MemoriesAndThoughts

על תנועת Occupy Wall Street ושיטת הממשל בארה"ב

2012-01-22T12:15:00.000-05:00

על תנועת Occupy Wall Street ושיטת הממשל בארה"ב

שיטתהממשל בארה"ב:

כישראלים, אנו נוטים לחשוב שבארה"ב ישבחירות אחת לארבע שנים, כאשר נבחר הנשיא, או מקסימום מכירים בבחירות "אמצעהתקופה" מדי שנתיים. למעשה, מערכת הבחירות בארה"ב מורכבת ביותר. בנובמברשל כל שנה נערכות בחירות, ובכל תקופת בחירות כזו האזרחים בוחרים את נבחרי הציבורשלהם וכן מצביעים על משאלי עם בנושאים ממוקדים, עליהם התשובה היא כן או לא. כדוגמהלמשאל עם ממוקד יחסית מפורסם אפשר לקחת את "נושא 8" בקליפורניה, שעלהבשנת 2008, ובו האזרחים במדינת קליפורניה הביעו את דעתם על החוקיות של נישואיםחד-מיניים. מטרת המשאל הזה הייתה להפוך החלטה של בית המשפט העליון בקליפורניהשאישר קודם לכן את חוקיותם של נישואים חד-מיניים, ואכן היה רוב להפיכתם ללאחוקיים.

מערכת הממשל האמריקאית מחולקת, בגדול, לשלושרמות: כלל ארה"ב (להלן, פדראלית), מדינתית, ומחוזית. ברמה הפדראלית הנשיאנבחר אחת לארבע שנים, חברי הסנאט נבחרים אחת לשש שנים (כל שנתיים שליש מחברי הסנאטעומד לבחירה), וחברי בית הנבחרים נבחרים אחת לשנתיים. בסנאט מיוצגת כל מדינה עלידי שני סנאטורים ובבית הנבחרים מיוצגת כל מדינה באופן פרופורציוני לגודלהאוכלוסיה במדינה. כך, מדינות גדולות כמו קליפורניה וטקסס זוכות לייצוג רחב יותרבבית הנבחרים לעומת מדינות קטנות כמו דלאוור. שני הסנאטורים שמייצגים את המדינותמכונים ה"בכיר" וה"זוטר" (senior and junior) עלפי הותק שלהם. חברי בית הנבחרים נבחרים בכדי לייצג את המחוז שלהם, וחלוקת המחוזותנקבעת כך: אחת לעשור נערך מפקד של כל תושבי ארה"ב, ובעקבות תוצאות המפקדמחולקים מושבים בבית הנבחרים הפדראלי למדינות. כך, למשל, מדינות כמו אוהיו ומישיגןאיבדו מושבים בעקבות המפקד של שנת 2010 לטובת מדינות כמו טקסס. מחוזות המדינה בכלמדינה נקבעים על ידי בתי המחוקקים של המדינה ומאושרים על ידי המושל של המדינה.התהליך הזה מתבצע עכשיו, וכבר עתה ברור שחלוקת המחוזות מתבצעת באופן בו יהיה קליותר למפלגה השלטת באותה מדינה להבטיח את בחירת מירב נציגיה. לדוגמא, באוהיו,הערים הן לרוב מעוז דמוקרטי ושאר אוהיו נוטה לטובת הרפובליקנים, שמחזיקים כעת ברובולכן מחלקים את המחוזות באופן שיקל על בחירת רפובליקנים. יש לכך חשיבות רבה שאעמודעליה בהמשך.

הקונגרס מורכב מבית הנבחרים ומהסנאט גם יחד,ומהווה את הרשות המחוקקת, שבניגוד לנהוג בישראל, יכול להיות עם רוב לחברי המפלגהשמתנגדת לנשיא. החל משנת 2010 ישנו רוב בבית הנבחרים לחברי המפלגה הרפובליקנית,בסנאט יש רוב לדמוקרטים, והנשיא אובמה הוא דמוקרטי. גם לנשיא בוש הבן היה קונגרסלעומתי החל מ- 2006 וכללית זה לא מצב נדיר.

ברמת המדינות התמונה דומה, כאשר אחת לארבע שניםנבחרים מושלי המדינות, וישנן גם בחירות לחברי הסנאט ובית הנבחרים של המדינה. ברמתהמדינות כל מחוז מיוצג על ידי המחוז. אז מה האמריקאים בוחרים? בעיקרון הכל, החלמנשיא ועד לגזבר המועצה, מחברי קונגרס ועד אחרון התובעים, שופטים בכל רמה אפשריתשל בית המשפט, מועצות פדגוגיות, ועוד ועוד.

לכאורה, זו הדמוקרטיה האולטימטיבית: אתה לאמרוצה מהחלטתו של התובע המחוזי לא להעמיד לדין את השכן שלך? תחליף אותו בבחירותהבאות. יחד עם זאת יש לכך מחיר. ראשית, מחיר כלכלי: כל מערכת בחירות כזו, והן דיתכופות, עולה כסף למועמדים. חלקם מביאים את הכסף הזה מהבית, אם יש להם, וחלקם,בייחוד במערכות בחירות לרמות הגבוהות יותר, מממנים לפחות חלק ממסע הבחירות באמצעותתורמים, שכמובן דורשים תמורה בעד התרומה, אם זה על ידי מעורבות בהחלטות או קידוםנושאים אישיים.

מכאן גם נובע שבכדי להיות פוליטיקאי, ובעיקרברמת הבכירות, עליך להחזיק בהון אישי לא קטן, או בקשרים שיאפשרו לך לגייס הוןמתורמים עשירים, כלומר להיות מסוגל להתחכך במאיונים העליונים.

רפובליקנים, דמוקרטים ומה שביניהם:

במבט שטחי נראה שהמערכת הפוליטית בארה"בפשוטה ביותר: ישנן רק שתי מפלגות – רפובליקנית ודמוקרטית. יחד עם זאת, מבט מעמיקיותר מציג תמונה קצת יותר מורכבת, שאותה אנסה לצייר עכשיו.

ראשית, ישנן מפלגות נוספות, שאינן מיוצגות כללבבית הנבחרים האמריקאי (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_States),בעיקר כי אין להן שום סיכוי להכניס נציגים. שיטת הממשל, שבה נבחר לייצג את המחוזהמועמד שזכה למירב הקולות מביאה לכך שרק נציגי מפלגות המרכז נבחרים. כפי שניתןלראות, רק שני נציגים בקונגרס הנוכחי אינם משתייכים לאף מפלגה גדולה. יחד עם זאת,צריך לזכור ש"מרכז" הוא דבר יחסי למחוז בו נבחרים המועמדים ואין דמיוןבין עמדות המרכז במסצ'וסטס למרכז בטקסס. זו, למשל, אחת הסיבות העיקריות שעליהןהמועמדים הקונסרבטיביים (ניוט גינגריץ', ריק סנטורום) מבססים את הטיעונים שלהם נגדהמועמד מיט רומני, שהיה מושל מסצ'וסטס, ושבתקופתו הועברה במסצ'וסטס רפורמת בריאות,שלטענתם (וגם לטענת הנשיא אובמה) דומה לרפורמה, השנואה על הרפובליקנים, של הנשיא.

אז מה ההבדל בין המפלגות בארה"ב? על מהנסוב הויכוח בין הדיעות? למעשה ישנם שני צירים מרכזיים לדיעות הפוליטיותבארה"ב: שמרנות חברתית מול ליברליות חברתית ושמרנות כלכלית (שוק חופשי) מולליברליות כלכלית (מעורבות ממשלה).

שמרנות חברתית כוללת: אמונה בדת, וכתוצאה מזההתנגדות להפלות, שהן נושא שנוי במחלוקת בארה"ב, התנגדות להגירה ולמיעוטים,כולל מהגרים לא חוקיים והקשחת תנאי ההגירה לחוקיים, ושימור מעמדה של ארה"בכמעצמת-על יחידה, ובכלל זה נטייה להגדיל את תקציב הביטחון וקיום צבא שמסוגללהתמודד במספר מערכות קרקעיות גדולות (לדוגמה: הזירות באירופה ובאוקיינוס השקטבזמן מלחמת העולם השנייה), ובעד התיקון השני לחוקה (הזכות לשאת נשק). הדוגמההמייצגת ביותר של הקו הזה הוא ריק סנטורום, שעמדותיו נגד זוגות חד-מיניים גרמו להםליצור לו את "בעיית הגוגל" שלו (פשוט תגגלו santorum, אבל עלאחריותכם האישית בלבד אם תקיאו).

לעומת השמרנים חברתית, הליברלים החברתיים תומכיםבחופש דת, בזכות האישה להפיל, בשוויון זכויות לכולם, כולל מהגרים, מיעוטים וזרים,וכן תומכים בהכרה במעמדן של מעצמות מובילות אחרות בעולם, ובעיקר עם סין, יפן,בריטניה, רוסיה, גרמניה, צרפת, הודו וברזיל. המייצג הפוליטי של עמדה זו היא הנשיאאובמה.

שמרנות כלכלית כוללת צמצום גודל הממשל ומעורבותבכלכלה, הפחתת מסים, צמצום הגירעון הכלכלי, תמיכה בשוק החופשי, ביטול רגולציות, וביטולסוכנויות שאמונות על אכיפתן, לדוגמת הסוכנות להגנת הסביבה (EPA), מנהל התרופותוהמזון (FDA), ומשרדהחינוך הפדראלי, שאחראי על תוכנית הלימודים. על פי שיטה זו המשק ינהל את עצמווידאג לכל השאר. בתחום הזה ישנה סתירה בולטת בין מועמדים כמו רון פול (ובמידהמסויימת מרבית תנועת "מסיבת התה", ראה איור 1), שלחלוטין רוצה להקטין אתהממשל, כולל הוצאות על צבא, לטובת צמצום הגרעון, ובין מרבית המפלגה הרפובליקנית,שתומכת בצבא גדול ויקר, וביחד עם צמצום מסים לא ברור מה התוכנית שלהם לצמצוםהגרעון (בעתיד אפרסם על הגרעון האמריקאי ודרכים להתמודדות איתו).

ליברליזם כלכלי כולל הרחבה של מעורבות הממשלהבכלכלה, אכיפת רגולציות, חיזוק הסוכנויות האמונות עליהן (כולל הקמת סוכנות להגנתהלקוחות מפני הבנקים, ששנויה מאד במחלוקת כרגע). יחד עם זאת יש לשים לב שגםהליברליזם הכלכלי בארה"ב איננו סוציאליזם. גם הרפורמות של אובמה בכלכלהובבריאות לא מביאות את ארה"ב למצב שבו הממשל המרכזי מנהל את המערכות האלה.

איור 1: דיאגרמה סכמתית שלעמדות הימין, השמאל, והמועמד רון פול. (מקור: http://boingboing.net/2012/01/07/ron-paul-the-venn-diagram.html)

שיטת הממשל הנוכחית בארה"ב מחזקת אתהקיצוניים משני הצדדים בשני אופנים: ראשית, בזמן הפריימריז, כיוון שהמועמדיםמתמודדים רק נגד מועמדים אחרים מתוך המפלגה, כל אחד מנסה להציג שהוא "יותרמפלגתי" מהשאר, כיוון שממילא הוא יודע שהוא לא צריך לחזר אחרי קולות הצדהשני. כך, למשל, אם עוקבים אחרי האמירות של מיט רומני במסע הבחירות הנוכחילמועמדות המפלגה הרפובליקנית לנשיאות, הן סותרות לחלוטין אמירות ומעשים שהוא עשהכמושל מסצ'וסטס, הן בתחום הבריאות והן בתחום היחס לזוגות חד-מיניים או לדת בכלל.הסיבה לכך היא שהוא צריך לחזר אחרי הקולות השמרניים יותר, בעוד שהליברלים במפלגהכבר איתו. שנית, החלוקה למחוזות גורמת לכך שכל מחוז די מובטח למפלגה מסוימת. כך,למעשה, הפריימריז קובעים את המנצח, וכאמור בנקודה הקודמת, זו הסיבה לניצחוןמועמדים שמבטיחים לא להתפשר.

כתוצאה מההקצנה של הנבחרים, המערכת הפוליטית,בייחוד במצב שבו בית הנבחרים הוא אופוזיציוני לנשיא, לא מסוגלת לתפקד. ובעקבותזאת, גם הנשיא והממשל לא יכולים לתפקד. הנשיא צריך את אישור הקונגרס לכל הפעולותהמרכזיות של הממשל, ובכלל זה אישור התקציב, הטלת מסים, הכרזת מלחמות, חקיקה,ומינויים לתפקידים בכירים. במצב הנוכחי, בו בבית הנבחרים יש רוב מסיבי שלרפובליקנים, שחלקם שייך ל"מפלגת התה" והנשיא דמוקרטי, הממשל מתנהל ממשברלמשבר. בקיץ בקושי העבירו את העלאת תקרת החוב הלאומי, ומדי כמה חודשים בקושימאשרים תקציב ביניים לחודשים הבאים. אחוזי התמיכה של האזרחים בקונגרס צנחו בחודשיםהאחרונים, מאז הקיץ, לאזור ה- 10% (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/16/congress-approval-rating-porn-polygamy_n_1098497.html).

