Evolution of Greek Intelligence in the Antiquity

Left: the goddess flanked by two lions as in the Lions Gate of Mykonos. 3300 years ago. Those were very smart people. More than us.

The decadence of Greece fascinates me from old. Analyzing genotypes, a clear picture emerges: A small settlement of Minoan people (from Knossos) at Mycenae, in the Argos plain, and the progressive increase of ever smarter people (eugenic selection?). Then, their steady replacement by semi-moronic barbarians from the North. Building Cyclopean fortresses did not help them much. If you continue the curve down and down, you may find the profile of the current Greek population.  Source

Netaniyahu's Divine-Birth Myth

There are many myths surrounding the divine origin of kings and heroes of the Antiquity. Who could imagine that among contemporary Africans should circulate the myth of Bibi being an albino African that reached Israel and his position through a miraculous chain of adventures? Africans have even devised rituals to inherit his fortune, to steal his luck and success. Decapitating chickens is de rigueur. 

More tomorrow, if I have time.  In the meanwhile, let's hope that this night Bibi will succeed in consolidating a coalition and continue leading us. If not, new elections in Israel. That would be rather bad. 

Long Trends Omnia Vincit

The demographic growth and strengthening of the national-religious dedication of the Israeli religious segment is causing increased stress in the government structure. My granddaughters are learning religion in the kindergarten and Netanyahu is proving unable to form a coalition.

Labor got only 10% of British votes and the country is divided and ungoverned. The European Union is holding but the lack of a foreign enemy is making it purposeless. Surprisingly Russian bourse is the world's best, that country has pulled itself together.

China and the US are competing for hegemony. The US is increasingly desperate and aggressive, it all leads to a shooting war in Asia. The war could re-align the world into a new configuration. Remember: there were TWO Vietnam Wars. One with China and China lost. Other with France/US and USA lost. The pic shows how impressive is (or they want to be seen)  the Chinese military: Twenty-something mobile cannons firing at the same time, everything perfectly clean and ordered.   As a former AA team leader, I know how impossible is to achieve this level of synchronization. Even in a parade show.  This pic is fake. But real wars are unpredictable. 

I am expecting a new William the Bastard. In the year 1100 England was in chaos.  The Angles and the Saxons (North Germanic barbarians) were unable to govern themselves. Came William with his French-speaking Nordmen and imposed strict order, divided the land among his sub-chiefs, made a grand inventory and established a well-ordered tax system. The new landowners extracted rent from the farming population and gradually replaced them. This structure lasted 800 years. It was based on stable laws and agricultural rents. When farming produce became abundant and cheap in the early twentieth century and the rents of the aristocracy became worthless and England's structure collapsed. It is chaos again. England returned to island marginality.

BTW, Tom Segev's book 1948 about Israel's first year shows the beginning of a similar structure. Expulsed Arab houses and lands were taken over by well-connected former soldiers with initiative, and a middle class started to take form.  That structure disappeared or went underground with the organization of Israel's legal forms, but I am still suspicious about the origin of some fortunes. But they were small middle-class fortunes, they dissolved in the second generation. Something that did not happen in England, there landed fortunes persisted for many successive generations.

The English are an amazing race. 

35% of Israeli Business Outside of the Law

35% of the business has operate without an official permit and according to the law, they must be closed down.

Regarding building permits, my estimate is that 25% to 50% (in the Arab sector) are built without approved drawings, and about 100% of the existing building ten years old have additions and changes that invalidate the original permit and need to be re-permitted.

They are my potential clients and my market.

But the projects I love most are the bona-fide technical piping/treatment problems, they are difficult but intellectually challenging. 

Living in Fantasyland

Chandni Desai, from the University of Toronto, writes in an academic paper sent to me:  "He describes how a Palestinian peasant, Abu Nidal, whose land was being confiscated by Israeli occupation forces, began to speak the land during a direct action, while simultaneously mocking the settlers inability to comprehend the living relationship Palestinians have to land. ... It is these embodied ties and practices of resistance that enable Palestinians to enact a decolonial process on a daily basis, one that constructs a present and a future beyond settler sovereignty and the imagined geography (Said, 1978) that it imposes on the land."

Having been trained and working as an engineer, it is not clear to me the meaning of this mystic nonsense. I think the University of Toronto should be more exigent toward their teachers/employees and demand them to write clear understandable English. 

Anyway, Mr Abu Nidal may keep talking the land, he may enact daily a decolonial (sic) ritual, it does not change my imagined geography (Said, 1978). He (and Prof. Desai) may happily continue living their fantasyland. 

Orthodox Judaism becoming more liberal than the Roman Catholic Church

The Jerusalem Post writes that a gay rabbinical student, rejected in New York, will be ordained in Jerusalem.  Interesting. I always thought that a rav had to be married.  

The Best Beer in China

When I was working in China,  I was proudly invited to drink the local German beer, produced by authentic Germans. Not German Germans but Chinese Germans. As forgotten by the West (but never by the Chinese), Tsingtao province used to be a German colony. In 1903 German settlers in Qingdao, Shandong province established brewery which is still operating. I am not a beer drinker so - to quote Shakespeare - it is all the same to me. 

My hosts were very aware of China's conquest, division, colonization, and Western settlers on their land. They had it always before their eyes when considering who they were and where they were on this jungle-planet. It was 1985 and they still were deathly afraid of Western foreigners.

With some reason.