Three Suns and One Planet

Of course I am reading his books. Interesting. The man is not normal. He is a nervous wreck, full of involuntary ticks and rictuses. Sounds very intelligent. The woman too is very notable.

Reality and Dreams

Yesterday evening I went down to buy sour bread and the bald Yemeni behind the counter was flirting with a good looking woman I had been ogling, and he was making her to blush. The brown baker raised her hand across the counter to hit her - a gesture of good nature dominance. He noticed that I was looking and said "It is nothing, she is my neighbor". Then, to dissimulate, "Bye, sister". I left depressed.

Drank some wine and slept well. Had a beautiful happy dream, I was in high school, but not like the drab unisex Colegio Nacional Mariano Moreno but a colorful building with fresh bright-eyed girls.

These things should not happen to an over seventy fat Jewish man. I'll never be young again, the light flirting is finished for me. Now, what?

Outlasting the Syrian War

How will end the Syrian civil war? After a decade of conflict, half of the population has abandoned their homes and lands and businesses, and the per capita product is about 3000 US$. The army of some 200,000 has suffered 40,000 casualties. Yet there is still a functioning government in Damascus.

In the North, confused fighting goes on with foreign troops on the land: Russians, Turks, Iraqis and Iranians. And the new Kurdish nation. And American "advisers". The question: Is this prolonged armed conflict weakening and emptying the Syrian State? Or the continued fighting is hardening and strengthening the Syrian Army? Is Syrian territory being divided up among fractions and lead to independent statelets?

According to military doctrine (Hoover Institute) the winners will be those who enter the war in its final phase, those with strong nerves that stayed on the sides while the others bleed themselves white. An impoverished nation cannot support for long a fighting army, a famished army fast degrades to bandits. The result in twenty years will be a wealthy, stable and strong Israel surrounded by exhausted, overpopulated and very poor nations. Pic.: a 9000 skeleton mass grave in Lutzen,from the German Thirty Years War.

Grandaughter today.

 

The Crossness Pumping Station

I spent many hours in pumping stations, in Israel and other countries, and never saw a more beautiful and inventive sewage facility. This Victorian station was a revolution in it design, in the enormous iron wheels and gates. I am a fan of everything related to the British industrial revolution, and could spend another week in the Manchester Industrial Museum and roaming the old factories and kilns of North West England. I for one think the Industrial Revolution had an important esthetic element, the machines were elegant and much decorated, their products useful, cheap and beautiful. I had a dream of renting a boat or barge, and to explore England's network of canals, but my wife and daughters are not interested. Well, some dreams have to be left for the next life, not that there will be one.

The Kingdom of David

Lately I am seeing ambitious maps depicting an Israelite kingdom with extensive (possibly imaginary) borders. Contemporary Palestinians (Plishtim in Hebrew = Invaders) negate even the historicity of David and Solomon, they definitely do not like this map. Just to make it easier to mentally overlay it on today's political division, put your finger on Damascus, the capital of Syria. On the hand, the Mediterranean coastal strips north from Haifa and in Gaza are not included in the kingdom, they are Phoenician and Philistine respectively. Regarding the Phoenicians, they were Hebrew speaking Canaanites, a brother nation, so we may be their legitimate inheritors. Regarding Philistines, they disappeared and the solution to this mystery is that they were absorbed in the Israelite nation. 

Iranians in Western China

The whole of Western China was peopled by an Iranian people called Saka. One of their branches was the Tokarian that had a developed culture (pic) and spoke an Arian language similar to the Persian. Yet from the Tenth Century AD they lost to competing Turkish tribes and disappeared. The only remnant are the Uyghurs, that are thoroughly mixed and look Asian. Only a few of them have clear eyes and semi-European features.

In the vast space of Central Asia where the Iranian race encountered the Turkish/Chinese race, the result was a steady advance of the Asians toward the West, encroaching on Iranian lands, a progress that only stopped on the Mediterranean coast. The Iranians have been retreating for a millennium, even their central homeland on the Iranian plateau is being colonized by Azeri Turks.

The Iranians have much to offer to humanity, it should be a pity if they were to follow their brothers the Saka of China.