China bans crypto token trade

The central bank of China banned banks or financial institutions holding crypto\internet tokens. As much as 90 per cent of transactions worldwide still take place in the country, which also generates roughly one in every two new coins created through mining. On the US exchange Bitstamp, bitcoin currently trades at US$6,095, a record high, after surging 49.2 per cent over the past three months.

I think that the explosive growth of internet token trade and the success of many internet only banks like HUOBI (that exchange currencies and allow deposits, and are planning to provide credit and other financial services) has provoked panic among the state bankers. The token growth is too fast and too big. They would like to stop the world and have a break to think.

Why are people so anxious to possess tokens, that are no more than a digital certificate that they paid legal currency to buy them? Are bitcoins the modern version of tulip bulbs?

Global Prosperity Fuels Commodities

Today we entered into winter time regime, the day when winter sadness or depression hits cold-evolved genotypes. I too felt it. Anyway, global markets are starting to be optimistic and, as Koldus predicted, commodity prices are due to rise. (I am not saying that they ARE rising but that I hope...). Which Israeli shares will lead the avalanche? Israel Chemical (potash) should be a good investment. Metals are another field, but we in Israel have no metals. Neither have soybean.  Pic: A field of mature soybean.

I am starting to plan my next holiday in the UK in June/July 2018.

Climate Change in the Middle East

The rivers almost stopped flowing into the Kinneret - our main water reservoir - and the climate has changed: higher temperatures, longer summers, and less rainfall. We are surviving thanks to the five desalination plants built during my work in the Water Authority. To tell the truth, I considered it an hysterical over-reaction to a passing drought, and my boss Dr Yossy Dreizin an idiot, but I was wrong. It happens.

After vacations

A week in London with my daughter was my first vacation in years. Two weeks back in Kever Benjamin I am still dreaming with London. Before the trip, I had been contented and happy with my daily routine of work, teaching, sleep, blogging, investing, etc. but now I feel it most depressing. I love London, its air is cleaner than Kever Benjamin, its people nicer and more civilized, its girls slimmer, its theater more entertaining, its chorizo sausages tastier and cheaper.

HaAretz Channeling the Palestinian Liberation Organization

The newpaper HaAretz acts as if joining enemy campaigns to isolate and weaken Israel they are doing a great service to the world. Today, they publish an article dedicated to justify, to legitimize, to transmit and to amplify the PLO's latest attack on Israel. The PLO strategy is to impress the world that the State of Israel as the creation of the British Government. The British Empire is considered, in the UK most of all, unrivaled evil, and everything related to it is nefarious and sinful and against the laws of Nature.

Gideon Levy, HaAretz's chief columnist, denounces the unheard and unprecedented evil of the Brits promising and delivering a country they did not own to a people that did not exist and did not live there. The PLO line is that Israel is an imperial creation, illegitimate, and they imagine that retracting Balfour's personal note to Rothschild, time will flow backwards and Israel will evaporate as if never existed. That dream is infantile, because apart from "seeing with favor" (from the distance) the gradual in-gathering of the Jews here, Brits did little or nothing to create Israel. On the contrary, they established the Arab Legion with British officers and finance, to fight the Jewish Defense Forces, and negated half of Eretz Israel to Jewish settlement.

During wars and elections it is common practice to make promises to gather support. Politicians (Balfour, above) will promise what they do not possess and do not intend to deliver. Journalist Levy never heard of such thing.The Pope's division of unexplored and unconquered America between Spain and Portugal  in 1494 (pic. "En el nombre de Dios Todopoderoso...") comes to my mind. Should Trump blame the Pope for the creation of Mexico?

Notwithstanding the stupidity of the PLO's campaign to pressure post-Brexit Brits to retract - a hundred years later - Balfour's ambiguous note, HaAretz is harming us by joining the initiative. I would like to believe that Levy is sincerely convinced that by taking the enemy side, he is doing his best to help his country, but cannot. Levy is intelligent and writes so well that it is inconceivable that he is also sane and true.    

Energy Loss in Hot Water Pipes

I made a stupid mistake of submitting a proposal for an industrial kitchen without studying first what was about. It happens that it has surface of 1200 sq.m. and there many problems and in addition, they are demanding compressed air and instant hot water in the faucets. My price was for a restaurant. After a week it is still incomplete. I am calculating the energy loss in the 140 meter long hot water re-circulation main line.

The significant variable is the thickness of the pipe isolation. Above 1 inch thickness flexible elastometric (pic), the energy loss stabilizes and it is insignificant. Ali Express (Chinese) offers impressive samples I have never seen before. Like the Japanese that liquidated the Swiss watch and camera industry, the Chinese are leveling the industrial materials market. They are superior and cheaper. 

Alcohol makes you speak German like a Native

Der Spiegel writes about a study: Non-native German speakers that drunk alcohol had better pronunciation than the subjects that had drunk only water. Alcohol improves the pronunciation of foreign languages. The study also demonstrated that alcoholics had the most fun during the experiment. Pic.: Octoberfest.