Sold his mother to the Ayatollah

Dr Gonen Segev, ex Minister of Energy, was detained by the Shabach and accused of working as an Iranian spy. Segev comes from a poor family in the Krayot neighborhood of Haifa, he was working as a doctor in the Hospital HaEmek while renting a room in the home of the ex Minister of Defense. He entered politics with him and won the Energy Ministry. He was entangled by an Israeli Arab in drug dealing in the Gulf and fell like a rotten apple into the extended hands of the Iranian intelligence.

Lately he has been living in Nigeria. At last the Shabach's long hand reached him when trying to cross to Equatorial Guinea, and was extradited to Israel. He will spend the rest of his life in jail. What damages did he cause to Israel? No one knows. Most probably he acted as a recruiting agent for the Iranians, complicating all his acquaintances. A very bad apple.

Black Buildings in Tel Aviv

I try to avoid Tel Aviv in summer, the temperature can easily reach 40 Centigrades, and people travel like crazy on electric scooters and bicycles and motorized shoes or whatever. The municipality is transforming the city, its latest project is a 100 floor skyscraper. Surprisingly, most of my orders are in Tel Aviv, and I charge higher fees there because of the bureaucracy and the collapsing infrastructure that makes planning very difficult. The pic is the new Alon twin towers, black and intimidating. I may get the order for a restaurant in it. 

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich J

All the armies of the Antiquity checked out with the gods before entering a battle if the day was fausto or infausto. Today was pre-ordained for me to be infausto, a luckless day. I started at 630 but the car did not, so I spent an hour arranging replacement for my lectures. The University's secretary cut me cold: Professor J. this day will be deducted from your salary. I never lost one day before, but that does not count, they are implacable.
Then the mails: My garage design was rejected for a small error, it happens to the best, but my client was impatient and demanding.
I checked my savings account, it is 10% lower than a month ago. I had the impression that it had been a good month, with money flowing in aplenty, but the numbers said differently.
A client-friend called to demand to finish his project - he was harsh and insulting.
Tomorrow I have to deliver the Dizengoff Center design. It is very complicated, the Center is fifty years old and decaying, they want to join several levels in one kitchen and a restaurant in the roof. I have not started yet. 
It was like a blow in the face, suddenly I felt bitter and depressed. Decided to stop worrying and to get drunk for the night.
Tomorrow is another day.
Hope so.

The dangers of safety

J. Thompson analyzes the inexplicable fall of Norwegian IQ. I think of one possible cause: the extraordinarily high level of physical safety and quality of life achieved by that country. Too much comfort may have a deleterious impact on IQ.

When in the seventies I had to urgently leave Argentina, I went to the United States where I have relatives. Since I had much open credit in Lufthansa (bought in Nigeria, because there was nothing to buy using my excess nairas) I continued to Israel. I was amazed that people here was buying land and investing, while worldwide consensus was that Israeli victory was not "real" and the country could not survive long. I remember Moshe Dayan saying that the army was too small, he needed a million strong army (like the Swiss, he said) to provide minimal security. The population then was about 2 million.

I decided to stay and asked to change my status from tourist to immigrant. I was impressed by the pro-active attitude of the people, facing difficulties and having real achievements. "Don't worry, not everybody dies in the war", told me my uncle, a Colonel in the IDF. I reached the conclusion that Israelis would never allowed to become passive, complacent, lazy or drunk. I did not consider IQ as a variable and to this day I don't believe in the Flynn effect.

Realizing What is Important in Life

CHETTY: So if you’re in your mid-30s, only something like a quarter or less of girls growing up in the Bay Area are married, and we show in our paper that every extra year you spend growing up in the Bay Area, you’re less likely to get married. I remember telling my wife, “I don’t think we need to worry. Our daughter will be fine in terms of earnings. It’s just that she might not be married if we move to California.”

COWEN: So, you’ve lowered your expectations for grandchildren?

CHETTY: Yes.

Source Chetty is a genius and not yet forty. Yet he is worried about grandchildren. If he really thought it was important, he would move to Beit Shemesh or Modi'in Ilit. He would quit Stanford and world-fame, and teach in a yeshiva known only to Haredi Jews. Obviously, he is not worried enough.

Lost in the information deluge

A 24 years old Arab man of Yaffo killed his two sisters for unbehooving behavior.

The Settlements are Aging

I have lots of new job offers, many of them in Judea and Samaria, where the water and environmental infrastructure is aging and in need of urgent upgrade. Without we noticing, the time has passed and some of the earliest villages have celebrated fifty years. The standard replacement age for water pipes is 25 to 30 years, and these villages have invested nothing in maintenance nor replacement, so the situation is critical in many points. There is talk of declaring some structures having historical values, something like museums of the settlement movement. Now it is the time to collect the object of the initial pioneer times. There are already third generation native Samarians walking the land, so what does the Israeli left mean by "temporary" encampments whose 'final" situation is to be negotiated?

Pic. The first years of Kedumim. I was there, in BAHD 3 on the slope to the left.