Back on the tracks

After two weeks of little doing and low productivity, finally I completed the Natania "Four Seasons Beach" project and dispatched it. Now I am starting the Mashani project. My right foot is aching - I self diagnosed sciatica and recommended rest.

I do not know why I am working so hard. I hate social occasions, and hate sports, have no TV and never go to the movies. I cannot take my eyes from the girls but, should I catch one, what would I do with her? I follow the TASE pondering how to invest my handful of sheqalim, but I cannot understand how Central Banks pumping money is not causing inflation. The multiple stimulus of low energy prices and excess liquidity is just maintaining the real economy afloat, ergo we must be in deep depression. Now what?

Misinterpration of the American Riots

I have yet to seen a correct interpretarion of the current riots and looting in American cities. It is not against police (which society can survive without police?) and not against the rich, and certainly the poor are not famished and are looting bread. It is simply a standard communal strife, the same kind that occurs in India among Hindu and Muslim communities, and anywhere where two communities live en close contact. The solution is like India: total separation. Or Israel: a tall concrete wall. The South African solution, "separation" (apartheid), failed because the dominant side lost its self- confidence. That is happening in America too: The Government has lost faith in its moral right and has ceded the power to the "other" community - without ever achieving peace. Pic Manhattan today. 

Second Wave of the Corona

Israel has loosened all retrictions and now is on the verge of a second wave that will lead to a widespread outbreak of the coronavirus. "The hospitals have difficult cases the likes of which we haven’t seen in two months."  51 schools have been shut down (mostly in Jerusalem) after 261 cases of coronavirus infection were discovered among their students and teaching staff. About 8,000 teachers and students are in isolation. The Ministry of Health reported that 32 Israelis had been diagnosed with coronavirus in the last 24 hours and the total number of cases was 2,103. Of the active cases, 27 are in serious condition and 25 are on respirators.

Now I am worried. Look at the graph - 8 to 10% death rate at my age. My leg is aching and I think it is the sciatic nerve. My big daughter has problems with her husband and we are helping with the girls. I am not working hard.  

Mongol immigration to Israel

Yesterday we went to the supermarket (after two months) and observed a tall mongol middle-aged man and a big eskimo woman cleaning the floors. Asked about them and the Arab employee told me that they speak only Russian and are freshly arrived immigrants. To provoke, I asked: Are they Jews? She grimaced. I assume they are from BiroBidjan and their grandmother was Jewish. Welcome. We are expecting 40-50,000 new immigrants in 2020, many from the former SSSR, France and the USA (the Jewish community has been hit hard and frightened by the corona). These are large numbers for this small country. 

TASE - Up or down?

We have 25% unemployed, whole branches crashing (airlines, gas, turism, etc.) yet the bourse is rising. Energy prices are supercheap all over the world, and that should mean prosperity. Central banks are buying industrial loans and bonds, flooding private sectors with liquidity. I am not investing in the last month and missing profits. I dont know what to do.

Yesterday I ate about 150 gr roquefort style soft blue cheese with black bread and red wine. I had been feeling tired and dispirited. At night  it was burning my insides so bad that I thought that the green fungus had poisoned me. Yet in the morning felt well. I am too old for excess. 

Towards the Abolition of Biological Race

I thought that the right direction was to personalize medicine, to taylor treatment to the biological group and then to the individual. But justice (as above) demands to treat all as a homogeneous mass.

Obsession

On the refugee front, I spent an entire chapter of my dissertation trying to understand why Black folks in the US don’t qualify for asylum elsewhere, and the answer is, as usual, racism.

(Did she try Nigeria?)