Les Indes galantes. Les Sauvages

Forêts paisibles,

Jamais un vain désir ne trouble ici nos cœurs.

S’ils sont sensibles,

Fortune, ce n’est pas au prix de tes faveurs.

 

(Chœur des sauvages):

Forêts paisibles,

Jamais un vain désir ne trouble ici nos cœurs.

S’ils sont sensibles,

Fortune, ce n’est pas au prix de tes faveurs.]

 

Dans nos retraites,

Grandeur, ne viens jamais

offrir de tes faux attraits!

Ciel, tu les as faites

pour l’innocence et pour la paix.

Chinese Belt Project

 The Chinese are offering us a grand infrastructure project linking by rail the Port of Haifa (which they are building) and the ports of the Arab Gulf. It would reduce Egypt's income from the Suez Canal, but open profitable trade opportunities for everybody. In fact, China is taking up Imperial Britain's role of organizing world trade, and no one in its right mind would stay outside.  

Spain: 25% less births in 2020

 Spain is one of the countries with negative population growth, each year its population is a million persons lower and in average, more aged. When it was imagined that it cannot fall lower, it did. All European countries have been affected by the epidemic. A catastrophe. 

Caesium-137 storm

Former atomic experimental sites in the Sahara are releasing Caerium 137 dust, which is penetrating to Europe. It is a highly toxic material, people will be advised to stay at home. Ingestion of caesium-137 can be treated with Prussian blue, which binds to it chemically and reduces the biological half-life to 30 days. Pic.: France (It looks like Paris, the Montparnasse? Mais non, c'est Lyon) -  today. The dust avoided Israel but Turkey is alarmed. 

Tuba Skinny

Good Company

Austria, Denmark and Israel launched a cooperative project to produce anti-corona vaccine. I could not choose better partners for Israel. We are in good company. 

The Bell Imperative

 Clark published a new research paper concluding that "aspirations that by appropriate social design, rates of social mobility can be substantially increased will prove futile. We have to be resigned to living in a world where social outcomes are substantially determined at birth."

Clark studied the genetic changes in the English population on the basis of surnames. In a few hundred years the surnames of lower/criminal class have disappeared, replaced by descendants of the upper/richer classes. In our generation, it seems to work on the reverse. 

Why this happened in South East England and not in Bulgaria? England was/is a stable, well-governed society for centuries, where violence does not pay. Bulgaria was a frontier lawless region, where violence and brutality was survival necessity.