PETER PAUL & MARY

Krasnaya Armiya honoured

Kever Benjamin City, like her big sis Tel Aviv, has many small hidden gardens and plazas. In front of Majdi's Oriental Restaurant we have a humble monument in white chalkstone to the Red Army (Krasnaya Armiya). The city has many WWII veterans.  

Hungarian Orthodox News: Jesájá Silberstein rabbi csodája -

From my Mother's side, I am from Vac and heard stories about the Rabbi. But this is unheard of. Below, the yeshive of Vac (Weitzen). There are no Jews left in that city.

Exotic Weapons

In his book, Shadows in the Sun, Davis (1998: 20) recounts what is now arguably one of the most popular ethnographic accounts of all time:

“There is a well known account of an old Inuit man who refused to move into a settlement. Over the objections of his family, he made plans to stay on the ice. To stop him, they took away all of his tools. So in the midst of a winter gale, he stepped out of their igloo, defecated, and honed the feces into a frozen blade, which he sharpened with a spray of saliva. With the knife he killed a dog. Using its rib cage as a sled and its hide to harness another dog, he disappeared into the darkness.”

Since publication, this story has been told and re-told in documentaries, books, and across internet websites and message boards (Davis, 2007, Davis, 2010; Gregg et al., 2000; Kokoris, 2012; Taete, 2015). Davis states that the original source of the tale was Olayuk Narqitarvik (Davis, 2003, Davis, 2009). It was allegedly Olayuk's grandfather in the 1950s who refused to go to the settlements and thus fashioned a knife from his own feces to facilitate his escape by skinning and disarticulating a dog.

Source: Science (sic)!

Tax Payers vs Benefits Receivers

Short  note: I made a calculation of Japan's taxpaying population (working age minus unemployment minus those earning less than the average salary, who are not taxed) in comparison with the retirement and other benefits drawing population. The Japanese State extracts less taxes from the population than pays out as benefits, and the situation is worsening. Japan makes up the difference assuming debts, that probably will never pay back.

Another interesting calculation is if the African population of America is a net tax contributor or it is burden to the State. Apparently they are positive contributors, although very marginal. It is the middle class (including the Jews that pay much of the revenue) that are keeping America in work. The same with Israeli Arabs, they are not much of a burden for the State, mostly because they are young. Contrary to what everybody is thinking, keeping them pacified does not cost much. 

This issue called my attention because I wrote exams for TALDOR (Ministry of Education) and they paid me only half of the published pay scale (50% tax!). And six month late. I'll come back to this thing later.

The Islamic University of Gaza

I have been looking for water engineering information on the internet and found that the Islamic University of Gaza, Faculty of Engineering, has excellent teaching materials. I also like its seal. 

I am learning new and surprising things every day.  

Political Thoughts from Pakistan

Leaving aside the moral and functional (non) desirability of parliamentary democracy in ethnically fractured societies... let's analyze China’s political economy... Source.
It is a skilled, efficient, and meritocratically recruited bureaucracy. This bureaucracy (which is the primary beneficiary of the system) has as its main duty to maintain stability and the integrity of the country, as well as to promote economic growth. Its feature is the absence of rule of law i.e. its unequivocal application. This is necessary to ensure that businessmen (or provincial chieftains) are never in a position to become primary drivers of government behaviour, which they would if a stable and consistent application of law was ensured. Instead, the state retains authority and autonomy precisely because it can choose to apply the law to whomever and wherever it wishes. It is apparent that these two main features are in permanent contradiction. How can you have a technocratic and meritocratic bureaucracy at the same time as the transient absence of rule of law? Therefore, the system is always in a precarious equilibrium.

J's corollary: More than a precarious equilibrium, the system is rapidly evolving to a one-man hereditary Emperor + meritocratic mandarinate, which seems to me the natural political order of China.