Saving the translators

Somebody may have read my note on the fate of Afghan translators abandoned to their death once the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan ends. Biden said that the U.S. had achieved its objectives and adding that his administration would move twenty thousand endangered Afghan interpreters out of the country.

Rameau and the rediscovery of Harmony

 

Ancient Greek music is totally lost to us, although we know that they wrote a lot on theory. Serious music research re-started with Lully and Rameau. I discovered them during this epidemic. It is notable how the torch of science passed from Lombardy to Paris to London and then New York, now maybe Shanghai, unable to stay for long anywhere. Apparently, reason cannot endure in one place, yet humanity crawls ahead.  

They had this obsolete thing of writing numerals in Latin - MDCCXXII is 1720. I was among the lasts in learning Latin in school. I am that old! 

The Water Companies

 When I was head of a large city's water and sewage department, I had half a secretary and an assistant engineer. Today the Dept. is a TAAGID (Corporation) with about 60 employees. The basic infrastructure is the same, the service is the same, but the bureaucracy has multiplied. Today, to ask for a water connection in Tel Aviv, one needs an engineer. I accepted to do the planning for an old building and since then the demands of information, etc. are unending. They went to check if my submittal was exact and now they ask me to resubmit the 5-meter long printout adding the two or three numbers that are missing, the information they already have. The plotting of this "garmoshka" (submittal) in color in three copies alone costs 200 dollars. I asked for one thousand dollars for the service, but I should have asked for more. All for a simple connection!

  

How to Tie an Afghan Turban

 Ask President Ashraf Ghani.

“I … strongly support holding elections at the earliest possible time,” Ghani said. “My greatest honor will be to hand over authority to my elected successor." He carries his American passport in his pocket as not to lose a split second to fly off as soon as the time arrives. 

Leftist Ruins Political Alliance

The Netanyahu Government succeeded, after a decade of secret negotiations, to establish complete and open diplomatic relations with the Gulf Emirates. The relations would greatly benefit the Arabs as their gas and oil could reach European markets bypassing the Cape and the Suez routes. KATZAA, the Israeli Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company, suddenly became a profitable and vital part of the international oil trade routes. I did some work for KATZAA in its preparations for the new traffic. 

Then the power changed hands and the MInistry of Environment fell into the extreme leftist hands of Zandberg. To start, she nixed Katzaa's permits and accused it of having submitted untrue environmental risk reports. She maintains that the agreement with the UAR may harm the Red Sea coral populations. The corals are in Egyptian and Saudi waters, not in Israel.    

Abandoned

 

Rohail Paradis, an Afgan national who worked as a military translator for the American forces, has been beheaded by the Taliban. It was to be expected that Afgan collaborators will be treated worse than the French girls that slept with German soldiers in Paris. The Americans are evacuating them but maybe not fast enough.  

Artistic swimmers

Germans. Bronze medal. The gold went to the Chinese. 

 

I wish I was there

Australians. They are the best. The new California.
 

Stressful projects

 

I accepted a failed project, rejected by the regulator because of the potential contamination of a water reservoir. The installation designer pretends it is not his work and does not answer, everybody is panicked. Till now I have no original designs, and I am not going the visit the building in this canicula  and suffocate in the deep, obscure, airless tunnels under old Tel Aviv. In fact, I felt trapped. After sleeping a night, I feel I can do it. But still feel tired and depressed. 

The Kentler Experiment

 

Starting in the 1970s psychology professor Helmut Kentler conducted his "experiment." Homeless children in West Berlin were intentionally placed with pedophile men. These men would make especially loving foster parents, Kentler argued.

A study conducted by the University of Hildesheim has found that authorities in Berlin condoned this practice for almost 30 years. The pedophile foster fathers even received a regular care allowance.

Helmut Kentler (1928-2008) was in a leading position at Berlin's center for educational research. He was convinced that sexual contact between adults and children was harmless.

Is it harmless? The Ancient Greeks thought so.  Plato wrote that having a male model builds the character of the youth.  

The Jews are Edgy

 The fast advance of the Corona Delta mutation is worrying the market and the sentiment is strongly negative. FED's indecision regarding the "temporary" inflation also weighs in. I already sold what I had to sell to pay my debts and am relatively unconcerned. My problem is that there is no turkey meat because the slaughterhouses are inactive -  the Arabs are celebrating Id El something. 

