Long Term Loans Erosion

I found this expression in a Singapur text. What does it mean? Economic dictionaries have profit erosion, due to a number of events but this is different. Long term fixed interest loans get eroded because of inflation. Or they lose its worth by annual bank maintenance expenses.

Maybe the creditworthiness of the debtor changes with the time, gets worse. Maybe the difficulty of recouping the money increases with time? Who knows?

Tunnel War with the Hizballah

We are having a tridimensional war with the Hizballah religious party of Lebanon. In fact, we founded that Muslim organization, thinking that it will focus in humanitarian and social work in South Lebanon. You know, highly educated and intelligent people - in positions of power - tht were convinced that Lebanon's hostility was founded in poverty and destitution, so if we improve their life, they will love us. Hizballah IS basically a welfare organization but it has also organized an army focused on our destruction. They had fired missiles to our Northern cities, and we have built a tall prefab cement blocks wall. So they went underground and bored several tunnels to surprise us. They planned to send through the tunnels fighters on motorcycles, with mission of causing chaos. We have discovered three tunnels, we don't know how many are. The pic shows that these days they have erected a wall in the tunnel, to make difficult to Israeli soldiers to advance in it. Comparing this photo with the photos of Hamas tunnels, I think the Hamas's technique of prefab inverted U blocks is more effective. The Hizballah seems to have worse engineers, maybe because those in Gaza have worked and gathered experience in Israel. 

Flint Water Keeps Poisoning Innocent Victims

The Flint Water Crisis keeps taking victims. A Michigan judge ruled Friday that the state’s chief medical executive will be one of six people to stand trial on involuntary manslaughter and other criminal charges related to the Flint water crisis.

During that period an outbreak of the Legionella disease affected at least 90 people in Genesee County, resulting in the deaths of 12. (The local hospital's unmaintained hot water system was breeding the bacteria). A manslaughter charge was added to Wells’ case. Wells (pic), a member of Gov. Rick Snyder’s cabinet, has denied any wrongdoing and her attorneys claim she had no legal duty to warn the public.  

Fear Seizes The Algo Trading Machines

All the main indicators of economic activity are telling us about an economy that is all right and full employment and fat profits and dividends. Yet NASDAQ is falling evermore. What is that? I think that the crossing of the long term and short term interest rates in the USA, which has apparently predictive power, has convinced the statistical machines that recession is coming in six months. So they are discharging shares. Since the algo machines are the most active participants in the market, they impose their mood on everybody.

Should I join the robots and follow their direction? I don't know. 

Catching up with the Oumuamua Space Sailing Boat

The discovery of a space sail of extra-solar origin, the Oumuamua, made me wonder the nature of the civilization that created that thing. Humanity knows a lot about wind sailing, as it has been navigating on the ocean surface for the last 3000 years. For one thing, it is not just stretching out a membrane against the wind but wind sailing requires at least two independent sails to be able to maneuver the boat in a purposeful way and additionally, it requires much skill to do it without turning over the device and get it spinning uncontrollably. The fact that we observed one sail drifting and spinning freely in space (the Oumuamua) proves that it was not a probe of the extrasolars but some kind of "driftwood". The conclusion is that the extrasolars have not perfected their space travelling technique.

On the other hand, in our days wind sailing is a sport, since in the "adult", commercial world much better technologies have supplanted it, such as fossil fuel and nuclear energy engines. Wind sailing for commerce had a historically short life, of two three thousand years, a second in human history. It was primitive, difficult to control and totally unreliable. If the extrasolars are using solar wind ships, it means that they are at the starting phase of space travel, and soon we shall reach and pass their level.

Are they to be feared? Yes and no. Yes because we are in a vulnerable instant, like the Japanese without ocean-going vehicles being visited by Portuguese sailors in the 17th century. No, since the technological gap is not large. It took Japan only a century to catch up and surpass the visitors.  

It's 2040 and No Colorado River

The best way to prepare for the future is to write it down as a narrative aka sci fi novel of the scenario envisioned.

We start in December 13th., 2018 and the water authority of Las Vegas is preparing for life after the drying up of the Colorado River, that feeds 90% of its water demand. They are planning pumping stations to convey water from some yet unidentified, imagined water sources.

They look to China that solved Beijing's water supply with a long  canal that brings water from the Himalaya mountains 3000  kilometers away. A similar solution for the American West, now without the Colorado river, would be a north-south canal from Alaska to replenish the Hoover Dam and inject life into the Colorado. They visualize the Chinese scale civil works required and the budget estimate, and it would find it feasible. There is an obstacle in the way called Canada. Canada has rejected all American offers of purchasing water, which they have in abundance, because of nationalism. In fact, the Canadians are reacting like the Egyptians when we suggested to sell us their unused excess Nile flow, that is, total rejection. In fact, the very question made their blood to boil as if the offer was an act of aggression.

We don't need Nile waters, although it would come handy to develop the Negev. But the 50 million Americans and 20 million Mexicans depending on the Colorado River, that in 2040 would not exist. America would then have a problem with Canada.

In my sci-fi scenario, America would subvert the Canadian state, and promote with the help of De Gaulle (from his grave) and contemporary France, the separation of Quebec as an independent francophone state. America needs only the right of way through the Pacific seaboard. The oil, he potash, the agricultural wealth generated by this area is now distributed in all Canada, fueling the resentment and desire of separation of the natives. Moreover, there is a deepening ethnic/racial gap between the increasingly Asiatic Vancouver and the mixed multitude of central Canada. The rise of China - if it happens - would exert economic and cultural stress in the Pacific seaboard and the Chinese may think it a good idea to promote a foothold on the continent.

Then, there would be three political entities north of the USA, each of them weaker than Canada was and more sensitive to American desires. If it is well played, Canada's water resources would then flow to California. The detailed working out this story would make the exciting content of the proposed sci-fi novel. 

Ani Maamin (I believe) at funeral of Haredi soldier

I believe
with a complete faith
in the coming of the Messiah
in the coming of the Messiah I believe
in the coming of the Messiah
in the coming of the Messiah I believe

I believe
with a complete faith
in the coming of the Messiah
in the coming of the Messiah I believe
though he may delay
still every day

I shall wait him
every day that he will come.

(free translation by J)