וכאן, סוף סוף, אנחנו מגיעים לתנועת Occupy Wall Street.

Occupy Wall Street (OWS)והמחאה החברתית:

בקיץ 2011 ראינו תנועות מחאה כלכליות בכל העולם.בגרמניה שרפו מכוניות, באנגליה היו מהומות שיצאו מכל רסן, בספרד ויוון הפגנות קשותנגד מדיניות ממשלתית מצמצת, בישראל מחאת האוהלים ובארה"ב קמה תנועת OWS. המשותףלכל המחאות האלה הוא חוסר אמון במערכת הכלכלית הנוכחית במדינות המערב. את שורשיהשל התנועה אפשר למצוא עוד בשנות ה- 80 של המאה הקודמת, וספציפית אפשר לייחס אותםלשני אנשים: הנשיא רונלד רייגן וראש ממשלת בריטניה מרגרט תאצ'ר. שניהם, אגב, זוכיםלהערצה חסרת גבול בקרב מנהיגי השמרנים כלכלית וחברתית (http://youtu.be/t-1XSarLhls).

בעקבות המדיניות הכלכלית של שנות ה- 80, המגמהבמערב נטתה לכיוונים הבאים: גלובליזציה – העברת תעשיה ושירותים כמה שיותר להיכןשיותר זול להשיגם, הקטנת נטל המס, הורדת רגולציה, וצמצום התמיכה הסוציאלית בחלשים.כתוצאה מזה, התחוללו שני תהליכים: מחד, הכלכלה צמחה במידה ניכרת ומאידך, הפעריםבין רמות השכר וההון המוחזק של העשירון העליון לשאר העשירונים גדלו עוד יותר,במיוחד בארה"ב (ראה איור 2, מתוך http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/cwed/wp/wealth_in_the_us.pdf).

איור 2 - אחוז מהעושר הלאומי המוחזק על ידי חלקים באוכלוסיה.מקור: berkeley.edu/cwed/wp/wealth_in_the_us.pdf

למעשה, הפערים הכלכלים בארה"ב הגיעולמימדים הגבוהים ביותר מאז שנות ה- 20 של המאה הקודמת, שבסופן היה המשבר הכלכליהגדול של 1929 (גם על זה אולי כדאי יהיה להרחיב בעתיד).

תנועת OWS חרטה את הסיסמה "אנחנו ה- 99%". מהשהם יוצאים כנגדו הוא שחוקי המשחק בעשורים האחרונים היטיבו עם האחוזון העליון, עלחשבונם של השאר. כיצד זה קרה? בגלל שיטת הממשל בארה"ב, כפי שהזכרתי קודם לכן,המועמדים לבחירות נזקקים להון רב, ובייחוד בבחירות בפדראליות, ההוצאה היא אדירה.זה גורם לשני דברים: ראשית, כל המועמדים מגיעים מאותו מאיון עליון (ראה http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2012/news/economy/1201/gallery.presedential-candidates-wealth/) כי פשוט אף אחד אחר לא יכול להרשות את זהלעצמו. ושנית, הם מגייסים הון עצום מבעלי הון. בבחירות הנוכחיות, התהליך הזה מתבצעבעיקר באמצעות SuperPACs,עמותות שלכאורה אינן קשורות למועמדים (על זה ראו: http://www.nj.com/njvoices/index.ssf/2012/01/stephen_colbert_super_pac_jon.html), ושיכולות לגייס כלסכום ללא מגבלה. הן מקבלות תרומות אדירות, של מיליוני דולרים מתומכים, וכמובן,התומכים היחידים שיכולים להרשות לעצמם סכומים כאלה הם עשירים. לדוגמה, שלדוןאדלסון, הבעלים של העיתון "ישראל היום" תרם כמה מיליוני דולרים לניוטגינגריץ' תמורת הבטחת התמיכה שלו בישראל (http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/sheldon-adelson-and-newt-gingrich-one-gained-clout-from-friendship-the-other-funding/2012/01/11/gIQACvSrBQ_story.html. הכל חוקי, בייחוד בהתבסס על החלטת בית המשפטהעליון בארה"ב שמתירה לתאגדים, תחת התיקון הראשון לחוקה (חופש הביטוי), לתרוםכל סכום למועמדים לבחירות, אבל כתוצאה מזה, הכוח הפוליטי, שגם כך היה פרופורציונילכוח הכלכלי, התחזק עוד יותר לטובת העשירים ותומכיהם.

למה אי השיוויון הכלכלי והשפעתו על הפוליטיקהמוביל? מחקר שבוצע על ידי המרכז New England Complex Systems Institute(גילוי נאות: אני מועמד לעבודה שם) הראה שלפחות חלק מהמשבר הכלכלי של שנת 2008ניתן לייחוס לביטול רגולציה, ובמיוחד לביטול ה- "uptick rule",כלל שנועד למנוע ביצוע עסקאות באופציות מכר כשהמניות עליהן האופציות מבוססותיורדות (ובכך להגביר את הנפילה שלהן בבורסה), כתוצאה מלחץ מסיבי של לוביסטים (http://necsi.edu/headlines/uptickreport.html).באופן כללי, לוביסטים בוושינגטון הם תעשיה גדולה ונרחבת, ומחקר עדכני מראה שההחזרעל השקעה בלוביסטים מראה שההחזר נאמד בעשרות אלפי אחוזים (http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forget-stocks-or-bonds-invest-in-a-lobbyist).גם אם ההערכה היא אופטימית מאד, עדיין מדובר כנראה במכפילים נאים על השקעה.

תנועת OWS ודומותיה בעולםלמעשה תוקפות את השיטה הזו, שבה הון קונה השפעה על השלטון, והשלטון, מצידו, מקל עלבעלי ההון על ידי הסרת מכשולים בדרכם. איך זה יכול לעבוד בחברה דמוקרטית ובשיטותהממשל הנוכחיות? לא ברור. די ברור, שכאשר נחקקים חוקים שאוסרים על תורמים פוליטייםלתרום בשמם, כלומר התרומות הן אנונימיות (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-13-2011/lawrence-lessig),אף אחד לא תורם, וזה כמובן מעורר בעיה כפולה – רק עשירים יוכלו לממן לעצמם אתהבחירות, ובנוסף, מי בכלל ירצה להוציא כל כך הרבה כסף רק בשביל להשתלב בשלטון? מהשדי ברור הוא, שהמצב הנוכחי עלול לערער את יציבותן של המערכות הכלכליות (http://necsi.edu/projects/yaneer/owsdesc.html)והפוליטיות כפי שאנחנו מכירים אותן, באותה מידה שבה המשבר של שנת 1929 ערער אתסדרי עולם, סייע בעלייתן של אידיאולוגיות קיצוניות, והוביל למלחמת העולם השנייהעשור לאחר מכן.

ברוך הבא גלעד שליט

2011-10-18T09:04:00.001-04:00

גלעד שליט שוחרר בשעה טובה ומוצלחת היום בבוקר וחזר לחיק הוריו. קשה לחשוב על רגע אחר, שכל כך הרבה אנשים ציפו לו במשך כל כך הרבה זמן. ומובן גם חיוכו של ראש הממשלה, שללא ספק עשה את מה שקודמיו לא הצליחו לעשות, להחזיר את "הילד", כפי שגלעד כונה על ידי התקשורת הישראלית, הביתה.

נשאלת השאלה, למה בעצם נחתמה העסקה הזו דווקא עכשיו, כשקודמיו של בנימין נתניהו בתפקיד סירבו לעסקאות בהיקפים דומים, קרי כאלף מחבלים ובהם כמה עשרות עם הרבה דם על הידיים? אומר ראש המוסד לשעבר, מאיר דגן, שהעסקה הזו גרועה מזו שאהוד אולמרט דחה בשעתו. אינני בקיא בפרטים, אבל אני מוכן לסמוך על אחד מראשי המוסד המוצלחים ביותר שהיו למדינת ישראל אם הוא אומר את זה.

השאלה הזו מנקרת במוחי כל העת. שלא יהיה ספק, אני שמח מאד בשמחתו של גלעד שליט, ובשמחת משפחתו שיכולה לנשום לרווחה לראשונה מזה שנים רבות. אני רק לא מבין למה זה לקח כל כך הרבה זמן, אם אפשר היה לסגור את העסקה הזו במחיר קטן או שווה מהמחיר ששולם עכשיו? החלק הבאמת ציניקן במוח שלי, זה שמנסה לחפש איך אחרים מנצלים מצבים שונים כדי להרוויח מהם, חושב שאולי העיתוי עכשיו קשור פחות ל"אביב הערבי", ל"סתיו המצרי" ו"לחורף האיראני" ואולי הוא קשור יותר ל"קיץ הישראלי" עתיר המחאות החברתיות ומאבק הרופאים.

הצעתי לחברה הישראלית בכלל ולראש הממשלה בפרט היא להמשיך את הדיון הכלכלי-חברתי ולמצוא פתרון של כבוד למצוקת הרופאים המתמחים. אינני מתיימר לדעת מה עובר לגלעד שליט בראש כעת, אבל אני מקווה בשבילו שהוא חזר למדינה דמוקרטית ואחראית חברתית, ולא למדינה בה ראש הממשלה עושה כל מאמץ כדי להרוס אותם..

A thought about engineering students

2011-10-16T10:58:00.001-04:00

I have been an engineering professor in the last three years. In these years I have seen great students, good students, and sometimes bad students. I think the main differences between the groups were their inclination towards engineering skills, i.e. mathematical skills, ability to decompose complicated problems into manageable sub-problems, and ability to see the bigger picture. This led me to believe that some students are probably not cut for engineering. This doesn't mean they are not intelligent and I believe that many of them can have great skills in other professions.
So, why, then, are they studying engineering instead of other things they could enjoy and excel in? I think the problem stems from the early age in which American students go to college. At 18 they start, which means that by 17 they already supposed to know what they would want to do in the future. At this age, many young students are still not quite mature enough to make such decisions, and they are probably influenced quite a lot by peer pressure and parents pressure. As a result, their decision depends on factors other than their abilities and wishes, which should be the deciding factors.
What is the problem? The problem is that, in many, cases, these students will start their 4 or 5 years in college studying for engineering, accrue a huge debt in student loans, and then will not be able to enjoy practicing engineering. Many of them may even decide to drop out of college or change their choice. I had a brilliant sophomore student once that dropped from engineering because after two years in college he realized that he wanted to become a nurse. Another good student of mine has been wavering between continuing his engineering studies and becoming a player in a rock band. When he told me about his wish to play with his band in New York his eyes used to sparkle. I couldn't see that sparkle when he talked about engineering: he just didn't enjoy engineering that much.
One measurement for colleges is retention: the ratio of students that complete their course of studies relative to the ones that finished it. I believe this is a very problematic figure of merit: it doesn't take into account the most important thing: that people LOVE what they do. True, engineers make more money than band players (except the really successful ones), and certainly more than nurses. However, payday is only one day a month (or two weeks) whereas joy and job satisfaction is something you live with for every day in your life.

התפטרות המתמחים והשוק החופשי

2011-09-01T14:24:00.001-04:00

לפני כחודש הגישו מאות רופאים מתמחים בבתי החולים את מכתבי ההתפטרות שלהם כחלק משביתת הרופאים. מאז נחתם הסכם שסיפק את חלק מדרישותיהם, אבל רוב הדרישות שלהן לא נענו. אני לא רופא ולא מתמחה, אלא רק אזרח שמסתכל על העניין הזה מהצד ואתמול הוגדשה הסאה מבחינתי: ממשלת ישראל הגישה לבית המשפט העליון (שזרק אותה מכל המדרגות) ולבית הדין לעבודה דרישה להוציא צווי מניעה כנגד ההתפטרות של המתמחים. במלים אחרות, מדינת ישראל בתפקידה כמעסיקה הראשית של אותם רופאים מתמחים, מבקשת למנוע מאותם רופאים לסרב להיות עובדים שלה. הרי זו חוצפה מאין כדוגמתה.

ראשית, כיוון ששירותי הבריאות בישראל הם ממלכתיים (וטוב שכך!), ממשלת ישראל היא המעסיק הכמעט בלעדי של רופאים מתמחים בבתי החולים בארץ. אם היה זה כל מונופול אחר, היו חלים על הממשלה כללים מחמירים של מה היא יכולה לעשות וכיצד היא יכולה לפעול, אבל כיוון שזו ממשלת ישראל היא מתעלמת מכל הכללים גם כך.

