Water consulting is bad business

My alma mother TAHAL Water Consulting is in trouble and its CEO Bracha has resignes after the failure of selling the company to FIMI Funds. The agreement was that FIMI Funds will invest up to US$35 million in Tahal and float the company on TASE. From the money collected from buyers of the shares, FIMI would pay part of the purchase and have total control. The banks holding the loans of TAHAL and the monstrous amounts guaranteed for the completion of ongoing projects had given green light to financial operation. But the transaction failed somewhere. Simply, agricultural and infrastructure consulting in the Third World is no business. For one, Israeli experts are very expensive and two, water and civil engineering has become low tech and foreign experts are not needed anymore. 

The Guns of August

I am reading Barbara Tuchman's book on WWI. It describes the details of the calculations of the French and the German armies. The armies marched (imagine walking from Aachen to Paris with a bayonet in hand) and roads and marching days had to be calculated with precision while there was no wire communication among the units. Generals strategized without precise information and they were under tremendous stress and used to blank out. All those flanking maneuvers suddenly brought up the memory of my readings in the Circulo Militar of Buenos Aires. I was 14 and searching Buenos Aires public libraries for information about the rocket technology for the project we were doing with a Dutch school friend, he was fabricating the explosive fuel and I was trying to design and procure pipes. The Military Club was sited in an impressive palace in the most elegant neighborhood, surrounded by elaborate iron work gates. Inside there were large brown leather lounge chairs and sezlongs, with quiet old people reading the papers.

I took out the Military Science journals and read the articles. Remember one about artillery and rockets, with simple equations to calculate range. There were articles about the Triple Alianza (Paraguay) war, that struck me as uninteresting. Horsemanship and river crossing. I soon dropped out of the rocket project, the others were obsessed in building wood and iron pipe pistols, which they did.

Cursed Computer

I am desperate finding a file received yesterday. They sent me a DWG and a PDF version, and they do not match. Asked to send it again, and once more the DWG is different. The architect insists that I do not know how to open the zip file, showing his autocad literacy and my ignorance. Yet still I have two different versions and the contractor already is boring holes and demolishing walls. Oh, sweet gods of the computer, please lift the curse from my machine! 

The Deep State takes over

 

STASI  was the East German State Security Organization. Its motto: Schild und Schwert der Partei   (Shield and sword of the Party). Every State has an organization of that kind, from the Krypthaya of the Spartan State to President Putin's alma mater to Germany's Defense of the Constitution something. That is the real Deep State. The real source of power. The Chinese State is in crisis mode and has drawn the sword from its scabbard and replaced all local authorities with heavyweight political police officers. Pic. Ying Yong, the new boss of Hubei province. 

The rules have changed, it is hardball from now on. 

Cutie

cutie

High IQ people doing crazy things

The Chinese people are among the most intelligent so I wonder what to do with Emperor Jingdi's tomb. He built an underground tomb (pic. Han Yangling Museum in Xi'an, China) full of clay sheep, pigs and other domestic animals, so he would not starve in the netherworld. His colleagues were even crazier, they manufactured clay soldiers by the thousands to guard them. My father explanation was that there is something wrong with the human mind. 

Worse than first estimated

I did not want to blog about the new non-flu Wuhan disease, but it is becoming too important and urgent, so I have to follow its development. A recent Los Alamos Lab paper estimates that it is unstoppable..." the number of infected individuals during early epidemic double every 2.4 days, and the R0 value is likely to be between 4.7 and 6.6."

This bad flu kills mostly over 50 males already with some disease, like me. Young people is safe. Should I be afraid? I have completed my life cycle and am surviving only to help the next generation. Of course the new flu worries me. Half of Japan's budget goes to pay pensions and health care for the elderly. After the epidemy they will have a balanced budget. It is a godsent disease to heal the economy. 

The 1914 worldwide epidemy killed mostly babies and children. When I visited the Jaszbereny Jewish cemetery, saw many monuments with syrupy inscriptions for dead children. It must have been horrible.