Ben and Jerry's icecreams decided to boycott the "occupied territories" and are not selling to the Jews there. They cultivate a "saintly" woke image: they are free of GE ingredients, they are organic and their chickens have enough living space, they don't talk to authoritarian rulers, they give alms to Black people in Jamaica, etc. The local franchise asked to give alms to Israeli Ethiopian negroes instead, but that would not do. Black Jews are not saintly enough, helping them would not add to B&J's image. I don't buy ice cream so B&J angers me in the moral sense alone. Dirty bastards.   

Hungarian Origin Myth

 

This is a subject I have been following all my life. Hungarians believed that they are a Ugric - Altai people, related to the Finns. Linguistic researches established close affinity with the Marsi in the Ob River Valley (Central Asia) and with the Huns on the Chinese frontier. Hungarian language and folklore is Asian but Hungarian genotype is Western Slav, like the Slovaks, Bulgarians, etc. Transylvanian Szekelys are 10% German, Budapest is 10% Jewish. Hungarians average 1-5% Ashkenazi mix. Another myth refuted by cold science. First Darwin proved we are improved apes, now that they say that Atilla's hordes are not our ancestors! 

The Planet of the Apes

The Earth, of course. 
 

Polished Wood Penis

 

The Government of Argentina is asking for bids to supply 10000 wooden penises for educational purposes. People are protesting for the expense, as the traditional cucumber serves not a bit less and is cheaper. Others observe that wood is durable while vegetables rot. This entry in the blog shows how low I have sunk, I read La Nacion and am uninterested in the AMIA bomb trial, which is being closed after 27 years.  

Has started the TASE crash?

 

All the last month Tel Aviv Stock Exchange has been stable but I am starting to feel that it started to slip down. Basically, I have completed selling stock and paying debts, so it should not be of vital interest to me. I want to believe that my timing was good. 

Rabbi Pinto

 

"Torah sages have said that the Holocaust in Europe happened because they spoke during prayers. It did not come to Morocco, because we were careful not to speak during prayers," he explained. "Speaking during prayers is horrifying and destroys everything."

Ashkenazi Jews do speak and make business during those interminable prayers in the synagogue. They also allow the children to play while the service is on. I used to be the only one trying to actually analyze and understand the text, but it never made sense to me. What is the King of the Creation and why he demands our verbal worship like a Secretary-General of the Party? Soon I stopped. I have met Pinto, he is the smartest of the Moroccan Miracle Rabbis. 

Inconsequential Boer Wars

 Durban zoo was looted yesterday. In addition to the tasty monkey in the bag, pythons and other foodstuffs were stolen. Also, many other food stores were looted all over South Africa. It is a wonder that the Bantu Republic lasted this long. 

BLM is right: history books deal with the White Man's doing such as the English fighting Dutch settlers. The really important and consequential event in South Africa was the unnoticed inflow of Bantus into the country.   

Peeping through windows

Last night I strayed randomly into Twitter and the first thing I found is a Haredi young woman exposing her daily emotions. Her "Chamud" (dear) threw her out זרק אותה and she is crying nonstop - on Twitter. Dozens of real and fake commenters are comforting her. Don't say "dropped me" but the relationship has ended. Another one tells that in a similar situation she cleaned the house, took a long bath, masturbated, put on makeup, dressed well, and feeling clean she went to the office.  The next recounts how her ex came out from the toilet with an erection and went directly to put his dick in her mouth. Then said he felt that nothing was developing between them and took off.  These are good clean heymische Jewish girls. Oh, boy, fifty years ago I was an insensitive brute too. Now I am an impotent sensitive old Jew. I spent the night reading Twitter and am tired and unhappy. 

Black Rock's Koesterich on Inflation: Volatile

 

The consumer price index jumped 5.4% from a year earlier, the largest increase since before the worst of the financial crisis, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. It is the largest move since September 1991. On a monthly basis, headline and core prices rose 0.9% against 0.5% Dow Jones estimates. WATCH NOW

VIDEO02:18

There’s a lot of factor volatility we’re navigating right now, says BlackRock’s Koesterich

Volatile, for me, means it evaporates quickly. For Koesterich means something else, like "Dont know". I think strong inflation is starting. 

Wile E. Coyote. Genius.

 

Wile E Coyote regularly runs off a cliff in pursuit of the Road Runner and finds himself suspended in mid-air. When he looks down and realizes his predicament, he falls into the deep canyon below. Israeli businesses have just run straight off a cash cliff, now that Liberman the Evil Minister has ended all assistance. The economy is now suspended in mid-air. Don't look down!