שנית, ממשלת ישראל בעצם מבקשת מבית המשפט לשלול את זכותם של אזרחיה לבחור מה הוא מקום העבודה שלהם. זו זכות בסיסית, שמעוגנת בחוקי יסוד במדינה, אלא שממשלת ישראל חושבת שזכותה להתעלם מהם. מעסיק יכול להוציא צווי מניעה כנגד עובדים שלו, ששובתים, בכדי למנוע פגיעה בשירות לציבור. בתי הדין לעבודה בישראל נוטים לאזן את זכות השביתה עם האינטרס הציבורי, ובד"כ פועלים היטב, אך צווי מניעה ניתן להוציא כנגד עובדים ולא כנגד אנשים שאינם עובדים עוד בחברה. זכותו של כל אדם לקום בבוקר ולהחליט שאין הוא מעוניין עוד לעבוד אצל מעסיקו, מכל מיני שיקולים. במקרה של המתמחים הם אמרו באופן ברור מדוע אינם מעוניינים עוד לעבוד אצל מעסיקם, קרי ממשלת ישראל, והסיבה לכך היא שהם לא מקבלים שכר ראוי לדעתם, עובדים שעות ארוכות מדי לדעתם, ואינם מרוצים מתנאי ההסכם שנחתם עם המעסיק. בין אם הממשלה מסכימה לטענותיהם ובין אם לאו, אין ביכולתו של מעסיק לדרוש את המשך עבודתו של עובד שמעוניין לעזוב. הרי ביום שנאפשר את זה, או למחרת, כל מעסיק במדינה יוכל לא לשלם שכר כלל לעובדיו בידיעה שביכולתו להוציא צווי מניעה נגד עזיבתם. צריך לזכור שכאן הממשלה פועלת לא כמשרתת את האינטרס הציבורי, אלא כמעסיק וכמונופול, ולכן אין ביכולתה לדרוש צווי מניעה.

שלישית, כיוון שהמדינה היא מעסיק כמעט יחיד במשק הרופאים, מה שהרופאים המתמחים אומרים, בעצם, הוא שהם אינם מעוניינים עוד לעסוק ברפואה בישראל. זו החלטה כבדה ביותר, שנלקחה לאחר שנות לימודים רבות, ולאחר שנים של הקרבה עצמית מכל הבחינות. לא מובן לי כיצד יכול מעסיק לצאת נגד עובד שמוכן לזרוק לפח שנים של הקרבה לטובת עתיד טוב יותר במקום אחר? הרי זו הצבעת אי אמון גורפת במעסיק ועל המעסיק להסיק את המסקנות ולתקן את המצב. במקום זאת, ממשלת ישראל בוחרת ללכת לסעד משפטי כאילו היא הנעשקת, בעוד היא העושק.

עכשיו נסביר לקורא בנימין נתניהו, שטוען כי הוא מבין גדול בכלכלה ותומך נלהב של שוק חופשי, מה בעצם המתמחים עושים בהתפטרות שלהם. כידוע, על פי התיאוריה המקובלת בכלכלה, מחירו של מוצר בשוק החופשי נקבע על פי האיזון שבין הביקוש וההיצע. כאשר ישנו עודף היצע, המחיר יורד, כתוצאה מכך הביקוש עולה, עד שהוא תואם את ההיצע. ולהיפך, כאשר ההיצע קטן ביחס לביקוש, המחיר עולה, פחות אנשים יכולים לשלם עבורו, ולכן הביקוש יירד עד שיתאם להיצע. מה שהמתמחים עושים, למעשה, מר נתניהו, הוא לתקן את המחיר הנמוך של העסקתם על ידי הקטנת ההיצע. הם בוחרים, על ידי התפטרותם, לצמצם את היצע הרופאים הקיים והעתידי במדינה, על ידי מעבר לתחומי תעסוקה רווחיים יותר או הגירה למדינות בהן שירותיהם הטובים יקבלו תמחור הוגן יותר. למה הדבר אמור להוביל?לעליית המחיר של העסקת רופא מעכשיו ועד לשלב בו היצע הרופאים יגדל חזרה. כלומר, ההחלטה שלא לקבל את דרישותיהם העיקריות של המתמחים, מר נתניהו, תוביל את ממשלת ישראל להוציא עוד יותר כסף בעתיד, כשהרופאים הותיקים יפרשו ולא יהיו צעירים שימלאו את תפקידם. אבל מה אכפת לך? הרי הקדנציה שלך תסתיים בקרוב.

ובחזרה לרופאים המתמחים: מה הם יכולים לעשות? ההמלצה שלי תלויה בהחלטת בית הדין לעבודה. אם בית הדין לעבודה ידחה את בקשת הממשלה, כפי שהוא אמור לעשות במדינה מתוקנת, עליהם להמשיך בהליך ההתפטרות שלהם. אני הייתי מציע להם לחפש עבודה במדינה מתוקנת או בשוק ההנדסה הביו רפואית בארץ ובעולם. יש להם הרבה ידע והם יכולים לתרום המון, לקבל יותר כסף, ולעבוד שעות יותר נורמליות. ואם בית הדין לעבודה יקבל את בקשת הממשלה? אני מציע לכל אזרחי ישראל לברוח כמה שיותר, כי המדינה הופכת להיות דיקטטורה טוטאליטרית.

על יוקר המחייה בישראל ודרכים לפתרון

2011-08-06T13:22:00.002-04:00

מי שמכיר אותי יודע טוב מאד מה דעתי על סוציאליזם ועל החיים שלי בסינסינטי. מי שלא מכיר מוזמן לחפש את הבלוג שלי. בכל מקרה, סוציאליסט אני לא. קראתי את הספרים של איין ראנד והסכמתי עם רבות מהאמירות שם, ואני בהחלט חושב שיש לתת לאדם את החופש להצליח ולהרוויח מהצלחתו על פי כשרונו וזיעת אפיו.

לגבי ארה"ב, אני חושב שהמדינה הזו נמצאת בדעיכה. גדולתה העיקרית, שהיא היכולת של המדינה הענקית הזו לחדש ולייצר הולכת ונמחית בגלל שני תהליכים: גלובליזציה מחד, שהופכת את הייצור בארה"ב ללא כדאי, וחינוך מידרדר מאידך, שהופך את האמריקאי הממוצע לפחות חדשני ויצרני.

עכשיו ששני הנושאים האלה מאחורינו, בואו נראה למה יותר קל לחיות בארה"ב מאשר בישראל של שנת 2011.

כשחייתי בארץ, הייתה לי משכורת נאה ביותר. למעשה, במעבר לארה"ב לקחתי על עצמי ירידה ניכרת במשכורת, אבל מאחר וראיתי את עצמי כסטודנט יותר מאשר כעובד (למרות שאני עובד במשרה מלאה, המטרה העיקרית שלי פה היא לסיים דוקטורט), לא הייתה לי עם זה בעיה עקרונית. אני לא רוצה להכניס נתונים של בת זוגי לכאן, אז אתייחס רק לעצמי. אני מרוויח היום פחות ממה שהרווחתי לפני שלוש שנים בישראל, ובוודאי שפחות ממה שהייתי יכול להרוויח היום לו הייתי נשאר בארץ. עדיין, כושר הקנייה שלי בארה"ב גבוה בהרבה. יש לסייג, כשמדברים על ארה"ב צריך לדבר על מדינה ספציפית בה אדם חי, גם בגלל שהמסים שונים ממדינה למדינה, אבל בעיקר כיוון שיוקר המחייה משתנה ממקום למקום ואין דין ניו יורק או שיקאגו כדין סינסינטי. סינסינטי היא עיר ממוצעת בארה"ב, לדעתי, אולי טיפה זולה מהממוצע.

אז מה היה לנו שם? המשכורת שלי היום נמוכה בכ- 40% ממה שהייתה בארץ בשנת 2008 במונחים דולריים. בגלל הפרשי שער הדולר מ- 2008 ל- 2011, בואו נוריד את ההבדל הזה ל- 30%. במפתיע, אני עוקב אחרי שיעור מס ההכנסה שהייתי נדרש לשלם בישראל על הסכום אותו אני מרוויח פה לעומת הסכום שאני משלם פה וההבדלים זניחים. כן, מס הכנסה כמעט זהה!

לעומת זאת, כוח הקנייה שלי פה גבוה משמעותית ואני מייחס את זה ליתרונות השוק החופשי בארה"ב.

אני לא משלם בכלל עמלות לבנק בו מתנהל החשבון שלי, ואל תדאגו לבנק, אני בטוח שג'יי פי מורגן צ'ייס מרוויחים יפה (5.4 מיליארד דולר ברבעון השני של 2011).
עלויות התקשורת של שנינו מגיעות ל- 135$ לחודש, פחות מ- 500 ש"ח לחודש, והן כוללות אינטרנט מהיר, שני סמארטפונים, ללא הגבלה על הודעות טקסט או שירותי דאטה ו- 500 דקות שיחה לא כולל השיחות בינינו שהן בחינם (וזה הרבה יותר ממה שאנחנו צריכים).
קנייה ממוצעת שלנו בסופר מסתכמת בכ- 40 עד 50 דולר לשבוע, וזה כולל לא מעט ירקות ופירות שהם המרכיב היקר ביותר בסל הקניות שלנו בארה"ב.
ארוחה זוגית במסעדה עולה פה בערך 30 דולר לשנינו בערב. במסעדות יותר יקרות בערך 50 דולר, ונכון, אנחנו לא הולכים למסעדות סופר פלצניות, אבל נהנים מהאוכל. בישראל אני חושב שהממוצע בגדול במסעדות דומות הוא בערך 100 ש"ח לאדם.
עלות חדר כושר לאדם היא בערך 30 דולר לחודש, ואנחנו צריכים ללכת יותר. בישראל שילמתי בערך 300 ש"ח למנוי לחודש.
על שכר דירה באמת שאין טעם לדבר, כי סינסינטי היא לא ניו יורק ולא תל אביב מבחינת ביקושים ולכן השכ"ד פה נמוך עד מגוחך.
אה, וקנינו ניסאן סנטרה חדשה עם כל התוספות, מנוע 2 ליטר, בפחות מ- 20 אלף דולר (70 אלף ש"ח).
עלויות החשמל והגז נמוכות משמעותית מאשר בישראל, ומגיעות לפחות מ- 150 דולר בשיא הקיץ (מזגן כל הזמן) ופחות מ- 200 דולר בשיא החורף המושלג כשהגז לחימום עובד כל הזמן. בין לבין הן נמוכות מ- 100 דולר לחודש.
מחיר הדלק פה נע בין 3.50 דולר לגלון ל- 4.00 דולר לגלון בשנה האחרונה, כלומר בערך דולר לליטר, או חצי מישראל.

כך יוצא שדברים שלא הייתי מסוגל להרשות לעצמי בישראל, כמו רכב טוב וחדש, הופכים להיות מציאות פה.

כן, יש גם הרבה דברים יקרים פה. ביטוח בריאות פה עולה הון תועפות, מאות או אלפי דולרים בחודש תלוי בתוכנית שבוחרים. אם היינו צריכים לשלם על שכ"ל לילדים היינו פושטים את הרגל.

לדעתי ישנן מספר בעיות מרכזיות בישראל היום והן הסיבה המרכזית למחאה החברתית שאנחנו רואים בשבועות האחרונים:

קודם כל, ברמת מדיניות הממשלה, ישראל לא החליטה אם היא מדינת רווחה קפיטליסטית דוגמת אירופה או מדינה קפיטליסטית בלי רווחה דוגמת ארה"ב. עד שנת 2000 בערך ניסינו להיות במודל האירופי ולא כל כך הצלחנו, ומאז הרפורמות של ביבי כשר האוצר אנחנו מנסים להידמות לארה"ב וגם לא ממש מצליחים. זו החלטה שהעם צריך לקבל באופן דמוקרטי, אבל אין היום חלופות מפלגתיות, כיון שגם ביבי, גם ברק וגם ציפי לבני, כולם מאמינים בשיטה הכלכלית האמריקאית. הדיון הציבורי בישראל מתרכז אך ורק בשאלה המדינית בטחונית ובכלל לא עוסק במדיניות כלכלית חברתית. המחאה הנוכחית אולי תשנה את זה, אבל קשה לי להאמין שהיא תצמיח מפלגות סוציאל דמוקרטיות חדשות, עם אג'נדה מדינית ימנית למשל. וכיוון שההבדלים בין המלפגות הם רק בנושא המדיני, הדיון תמיד יחזור לדיון בטחוני מדיני, ומי שמגדיר את נושא הדיון גם מנצח בדיון עצמו.
מאחר ובחרנו בשוק חופשי, בין אם מבחירה חופשית של האזרחים ובין אם בהכתבה מהמנהיגים, יש לבחון איך השוק הישראלי מתמודד עם הבחירה הזו. לטענתי, הכלכלה הישראלית איננה שוק חופשי כלל. בכל תחום בארץ יש קרטל כזה או אחר של 2-3 חברות, שמתאמות מחירים באופן מוצהר יותר או פחות אחת עם השניה. לדוגמה, הבנקים מתאמים את העמלות ללקוח (כזכור, אני לא משלם עמלות בארה"ב בכלל). לדוגמה, המחלבות מתאמות את מחירי מוצרי החלב ביניהם. לדוגמה, חברות הסלולר שאין ביניהן שום הבדל מעשי. בכל שוק שמסתכלים עליו יש 2-3 מתחרים חזקים שמתאמים מחירים ביניהם. עד שהשוק לא יהפוך לתחרותי יותר לא יירדו מחירי המוצרים והשירותים בארץ ובהתאם כושר הקניה של הישראלי הממוצע יירד. כדי לעשות את זה יש לתת בידי הרגולטור כוח חזק יותר לקנוס בסכומים מאד גבוהים את אלה שמתאמים מחירים ומונעים שוק חופשי. במקרים קיצוניים יש לפרק חברות שמשתתפות בזה לכמה חברות קטנות יותר, כמו שעשו לחברת התקשורת בל בארה"ב. (זה שהחברה הזו מתאחדת מחדש תחת השם איי-טי-אנד-טי בארה"ב זו בעיה אחרת). לדעתי על ידי מלחמה אמיתית בקרטלים ופתיחה של השוק לתחרות אמיתית ניתן להוריד את יוקר המחיה בישראל בעשרות אחוזים.
נטל המסים העקיפים בישראל גבוה מדי ביחס לארה"ב. באוהיו מס הקניה הוא 6.5%, שזה בערך הממוצע בארה"ב. מס הקניה במדינות שונות נמוך יותר, לפעמים 4% ואפילו 0%, ולפעמים גבוה יותר. אין מס קניה פדראלי ובשום מקום זה לא מגיע ל- 16% של ישראל. המסים על הדלק פה נמוכים באופן משמעותי מהבלו בישראל, ולכן מחיר הדלק הוא בערך חצי. כזכור, חישבתי ומצאתי שאני משלם אותו אחוז מס הכנסה כמו בישראל, אז סה"כ המסים נמוך יותר.
אם מורידים את נטל המס צריך לבחון איך מצמצמים הוצאות. זה משהו שבארה"ב לא עושים כל כך טוב, ראה משבר התקציב האחרון, אבל ישראל לא חייבת לחקות את ארה"ב בכל דבר, על אף מה שביבי חושב. אז איך מצמצמים את הגירעון? קודם כל על ידי צמצום הקצבות לדברים מיותרים, שבסופו של דבר יילקחו מאיתנו. אם ברור לנו כבר היום שבהסכם עתידי לא יישארו ישובים ישראלים מעבר לגושי הישובים ביו"ש, למה אנחנו ממשיכים להשקיע בהם ולסלול דרכים לשם ולהחזיק יחידות של צבא לשמור עליהם? אפשר לחסוך המון כסף מפינוי של הישובים האלה. יש עוד דרכים לצמצם הוצאות על ידי הורדת ההקצבות למגזרים מיוחדים, כמו חרדים. לדברים האלה צריך שינוי משטר או שינוי ממשל והרבה ביצים, מה שאין למנהיגים הנוכחיים שלנו
ועל אף האמור לעיל, צריך להגדיל את ההשקעות בנושאים האזרחיים בארץ. יש לנו משאב לאומי אחד בישראל והוא כוח אדם איכותי. אם ישראל רוצה להמשיך לשגשג כלכלית היא צריכה להשקיע בחינוך בראש ובראשונה.. חינוך לכולם, חינוך לעתיד טכנולוגי ולכושר ייצור בחזית המדע. אין לנו דרך אחרת לשגשג. זה אומר שצריך לבטל מוסדות חינוך שמחנכים ילדים בלי להקנות להם כלים להתמודד עם העתיד, כלומר החינוך של ש"ס. אם נעשה את זה, נוכל לקבל עוד 20% מהאוכלוסיה שתשתתף בנטל הכלכלי, וזה יוריד את העומס מכל השאר. אם נחזק את החינוך הטכנולוגי נוכל להתמודד עם מדינות אחרות, וזה יקל על השגת הכנסות גבוהות יותר. לא לנצח נוכל לבנות על מדינות אחרות שיכשירו לנו את טובי המהנדסים והחוקרים המדעיים, כמו עם העלייה מברה"מ לשעבר בשנות ה- 1990.
שימו לב שלא הגעתי לנדל"ן בכלל. מחירי הדירות בישראל גבוהים בגלל שיש הרבה ביקוש ומעט מדי היצע אבל גם בגלל שההיצע שיש הוא תמיד של דירות עם מספר רב של חדרים. אפשר לבנות גם אחרת, השאלה מי ירים את הכפפה. את זה, אגב, אפשר להשאיר לשוק החופשי, אם הוא באמת חופשי ובאמת קיים. מסים על בעלי דירות או דרכים שונות להטיל עליהם פיקוח רק ייצרו מצבים בלתי אפשריים, אבל לא ייצרו שינוי של ממש. השינוי יגיע מהוספת היצע, למשל על ידי בנייה מחדש של איזורים שלמים במרכז והפיכתם מאיזורים של בתים נמוכים עם מעט דירות לבתים רבי קומות עם הרבה דירות, אבל לא דירות יוקרה של עשירים.

המסקנות הן שאזרחי ישראל צריכים להחליט על דרכם הכלכלית. עד היום היינו עסוקים רק בנושא המדיני בטחוני והזנחנו את הנושא הכלכלי לחלוטין. אנחנו צריכים דיון אמיתי בנושא הזה, ואנחנו צריכים להחליט להיכן מועדות פני המדינה. אם נחליט על שוק חופשי, אין בעיה, אבל שיהיה שוק חופשי אמיתי ולא רק למראית עין היכן שבעלי ההון עושקים את הציבור. אם נחליט על שוק סוציאל דמוקרטי, גם נפלא, אבל שוב, שיהיה סוציאלי ודמוקרטי אמיתי, לא כזה שמנוהל על ידי ביורוקרטים מושחתים.

זה בידיים שלנו.

“Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.”

2010-09-08T09:00:00.003-04:00

(Heinrich Heine)
In the 1940s Heine was proven right and the Nazis burnt many millions of people, including 6 millions Jews.
This year a church leader in Florida thinks it will be a good idea to burn Korans on 9/11. I believe there are better ways to remember the tragic loss of lives in that horrible day nine years ago, especially when the method proposed here is not significantly different from the one used by the terrorists, namely: hatred.
In addition, the commander of American forces in Afghanistan said it will risk American soldiers in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
I know the First Amendment gives anyone, including evil and stupid people, the right to express their views in whatever way they find appropriate, but isn't that the same amendment that also gives Muslims in New York to build their own community center? Seriously, the Bill of Rights is not a "choose what you like" store. If the American people thinks they have the right to meddle with other peoples' affairs, take down leaders and put new ones on, all in the name of Democracy and Human Rights, then this right is based on one thing, and one thing only, exercising the Bill of Rights without racism or bigotry.
Let's hope this time people will stop this insanity earlier.

Coffee Name

2010-07-28T19:33:00.004-04:00

Americans are unable to say foreign names. They don't even try to think outside of the box / strict pronunciation rules they were brought up with. For example, the whole world calls the country Iraq (pronounced Ee-rak) while the Americans pronounce it Ay-Raq. The same goes to Iran (Ay-Ran), or even Italians (Ay-Talians). Israel (Ee-sra-el) is pronounced (Eez-Real), which kind of fits, because it is a surprise that it "is real".

So it is no surprise that they can't pronounce my totally complicated and impossible Israeli name, Elad. They pronounce it Ee-Lad. It should be El-Ad, literally God Forever, well what can I say, my parents had high expectations of me. :-)

So, to make it easier for Starbucks / Panera Bread / whoever needs to call me by name to get my order, I give a fake American name. Sometimes I am Josh (a pet name my sister gave me), sometimes Kyle (as in Kyle McLachlan). Surprisingly, I am not the only one. Many foreigners do it, but also many Americans. You can hear all about it on NPR's All Things Considered at this link:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128828538

The invisible yet empty hand

2010-07-20T10:37:00.004-04:00

A while ago I had a conversation with a guy at work, whom I consider to be pretty open minded and intelligent. We started off talking about the World Cup and ended up talking about the free market and should the government interfere with it. I claimed that the free market is definitely a better model than a totalitarian centrally controlled market, as in the Soviet Union, but it is not necessarily the best way to run an economy. I used several examples.

The first one was the health care industry, which in most countries in the world is centrally run by the government with a much greater success than the free market American model - the one that successfully leads both the people and the US to bankruptcy while being mediocre at best (ranked 37 in the world!). He wasn't convinced that this was indeed the case, although he agreed with me that the money people pay for health insurance can be considered as part of "non-tax" - money missing from your available funds, but is not taxed by the government.

The second one I used was the availability of broadband internet - both wired and wireless. As Israelis, we are accustomed to think of the US as the epitome of technological achievements. Living here we have quickly learned that the case is far from being so. In fact, even after two years here in Cincinnati, I still wonder whether or not there is a reliable and widespread 3G cellular network in this city. I know there is none in the nation. Cincinnati Bell, a local provider that doesn't have coverage beyond the greater Cincinnati-Dayton area, claims to have the best regional network. That says a lot about how the national providers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile) see the importance of a national network. Don't misunderstand me, all of them claim to have a perfectly good data network in the Cincinnati area. So far, none of them convinced me that it is really so. And it could have been pretty easy to convince me - just give me what I had been used to by Israel's Orange network in 2008. The main reason not to implement a fast data infrastructure is simple - the economic gain is directly proportional to the population density. The more dense the area is, the higher revenue the network will generate, and Cincinnati is not populated densely enough.

On the other hand, the free market should be able to rectify this situation by offering an incentive in the form of higher margins in places where there is a lack of competition. Free market enthusiasts tell us that the invisible hand is supposed to draw people into such places to increase the supply and meet the demand. However, in some cases this doesn't work. In some places, probably the less populated or poorer areas, market forces do not accumulate enough to produce this invisible hand. The FCC has recently come up with a report that claims exactly that. About 24 million Americans have no access to broadband internet. That's roughly 8% of the population. Before the health care reform by President Obama, it was estimated that 50 million Americans do not have access to any health insurance. That's on top of the other millions that are covered through government plans like Medicare and Medicaid. In other words, only 2 out of every 3 Americans got their service from the "free market".

As in any problem, the first step to solving it is recognizing that it exists and that it is indeed a problem. If you ask Glenn Beck for example, he will tell you that America has the best health care system in the world. One can only hope that the current administration sees through this smoke screen and will at least be able to convince some Americans that not everything in this great country is indeed the greatest in the world. Media will certainly play a major role in this - both for the good and for the bad. Here is another example from an NPR (hardly a conservative right-wing station) host being taken by surprise when hearing the fact that Americans pay more for less broadband (skip to 21:15 and on).

However, even if the problem is recognized, the solution may not be clear immediately. This is especially true when people mix solution strategies with political views, i.e. when the political views cloud the thinking process and prevent it from going in the direction of central intervention in the market. In Israel I was known to be the most libertarian anti-socialist person in any room I walked into. I believe I have not changed my views at all and that I still believe in the power of the market in controlling complex systems. If I didn't believe it, I wouldn't choose the PHD topic I have chosen.

Central intervention can come in all sorts of ways, ranging from creating incentives for companies to invest in not-so-lucrative investments to playing a major role or even being the sole participant in the market. The level of central intervention should depend on how badly the market produces what we want it to produce. If the market works relatively well, as most do, government should facilitate the existence of the market, e.g. by creating a currency to be used in deals, but otherwise step aside and let the market work its way. But what if the market is left alone and does not yield the desired results? Well, that depends on how big the gap is.

If the market leaves a few people behind, as in the broadband market, the government should create the incentives for companies to go back and pick these people up. The fact that a child was born in North Dakota does not mean they should not be able to bridge the digital divide and be left behind for the rest of the 21st century. A recent study showed that a child born to poverty is likely to stay poor for the rest of his childhood and we know that a poor child left behind is a grown up and family we will have to support for the rest of his life. So even from the libertarian-reduce-my-taxes point of view I would rather spend small dimes on getting these kids connected than spend many more dollars for supporting them during the rest of their lives. That, of course, assuming that we're not going to leave them to die of starvation.

If the situation is even worse, as in the health care market, then simply using incentives cannot and will not rectify it. This has already been established because we see that even greater government interventions do not help the health care industry change its ways. A complete overhaul is in dire need. In fact, the main criticism I have about the Obama Administration in this case is that they "chickened out" and that the new overhaul is nothing compared to what should have been done. In fact, in the health care business I believe that the basics should be given by the government for the people and not the private sector. The reason is simple: the private sector, as it should be, tries to maximize revenue to their share holders. The only way to maximize revenue is by generating more income and reducing costs. In the health care industry generating more income means taking more money from the insured people and reducing costs come mainly from cutting the coverage they get. In other words, from the company point of view, the best revenue would be generated if from every dollar a person spends, 100 cents of it go to revenue and the rest is spent on coverage. The only reason why this is not a complete scam is that the companies - at least theoretically - must make the coverage sound good enough for one to spend one's dollar on a certain insurance and not the other. So, the coverage offerings are designed to lure one in, but once in - who cares? Leave the market to run wild long enough and you'll get exactly to where the market is right now in the US - people spend more and more money and get less and less while companies' revenues are in the billions. These billions of dollars can come from only one source and on exactly one expense -coverage. There is only one solution that will prevent these companies from reaching even deeper into our pockets - a government run national plan. This way the market is ruined, but everyone gets covered and pay roughly the same amount that they will take by the end of their lives. This is obviously the other side of the government - private sector spectrum.

