Dreaming

Lately, my dreams deal with leaving. This night I owned a large gas station in Hungary and the SS sent me an invitation to their office. I presumed it was to expropriate my business, so decided to give it up and emigrate with my family. I felt no loss, the tone of the dream was light and before I woke I was just about to sleep with a beautiful lily-white girl. In my "real" life, I am leaving the university and accepting fewer commissions to start slipping into retirement. 

No one is guilty of the Flint Water Poisoning

It took five years of judicial investigations to realize that there were issues with the original investigation. Now it all re-starts from zero. 

“The Michigan Attorney General’s Office has dismissed all pending criminal charges arising from the Flint drinking water crisis, saying it has instead started over with an expanded investigation,” per USA Today. “The office … announced the dismissal of charges against all eight remaining defendants, including an involuntary manslaughter charge against Nick Lyon, the former director of the Department of Health and Human Services. Charges were also dismissed against other officials from the health department, plus two former Flint emergency managers and current or former employees of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the City of Flint.”

Just as I wrote at the first day, there was no crisis, there was no one harmed, the whole thing was made up to frighten the Blacks that racists were conspiring to poison them, and make them vote for Hillary. Good she lost. The pic is from the Jacobin that holds a different position.

In the article "Flint's Bottom Line", Jacobin concludes:  Detroit and Flint, taken together, lay bare a brutal fact — Michigan no longer seems to have any need for a large proportion of its children.  

What does it mean? Jacobin seems to suggest that yes, it was a racist conspiracy to dumb down and kill black children. Anyway, Jacobin says, there is no need for them. Jacobin seems to incite division and strife. 

Preserving exclusivity

The City of Herzliya is fighting against the Apolonia development (pic) arguing that has no infrastructure to another ten thousand inhabitants. They want to be inaccessible and preserve high real estate values. San Francisco has arrived to Herzliya. I do not like this anti-growth wave. 

TEVA flying with backwind

(1)  Oklahoma agreed to accept 80 million dollar penalty to discharge TEVA from the opioid pushing blame. May be it will be the end of all the litigation on the subject.
(2) The Competition Administration ordered TEVA to sell its Allergan business, and yesterday it was signed. Another problem solved.
TEVA's shares jumped 7%. I have some shares.

The East Asians

Spandrell profiles the Chinese people: "East Asians are just civilized but profoundly different people who mostly dislike us, think we’re weird, and just want to be left alone, taking advantage of us and scamming us money every now and then."  Correct. Spandrell  impresses me as one of those Russian Jewish refugees of the seventies, who instead of making Aliyah went to the USA. He loves languages. Now he is wandering in East Asia, teaching English to the locals or teaching Chinese to expats.

Average Building Permit Process Time in Israel: Five Years

HaAretz: the bureaucracy in Israel is a monopoly game: there are traps in the road that make you start anew. This time the leftwing fishwrap says the truth. For a building permit in this country they make you carry a heavy and expensive cross along the Via Dolorosa. The regulation adds 10% to the selling price. As an engineer, I am part of that ten percent. Sorry.

Global Hawk Is Watching You

Iran shot down an American surveillance drone, a naval variant of the Global Hawk. The pic shows the size and the fearsome profile of the bird. Haven't been these technologies made obsolete by spy satellites? Apparently the Hawk observes reality with a higher resolution and can sample the air over a chemical factory or an Israeli workers restaurant (today's menu: Fasulia). BTW, the Global Hawk costs 200 million US dollars. There are only 40 of them.