Amphidromia

The Economist's Word of the week: amphidromia, an ancient Greek ceremony during which the father decided whether to keep a baby or abandon it on a hillside.

I tried to look up the word on the internet, and I got other definitions: It was a name-giving ceremony five to seven days after birth. At the amphidromia, friends and relatives would arrive with gifts for the child. Decorations adorned the outside of the house: olive branches for a boy and fillets of wool for a girl. A feast was prepared for the guests, followed by the child being carried around the hearth by a nurse or one of the parents.

No mention anywhere of abandoning the baby on a hillside. The meaning of the ceremony is running around a fire, that is, the father ran around. The newborn was declared legitimate and given a name, or illegitimate and abandoned. It is well known that Spartans killed weak or malformed babies, and all Greeks abandoned most of the newborns. Conclusion: The internet is incredibly censored and softened to present an infantile, saccharine reality. Like the ancient folk tales, where the Big Bad Wolf ate the grandmother and the girl too, while contemporary versions tell some sweet nonsense. 

Pic.: Yoruba naming ceremony.

How Christian Algeria became Arab

The Wiki explains why Algeria is Algeria: 

 Between the Nile and the Red Sea were living Bedouin nomad tribes expelled from Arabia for their disruption and turbulency. The Banu Hilal and the Banu Sulaym for example, who regularly disrupted farmers in the Nile Valley since the nomads would often loot their farms. The then Fatimid vizier decided to destroy what he could not control, and broke a deal with the chiefs of these Bedouin tribes..The Fatimids even gave them money to leave.

Whole tribes set off with women, children, elders, animals and camping equipment. Most arrived in Ifriqiya by the Gabes region, arriving 1051. The Zirid ruler tried to stop this rising tide, but with each encounter, the last under the walls of Kairouan, his troops were defeated and the Arabs remained masters of the battlefield. The Arabs usually did not take control over the cities, instead looting them and destroying them.

Mansourah Mosque, Tlemcen

The invasion kept going, and in 1057 the Arabs spread on the high plains of Constantine where they encircled the Qalaa of Banu Hammad (capital of the Hammadid Emirate), as they had done in Kairouan a few decades ago. From there they gradually gained the upper Algiers and Oran plains. Some of these territories were forcibly taken back by the Almohads in the second half of the 12th century. The influx of Bedouin tribes was a major factor in the linguistic, cultural Arabisation of the Maghreb and in the spread of nomadism in areas where agriculture had previously been dominant. Ibn Khaldun noted that the lands ravaged by the Banu Hilal tribes had become completely arid desert.^[88]

Algeria's name derives from the Arabic Jazāʾir Banī Mazghanna (جزائر بني مزغنة, 'islands of Bani Mazghanna')

 

They lost me

 
I scheduled a meeting this morning but could not make it on time, and I probably lost the account. 

Nasdaq index rocketed 4% up yesterday, and I estimated that TASE would follow. It did not; it is on red. Is USA tariff agreement with China bad for us? Is HAMAS agreement with President Trump bad for Israel? Israel expected Trump to visit Israel, but he ignored us and went to the wealthy Arabs in Saudi Arabia. 

 I am lost. 

Houthi missile destroyed in the air

Ten minutes ago, the Civil Defense alarm sounded, and we moved to the hardened shelter room. The city became quieter, more so than usual on a sunny Friday afternoon. Already, we can see the missile being hit by an Arrow 3 (pic). I'm continuing with the difficult Gan Yavne project. That's my life in short. No big pleasure. 

The Client, after working without a permit for 15 years, gave the project to a known permitting office. There, the job wandered from one desk to another, till I asked for a file on what they were doing and sent my half-finished plan to them. I should never have done that! NEVER SHOW A HALF-FINISHED WORK TO A COMPETITOR. That horrible woman immediately fired an ugly email to our Client, stating that I was working on the wrong plan and it was all wrong. The client immediately called What the hell are you doing? I took a tranquilizer and sat down to investigate what was going on. Clearly, they are re-planning the whole building, while I am trying to get the permit for the building as it is. I hate those uncooperative, aggressive, embittered women I find once and again in my work in Israel.  

Carving Up Syria

 Epoch magazine says that Turkiye and Israel are holding conversations in Azerbaijan over their respective areas of influence in Syria. Just now, I am rereading the book about the Sykes-Picot line that marked the mandates of France and Britain after WWI.  In the last hundred years, Turkey has rebuilt itself as a regional hegemon, and the insubstantial Zionist movement has grown into a strong state in the Middle East. The old imperialist powers, Britain and France, have enough Arabs and little interest in acquiring more.

Unimaginable Futures

 
Claude: Based on trends, we can estimate when the birth numbers might equalize:

If Poland continues its approximately 11% annual decline in births (from ~272,000 in 2023), and Israel maintains relatively stable birth numbers around 180,000 (with slight variations), the crossover point would be reached in approximately 4-5 years (around 2029-2030).

By that time:

• Poland's births would be around: 272,000 × (0.89)^5 ≈ 160,000
• Israel's births would likely remain around 180,000 or grow slightly

For this old Eastern European Jew, it is unimaginable that Israel will have more births than Poland. A few years ago, a German said that, according to the trend current then, Guatemala would soon be more populous than Germany, which was impossible and unimaginable for him. As things are now, that is still far away. 

Surprise

 לקח זמן לגורמים בישראל להגיב על הודעת הנשיא טראמפ, לפיה החות'ים נכנעו ולא רוצים להילחם יותר - והנשיא גם
סומך על מילתם והורה להפסיק מתקפות נגדם. כשבירושלים התאוששו מהאירוע מספיק כדי להגיב, התגובה שניתנה למי שפנה ושאל, הייתה לא רשמית, בעילום שם והסתכמה בהודאה הכנה: "לא ידענו. טראמפ הפתיע אותנו".

"It took time for officials in Israel to respond to President Trump's announcement that the Houthis had surrendered and no longer want to fight - and the President also trusts their word and ordered them to stop attacks against them. When Jerusalem recovered from the event enough to respond, the response given to those who approached and asked was unofficial, anonymous, and amounted to an honest admission: 'We didn't know. Trump surprised us."

Houthi official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti explicitly denied that they would halt their terrorist activities altogether, stating: "We stress that we will not commit to stopping our military operations in the Red Sea".