One may argue that this will make the US a socialist country (God forbid!) and will consequently lead to its demise. My response is - yes, some things are better run in a central (maybe socialist) way. This doesn't mean that everything becomes socialist or that the country as a whole will become socialist. Why is the military run by the government and not private companies? Why is the police controlled by governments (on federal, state and city level)? Why was the Interstate Highway System initiated and has been funded since by the government and not the private sector? The reasons behind all the above examples are - because the public needs it, because their services have to be accessible to all people and companies without bias, and because it is too important for the people as a whole to become a revenue generator. Can you consider a police run by its share holders? They will not go into poor neighborhoods, deal with major crimes, or investigate corporates because it's either too dangerous or counter-productive for the share holders. So why do we still allow health insurance companies to do exactly these things - not to be available for poor people and not deal with major illnesses (on the grounds of "preexisting conditions" or other nonsense)? As Forest Gump's momma used to say - "stupid is as stupid does".

ESPN3 - Brilliant

2010-06-23T15:54:00.003-04:00

I have been using ESPN3.com a lot lately and this is a brilliant site. Easy to use, excellent adaptive video quality, multiple screen option, and of course the best commentators.

Image quality has been reduced because I watched 3 matches at the same time.

World cup boredom

2010-06-15T12:18:00.003-04:00

This World Cup is probably the worst one I have ever seen since 1982. With the exception of Germany, who played well, with a good offensive and fast motion, all the other teams play slowly, defensively and do their best not to be beaten, which leaves most games to a 0:0/1:1 draw or a 1:0 fluke. What a bore. I think FIFA should start addressing this problem and come up with a way to compensate losing teams if they scored many goals. Otherwise, with the growing number of players and their ever improving athletic capabilities we will doom ourselves to 0:0.

End of the academic year

2010-06-07T22:14:00.002-04:00

Today marked the beginning of the final exams week for the spring quarter at UC. In other words, the end of the academic year is here, and what a year it was. Congratulations to D who is graduating in a few days with an M.Sc..

I managed to teach an entirely new class for which no available textbook existed, taught 4 other classes and two will come in the summer, and completed 5 courses towards my degree. Most importantly, I passed the Ph.D. qualifier exam, which is a mandatory step on the way to a degree. In all, this was a very busy and rewarding year for both of us.

Human rights hypocrites

2010-06-03T10:38:00.003-04:00

Israel is being denounced by the whole world for stopping a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip. The fact that the flotilla was organized by a known terrorist organization makes no difference to the enlightened world. The fact that human rights and peace activists were using knives, machetes, metal poles, broken glass bottles to attack soldiers fails to strike people as odd, perhaps puzzling - pacifists are known to be pro-violence, are they not? The fact that convoys upon convoys of food and medical supplies are being delivered to Gaza daily, again, is not part of the comfortable narrative, so let's just forget it.

The question is why this whole scam is being done? What is the motive? The motive is, in the end, to cast doubt over the legitimacy of Israel. It is a well orchestrated attack on Israel, with major organizations taking part in it. For example, the BBC with its one-sided depiction of the news, the United Nations, whose human rights section found only one nation guilty of human rights infractions, etc. It is not new, either. When Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear facility near Baghdad in 1981 the whole world condemned it, only to thank the Israelis 10 years later when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the international community came to rescue the oil fields there.

So, in order to let some human rights activists on some of the most known secrets in the world I decided to compile a short list of human rights infractions that Israel is *gasping* not involved in, yet they are still happening in our beautiful world:

There is this small issue of a so-called genocide in Darfur, Sudan. Not sure if it is worth mentioning.
I heard some rumors that protesters in Iran were killed and tortured by the regime, but I find it very hard to believe knowing how humanitarian they are.
Workers in factories in China might be driven to work to death, to the point of slavery, but who wants to hear about the way his iPod/iPad was manufactured? And, besides, who lets them speak up about it?
I can't believe it's true, but I heard claims that Turkey was involved in a genocide of their own. Naaah, can't believe them, such a nice people the Turks. Probably a Zionist propaganda this thing.
There is a nice little island just to the west of England. For some reason, it seems that some of the settlers there are not originally Irish and the northern part is interestingly enough under British rule. I wonder when the English will remove all the settlements from Northern Ireland as Israel withdrew from Gaza in June 2005 (ah, yes, did you know that Gaza has been under Palestinian rule for the last 5 years?).
While at it, how are the Basque and the Catalan states doing? I would really love to visit the free Catalan capitol of Barcelona soon.
I heard the Belgians had some minor misunderstandings of human rights as well. The fact that Congo and this region is still in turmoil a century later can be attributed to the successful Belgium policy there. Hey, but human rights are not violated anymore, right? Everyone lives there peacefully?

This list, by the way, can go on and on forever. I just wanted to point out some matters, that in my humble opinion might be more pressing than the Israeli-Gaza conflict. After all, the people in Gaza live, eat food, get electricity, and have fresh water. All of that is due to Israel, which still supplies them with everything they need, even after 5 years of independence.

Independence?

2010-04-19T13:46:00.003-04:00

Birthdays and new year days are usually good times to consider one's achievements. Well, it's not my birthday, but it is Israel's 62nd. So, happy birthday Israel, let's see how you're doing.
Lately I complained about the way the Obama Administration meddles with Israeli policy, and puts its democratically elected government at awkward positions, sometimes demanding things that contradict the very ticket they had used to get elected. At this point I would like to tackle the other side and answer the following questions: why does the administration think it's a legitimate move, and how can Israel escape this dire situation.
Israel has relied on one superpower or another during all its existence. Starting with France, that supported Israel in its first 20 years of existence, including providing it with weapons, and following the French embargo in 1967, the Americans. There is no doubt that the Americans get their reward out of it, otherwise why would they bother? The question is: should Israel continue with it and at what price?
From the economic point of view, the American aid is currently $2.5B, mostly for defense expenditures. Undoubtedly, this helps Israel buy advanced American aircrafts and equipment, but not the most advanced, e.g. the F-22 Raptor was not sold to Israel. But, more importantly, more than 2/3 of the money is required, by the treaty between the countries, to be spent on military equipment. So, basically, this is money that helps the federal government in generating jobs for the American people. It also allows the US to control what Israel buys, not only in military contexts, but also, for example, which airliners will El-Al use. At least on one occasion, El-Al had to cancel a better deal with Airbus and buy from Boeing under heavy American pressure. And finally, and most disturbingly, it allows the US to pressure and in many case cancel weapons sales from Israel to India and China. Independence? Hardly.
Let's assume that Israel refuses to take any more American aid. Sure, it will have to cover this gap in its national budget. Let's see if it is possible. The Israeli budget is about $80B, so $2.5B are about 3% of this budget. However, since at least $2B out of the $2.5B are not spent domestically, Israel can just buy aircrafts at a lower rate, or simply not buy them at all. In the last F-16 deal with the US Israel bought 102 F-16s worth $70M each. That's about $7B. Assuming it was paid for in a decade, the cost per year is $700M, which could be saved entirely, or reduced to a more manageable value. In short, at least $0.5B-$1B a year can be saved by cutting down on military expenditures.
Another part is spending the money domestically. Israeli defense forces started buying fatigues, uniforms, and other equipment from American sources because it was "cheaper" as it came from the American aid and not in Israeli shekels. But this came with a price: many textile and low-tech industries, which relied on these purchases, had to close down, because they could not compete for contracts that excluded them from participating in them. If you take all the unemployment money paid to former employees of these industries and instead of spending it on unemployment, the same money can be spent to buy necessary equipment from these factories. Doing so would boost the entire economy and will actually reduce government spending. I don't have the figures, but I would guess that at least $0.2B are spent each year on these types of equipment. If spent domestically, the workers hired to meet this demand will also buy more, pay taxes, and in general contribute to the Israeli economy and budget, so the benefit can be even higher.
Now, assuming the $1B-$1.5B can be saved or "won back" without the American aid, it seems that the other $1-$1.5B (1.5%-2% of the budget) can be saved as well, either by cutting on defense budget or simply by making better deals, which will be easier if Israeli is no longer restricted to buying just from American companies. As a last resort: raise taxes or increase the deficit.
It seems that the price Israel and its democracy pay for the American aid is too great. If the US wants to turn Israel into a state in the union, let it be clearly stated so, let the Israelis and Americans vote on it, and I am quite sure it will cost more than $2.5B a year (Israel's population is about 7.5 million, which ranks it 12-13 between Washington and Virginia. I doubt if they get less money from the federal budget spent in their area). If, on the other hand, Israel wants to retain (or gain, depending on who you ask) its independence, it should free itself from the American aid money.

On Politics and Friendships

2010-03-15T09:10:00.005-04:00

The Israeli, and partly also the American, media are discussing lately the issue of the Obama administration's reaction to the Israeli government's decision to build 1600 housing units in East Jerusalem. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times had some spare thoughts to share, which the Wall Street Journal repudiated. In light of this discussion, I will share my 2 cents. I know I am not exactly a publicist or a renowned blogger, but still there is one thing that bothers me about the way the administration is pressing the Israeli government. But before that, a word of warning: I am what Israelis might call "left-wing"; I fully support the right of the Palestinians to have a state alongside Israel, I support the so called "Two States Solution", I supported the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and I object to building in the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Now that this is out of our way, let's take a deep breath and see how the Obama administration, with senior Jewish officials (Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod), is acting in their worst interests, instead of the required, assuming that the administration indeed wants to get the peace process working.

It is often said that special relations between Israel and the USA are founded on the premises of joint values, democracy being one of such main values. Israel is, in fact, the only openly democratic republic in the Middle East. It is so democratic, in fact, that in the last fifteen (15) years since 1996 there were six (6) elections. This democratic instability is caused by many factors, which are not the scope of this post. However, the main things to mention are that Israel is a democracy, an unpredicted one at that, and that the fragmented political map in Israel makes it impossible for a government to complete its four years' term. One may ask, what does it have to do with the Obama administration? Well, in short, everything. Since the Obama administration wants democracy to proliferate in the world, it should also show some respect to its, occasionally, undesired side effects, namely that an undesired political side gets into power. Undoubtedly, having a right-wing Israeli government, in which Avigdor Lieberman is Foreign Minister, is hardly a desired partner in American eyes. Nonetheless, it is still the elected government. The last campaign was unique in the way that one side, the Israeli right in this case, decidedly won the elections. And, being the right wing that they are, the ticket that got them there was expanding the settlement in Judea and Samaria, which, according to their voters, is, has been, and shall always be, part of the Jewish Holy Land. I might argue with that, but as the side that lost the elections, I respect their views and hope for the best in the next elections.

In my view, this is where the Obama officials show their infuriating combination of hypocrisy and inexperience. Hypocrisy because they do not accept the vote of the Israeli people, and force Prime Minister Netanyahu to accept their terms, which are contradictory to the ticket he was elected with. Not only that, by doing so the administration is deliberately trying to undermine Prime Minister Netanyahu's government by alienating his coalition partners. The inexperience part comes from the lack of understanding in Israeli politics. If they knew better, the administration would know that what they are doing will cause the Israeli public, including left wing people like myself, to rally in support of their government. I may not like the government's decisions, but I am definitely against foreign countries' meddling in our decision making.

And, yes, it is, in lack of better term, meddling with Israeli internal affairs. This is hardly the first time American administration did it to Israel, or to other countries. However, this time the administration has crossed the line between mild meddling and acting forcibly to destabilize the elected Israeli government. To make it clearer to American eyes, this would be parallel to a foreign superpower (China perhaps) forcing the administration to stop its healthcare reform, claiming it to be too expensive (China is after all America's largest creditor) by destabilizing Obama's administration using international and internal pressure on decision makers. I am certain that if this was the case, the Obama administration would not accept it silently, and certainly would not apologize for not doing so, as Netanyahu did. If anything, the administration reaction would be to denounce this act of meddling in American internal affairs and the American people would not accept it either. So, it is of great wonder to me that the administration expects the Israeli government and people to accept this breach of Israeli sovereignty.

5+3=7

2010-03-04T17:01:00.001-05:00

If Google can't count, why should I complain about my students?

Brain drain

2010-03-01T15:17:00.004-05:00

So, I get an email this morning from someone claiming that they represent the Israeli ministry of science and are looking to generate a list of Israeli "brains" that are currently living abroad. Great. First thought - it's probably phishing.
Second thought - other people got it as well, so may be it's not.
Third thought - I clicked the link, a genuinely looking site comes up. Great.

