North Korean Class-less Society

 

North Korea was founded in the late nineteen forties establishing a strict caste system as a way to maintain the survival of the new communist government. The newly established secret police and communist party reported on everyone making it possible to create an official list of every family assigned to one of 51 social classes. Most (29) of these classes were composed of people considered either hostile to the government or leaning that way. These new lower classes included business people, the most successful farmers, professionals, etc. Most of the population belongs to these 29 social classes. After decades of imprisonment or execution of any lower caste North Koreans who showed any sign of disloyalty, the survivors learned to hide their true feelings and forget nothing. This lower class lives bordering starvation, because of the permanent agricultural crisis. Incredibly, N.Korea's GNP is only about 30 billion dollars. The population has a high IQ but is undernourished and short. 

The children of the higher-class families can afford more food and luxuries like electronic devices to view forbidden content stored on USB or MicroSD devices crammed with recent South Korean entertainment and news video. MicroSD cards are cheap (a few dollars for a Chinese or South Korean card that carries at least 32 gigabytes of data). 

The Best Investment Adviser

 

I have sold most of my losing stock to cover debts (not mine but, among others,  my daughter's divorce settlement). I am now looking at what remains and noticed that my best bets were those when I followed one of the bank advisers. Only one of them, a friendly fat lady from Tel Mond, helped me to make money. She made me diversify and buy American index vehicles, such as the EQM online retail index (see left) when it was cheap. I enjoyed her advice only for a short time, as she was transferred to another branch. I miss her. My only "romantic" affairs are with bankers...

International Space Station

Growing every year. A marvel of humanity.
 

Jordi Savall is 80

Another Catalan genius. I discovered him a time ago and follow his music. I went through life focused on my projects, only now near the end I am starting to enjoy music. 
 

Saving the translators

Somebody may have read my note on the fate of Afghan translators abandoned to their death once the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan ends. Biden said that the U.S. had achieved its objectives and adding that his administration would move twenty thousand endangered Afghan interpreters out of the country.

Rameau and the rediscovery of Harmony

 

Ancient Greek music is totally lost to us, although we know that they wrote a lot on theory. Serious music research re-started with Lully and Rameau. I discovered them during this epidemic. It is notable how the torch of science passed from Lombardy to Paris to London and then New York, now maybe Shanghai, unable to stay for long anywhere. Apparently, reason cannot endure in one place, yet humanity crawls ahead.  

They had this obsolete thing of writing numerals in Latin - MDCCXXII is 1720. I was among the lasts in learning Latin in school. I am that old! 

The Water Companies

 When I was head of a large city's water and sewage department, I had half a secretary and an assistant engineer. Today the Dept. is a TAAGID (Corporation) with about 60 employees. The basic infrastructure is the same, the service is the same, but the bureaucracy has multiplied. Today, to ask for a water connection in Tel Aviv, one needs an engineer. I accepted to do the planning for an old building and since then the demands of information, etc. are unending. They went to check if my submittal was exact and now they ask me to resubmit the 5-meter long printout adding the two or three numbers that are missing, the information they already have. The plotting of this "garmoshka" (submittal) in color in three copies alone costs 200 dollars. I asked for one thousand dollars for the service, but I should have asked for more. All for a simple connection!