Wildfire Bankrupts US Largest Electricity Company

Power provider PG&E Corp filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday, succumbing to liabilities stemming from wildfires in Northern California in 2017 and 2018. It listed assets of $71.39 billion and liabilities of $51.69 billion, in a court document filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California.

No one knows from the where the next blow will fall. American judicial system is as dangerous as it is unpredictable. No one escapes it capricious vengeance.  

Tailings Dam Collapse in Brumadinho: Two Engineers Arrested

"Três funcionários da Vale diretamente envolvidos e responsáveis pelo licenciamento da barragem que se rompeu em Brumadinho e dois engenheiros terceirizados que atestaram a estabilidade ..." Three Vale officers and two engineers responsible for the stability permit of the dam..." were jailed today. The operation was carried out by the Ministério Público de Minas Gerais (MPMG), the Ministério Público Federal (MPF) and the Polícia Federal (PF) as well as the Promotoria de Justiça da Comarca de Brumadinho, a Coordenadoria das Promotorias de Justiça de Defesa das Bacias dos Rios da Velha e Paraopeba, o Grupo de Atuação Especial de Combate ao Crime Organizado (Gaeco), e Grupo Especial de Promotores de Justiça de Defesa do Patrimônio Público (GEPP). GAECO is the special group to combat organized crime. 

Poor engineers.

The mayor of the state capital Belo Horizonte, Alexandre Kalil, said "Vale's board of directors should be in jail". The comments came after state prosecutors said they had frozen a total of 11bn reais ($2.9bn; £2.2bn) of assets belonging to Vale.

Access to the areas is difficult - in some places, the mud is up to 15m (49ft) deep. An Israeli group of engineers, doctors and members of the navy's underwater missions unit has joined the efforts.

Enduring Grandfatherhood

I married late and my daughters are also marrying late so I am now an old grandfather. Today went to pick up one grandchild from the kinder because the mother was in the hospital. She is studying for the Master and the exams are coming, and she started vomiting and feeling ill. She is pregnant. My wife and I am the substitute parents, and at my age, it is not easy. We cleaned her apartment and prepared some food. I feel in my bones that modern life is the enemy of big families. Or even small families. Only isolating ourselves from secular education, career, friends, etc. and sacrificing the possibility of making money  - like the religious - are we able to have children. For the first time in history, there is plenty of food, but life is not easy. 

Chimps are better hunters than humans

Chimp males form themselves into hunting parties of up to eight animals and trap jungle mammals with incredible efficiency. Hunting expeditions are generally successful and catch up to three Colobus monkeys, to the point that chimps are exterminating them.  There are also war parties organized to attack razzia-like neighboring groups, in order to increase the territory and to kidnap young females. Human ancestors were trapped in the dry side of the large Rift Valley and developed bipedal mobility and invented butchering instruments. I always imagined chimps to be like dwarves, but they measure 1.20 to 1.50 meters, weighting 40 - 60 kg, which is comparable to humans. I look at the people in the street, and there are many of the 1.30 - 1.60 m group. Chimps are stronger than three weightlifters together. The humans sharing the same rainforest environment became pygmies, not much more intelligent than the chimps: a comparative study would be interesting. Do pygmies also wage war?

 When pondering the goals and methods of human activities, we should try to think their equivalent in chimps, which being simpler and more obvious, offering better insights. For example, what triggers the formation of chimp war parties? When and how the group decides that the time has come to raid the neighbors?  

RED-DEAD project failed

With typical phantasioner overoptimism, Shimon Peres envisioned numerous infrastructure projects that would wave a network of common - unbreakable - interests between Israel and the neighboring countries. The Sinai gas pipeline, that would solve Egypt's energy scarcity and promote its industrialization. The pipe was laid down and worked for a while, till  ISIS sabotaged it. Cairo has no effective forces in the Sinai nor in the rest of its vast territory. On the map, Egypt extends over a million sq.km, but it has no power out of Cairo.

Having learnt this painful lesson, we made a re-appraisal of the Red Sea - Dead Sea pipeline hydroelectrical project. Does the King of Jordan exert effective rule along the 220 kilometer pipe? Israel has decided to retire from the project, and compensate the breaking of the contract with a large payment in currency and drinking water. A very costly fuckup.

We are following the American model of Nation-building for the benefit of our neighbors, but we have even less success than the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. We organized friendly political forces in South Lebanon, but they turned out deadly enemies. We tried to make Gaza a self-governed political entity so we could make peace with them. Absolute failure. The Palestinian State, another Israeli invention, is a comic opera. Thus, the potential of the 450 meter fall of the Dead Sea valley will continue unexploited, till the Moshiach comes. 

Welcome, Low IQ People!

I just received a phone call from a corporation - they had a problem with a calculation. I solved it with excel in no time. They gave me five hundred. Since childhood I receive these presents for nothing, for helping a fellow student for an exam, for translating a page from an unusual language, for solving some banal calculation, for helping the President of the University with a speech, for writing a learned rebuttal to an ignorant regulator. More dumb people make my life easier. More dumb blondies ... ("deep sigh")  … would make my life … (complete the sentence). 

Newark's Water Poisoned with Lead

Mayor Ras J. Baraka wrote a letter to Donald Trump, urging the president to ditch his potential plan to fund his long-sought border wall with emergency funds and instead send some of that money to Newark to replace faulty lead lines that are leaking ‘dangerously high levels of lead’ into the city’s tap water,” The Root reported.

Newark is still in the process of fixing the corrosion control treatment process at the Pequannock plant, which is contributing to the elevated lead levels, said city spokesman Frank Baraff, adding that the city was expecting the levels would still be high during the latest monitoring period”.

It looks that the Flint Water Treatment Plant's failure in treating the water and the subsequent success in drawing Federal Emergency monies is being repeated. 


Newark is one of the oldest American settlements. Originally it was organized as a theocracy of Connecticut Puritans, but that was a long time ago. About 10% of the population is European, the rest is African. Talk about Jews replacing the natives.