I clicked the "המשך" (next) button that will allow me to view/update my details, and - surprise! It doesn't work.

What's the f***?
Didn't they hear of checking their website? How do they expect Israeli scientists to return to such a "partachi" state?

Reply to "All That Buzz"

2010-02-11T10:30:00.003-05:00

D wrote in her blog about Google's new edition to Gmail - Buzz.
This is my reply:
I think that the jury is still out on Google Buzz. I share D's worries about privacy and Google accumulating too much data on me. I don't, however, think that Google are doing a good job at managing the privacy setting. It's still an "opt-out" settings, and still - if you are not careful enough, people may have too much information about you. Add the fact that when used from a cellphone Buzz adds location data to your entries (buzzingas?) just makes it even scarier.

In addition, I find the level of noise (or maybe clutter would be a better term) to be too distracting at times. Buzz is now another thing that you have to check, after email, Facebook, Reader (and Twitter if you joined it). The fact that it is constantly inundating you with more data makes it harder to concentrate on the important stuff. Just think how hard it is to read an academic paper on the computer when there are so many distractions just around the Start button.

Finally, I think that Google is trying to kill off the competition, and get people more hooked on their services. Some of the competition they are aiming at is obvious - Twitter being the first, and perhaps Facebook and MySpace coming closely after. However, I think that since Buzz requires you to actually load the Gmail page (something I haven't done in years except for marking things "read") and read it, Buzz is a way of thwarting the risk of email clients syncing with Gmail and saving people from getting the well directed ads D mentioned. So, in the bigger scheme, Google is aiming at Microsoft's Outlook / Live Mail, Apple's mail client, and the open source Mozilla Thunderbird. I can understand the first two, but I think Thunderbird is a casualty of indirect fire and too much collateral damage. Google is supposed to "do no evil".

At last: Google Chrome got useful extensions

2009-12-08T23:02:00.003-05:00

Google's Chrome is probably the fastest web browser around. But until now, it was almost impossible to use with popular Israeli websites because of their notoriously ad-packed noise. This required me to use the combination of Mozilla Firefox (a good browser by its own right) and Ad-Block Plus. While working with the Fox, I got accustomed to using various other add-ons. This is basically what I really liked about Firefox - the huge variety of add-ons and I longed for the day the Chrome gets extensions.

Well, the wait is almost over. I am now using a beta (I think) version of Chrome 4 (4.0.249.25), with extensions. Google finally allowed programmers to develop extensions for their browser, and started a website not too long ago. Now, there are already some useful extensions. Among which are the following that I have already installed:

AdThwart (there are other ad blockers, but this one seems to be able to block Ynet's clutter, see picture)

Search Preview for Chrome (similar to Google Preview for Firefox, and there are others like it)

Wave Notifier (not really useful, but still)

Instant coffee - how do you do that?

2009-11-22T20:22:00.003-05:00

This how-to is brought to all Americans, who are kind enough to have me in their country, but don't know how to make coffee (at all, and in particular out of instant coffee). Lately, D and I have encountered several people that looked at instant coffee and were at a loss with regards to how to make coffee of it. The time required to prepare instant coffee is almost equal to the time required to heat water to boiling conditions, which is 2-3 minutes for cup or two of water in a kettle.

Ingredients:

Instant coffee - that's coffee made to be in a powder or granulated, and kept in a jar, e.g. Jacobs. Other brands are sold in American markets, but they are not as good as this one, which is sold only in international food shops. If you have to, buy Taster's Choice. Don't touch any other brand of instant coffee in US supermarkets. Although Starbucks' Via is instant coffee, it is absolutely disgusting and do not drink it.
Water - heated to boiling conditions. Water heated in microwave is not hot enough, so is not good enough. You can use hot water from your office water dispenser.
A spoon
A cup
Optional: sugar or sweetener, and cream or milk.

Instructions:

Take an empty cup. Put a spoonful of instant coffee in the empty cup.
If you like your coffee sweet, add the sugar or sweetener now.
Add boiling water to the cup and stir well until the coffee is fully dissolved in the water.
If you like your coffee with milk or cream, add them only after the previous step.
Sip and enjoy. Caution: contents may be hot.

After you get used to the taste of what the rest of the world considers as coffee, you will never drink that disgusting brownish liquid you used to call coffee until now.

Academic success

2009-11-14T21:54:00.002-05:00

D. and two of her fellow students in the MS-IS program in the College of Business won yesterday a regional competition in IT strategy consulting organized by CA and hosted by Carnegie Mellon University. I will not be surprised if this was the first time that students of the University of Cincinnati win a competition versus rivals from Carnegie Mellon, other than football that is. Kudos to D and her team members.

What is wrong with this site

2009-11-05T07:50:00.002-05:00

Hello kids,

Today we will play a little game called: "what's wrong with this new site?". Don't worry it's not something your parents would not allow you to see, it is not porn (and that's okay), and it's fun.
This is a very simple game. Following is a link to the University of Cincinnati website that deals with the conversion from quarters to semesters. In particular, this site targets questions that students may have regarding the famous co-op, or educational work experience.
http://www.uc.edu/conversion/faqs/coop_students.html

The question is: what's wrong with this site?

The readers are encouraged to leave their answers here.

A great award for UC research

2009-10-05T22:58:00.004-04:00

In light of the previous post about academic level, I am happy to announce that the University of Cincinnati has recently won a very prestigious award – the Ignoble prize. :-)

Here is an excerpt from the page enumerating the winners in each category:

Physics: Katherine K. Whitcome, of the University of Cincinnati, Daniel E. Lieberman, of Harvard University, and Liza J. Shapiro, of the University of Texas at Austin, "for analytically determining why pregnant women don't tip over." (Paper: "Fetal Load and the Evolution of Lumbar Lordosis in Bipedal Hominins," Nature, December 13, 2007.)

(source: http://chronicle.com/article/Winning-an-Ig-Nobel-Beats-a/48669/)

For those of you unfamiliar with this esteemed award, the Ignoble Prize is the prize given for researches that "first make people laugh, and then make them think", or as it was initially termed: “for discoveries ‘that cannot, or should not, be reproduced’” (from the Wikipedia site about this prize).

One may only hope that “any publicity is a good publicity”.

And, by the way, the university published this as great news.

Good Things, Bad Things: Measurements and Distances

2009-09-23T12:20:00.003-04:00

This post is the last and belated part of the Good Things, Bad Things series.

The USA is the only industrialized country to be using a systems of units that differs from the international standardized, or metric, system. In fact, the World Factbook by the CIA, in Appendix G, states that:

At this time, only three countries - Burma, Liberia, and the US - have not adopted the International System of Units (SI, or metric system) as their official system of weights and measures. Although use of the metric system has been sanctioned by law in the US since 1866, it has been slow in displacing the American adaptation of the British Imperial System known as the US Customary System. The US is the only industrialized nation that does not mainly use the metric system in its commercial and standards activities, but there is increasing acceptance in science, medicine, government, and many sectors of industry

This issue about units of measurements causes many differences, both for the good and for the worse. The system now called American Customary Units was derived from the English and later Imperial Units, but even that is not entirely correct or accurate. For example, an American Wet Pint is much smaller than its British counterpart (and even the Amreican dry Pint for that matter, but who the hell drinks a dry beer?!), and the only explanation for that might be that no one wants to drink more than an American pint of domestic beer, especially when compared to a nice smooth pint of Guiness. Anyway, I digress.

One problem with American Customary Units is that they hold true only at a certain location on Earth, specifically at latitude 45, which is roughly where the USA is. This is so typical of Americans: to invent a set of units that can be true only at a certain location in the universe. As usual, as long as Americans keep to themselves and don't try to meddle with the affairs of others that is not a problem. However, they rarely do, and at some point they even decided to venture to space. Now, on space, as everyone knows, there is no gravity. As a result, there is also no definition of weight, which is the force that stems from the product of mass and gravity, hence no gravity - no weight. Since the American Customary Units assume a weight of 1 lb as its basic unit of measurement, and calculates the mass that produces this weight at latitude 45 and sea-level, this entire system of units is useless in space. Thus, for scientific purposes, it makes more sense to use Standard International units, i.e. the metric system, whose base unit is the Kg for mass, and not weight. Mass is invariant no matter what the gravity acceleration is. Why am I telling you all this? For two reasons: 1) it's virtually impossible to teach American students to distinguish between mass, weight and the units used for both. They know that some multiplication or division is required, but not exactly which is what. 2) it's the cause of one of the most colossal failures in NASA's history.

There are also positive sides to using American units. For example, we still think about temperature in Celsius, but if you look at Fahrenheit it makes more sense: the weather in Cincinnati this year ranged from really cold when it was zero Fahrenheit to hot when it was 100 Fahrenheit. On the other hand, spatial distances are shrunk or expanded as needed: for example it's much nicer to live in a 1000 sq. ft. apartment than in a 100 sq. meters apartment. It's easier to drive 500 miles to a party than it is to drive 800 Kms, as we did on the weekend of the 4th of July. ;-)

Cincinnati Bell's service

2009-09-18T12:30:00.003-04:00

We have our internet connection with Cincinnati Bell. At first it was great: high speed fiber optics. However, we had to disconnect the fiber optics because of our move to another apartment (where we will have a new non-fiber optics internet with Cincinnati Bell). Therefore, we scheduled a time for a technician to come pick up the old equipment. It was between 8 and 12 today. Naturally, no one showed up. It's a working day, and they just didn't give a damn about people being left at home and missing work.

So, I called their office. It took a Cincinnati Bell representative 18 minutes just to answer the phone! This is such a bad service I am now considering disconnecting from them altogether.

A technician finally called. According to him no one told him it was supposed to be in the morning. He said that it happened a lot with the office mixing orders.

This company is a disgrace to American service standards.

Continental

2009-09-14T19:06:00.002-04:00

This part was written before I boarded the plane to Israel:
Our last flight was to Las Vegas, with Delta Airlines. I wrote about that horrible flight and how I detest the way Delta treated us on both our flights (in and out of Las Vegas). After I had written that post, a friend told me that his experience with US Airways had not been any better. So, when it came down to booking today's flight to Israel, I decided that I would not use either Delta or US Airways, and instead I chose Continental Airlines. To my pleasant surprise this flight was significantly better than my previous experience. Although the flight was much shorter than the flight to Las Vegas, we were given snacks, and not just one. It was actually a small meal (though my stomach ache prevented me from enjoying it, but that is not the airliner's fault), and not just a small pack of peanuts. They also served beverages. And lo and behold! they even did it free of charge. Who would imagine that?!

If the flight to Israel, which I am about to take, is as good as the one I just came down off, I think I will have found my airliner of preference.

This part was written after my return from Israel
I am now after completing the entire itinerary. The flights to Israel were okay as well. My only complaint is that Continental learned too well from El-Al's method of packing passengers into small spaces. The leg-room was horrible. On my flight to Israel at least the seat beside me was empty, so I could maneuver a bit. On the flight back it was impossible. When I got off the plane, my knees hurt from sitting like this. On the other hand, the video on demand system was absolutely great, and superior to any VOD system I saw in any airline. It had so many choices of movies and shows, and I enjoyed it very much. So much, that I even didn't get to sleep on the flight to Israel (also because of the leg-room). Kudos for the VOD system.

Home is where your heart is

2009-09-05T14:28:00.002-04:00

D and I have been in the USA for almost a year now. As a result of our relative social seclusion, and since we're both here for each other, our bond has become very strong, so it seems to me. Today I left D behind at the CVG terminal, and since then I have been feeling somewhat disoriented. The further I get away from D, and closer to Israel (AKA "home"), the worst it gets. How is she doing? How will she manage without me? What will she do? Will she be lonely?

I know it's only a week till I see her again, and that we just said our farewells, but I already miss her. Home is not where you're born. Home is not where you were raised. Home is also not necessarily where your family and friends are. Home is where your center, your balance, your orientation, and your love are. Home is where your heart is. My home is D.

Best hummus in Cincinnati

2009-08-28T19:12:00.001-04:00

Is the one we make at home with our new food processor!!!!!

Good Things, Bad Things: Privacy

2009-08-28T10:09:00.007-04:00

This post is part of the "Good Things, Bad Things" series.

In general, the right for privacy in our world is diminishing. Some proof for that are: the ever growing number of CCTV cameras in city centers (especially in the UK, where this thing has almost gotten to the point of being a public Big Brother), Google's Street View and its privacy infractions, online mail applications that use key words to put contextual ads, and electronic data everyone leaves behind him just to prove he or she is still alive, e.g. on Facebook, Twitter, cellular networks, blogs, etc. To this one can add the debate over biometric database, especially the one lobbied for and promoted by MK Sheetrit in Israel.

Photo: Hustvedt for Wikipedia. Photo location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Three_Surveillance_cameras.jpg#file.