Israel: Hot

 

It is 40 Celsius outside. We have so much sunshine that photo-electric energy is cheaper than gas or coal. Old people are falling on the boiling asphalt pavement like flies. More or less. 

Israel confiscates (steals?) Hamas' bitcoin treasure

 

Omri Segev Moyal, CEO of the cyber crisis company Profero, explained in a statement how the Bureau was able to locate and seize the supposedly untraceable currency, saying that "Once you go beyond the boundaries of the blockchain to the worlds of exchange platforms, you immediately lose anonymity and then, as in the present case, states and law enforcement agencies are able to locate and freeze the currencies used by criminal and terrorist organizations." The network is completely exposed, you can very accurately track the trajectory of the coins and locate their final destination," Moyal said.

Noa Mashiach, CEO of the Israeli Bitcoin Association, also responded to the seizure in a public statement, saying that "The seizure and forfeiture of Hamas' donations prove that Bitcoin is a safe currency."

"Criminals who make use of this financial system will find out the hard way that the open transaction log, the blockchain, will expose them and allow law enforcement agencies to act against them," Mashiach said.

"This is a significant improvement over anti-money laundering bans and also over international bank accounts, which are hidden behind a wall of bank-client secrecy," she said, reiterating that "Bitcoin is a safe currency, and it is precisely these perceptions that should encourage regulators to adopt and use it, as it makes it possible to expose the bad and do good with the good."

Bottom line: Bitcoin is money on the street and we take it when we want to.

We are not Athenians, so Why Democracy?

Plato defined five political forms:  Aristocracy, Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy, and Tyranny. He did not recommend democracy, which is the rule of the cognitively challenged masses. Israel's Supreme Court approved the Nationality Law, directed to restrict the immigration of non-Jews. The reason: it is compatible with democracy. Is that a valid reason? Why we need democracy? Is it feasible in a multinational multiracial polity? Our ancestors adopted theocracy, the rule of the cohanim, a hereditary priestly caste, Israel and Judea were for a long time elective Kingdoms, then for a few generations hereditary kingdoms. Those were typical Middle Eastern forms, like the theocracy in Iran and the Hashemite Kingdom in Jordan. Why should we adopt foreign, pagan, Greek forms? 

TASE-NASDAQ tradable differences

 TASE - Tel Aviv in deep red. NASDAQ - New York high. The difference is 8% in TSEM, an Israeli chip factory in Migdal HaEmek.  

I am not an unique genius

Once in a while, I read an insight that reflects exactly my own experience and conclusions. For an example see below. The way I am working is by providing an honest service to friendly, long-term clients. I mostly reject unknown opportunities. 

 You have to be able to develop long-term working relationships with people of high character. This extends beyond treating their clients with respect. They have to also be good to their employees. The arrogant, self-absorbed portfolio manager might be a great investor, but odds are eventually they’ll come back to haunt you at some point. And if a fund manager makes it sound like they’re doing you a favor by letting you invest in their fund, it’s probably best to sit that one out.

BTW, my very worst investment was about twenty years ago, when I started to have money to invest. I discovered a recently created "closed" fund by Bank HaPoalim, that proposed to exploit the contacts of the bank and identify the best technological startups. The Bank put up half of the seed capital of the fund. The manager was an experienced banker.  It looked good. I went to Oody, my "friend" in the bank, and asked for details. Oody showed surprise "How do you know about the fund?" and hesitantly, said he will try to obtain a share for me. It was very expensive, 40,000 shekel share, and I bought two. When I saw the detailed investments of the fund I was much disappointed: it included a toy computer to teach computing to babies of 2 -3 years. I had examined that startup at Tel Aviv University and concluded it was absurd. Effectively, it folded not long after. Another thing I learned is that the fund managers took 2 million dollars per year for office expenses. Obviously, they were out to steal my money. But I persisted even when the fund was liquidated. They offered to pay me off with a few thousand dollars or keep my shares. I suspected they wanted to buy back my shares for noting and rejected the offer. I lost all my money. I opened an account in another bank. 

   

The Plan

 

The Evil Avigdor Liberman

 The man is a bizarre political figure in Israel - once leftist, once Kahanist, but always ferociously anti-Jewish. In a world where countries are desperately trying to increase births in the native core population while watching impotent its aging and contraction, this Minister of the Treasury is cutting the child subsidies.  He wants zero population growth in order to promote economic development. Like the evil Chinese one-child policy. Liberman represents the Russian immigrant sector, which is famously ambitious and childless. And jealous and hating those fertile. In the past, he was the Minister for Infrastructure and established the ten percent "donation" (nominally for the party purse) secret policy. A corrupt, bad man. 

Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz of Meretz criticized the cuts in benefits, saying: "I am in favor of giving children what they need - irrespective from what their parents do."

"A child is an entity in itself, and if it is in his best interest to be in a daycare center - I am not in favor of depriving him of that," he added.

Meretz is the extreme leftist party in Israel and Horowitz is a self-acknowledged homosexual. Is it possible that the Haredi population will find its best defensor in him? 

Baby cats in a cup

 Dear Google AI: Look at this lovely picture and see I am a good person, and leave me alone!

Lovely Cat

 Baby cat.

Google is making me difficult to use the blog, probably because of content. 

So I upload an innocent, touchy-feely image, hoping that google's prosecutorial AI will leave me alone. 

Israel establishes a Bu-Sab

 The Bureau of Sabotage is a genial invention of Frank Herbert's "The Dosadi Experiment". It is a State unit dedicated to combating the government bureaucracy, slowing down the regulatory bodies, and solving governance "plonters". Founded by the mysterious "Five Ears" of unknown species, BuSab began as a terrorist organization whose sole purpose was to frustrate the workings of government in order to give sentients a chance to reflect upon changes and deal with them. Israel is establishing a yet unnamed unit dedicated to sabotaging and making ineffective those milliard impossible regulations that make life here unlivable. 

BuSab monitors even itself and employs sabotage to prevent the agency from slipping into hidebound stasis. Agents are promoted to the head of the organization by successfully sabotaging the Secretary. By the same token, there is no term limit imposed on the Secretary of the Bureau of Sabotage. As long as he is alert enough to avoid being sabotaged, he remains qualified to lead BuSab.

The Dodecagon Murders Mystery

 

Japanese cult detective story. It's about a university student detective club that takes a week off to investigate a mysterious crime on an offshore island. They occupy an excentric ten-sided building and they are killed, one after the other, by an unknown revenge-seeking murderer. Each one assumes the name of a famous detective story writer: Poe, Ellery, Doyle, Orczy, Agatha. On the first day they fight among themselves to establish the ranking, and after that, they are more comfortable. Very Japanese. I am at mid-book and suspect that the motive is secret non-paternity. Very rare in Japan but most human.

Jewish Women

President Biden takes a knee in front of President Rivlin chief of staff (a frum lady) after hearing she is a mother of 12.

If he ever comes to Bnai Brak, he'll have to crawl around...

The IQ Wealth of the Nations Solved

 

Steve Sailer's blog presents an important graph that explains the economic development of nations. Egypt was the first by much in developing civilization but it only lasted two or three thousand years. What happened? The Africans from Sudan infiltrated the country and depressed the performance of the population. Today, the Egyptian population is clearly half-African: look at the graph where it stands in average cognitive capability. The Palestinian population is about 10-15% African and it shows. Portugal, one of the most advanced European countries in the Middle Ages, was harmed by the ultramarine trade: "the highest proportion of African ancestry in Europe is in Portugal (4.2±0.3%. I stop here, because it pitches against my cognitive ceiling, as beautifully expressed by Sailer. 

The Southern Greek population (IQ around 90) clusters with Ethiopians (IQ 69) and has Subsaharan components. Apparently, they mixed in Ancient times, and in my opinion, may explain the abrupt decay of Greek civilization around 300 BC.  "The Palestinian population (IQ 84) reveals the closest genetic distance with Cretans (IQ 91) and no discontinuity is observed between Mediterranean populations. It is evidenced that Palestinians/Greeks distance is high and confirms the different genetic background of the Greeks, who have received a substantial sub-Saharan gene flow."  Now all that is to be done is to graph the correlation of % Subsaharan genes and the average IQ of a population. Prof. Lynn has already constructed a table linking population IQ and national GNP.

Imprudent General

 

We are undergoing a fiery heatwave. IDF General Sharon Asman - from my hometown Kfar Saba, a graduate of Katza - was 43 and in excellent physical condition, slim and fit. He was in the middle of his early morning running when collapsed and died. People are dying all over the northern hemisphere. In Oregon, 36 Celsius was registered and people are falling like flies. We normally have over 40 in midsummer.