe described in The Dark Forest seems to be real. Now we have to discover the splitting of dimensions, but what is a dimension?

The usefulness of hedge funds

Reflections on investing.

What is hedging in investment? You buy something that tends to rise AND something that tends to sink. You are betting for the best horse AND hedging your bet with a slow nag. That kind of hedging makes no sense.

You can hedge against an expected catastrophe, like inflation or deflation. You can hedge against expected market changes or new regulation. 

It has been demonstrated that almost none of the hundreds of hedge funds existing generates alpha. Why are they prospering? Because there are pension funds, wealth funds and so that need management, and the services of a professional "safe" management. It is not really expensive, about 2% per year.

If they maintain their value is enough of an achievement and justifies the fund manager's salary. Eventual alpha is only a bonus, not really expected.

Therefore, if a managed fund produces AT LEAST the same as an index fund, then it is worthwhile. If it does so by investing in lower risk bets (if there really exist such a thing) then it is the best thing available.

The Futility of Diets and Excercise

Obesity is very difficult to impossible to treat. The most common prescription, and indeed the prevailing conventional wisdom, is that “lifestyle” changes are the best solution. This typically means diet and exercise. However, this has been extensively studied. Across the population, diet and exercise, each individually and in tandem, are completely useless to treat obesity, in the long term.

In the case of exercise, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) don’t even show a short-term benefit. One 2007 meta analysis by Franz et al looked at the results of all sorts of different interventions. For exercise-alone prescriptions, it found that the treatment groups lost no weight at 6 months (well, less than 2 kgs, but even this number comes only when you look at those who remained in the study). Indeed, after a year, the control groups actually lost more weight than the treatment groups. The total weight change was small and close to zero throughout.

In the case of diets, particularly the most common low-fat and low-calorie diets, a very large meta-analysis of RCTs with a combined N > 60,000 (of which ~48,000 came from a single mammoth trial) and a study duration of 2.5 – 10 years, found that diet was completely ineffective for weight loss. The subjects showed no aggregate permanent weight loss at the end of the study period. The largest of these studies, the one by Howard et al (2006) found little change, a total loss (over 3 years) of less than 1 kg (and a difference between control and treatment groups of 1.29 kg, favoring treatment).

As for diet and exercise combined, several studies in both previous meta-analyses look at trials which tested both together. The result was the same: little to no significant aggregate weight loss, especially after longer periods of time.

This is true of low-carbohydrate diets as well. One meta-analysis looked at RCTs. Each of the trials were individually small (n = 11 – 153), but all told there were 712 subjects in the low-carb trials. The duration of studies ranged from 12 to 24 months. The total average weight lost with the low-carb diet groups was on the order of 4 kg! And that’s with considerable attrition in the studies. Low-carb diets don’t work much better, either.

A new randomized comparison trial (Bazzano et al, 2014) of a low-carb vs a low-fat diet (N = 148) found only a weight loss of 5.3 kg after 1 year with the low-carb diet, but only 1.2% change in body fat percentage.

Source: JayMan 

The question is how much I am harming myself by being obese? Should I just sit and wait  till a heart attack or signs of diabetes hit me?

Azarbaijan Lake Urmia - Dying Silently

Lake Urmia, in Iran's Azarbaijan, used to be one of the largest permanent hypersaline lakes in the world. Its volume in 1997 was 30 billion cubic meters. Today is 2.5 billion cu.m. Mohammad-Reza Tabesh, chairman of the parliament environment and sustainable development group, said climate change and low precipitation have caused the same problem for many wetlands in Iran. There are also 100,000 illegal wells in the area. 

Iranian Hotties

In a laudable initiative, Iran's government encourages the use of traditional dress. The women in the southern port town of Bandar Abbas and the island of Qeshm are notable for their brightly colored, floral chadors and niqab, which come in two types. The first gives the impression of thick eyebrows and a mustache from afar, a ruse used in the past to fool potential invaders into mistaking women for men. The other is a rectangular embroidered covering revealing only the eyes. Many women choose not to wear the niqab today, but it is part of a centuries-old tradition that helped protect the face from the wind, sand, and scorching sun in these areas. I like the idea, but mustachioed women are not my type.

Pic. left:  Princess Fatemeh Khanum “’Esmat al-Dowleh” (1855/6-1905). Inscribed: “Khanum ʻIsmat al-Dawlah daughter of Nasir al-Din Shah, wife of Dust Muhammad Khan Muʻayyir al-Mamlik,” and dated mid/late 19th century. Part of the collection of the Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies (ع 3-5216). Courtesy Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran.