However, things really are nauseating when they come closer to oneself. One aspect of our lost privacy is the fact that the U.S. government requires every international student and international worker to report about his or her moves. We are already in the biometric database of the federal government as it is. And, lately, we discovered the that the University of Cincinnati, specifically one person in it is an avid reader of this very blog. This caused D and me to consider how much of what we experience in life should be made public through Facebook and blogging.

I have to say that although I hate having my rights being restricted by little people in dark suits, I support what the government is doing in attempt to prevent atrocities such as 9-11 from happening again. However, Sheetrit, this does not say that I support the biometric database promoted in Israel, there are other ways to have smart ID cards, and there are many nations that don't have ID cards at all, and biometric databases will not prevent terrorism or crime as you claim.

What I do hate, and I think there is no excuse for it, is having my freedom of speech trampled by little men that don't wear suits or badges. This is absolutely wrong.

Good Things, Bad Things: Infrastructures

2009-08-13T18:59:00.002-04:00

This post is part of the "Good Things, Bad Things" series.

In order to discuss the infrastructure in the US, let me first define what I mean by the term. For me infrastructures is everything that pertains to your ability to conduct your life. Good infrastructures are the ones that you don't have to think about: they are there, they are reliable, and they deliver everything you need when you need it.

In general I can say that the infrastructures in the USA are better than the ones in Israel. However, there are several exceptions to that rule. The infrastructures that are better than Israel are: broadband internet connection (we have 30Mbit/s fiber optics, at a cost that is lower than the cost in Israel for a tenth of that), roads (there are far less traffic jams here than in Israel), and the postal service, which is absolutely excellent, fast, efficient, and cheap. Service providers, and infrastructures providers among them, are usually more polite and don't require endless conversations to get rid of, but they are still inefficient just as their Israeli counterparts are. I really enjoy the banks here. We have an account with a major bank, and we pay absolutely no fees and get excellent service online and in the branch. It's a real pleasure that is in complete contrast to the appalling way Israeli banks work.

The infrastructures that are not as good as the ones in Israel are: buildings, that are built from IKEA style wooden plates and are just as strong as them, electricity, which has the tendency of failing every time there is a storm, public transportation, which is virtually non-existent in Cincinnati, and plumbing, which is a major problem in the building we live in, probably because of poor maintenance by the company that manages the property. The latter two are probably local problems, as public transportation in NYC, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco is supposed to be better, and the property management company is just one company and others may be better.

Though infrastructures in the US are better than in Israel, I feel that they may be deteriorating due to the economic problems. For example, the roads in Cincinnati have a lot of holes in them, and in the winter the city didn't plow the snow from the smaller streets or had money for salt to prevent the roads from freezing. Hopefully this is a temporary thing, that will pass when the economy improves.

Good Things, Bad Things: Weather

2009-08-09T15:11:00.002-04:00

This post is part of the "Good Things, Bad Things" series.

Weather in Israel can be described as having four seasons: December, January, February, and Summer. The former three are generally called winter, but are quite warm, but the latter ranges between hot and dry to blistering and humid.
After moving here I have finally realized that there are real differences between summer, fall, spring and winter. In the summer it's hot, muggy and rainy. In the fall the trees turn to all shades and colors. In the winter it's cold and sometimes snows. I really enjoyed the snow. Then, spring brings everything back to life, and the trees grow leaves in all different colors once more.

However, this wide range of temperatures and weather phenomena have a price: the weather here is very unstable. One day it's hot, the next it's soaking wet. Electricity lines were knocked out for several days twice since we came here. There are tornado alarms and flood alerts every now and then.

Still, I like the weather in Cincinnati, especially when it's not too hot or rainy.

Good Things, Bad Things: Health

2009-08-08T11:39:00.003-04:00

This post is part of the "Good Things, Bad Things" series.

Before we got here I thought that the Israeli healthcare system is not a good healthcare system. My mother had just died a month before we moved here, and I was angry with the way her treatment had been administered. It seemed to me that the healthcare system in Israel was too slow on one hand, yet too expensive on the other hand. This may still be true, but I have no doubt in my mind that when it comes to healthcare, the Israeli way is far better than the American way.

I use a report by the World Health Organization (WHO) to compare healthcare systems in the world. According to this report, though the Health Adjusted Life Expectancy (HALE) is high in the US (about 70+ years), it is not significantly higher than other countries, or perhaps even less than some. On the other hand the Total Health Expenditure in the US is one of the highest in the world, with Sweden and Germany (See figure 1.6 in that report). In fact the expenditure for healthcare in the US is so high, at about 15% of the GDP, that it is described as "singular" by the WHO (see page 106), compared even with other "high-income" (or developed) countries, which spend less than 10% of their GDP on healthcare. It is also singular in the fact that only 6.9% of the GDP is invested by the government, whereas the rest of the expenditures (almost 9% of GDP) comes from the private market. Although 6.9% of GDP government intervention is by no means low, the fact that so much more money is invested by the private sector contributes to high inequalities in the American healthcare system. This was not overlooked by the WHO: when it comes to universal coverage, the WHO has a lot to say about the inequalities in the American healthcare system, citing a decline of up to 5 years in the life expectancy of women in more than a thousand counties in the nation, where hazardous material are being disposed of (page 56), and the lack of care for uninsured elderly people (page 57).

In overall, it is thus not surprising that the United States of America is ranked number 37 in the world according to a WHO report that assesses the healthcare systems of countries in the world. What may be more surprising is that among the countries that have a better healthcare system than the USA we can find not-so-developed countries, such as Oman, Colombia, the United Arab Emirates, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Morocco, or even Israel (ranked 28). On the other hand, the United Kingdom is ranked number 18, with an expenditure which is only about 6% of its GDP, compare to the 15% in the USA. The highest ranking country is France. Obviously money isn't everything, contrary to common American belief. So, what is important in achieving a capable healthcare system?

The first thing that I can think of is mentioned in the WHO report: universal care. In American lingo this translates to Socialism, however, this is not what the WHO says. One should understand that to be healthy, it is not enough just to pay your ever-growing health insurance policy. It is also important that your neighbor, who may not be as lucky in securing a good healthcare plan as you are, is healthy. For some odd reasons, bacteria and viruses tend to ignore the sum of money you have in the bank, or the type of insurance card you have from your healthcare provider. If your neighbor becomes sick, chances are that you will fall ill as well. Especially if this neighbor is unable to pay for a visit to the doctor, or for the pills prescribed to him. And with 16.6% of Americans uninsured (as of 2007, I believe this percentage will be much higher, as unemployment has risen from about 4% or 5% at that time to about 9.5% today), that means that one of every 6 households are not insured. So, if you live at a house and you have neighbors on all your sides, at least one house around you is uninsured, won't go to the doctor, and there is a high chance you will contract his flu. A proof of that can be seen by the number of H1N1 (swine flu) victims in the USA, which is the highest in the world, 436 confirmed deaths, and it's not even fall or winter here. Yet.

However, it is not enough to make insurance accessible to the lower classes of the population. President Obama suggested a reform that will add a government option for Americans in addition to the private plans. I can't see how this is much different than the existing Medicaid program, but that is only me - I am not a recondite of the American healthcare system. It seems to me that a government run plan as an option is too little too late. Naturally asking for more from the American people, who genuinely believes that it has the best healthcare system in the world, is too much so the president has to settle for this little. Yet, even this is too much for the Americans, and the republican party fights it in every way it can, including scare and slur tactics.

In addition to that, there is a growing anxiety here about president Obama's alleged plans to "socialize" the country. Stemming from the stimulus plans (the first one, which bailed out the banks was actually passed in the term of the Bush administration, but don't confuse the GOP with facts), there were growing concerns about the growing intervention of the administration in the economy and now with the healthcare reform - in the healthcare system. As I wrote in the previous paragraph, I think that the healthcare reform is not enough, but even if President Obama's plans were to socialize the healthcare system completely (as per the GOP's scare tactics), what evil could come from this "socialization"? The worst that can happen, with these kind of expenditures spent on health as they are now, is that the American system will be similar to, and probably exceed, the ones in Germany (ranked 25 in the world), Sweden (23), Norway (11) or France (1). What's wrong with that?

Good Things, Bad Things: Economy

2009-08-03T16:01:00.004-04:00

This post is part of the "Good Things, Bad Things" series.

I am no economist. I do not know how to make good investments, never have known and probably will never know. I know one thing about economy: you have to spend less than what you earn. Otherwise, the expenses overcome the income and you go bankrupt. Simple as that. This is the number one rule of home economics. So, how did we get to the current mess?

We got there by simply not following the rules. I'm sorry, not rules - a rule. There isn't much really to it. But why didn't we follow one simple, 6-words rule? I think that the reason is quite simple: we, the people, wanted to have more, better, and fancier stuff. Somehow during the last 50 years the US-led Western economy has shifted from manufacturing based to consumer based. Instead of a positive influx of money into the US (and Germany, Japan, and other Western countries) we now spend much more than what we get. To get them, we shifted the plants that manufacture them to areas of the world that do not observe the same workers rights that we do in the west. It can be merely not paying the same salaries, but often it also involves longer working hours with little rest or no weekends, under-aged workers (not to say child slavery in the extreme cases), and so on. The average price of a T-Shirt has been dropping for ages at a rate of several percents, mainly because it is cheaper to manufacture them in places like China, Indonesia, or the Philippines, while Western textile factories have shut down. As another example think about the demise of the shoe-repair shops. Until 20-30 years ago when a shoe was torn, people went to repair them, now we buy a new pair of shoes. There is no incentive to keep shoe-repairing shops anymore and they shut down. This is one part of the equation - buy more products with the less money spent per each product. This not necessarily reduces the amount of money we spend on consumer products, and surely enough - we as a civilization have been spending more and more.

At the same time, the same factories and manufacturing that were shifting to the undeveloped world caused the Western civilization to have ever bigger gaps in the balance of trade between the West and the 3rd world. For example, the American balance of trade with China and Japan has been in a great deficit over the last 25 years (since 1985), causing an ever growing debt to these countries, as can be seen in the figure below, which is the work of Alex1011 and is taken from Wikipedia.

If the same debt had been accumulated by a single person, or a single company, they would have had to pay it or go bankrupt. When it comes to countries, things are more complex. However, I think that it can be safe to assume that such great deficits are not healthy to any economy.

But it gets even worse, I'm afraid. At first, manufacturing was out-sourced to economies with cheaper, but less proficient, work-force. However, two parallel processes have been developing over time based on this move: 1) the work force in those 3rd world countries has become more and more proficient, and 2) as they become more proficient the West have shifted the manufacturing of more complex goods to these countries. Let's take Brazil for example. Cars have been manufactured in Brazil since the late 1950s, starting with Toyota and Volkswagen, and in the last 50 years this industry have evolved with almost all modern car manufacturers working there (see link above). Brazil manufactures about 3 million cars and has passed France as of 2008, with high end models like Volkswagen Beetle as an example. However, if one can manufacture cars in Brazil, why not progress to the aerospace industry? Embraer is Brazil's most important aerospace manufacturer, and one of the four major manufacturers of commerce airplanes in the world (in the same league with Boeing, Airbus). Its major growth started in the 1970s. Nowadays, many commuter airlines in the US use Embraer models, especially the smaller ones that carry about 50-100 passengers.

There is nothing wrong with having 3rd world countries developing. On the contrary: when they develop there is a growing market for products that they could not afford earlier. However, as the manufacturing of more and more products is shifted, the local workers in the West lose their ability to manufacture complex products. In the last decade things have deteriorated to the point that Asian companies also design many of the "American" products. The Harvard Business Review writes that American companies have lost their ability to manufacture and design many of the small and simple things they used to be able to manufacture in the past. They even lost their ability to manufacture cutting-edge technology stuff, like the Kindle or the Boeing 787's carbon-fiber components.

Trade balance is just one angle. There is another one: government deficit, which also has been rising constantly. American administrations have always had problems with balancing their sheet, but since Clinton's administration the situation has been going from bad to worse. The 2009 deficit is projected to be more than 1 trillion dollars, some say even 1.8 trillion dollars.

On the lower end of the scale one can look at the consumers. Until the burst of the credit bubble Americans just spent without any second thought, or so it appears. That's why more and more people have huge debts and they turn to defaults and bankruptcies. This in turn is just a symptom of the illness I tried to present earlier: if manufacturing is low, as a whole, then each worker should have less money to earn. Less money to earn - and increased consumerism - must boil down to debt, that's simple math.

So, what is the correct way? How do you fix it? If I had the answer to that, I would probably win the Noble prize. However, it seems to me that the government has to reign in the uncontrollable masses. How? First, levee much higher taxes. This will also improve the government deficit. For example, if each American paid additional $1000 a year in taxes, the deficit would decrease by 350 Billion dollars. $5000 more a year, and the deficit is gone! Tax rates in America are low, compared to the rest of the Western world, however, Americans are not likely to allow this tax raise, and the administration will not be able to do it until the crunch gets much worse. One may argue that higher taxes will result in lower growth rates, which is the last thing desired during an economic crisis. That is true, but high deficit also boils down to more expensive debt for anyone, and higher credit costs, which in turn hinders long-lasting and healthy growth. So, which problem is bigger? Higher rates or higher taxes? Interesting. If I were the president I would increase taxes significantly and try to eliminate the deficit or at least reduce it almost to zero, even at the cost of immediate, short-lived, growth. He has 4 years in office and can afford it. Short-lived "bubble" growth that stems from the stimulus plan will likely to evaporate faster than we think - perhaps before the next presidential elections.

