Israeli Business Culture

The pic is from the front page of Globes, the leading Israeli business paper. This is how our magnates look: underwear T shirt and khaki shorts and big glasses. Dress codes are for the goyim who live in the cold, but we, after a hundred years in this tropical climate, have found the sartorial style that fits us. Cotton underwear. 

Villla 31 under a bridge in Buenos Aires

The inflation in Argentina is 40% and a third of the population is officially "poor".  30,000 persons living in the streets of Buenos Aires. The government of Nestor Kirchner was like a pirate attack on the country, and they took everything movable. Argentina's foreign debt is growing exponentially and it means poverty for generations.  Sad. 

Ashkenazi and French Canadian Genetic Disease

What is worse than being born before one's time? To suffer from a disease and to die before the remedy is discovered? In our miraculous time, when we are almost all-powerful and there are remedies for almost all the diseases, nothing is sadder than to see people suffering and dying when the remedy is surely be available in a few years or months. I remember Dr Idelsohn of TAHAL, his two daughters carried some fatal mutation and he dedicated his life to create incentives for the disease be studied in the universities. In a few years, the disease became curable but he saw his daughters succumb one after the other and later he himself was no more. 

The nice Moroccan (Sepharadi) Jewish girl spent ten years trying to give birth. They tried everything, IVF and Georgian surrogates, and nothing.  Her husband is Ashkenazi but she is not, but anyway they underwent the routine genetic counseling in Israel. No rare Ashkenazi mutations were suspected because she is "Oriental".

But in the end they paid 6000 dollars for a complete analysis and the rare Smith–Lemli–Opitz mutation was discovered. The carrier frequency is highest among Ashkenazi Jews (1 in 43) and Northern Europeans (1 in 54), and almost nil in Mediterranean and African populations. For some reason, the Cajun-French Canadian population carrier frequency is similar to the Ashkenazi (BTW, the Israeli Rabbinate believes in genetic profiling to decide who is a Jewish descendant and therefore entitled to Israeli citizenship. I wonder if French Canadians may pass for Jews, should they want to. They don't want to.) The mutation affects the cholesterol metabolism and has no cure. The healthy boy in the pic was conceived thanks to in vitro selection of fetii. 

She was born just in the right time: if born ten years before, she would have no chance to be mother at all. 

Frivolities

What a contrast with Michelle Obama! Our current First Lady (yes, she is) is a former professional model who shocks the fashion world with her creations. Here she is exhibiting on the background of the Sphynx her "tropical explorer" model. She is too cold and distant in my opinion.

China Realizes Its Mistake

When I worked in Tian Jin, China, in the seventies, most of the professors were very skinny. Professor Jin, who spoke excellent English, was a veritable skeleton. He was very worried about the high prices of the apartments in China, and interrogated me about the Israeli situation. He was shocked by the prices here, and that was forty years ago when the prices were a quarter of today's. He was worried by the poverty of China, and I told him that the Chinese are so hardworking that in no time China will be a middle class country. I was right. I also told him that the one child policy then imposed was a big mistake, but he said that "We are too many". That inhuman  policy was a big mistake, an irreversible big mistake.

Today China is providing incentives for a second child. Currently the Liaoning province has a TFR of 0.9 which is among the lowest and most unsustainable among the peoples of the world. 20.6% or the population are over sixty: this northern population is dying off. The province was formerly known as Manchuria and is among the most industrialized.

Being a Jew, my Chinese hosts were curious why we are so smart. I told them that we underwent the most severe selection in history, expulsions and mass murders, so only the fittest survived and did not abandon their identity. In my case, Jews in Hungary (and Bohemia and Germany) had no permanent residence permits and for hundreds of years they lived as ambulant illegal small salesmen, from one fair to the other, barely tolerated in trades that did no compete with the natives, such as money-changing and unsecured credit. One had to be a genius to survive in those trades. And my parents, among the few survivors of Auschwitz and the forced labor brigades. The Chinese left it at that, but without understanding, because in those post Cultural Revolution, intellectuals were incredibly limited and "provincial", and there was nothing in Chinese recent or imperial history resembling anything like the Jewish experience that they could even remotely compare.

Pic: A propaganda painting "National Harmony" commissioned by the Japanese regime in Manchukuo, with dancing girls of five nationalities Chinese, Manchu, Korean, Mongol and Japanese.

Snapshot of J's Morning

An unexpected sum in US dollars appeared in my bank account. It happens that Medtronics, an American medical giant, bought Israeli start-up Mazor Robotics and paid 50 dollars cash per share. I had some Mazor shares. Instead of losing 1% in currency exchange to sheqels, I decided to buy something on the NASDAQ.

It was a very hot morning so I took time resting in the airconditioned private banking area. Without provocation, a woman "sexually attacked" me and advised me to enjoy the money, life is for enjoying specially at our age. I completely misunderstood her and said that apart of helping my daughters, I know no way of enjoying myself. What could I do? Travel? Cars? I have no desire of anything. She told me where she lives, that she is a wealthy divorcee, that all she wants is to have a good time. As for this old Jew, bought INTEL and Tower Semiconductors.

Illustration: Add 20 years and 20 kilos to visualize the incident.
P.S.: Judge for Family Affairs (female, all of them are) ordered to give half of the monies received by the founder and principal of Mazor Robotics to his ex-wife. Apparently they were divorced before the foundation of the company, and have not seen each other for some time, but she is entitled to the fruits of his work. He will also pay 30% income tax. No relation between this and the yesterday conversation.  

Irreparable Damage

It was enough the accusation of a lachrymose old woman to destroy the teaching career of Kavanaugh.  Over 800 Harvard Law alumni have signed a letter calling on the university to rescind Kavanaugh’s appointment. He was hired to lecture at the university in 2009 but is no longer listed on the staff directory.His course in Yale was eliminated and he does not figure among the teachers. Teaching is the thing he most loves, and in his defense speech he said that he would not be able to tech again. He knew.

Regarding Christine's house, it is only about 50 sq.meter - two rooms and a kitchenette. She lived years in that small house with no claustrophobia. The second street entrance was 100% to create a rentable property. I am unfamiliar with her milieu, but it appears that although she lives in Palo Alto, she is not rich, and although she has academic titles, she works in a low-prestige poorly-paid job.

Mud is starting to stick to both: he was known in Yale for drinking, and she had many affairs. Her boyfriend left her for cheating. Her "trauma" did not affect her sexual appetite. No one will come out clean and shining from this affair.