China does Public Relations

China is pulling out a PR victory from the mouth of the Wuhan defeat. The narrative a month ago was that the Government repressive inaction let the epidemic to develop in Wuhan, killing thousands. Now China presents itself the only place where decisive government actions defeated the virus, helping sick Italy, an example to the world. I tend to agree with the Chinese narrative, with the provision that no one really knows what is happening. 

CoVid is Changing My Life

The University suspended classes and from now, we have to teach from home. I wrote them that I was not equipped for the change, my PC has no camera nor microphone (I learnt that from Zuckerberg). They answered that they will pay for the multimedia equipment and they gave me one week to be ready with the equipment and the material. Thus, I have no excuse. This bloody epidemic is forcing me to learn new things, which is the motto of this blog. La letra con sangre entra, that is, one learns with blood and effort, while in truth I hoped to pass the time till my end reading classics with a glass of red wine on the table.

Que esperanza! No chance! Now I have to prepare lectures on video and learn to operate the teaching application. Worse, the bourse is volatile and people is throwing away good shares that I can pick up. This panic will not last! People get used to everything and will recover their courage and value good shares for they are worth. I need to sober up and focus!

England replays the Blitz

England went into a Blitz mood. "Every single person in this country is going to be affected" 

Over-70s - and younger people with certain health conditions - will need to remain at home and have groceries and vital medication delivered, the health secretary said. 

All the UK deaths from the virus so far have been among people aged over 60 or with underlying health conditions.

He said car manufacturers, weapon makers and army suppliers would be asked to change their production lines to make ventilators for use in hospitals treating coronavirus - which can cause severe breathing problems.

Check Point in Jerusalem, Today

From the Palestine Post aka Jerusalem Post. 

We are Famous

The Economist has a half page note dated in Kfar Sava about a house meeting in a penthouse. This town always votes for the left and it may be the most liberal in Israel. The speaker was the leader of the Arab United List, and he was received politely, which the Anglo journalist present interpreted as the Jews are joining Arab parties. I blindly believe everything the British press writes, except when they report about things I happen to know personally. I never imagined that the neighbor's house party is important to figure in The Economist. Their home made cakes are vomitable.

I am spending this rainy day writing the Bill of Quantities of the Munier project. No rocket science but requires much concentration. Not a pleasure.  

The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage

The news are so bad that I shall distract myself with writing about the most prominent discoverer of vaccines, A. Wright (pic). In those Victorian times, men were not afraid of professional and social defenestration if they expressed their ideas, so there was free discussion of racial and gender issues, something inimaginable in our advanced times. Their ideas have been forgotten, repressed, criminalized.

Almroth Wright (pic) discussed, in a 1919 letter to The Times, why women should not be given the vote. He attributes the furious feminism to the million excess women in post WWI Britain. This excess was consequence, I think, of the massacre of the recent war, but Wright attributes it to the emigration of men to the colonies. Nothing has changed, today we also have a large excess of single women who are unable to form families. The cause, in Israel at least, is the draconic legislation against men that converts marriage into a lifelong servitude. Aspiring starlets that opened their legs hoping to get into the movies, and hating themselves for it, sent Harvey Weinstein - twenty years later - to jail.  

Purim in Shushan

The news in the bourse and the coronavirus front are very bad. I just watched on twitter a Persian on the paviment dragging himself toward  the hospital entrance - which was closed and full. No one came to his help. It is still cold in Iran.

So let's celebrate Purim and the Jews salvation from the evil Ahashwerosh in Shushan, with Shkeddy, the pink unicorn!

Be well!