The Erythrean Ghetto in Tel Aviv costs 100 million dollars per year

The abominable lunatic fringe lefwing fishwrap HaAretz published yesterday an article estimating the monetary cost of having an African ghetto in South Tel Aviv and the amount that will be saved by their return to Africa. Signed by the respected economist Hani Amit, it quotes the Police that the marginal cost of patrolling the neighborhood cost 119 million sheqel (2016), and the Social Security and Health expenses, given that the refugee population is young and fertile, etc. etc. they arrive to the conservative estimate above. Expelling them would save annually hundred million dollars minimum. We are paying them 3000 US$ to leave voluntarily, but the unwritten corollary is that every dollar spent on getting rid of each one is worth several times that sum. The NPV of 119 million divided by 35,000 Erythreans is ...  (do your math!).  I assume that other countries are making similar estimates but they would never acknowledge it.

The Ending of Death's End

Eighteen million years after the Three Body Problem inception, a Chinese couple finds refuge in a small universe. They receive a desperate message that the great universe (the one we live in) is doomed, because its total mass is not enough for its eventual collapse, so it is projected to expand endlessly, cool down and die. They sacrifice their own universe to add its mass to the great universe, so the cycle of collapse and re-birth may continue. The series ends with a Chinese communist exhortation that everyone has to sacrifice its private interests in order to save the collective. So, after a thousand pages of Trisolar invaders and their four dimensional weapons, we realize that we have never left contemporary China.

A visit to the cemetery

This is the grave to the right of my Mother's. The headstone is a typical sandstone of the Shomron with cavities created by water. The poem must mean something but it escapes me.

He said Yes to Life,
and Good Morning to the new day, 
of hours and days, 
of beautiful moments,
In the hope of strength - without trepidation. 

No mention of where he was born, name of the father and the mother, if he was married or had children. This unique in this place. The circular stamp in the upper left corner says "Magen ve Lo Yiraeh" - Defends without being seen. The logo of the Shabak, the Secret Service. An anonymous soldier.  


I tried to google Shmulik Erez. Appeared the despicable fishwrap HaAretz. Quote:
 
 שמוליק ארז. תת-אלוף שמוליק ארז. במודיעין האיראני יכולים להירגע: אין איש כזה

"Shmulik Erez. Lt. General Shmulik Erez. The Information Service of Iran may relax: This man does not exist. "

Mystery.

My Mother's Testimony

Re-Imposing Sykes-Picot

U.S., British and French forces pounded Syria with air strikes early on this Saturday. What? The British and the French still think that the Middle East is their area of influence and they have the right and the duty to impose their ideas how the Syrians should behave? And Russia still working to get a foothold in the Mediterranean?

Has anything changed in the last hundred years?

Waiting for that Midnight Knock on the Door

Figyelo, a Hungarian right wing paper, published a list of people in the pay of George Soros working against the interests of the Hungarian nation. Far from being a conspiracy, these are people employed by legal and open international NGOs like the Helsinki Committee, Soros's Open Society Institute, human rights societies and other registered organizations for the welfare of refugees. The publication of the list is frightening, because in Hungary the midnight knock on the door is never far away. There are few Jews on the list, but then, there are few Jews left in Hungary.  

Societies of Thieves

When Stalin died, 4% of the Soviet populations was in prison, more than half for ‘theft of socialist property’ and other petty crimes. To exceed this level of incarceration we have to take the situation of Black American men today (5% of Black adult men are in prison). By Piketty.

Europeans Subverting Israel

The European Union is very active in Israeli politics and has been financing and promoting subversive activities for a long time. One group on European pay has been following and filming the army and publishing fake news to discredit it. Soros' Open Society Institute is also hyper-active in Israel. I do not like Hungary's Orban but he may have had a valid case in rejecting the EU orders to accept unwanted "refugees" and to evict Soros's Institute from his country.

The Story of Avi Yaron

"I was going to die, I was desperate.  I had to do all to live, including betting on what I did not know. That was the only way to succeed."

Avi Yaron had brain cancer with little chances of successful operation. So he developed an instrument that sees the tumor with a bee's eye, as a tri-dimensional object. He was operated with full success. In 1998 he founded a start-up and today he sold it for 75 million dollars. Total investments in the start-up: 20 million. The Globes disses the project: It took too long to be really profitable.

Idiots, but this is Israel.

Be a Secret Agent

Yesterday we had a strike in the University. It was all very quiet so I had time to play with "moodle", the in-house network. Suddenly appeared a page urging me "Be a Secret Agent" - it was a call for a course in hasbara - explaining Israeli views on the social media. Since I have no free time and am old for learning new tricks, I am not interested. Moreover I am a declared Zionist since age fifteen and writing all the time about Israel. But we are so few and the world so big that overall Zionist impact is minimal.


Trying to buy something to eat, discovered that all the sandwiches were vegetarian or naturalist (tivoni) - no real food was sold on campus. The new religious right-wing settler youth studying in Ariel are mostly fanatical environmentalists, specially the females of the species, and carefully read the labels about components, and examine the kashrut stamp and which rabbi has signed it.

Chinese Sci Fi : The Dark Forest

In this Pesach week I finished reading the Cixiu Liu trilogy. There are several fascinating tit-bits in this fiction.

