Emergency phone line for depressed Palestinians

Trump declaration that Jerusalem is Jewish caused widespread depression in the Arab world. We should establish an emergency phone line for Palestinians with suicide thoughts. Why waste good ammunition on them?  Alternatively, we could buy ads on Ramallah Times: "How to connect correctly the wires of a suicide vest". Pic.: Wired.

Beta Decay

We are approaching the end of the tax year and I rebalanced my portfolio. My goal is to balance my losses with my gains, in order to cover my tax debts on the winning shares with the tax credits of the losing shares. Since tax here is 25%, the relation has to be one to four.

Since this year I had few losses, now I am thinking that the whole exercise was useless. It had been better to pay full tax and not to try to rebalance. Why? The first issue is beta slippage. 

The  second issue is the high cost of selling and buying stock through the bank.  Several times in the past I demanded and received a reduction of the percentage taken by the bank, yet it seems to silently return to its former shark bite share. The Poalim bank is the most expensive, and of course, also the most profitable bank in this country. I cannot change banks because of my managing partner, Giveret j. (aka wife).

On the other hand, it is important to meet the banker at least twice a year, because his job in the bank depends on the work he does, that is giving advice to the clients of the bank. It is good that he profits from my relationship, so he may be inclined to help me when I need him.

Another Project

                                                                                                Working hard on a new project. Yesterday on site.

James Flynn on Cognitive Decline

"There was a wonderful study by the OECD where they gave a test of working memory – what a pity it wasn't a test of analytical ability, but it wasn't – and they divided the countries into those like France, where 80% of people retired between 55-65, and those like Sweden and Switzerland, where 80% were still in work, and the loss on working memory in France for that age was twice as great. Which tells us that, if you kept exercising your brain at work, your working memory held up better."

I am much older than the subjects tested. But I keep working like a dog and blogging daily.  And I enjoy it. Most healthy old people in Israel I know is working.

Bitcoin's ancestors

The bitcoin was intended to solve a very real problem of transferring assets illegally that is, smuggling out or transferring money in a way that the authorities cannot know.  I faced this problem several times in my life (I am a twice-refugee).

I remember that while in Stalinist Hungary, our relatives in Argentina wanted to send help to us. Dollars were out of question, as its possession was a crime in Hungary. So they sent used cloth with something sewn in the seams. Another way was to send Gillette blades in letters. The blades were unavailable in Hungary and could be traded for food. Philately was another way: rare stamps could be traded in Hungary and viceversa, one who had to send out money from Hungary, could buy rare stamps and send it hidden in a letter (under aluminum paper  or something like that). Art was also used, small paper drawings by famous artists could be hidden in ordinary letters and packets. And historic documents.


The ancestors of the bitcoin had intrinsic worth, they were useful in themselves or were valued collection items. The bitcoin has no use nor collection value, it is a naked resource transfer medium. It exists  because the internet is free and the states cannot monitor the traffic. Taxes and death are certain, so its current tax free condition cannot endure. When the states figure out how to tax it, the crypto will deflate like a punctured balloon. See pic.

Argentine submarine disappears - Britain suspected

The San Juan submarine disappeared in the South Atlantic, near the Falkland islands. One of sailors sent, before the incident, a whatsup message: "British helicopters are seeking us. Yesterday it was the Chileans. There is much activity in this area."

Squeezing the brain how to say "Good Bye"

Japanese people are intelligent and strongly inhibited. They cannot be rude even if the want to. The language has no verb equivalent to "must" to express obligation, so the poor Japanese must torture his brain to say, for example, "Bye, I have to go". The newspaper Japan Times explains:

"Conditional forms are commonly used to express obligation, as if to make up for the nonexistence of a verb for “must.” In fact, the Japanese way of saying “something has to be done” is more like “it’s no good if it isn’t done.” If I have to leave now, for instance, I announce this by saying, 行かなければならない (ikanakereba naranai), or shorter, 行かなきゃ (ikanakya), which is literally, “It’s not OK if I don’t go.” Using two negations, I leave through the back door, as it were.

Even the well known farewell formula さようなら (sayōnara) is derived from the if-construction 左様なら(ば) (sayō nara ba). It’s meaning? Well, so long, “if that is how it is.”

 You have to live long time in Japan to get the meaning of their tortuous circumlocutions.