Sunday, March 31, 2019

Cat Mummies on the Hudson

Ancient Egyptians embalmed their cats and erected miniature pyramids to house them in the afterlife. A new Jewish fashion in New York is to share cemeteries and tombs with pets, something thought abominable in the past, even satanic (specially if the cat was black), but today it is an expression of love. Children have been substituted by these furry predators, that can inherit property and be interred with their "mother" under a fancy and expensive funeral monument. The discovery of luxuriously mummified cats on the Hudson, in the year 4000, will lead the discoverers to the right conclusion that Judaism had degenerated into a cat worshiping cult. 

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Laugh is the Best Weapon

A senator ridiculed the ludicrous Green New Deal of Alexandria (the senatoress, not the Egyptian city). 
“GOP Senators are using their congressional allowances to print Aquaman posters for themselves to argue that a #GreenNewDeal saving our nation from climate change is a waste of money,” she tweeted.

She added: “Like many other women + working people, I occasionally suffer from impostor syndrome: those small moments, especially on hard days, where you wonder if the haters are right. But then they do things like this to clear it right up. If this guy can be senator, you can do anything.”

Monday, March 25, 2019

The Chinese Strategy

Chinese thought is subtle and I am just now waking up to the meaning of the Belt and Road project. It is nothing less than building "caravan seray" in the hostile wasteland peopled by barbarian peoples surrounding China (as they see it). They realized that they cannot depend on trade with Africa without "forts" in the land, entrepots, and secure maritime and land roads to move the merchandise. China decided to open up and has no fear of competition. They realized - like the Japanese before them - that closing in was dangerous and not in their interest. And controlling the main trade routes is a fantastic source of rent and power. Ultimately China will have to build a large navy and air force to protect their entrepots and trade routes, just as England did in the colonial era. Or pay to Americans to keep protecting them, as the Europeans and the Japanese are doing. 

Counterattack in Gaza

Apparently, Zahal is preparing a significant action against Hamas in Gaza. Land frontiers had been closed, schools suspended classes, train service stopped in the South, Ashkelon opened all public refuges, soldiers are concentrating in the border with Gaza. Hamas says that the missile on Moshav Mishmeret (north of my town) was a mistake. But seven Israeli civilians were hurt  in their sleep in the very heart of the country and we are before elections when no government can show weakness.

I am hurt too. The stock exchange fell, I am so tired that could do little work today. 

Wake Up Call

At 5.00 AM the town alarm woke us and I took my glasses and moved into the hardened room. Then we heard the boom and went back to the bed.

The Gazan terrorists had fired a missile to the Sharon, wounding seven innocent sleeping people. pic.

They are begging for retribution. It'll come.

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Ancient Sea Monsters Coming Back

The stock exchange is falling into a vacuum. Many esoteric celestial signs have been observed in the night sky, yield curves crossing ominously and sinister red comets rising from the East.....yet Jim Cramer says :"get ready to ride the rough seas of artificial "intelligence" that say sell, sell, sell."

I'll have to think something. 

Thinking is painful. I much prefer to drink red wine. 

Gurus are saying deflationary assets should be held like long term bonds. I am over seventy and never saw deflation. How can be a shortage of paper?


Friday, March 22, 2019

What the Hell is this?

At age 13 my auntie and her detestable husband moved out of our home and I received, the first time in my life, a small room only for me. That gave me the first opportunity to be alone and think, and thinking about who was I and what I was going to do in life, arrived to the conclusion that I was a self-reproduction machine and nothing else I could think of. In the absence of other ideas, I decided to fulfill the purpose of my body and reproduce, and then of my mind, and make money (we were penniless Hungarian refugees, seriously).  To make my objectives achievable, I put concrete quantitative goals to myself, so and so children and so and so dollars. It was 400,000 dollars, because that was the sum whose interest would amount to a good middle class salary in those times, about one thousand dollars per month.

In a few years I completed those objectives but for some reason, I cannot stop. I mean I am past the age of sex, but keep working without actually knowing why. I have a pension and children are grown up and independent, so I work because I like it and doesnt know else.

I kept thinking about what the Hell is where I am and what I am supposed to do here, but did not advance a iota. This Hell is very strange: the universe appears to be expanding faster than the velocity of light, which is an absolute limit, so humans will never reach the border of the universe and have a look what is there outside. On the other hand, we shall never know what is what we are made of, as the quantum realm "down there" is indefinite and nothing is real. It is like somebody put us definitive barriers that we can never break and discover the truth. We may be a simulation or we may be God's creation. Why should God busy itself in creating the universe? The Jewish answer is to be its holy people and sanctify him or whatever.

Whatever. Now I continue working, planning a mikveh. For money,of course. 

