Thursday, June 18, 2020

Astounding Stories of Super Science: The Ape-Men of Xlotli

IN another second the flood of ape-men had burst in all its fury over him. Crashing, thundering shots were dinning in his ears, animal death screams and the Valkyrie battle cries of the girls filled the temple. He could not tell how many of the apes were fighting him. As a cave-man’s club whizzed past his head, he drove his knife once, and yanked it dripping from hairy, yielding flesh to plunge it again. A sudden side-step carried him away from another assailant. He dropped the knife to snatch the gigantic club of one of the creatures he had killed.

....

Kirby was left with the memory of Naida’s great eyes fixed upon his, fear-filled, beseeching his protection. In a second, the ponderous trapdoor crashed into place, and she was gone.

Prophetic sci-fiction from the 1930's.

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Rabbi Baruch Gazahi's teachings

Rabbi Baruch Gazahi, a member of the Knesset by the Sepharadi Party, explains the consequences of immodesty in Jewish women. .

"A woman who was used to revealing her upper parts usually is reincarnated as a cow, whose upper parts are exposed."

"That is why women have to be covered up there. This is one of the reasons women suffer from breast cancer, because everyone looks at them and it causes the evil eye."

Every day I am learning something. 

Saturday, June 13, 2020

The White Couple controversy

Google "White Couple" and you get a multitude of pictures - but none of a standard straight European man + woman couple. Among the pic I found this one the most atypical.

Google also presented an explanation (because this abnormality has called the attention of many googlers) and they say it is their word based AI that gets confused.

No one believes it. Of course it is a lie. AI can distinguish between black and white. Why they do this? because they fear the mere accusation of racism however fantastic it may be. They know their public and they think that they are savage, stupid, paranoid lunatics. Google managers will go to incredible extent to conform to what they perceive as social norms to be allowed to run their business.

BTW, Winston Churchill has become a non-person on googledom. Google explains: 

Churchill has become engulfed in controversy after a Black Lives Matter protest in central London last weekend led to his statue being defaced with the word "racist".

The vandalism was widely condemned but Churchill critics also argue he was consistently bigoted and discriminatory to non-whites during his lengthy political career, with his policies leading to the death of millions during famine in India in 1943.

They are closing Beijing

The butchery section of the large Beijing market Tzi Fa Si is the new focus of the coronavirus. The reaction is energetic - immediate closure. Also the access to the capital is being secured. I have been several times in Beijing but never visited the market. On the other hand, the Party made a voltaface regarding street hawking. In my time there were tolerated night markets, but now it is free day and night.

For a time, they stopped building a centrally planned socialist society. I think China is reverting to the Ming times as described by van Gulik. BTW, ordered more Judge Dee mysteries. 

Thursday, June 11, 2020

Criminalizing Sex

From July it will be punishable (2000 shekel) to have paid sex in Israel. 
Twenty years ago, Sweden became the first country to make it illegal to pay for sex, but not to be a prostitute (the client commits a crime, but not the prostitute). Similar laws were passed in Norway and in Iceland. In  2014, the European Parliament voted in favor of the 'Swedish Model'.
It is crazy. Everyone knows that prostitutes protect the social order and married women from violence. Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian writer described in "Pantaleon y las visitadoras"  the story of an officer tasked with organizing regular sexual services to the forces stationed in the Amazonas, to reduce the violation rate. Prostitution generates 11 percent of Thailand's GNP. It is a vital source of revenue. 
Paradoxically, the most vocal of the opponents of the law in Israel is the trans guild, as it would take away their rice bowl, to use a Chinese metaphor, and criminalize their work. The Swedes have probably worked out a solution to that problem. 

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

The Amazing Wealth Transfer

Have you noticed the peculiar fact that despite the lockdown, the economic crisis, tens of millions unemployed and multiple corporations filing for bankruptcy, Wall Street is having a ball? CNBC‘s Jim Cramer examined this anomaly earlier a few days ago, his verdict: “we’re looking at a V-shaped recovery in the stock market, and that has almost nothing to do with a V-shaped recovery in the economy. What is going on is one of the greatest wealth transfers in history.” Jim Cramer is the only one telling it as it is.

Fortunately, I am on the side where the wealth is being transferred to. So I believe, but it may be an illusion. No one really wins when the global economy sinks.