How do you say "shithole" in Chinese (without offending the shithole people)

Blake Stone-Banks‏ @blakestonebanks

Ha! Here's how friends are saying "shithole country" in Beijing: 垃圾国家 ("trash country"), 破点儿 ("broken place"), 鬼地方 ("haunted spot"), 穷山恶水 ("barren mountains and evil waters"), and the best: 粪坑国 ("manure kingdom").

The riskiest strategy is to do nothing

U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) reflects the relative worth of the US dollar vis-a-vis other currencies. The dollar is steadily losing weight, helping US trade balance.  But commodities like oil will rocket. The Israeli sheqel is gaining strength all the time.Take dollar loans and buy Israeli shares. Or take sheqel loans and buy American shares? What to do? 

Fighting the blues

A client owes me 8 thousand dollars and promised that the money will be in the bank last week. Today their accountant told me that the day will be Monday. Stupid me, already gave them the receipt.

I had to rewrite a Technical Report the third time, because the first was based on American (EPA) parameters, then the Ministry manageress demanded to apply Israeli parameters but she did not like the result, and now they demand recalculate all following German rules (the strictest of  all). She demands to use the very worst case scenario, like the sewage temperature is above 50 Celsius, the fats are all dense bovine fat (density 1.5 while in Israel we use light soy oil, density 0.8) and multiply all by an uncertainty factor of 1.5. Ignorant, malignant, indifferent bureaucracy. My client invested millions in building up the project and she knows he will have to comply with any expensive idiocy she may demand. I would suspect she is seeking a discrete bribe, but  a Zionist does not entertain such dark thought. 

To strengthen my spirit I re-run in my mind "Much ado for Nothing" staged at Shakespeare Theater, two months ago, in London. I was sitting first floor, left.

Post Scriptum Jan. 19, 2018: Well, the Bald Man who owes me money ...  paid. It paid a third of the debt and promised to pay the rest in two-three months, as I had agreed. In fact, I was so despondent that I had offered to be paid in subsequent months. It is not a disaster.

Regarding the rejection of my third Technical Report, surprisingly, it was approved. Retrospectively, I should have proposed a DAF (Diffused Air Flotation) machine, I would have been a pioneer introducing this technology in the Israeli food industry. I asked for a quotation from Ali Express and received dozens of beautiful (for me) offers from China (pic). The low prices were a surprise. Fifteen years ago the Chinese did not know what a DAF did. Shockingly fast learners.

Things They Dont Show You

Sonderkommando

A document. The survivors (in the sixties) of the last Sonderkommando return to Auschwitz-Birkenau. This is the first time I saw the real remains of the gas chamber and not the refurbished blocks they always show you. The Jerusalem Holocaust museum has an architectural model of the place (when it was operational). I could not imagine it in reality. I could not imagine how these physically and mentally superstrong people looked. Now I can. 

The Kishinev Pogrom, 1903

The New York Times described the first Kishinev pogrom:

The mob was led by priests, and the general cry, "Kill the Jews," was taken- up all over the city. The Jews were taken wholly unaware and were slaughtered like sheep. The dead number 120 and the injured about 500. The scenes of horror attending this massacre are beyond description. Babes were literally torn to pieces by the frenzied and bloodthirsty mob. The local police made no attempt to check the reign of terror. At sunset the streets were piled with corpses and wounded. Those who could make their escape fled in terror, and the city is now practically deserted of Jews.

The razzia was preceded by rumors that a Christian girl that died in the Jewish hospital had been sacrificed for ritual purposes. The pogrom was spontaneous (it was not organized by the Czarist police, as reported) and was followed by hundreds of smaller act of violence against Jews. The Kishinev pogrom started the flight of the Jewish masses to the West, mainly to the United States.

From a historical point of view, Jewish life in Ukraine (Bessarabia) was unsustainable,  and those who escaped saved their lives and posterity. About the same time, there had been blood libels also in Hungary (Tiszaeszlar) but the Hungarian Jewish community hired lawyers and politicians and succeeded in suffocating the pogroms and punishing the criminals. 110 years after one can wonder if was that good for the Hungarian Jewry? 

Nigerian Disappointment

Like millions, I too received wonderful emails from Nigerian princes and African Treasure Ministers begging me to help them to liberate large sums unreachable by normal means. Interpol estimates that about 100 million dollars per year are sent to Nigeria by people believing in the scam. "At last, I said to myself, the demonstration that Africans have high IQ at least when it comes to cheating."

But I am sadly disappointed. The "Brain" behind the scam is a 67-year old White (pink, in fact) American, Michael Neu (Slidell,LA), who is being prosecuted for 269 counts of Wire Fraud and Money Laundering.

On the other hand, and with me always there is another hand, sometimes even three or four, it is encouraging for this decrepit engineer to see an old man inventing and managing such an ingenious internet-based system.

Prehistoric Weapons found in East Kever Benjamin

Six meters under the surface, a large archeological finding at East Kever Benjamin, where I live. It has been dated 500,000 years old before our age. There are flint stone axes, scrappers and other instruments. I had seen the large excavations when driving on road 6 but I assumed it was another new neighborhood or a gas turbine electricity generator site.