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Walking tour in Tel Aviv

Yesterday I had to visit an underground storage on the HaArbaah street. The area had been an ugly industrial site and the Municipality transformed it into a nice open space. It was a sunny spring day and spend an hour drinking coffee and watching the giggling girls in their  fancy Purim costumes. Before the Liberation War it was a German village called Sharona, but when the Nazi forces approached from Egypt,  the British evacuated them to Australia. Instead of the original farm houses, hundred meters tall office buildings provide shade looking like Singapur. It was Purim, and Tel Aviv is a happy city with a young and active population. I like it.   

Friday, March 15, 2019

Purim

Granddaughters dressed up for Purim (our own tribal  carnival). 

Financial insight

During the current bull market, deflationary assets (industrials, technology, financials, communication, consumer discretionary and real estate) have greatly outperformed inflationary assets (commodities) for most of these past 10 years.

I"ll sell CIL the potash company.It had a great run under Mr Doyle, but he is gone. 

Thursday, March 14, 2019

Depression

I lectured today in Ariel, the students got interested in the Middle East water economy and arrived home late. The ICON Design Center gym project meeting (I was absent) ended well. Ireceived an ugly mail from the Vaad HaBayt (the house consorsium) because a humidity issue and that ended my bliss and depressed me. Tomorrow will be a new day.

Yesterday I sold shares of the Israel Corporation and today they sunk 5%. The owner decided to get out of the oil refining business and to sell his shares in BAZAN the Haifa Refinery. I have sold at the peak, for once. Today I read that the Eugene Wigner paradox, that in the quantum realm there are no facts, has been demonstrated. Two persons can see the same "fact" differently and both be right. How can that be? No one knows. One possible solution is that the universe is a simulation. But who would create such thing and for what purpose?

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Alexandria and the scientific consensus

The  congresswoman knows  what scientific consensus is:  “It is basically a scientific consensus that the lives of our children are going to be very difficult, and it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: is it OK to still have children?” 



One thing is admirable and encouraging: the American political system is open to advancement of minorities and women (regardless of their intelligence or lack of it).  

Swimming up river

I am having a stressed a period with much urgent work and little sleep. In the class today but I gave a wrong answer and it was noticed. I had much cash in my pocket and lost it, probably in the toilet. It is difficult but I am not depressed. There are few people of my age working, I am meeting boys and girls less than half my age.  This month I am paying ten thousand dollars of tax and yearly accountant fees, and today I sold some losing shares. Nothing special. I should be angry and depressed but I am not.

Friday, March 8, 2019

Sunni Defeat

America is celebrating the dissolution of the Islamic State and the return of the Western girls who had  joined it and are emerging with their half-blood children. There is nowhere a reflection that ISIS started as a rebellion  of the oppressed branch of the Islam against Shia aggression, in Syria and Iraq, as well reborn Iran. Palestinians, Jordanians, Saudi are Sunni and they lost. Now Iran will self-destruct, I dont know how. But it is an impossible regime, a secular people ruled by a medieval clerical clique. What makes it so durable is the surprising moderation of the clerics, but America will soon find the way to irritate and drive crazy those fanatics/

As expected after Obama and Hillary, the Democratic party is moving towards a Third World anticapitalist ideology. Till now it is declamatory  extremism, but America could end like Venezuela, God Forbid! The stupid rejection of Amazon in New York is a sinister omen of the things to come.

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

Stress, in a good way

I am much behind my timetable and telling excuses to my clients. I have sent out lots of proposals and almost all have been accepted. In some cases I had even accepted advance payments. I am not going to get overstressed and paralyzed by pressures and fear. No drinking till I finish this cycle. 

Saturday, March 2, 2019

Weekend work lost

On Thursday there was a storm over the city and lighting struck and confounded my computer. One day was spent in trying to repair it but no success. I tried to diagnose the problem using my other computer, and said "power ... something" with easy 20 steps. Gave up. So started up my heavy laptop, but the Lenovo had erased all the programs "while you were away". I spent the morning re-installing Autocad and I am still at it. Tomorrow shall take it to "Ay-gor" (as in Dr. Frankensteen) to repair. I shall have to hear out the complaints of my clients that are opening supermarkets without the permits.

Spent some time visiting daughters, one is being sent by the NICE to Madrid, other is teaching and doing a M.Ed. and the last one preparing papers on why her students are missing classes. Her reasons are very PC (she wants to succeed) and supported by lots of academic references. I told her that it was all nonsense but then  - resigned -  helped her to be more convincingly politically correct.

She was selected to represent the stakeholders in some EU educational program. If Greg Cochran reads our papers, he would surely think we are typical liberal crazies, but my daughter is not in the position to write that her students carry a heavy load of defects, as it would not be acceptable nor conducive to receive a diploma and draw a salary.