The story begins with a scientist discovering a message from the Trisolaris extraterrestrials. A friendly Trisolarian sends her a message: "Don't answer! Don't answer!" But she is so bitter with her Cultural Revolution experiences that answers: "Come and destroy humanity! I'll help you!" She establishes a secret movement dedicated to sabotage human defense and to facilitate Earth's invasion. I find that since Ancient Greece, In all history, specially in the Ancient Greece, there are always voluntary traitors, in fact, an enemy storming a city could always be confident that a faction would betray the defense. Why is that so?

When the Chinese decide to build their Space Force, they find it natural and necessary to create a Space Force Political Department to carry on political and ideological work. They select Zhang Beihai to lead this branch and he proposes that some of the best officers should be sent to the future (by hibernation), to re-inforce the fighters that by that time may have been weakened by "defeatism" and "escapism". More than a technological fiction, Liu spends about half of the text in imagining the political and hierarchical setup of humanity's efforts to confront the Trisolarian invaders. The setup is - surprise me ! - an idealized contemporary Communist China - the book tries to convince the suffering Chinese reader (more than 1000 pages) that the current regime is good and will be going two hundred years from now. Otherwise, Liu's book may have had little chance of being published and less translated. It even could be seen as political propaganda under a sci-fi cover.

No Eugenics in China

The Third Hospital of Peking University launched a sperm donation campaign from Wednesday to run until May 23, and listed a series of requirements for the donors. Source. 

In addition to being in good health, the hospital says donors must have “favorable political qualities”. “[The donors must] love the socialist motherland and embrace the leadership of the Communist Party,” the notice said. “[He must] be loyal to the party’s tasks, be decent, law-abiding and be free of any political problems.”

Apart from meeting the political requirements, would-be donors must be over 20 years old and show no obvious signs of hair loss, color blindness or weight problems.  

Families applying for IVF treatment wait more than a year, partly due to a shortage of suitable donors. China bans the sale of human semen and women looking to undergo fertility treatment must use non-profit sperm banks. 

For all the fears or hopes that the Chinese are improving their deteriorating gene pool, it appears that it is not happening. Surprisingly, the Chinese are as clueless as their Western counterparts. Much more, in fact, as apparently Party membership is one of the "genes" they are looking for. 

The Wolfowitz Doctrine

In short, the Wolfowitz Doctrine says that the USA should

“prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union."

Obama's do-nothing policy did not prevent anything but conduced exactly to that scenario. Now America is striving to regain its former hegemonic position.It is called Trade War.

America is in War

The Chinese Communist Party declared trade war with the USA and calls the American people to defenestrate President Trump:

 "Most Americans have their life linked with China-US trade.
As the tensions escalate, we want to expand the trade war to all Americans so that they have to choose whether to support Trump's unscrupulous move or to hold the president accountable."

China has crossed the line in the sand: It is paying for its oil purchases with the yuan, its own currency. This is a challenge to the dollar, a bold attack against America.

India is buying weapons. Russia is very quiet. Europe hates Trump and it will take time till it follows his leadership. Japan, South Korea, Israel are in this with Trump.    

China will lose but the future is dark for everybody. 

Rolpens, or Gefilte Keres

Rolpens, the Rolled or Filled Paunch (Rumen) is not a traditional Ashkenazi plate but it could be. The original Dutch filling is minced pork, but that is a small detail, fat goose would taste even better. I love these exotic filled meat and fish preparations but they are tabu in my naturalist, vegetarian, pro-starvation home.

Palestinians Playing with Fire

The Palestinians found a new way to kill us: burning thousands of old tires on the border and using the wind to blow the air pollution into Israel. If "eco-terrorism" ever had a concrete meaning, this is it.

In Israel we buy new tires every four years and the seller has to take back the old tires and recycle them. Burning tires in the open air is a criminal offense.

Israel is Paradise on Earth

I think so. The Eritrean infiltrators are allowed to work but 20% of their salary is retained and paid back when they leave. 16% additional is retained by the employers for an unemployment and retirement fund. An Eritrean in Israel accumulates seventy thousand dollars, yet no one is leaving. Ah, forgot, Israel gives a good-bye present of three thousand dollars to each one voluntarily climbing the airplane's stairs.

Millions of Palestinian "refugees" claiming to be "re-admitted". But no Arab is moving to the Palestinian Authority. These days, hundreds of thousands are risking their lives to break through the border fence in Gaza.

Objectively, they share my conviction that living among Jews is the best and Israel is as close to paradise as a political entity can be.

Millions trying to enter Israel

I wonder how the world will react to the pictures of wild brown masses trying to break through a frontier. I think the pics showing what is happening today in our Gaza border fence represent their innermost nightmares. The European too have sealed their sea and land frontiers trying to stop Third World "refugees", while the USA is building a long wall facing Mexico. The fact that we are like the others only more so did not help us in the past. The Europeans may project their guilt feeling on us. Others may sympathize with out troubles and post sharpshooters as we are doing.