Another thing to consider is investment in bringing back the industry and science to the US. This should be done cleverly, as not all fields will yield the same desired results. However, science, engineering and information technology should come back to the US. Perhaps a new race to the moon is in order? On the other hand, the US has nothing to gain from its failing auto industry until this industry sheds all the excess and starts to make small, fuel efficient and cheap cars. In any case many Americans buy smaller cars from Japanese manufacturers that produce in America, so why support GM or Chrysler?!

Economy: hard to grasp. Let's stick to the basics: spend less than what you earn.

Good Things, Bad Things: Food and Nutrition

2009-07-28T17:46:00.004-04:00

This post is part of the Good Things, Bad Things series.

Before we arrived in the States we had already known that good coffee is hard to come by here. In Tel Aviv, where we used to live, I was able to count between 10 and 20 coffee shops along Eben Gabirol (Hebrew) street, in the block between King David and Arlozorov streets, which is roughly the block I was living in. Indeed, at some point the best known coffee brand in the US, Starbucks, tried to establish a place in this same block. It was closed shortly after the opening, because Israelis were not willing to pay for the overpriced, low-quality, coffee that Starbucks had to offer, with all the better competitors around it (Hebrew).
We managed to find good coffee at Jungle Jim's, a local store, that sells food imported from all over the world. There, we were also able to find some of D's best loved food from the United Kingdom, such as HP Sauce, Branston Pickle, and tea, and some Israeli food, though not the most important product.

I think that the coffee world is the micro-cosmos of the entire food and nutrition industry in the US. The market is roughly divided into American low-end, American high-end, and international parts.

The American low-end part is intended for the use of the lower class / poor people. There you can get big portions for small bucks, and usually the quality is poor, taste is "industrialized" and nutrition values are questionable at best. Good examples for brands that specialize in this market are McDonald's, with the controversies regarding its nutrition values. As part of a varied diet, a Big Mac, as any other product of the fast-food industry, is something that I like to eat every now and then. The problem begins when one's entire diet is based on these products, and this person doesn't eat other types of food, especially vegetables and fruits. We, as students, found that we have to eat too much fast-food because of the limited variety at the university, that favors fast-food chains over nutritious options. However, we have choice, and we started to use it more often than before and bring home-cooked food, which is more healthy. Other people are not as lucky as us, I'm afraid. Since fast-food is cheap by design, many poor people prefer (or are forced by lack of other option) to eat it. if they were trying to eat vegetables or fruits instead of fast-food, it would cost them much higher for the same amount. This may explain why Americans have high rates of obesity compared to other developed and not-so developed countries. Combined with the existing health care system here, ranked 37 in the world by WHO, this can explain the high overall mortality rate in the US. But, I digress.

The second type of food here is the high-end American products. This includes brands like Starbucks, who sell a cup of latte for about $3-$5, depending on its size and the branch location. In comparison, for $5 you can get a foot long sub at Subway. So, only the rich can afford this type of food, but I'm afraid that to my taste it's not that tasty. Here I think plays another part of the equation, which is branding and "fanciness". I think that most people buy Starbucks on their way to the office to show that they can afford it, that they are successful. I haven't polled too many Americans (basically because I don't know enough), but the ones I did ask say that they don't like the coffee, and many of them prefer the bland American coffee to Starbucks' latte. Yet, they buy it in Starbucks for the paper-cup with the green logo.

The last type of food here is the part that we personally prefer: the international food. For lack of customers (I assume), Israeli and Mediterranean food is not the thing here in Cincinnati, except maybe the Mirage. However, this area has a lot of great Indian places, among which we found Krishna to be both cheap and tasty.

There are, however, some exceptions that I would recommend having in Israel. I really love the combination of quick service with good quality (mostly) Mexican food of the Chipotle chain. I also like the atmosphere, pastries and soups at Panera Bread's branches. In the Italian front perhaps we would recommend the Maggiano's chain of posh Italian restaurants. On the other had, we have at least two better chains of Italian restaurants, namely: Joya and Pasta Mia.

In conclusion, food - like many other things in the US - is a matter of social standing more than anything else. In addition, it's highly franchised and commercialized. If you want good food, you either have to make your own, pay a lot, or get really lucky.

To Blog or not to Blog

2009-07-27T21:13:00.004-04:00

To blog, or not to blog: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by writing end them? To blog: to silence;
No more; and by a blog to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To blog, to silence;
To silence: perchance to drown out: ay, there's the rub;
For in that drowning out what screams may we scream
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy sages,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after post,
The ever-index'd country from whose base
No data escapes, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than write to others that we know not of?
Thus implications do make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action

Naturally, this post is based on Shakespeare's Hamlet. Quote - with alterations - thanks to Wikipedia. I couldn't rise quite to the level of the original, but sometimes you have to try.

So They Put A Man On The Moon - Now What?

2009-07-20T19:14:00.003-04:00

One of the buzz stories now is the 40th anniversary of the landing on the moon, which was the culmination of almost a decade of enormous efforts. In my humble opinion this is probably the most ambitious and important combination of scientific and engineering efforts. However, since the last landing on the moon, Humanity has not been able to achieve it again. It's a shame that we - a group of more than 6 billion people - cannot join our forces in space exploration. The biggest achievement we have had came as a result of the cold war, rather than a result of cooperation. If necessity is the mother of all invention, war is its illegitimate dad.
Since the beginning of the 1970s space exploration has deteriorated gradually. First, only repeated landings on the moon with subsequent Apollo launches were made. Then, most missions became unmanned, and nowadays the only space flights are to Low Earth Orbits. Hardly 1/1000 of the distance to the moon. Even the International Space Station, Humanity's biggest cooperation to this date, is a small habitat of barely 6 astronauts (after increasing its size lately), who have to be relieved from their station every few month lest their bones decompose to the point of no return. If that's what we can achieve when all of Humanity cooperate, perhaps a war is in order.
But seriously, since the cold war has ended, in the late 1980s, and American companies have turned to manufacture their products in foreign lands, mostly in Asia, America as a nation has become more and more dependent on other nations. In the last decade things have deteriorated even further and now Asian companies also design many of the "American" products. The Harvard Business Review writes that American companies have lost their ability to manufacture and design many of the small and simple things they used to be able to manufacture in the past. They even lost their ability to manufacture cutting-edge technology stuff, like the Kindle or the Boeing 787's carbon-fiber components. The last nuclear reactor to start development (i.e. be designed) was in the 1970s. If this is the case, how can we expect America to lead the world technologically?
In my humble opinion, space exploration is not an option: it's a mandatory thing. It's something that we need to give to prosperity. This planet is already overcrowded, and it's getting worse. Climate changes will kill millions in the coming decades, yet we do nothing. For example, rocketry for instance, which is the only way we have to escape Earth's gravity at the moment, has not changed much since the Chinese invented the gun powder. At some time in the future a meteor will strike Earth and make it inhabitable for centuries, yet we do nothing. We need to save our lives and that can be done only by exploring other options. I am afraid the only hope is that the Chinese will start a new race against the USA, because this is our only chance to another big effort that may drive all of Humanity forward. Let it be soon, in our lifetime.

Good Things, Bad Things: Academy

2009-07-19T12:50:00.004-04:00

This post is part of the Good Things, Bad Things list.

When we had just considered coming to the USA we were thinking about a good academic institution, which will help launch our careers in a new direction. We ended up in Cincinnati, mainly due to the fact that this is the only place where we could secure a good financial position. The academic level of the University of Cincinnati, albeit being rated in most fields amongst the top 100 in the US or 200 in the world, is certainly not even close to the academic level in the leading institutions. When I compare UC to the Technion, the level of studies that I had in my bachelors degree is much higher than the level of studies in the department here.

<---- A section here was harmonized ---->

One can simply argue that our findings should be limited to the specific university we're attending at the moment and that in other places the level is much higher. I agree with the logic, but we spoke with a girl we know that studies at a very good university, one of the Ivy League universities, and she said that the level of her studies is not so high as well. On the other hand, one of the professors at my department simply said that I expect too much, because I compare the Technion to UC, whereas I should compare the Technion to MIT. That's a very flattering way of putting it, but according to world universities rankings, the Technion is much closer to UC than it is to MIT. In fact, in most rankings American universities take 8 of the best 10 universities world wide. I wonder if they really are that good, or maybe the rankings are given by mostly American scholars, who get caught in the same trap most Americans are caught in: not realizing that there is a world outside the US, and that this world is just as smart and successful as they can be.

Another problem is that rating a university is almost an impossible task. Firstly, a university has many colleges and programs, and averaging the college of business with the college of arts is as relevant as averaging the size of elephants with the color of grass. Furthermore, even if you focus on the ranking of a particular college, department or program, there are still differences in the way each university is divided, and in many cases there are programs, e.g. aerospace engineering, which can be a separate department or a part of a department. Lastly, rankings - by definition - attribute a number to something. When it comes to a vague, and mostly non-numeric field as academic excellence, it is almost impossible to rate. So, several numerical factors are weighted to yield a ranking. However, who says that these are the right factors? For example, I saw in one ranking that the number of students is a factor. What does the number of students tell about the level of studies? If anything, it should be a curve with an optimum, while most universities are ranked by their ability to attract as many students as possible. And who decides on the weights of each factor? This is a completely subjective thing.

So, if rankings are useless we are back to the feeling of the student that takes the program. Currently, our feeling is that we should have been taking better programs.

Related links to university rankings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Ranking_of_World_Universities
http://www.arwu.org/rank2008/EN2008.htm
http://www.arwu.org/rank2008/Top500_EN(by%20rank).pdf
http://www.webometrics.info/top6000.asp

From Bowling to Fear in 120 Minutes

2009-07-17T23:49:00.005-04:00

We have just finished watching the movie "Bowling to Columbine" on DVD. This is not my first time watching it, and although this movie has many flaws in the way Michael Moore presents and comments on the facts, there is one question being raised and going unanswered throughout the movie: why do Americans end up killing each other in such great numbers, whereas other nations manage not to do so despite being not less violent or possessing more guns than Americans?
My gut feeling is that the answer lies in the way American society is built. This ultimate individualism, which turns people to competitors in the race for - rather than contributors to the achievement of - personal happiness. Therefore they fear each other, and prevent themselves from making new acquaintances. Therefore they hate, segregate and avoid socializing with those deemed different. Therefore they don't try to get to know the other person, certainly not to help them when they are weak. In their eyes life is a zero-sum competitive game, so if the other gains I have to lose. And so the vicious circle continues.
I have mentioned before that Israelis tend to imitate Americans, and this is also something we do well in Israel - hate, segregate, and compete instead of helping each other. We're still a society, but our social values are less profound than they used to be. I hope we don't start killing each other at the same rate Americans do. But it seems to me that the sign is already on the wall.

Good Things, Bad Things: Technology

2009-07-09T17:56:00.002-04:00

This post is part of the "Good Things, Bad Things" list I am trying to compile to describe our life here in Cincinnati before the first anniversary of our relocation.

A good thing about life here is the abundance of gadgets and technology. But it is not uniformly distributed around the US, between companies, or among people. For example, we are connected to the internet using a fiber optic cable and we have a bandwidth of 30Mbps download. That's something that most Americans can't get because the infrastructure just doesn't get to their houses. Some of them also don't want to be connected to the internet all the time, and prefer the old fashioned dial up.
However, if you are a technology enthusiast, like we are, you can get almost anything you want, for a price that is. I have a new Kindle2, which can download books using the cellular network provided for "free" by Amazon ("free" means it's part of the book's cost and there is no extra charge for it).

When we first moved here we decided that since we didn't have a lot of money we should not get a TV and rely on internet connection and online entertainment options. As most of these websites don't work outside of the United States, Israelis rarely experience them. However, we have found out that we can follow almost every show that plays, a day or two after it was aired, at any of the websites of TV channels: ABC, NBC, TBS, CNN, and I guess several more - all have sites that allow you to watch TV. There is also Hulu, which aggregates several of these networks for our convenience. From Israel we can watch channel 10 (except for the football games, which was very annoying), but their relying on Windows Media technologies is very annoying compared to the superior Flash technology that all American channels use nowadays.
And then you have Netflix, which for a very small fee a month ($9) streams unlimited videos and TV shows which were distributed on DVDs, or sends the DVDs (one at a time) home.
So, basically, we don't need any TV now. In the future we may get a computer to act as a media player and stream all the videos that we want to a computer monitor (30 inch maybe?).

The main problem nowadays is cellular connection. When we first arrived here this was one of the first thing we did, thinking that we will have to communicate in some way or another with one another and with others. So we went to the only company that was generous enough to give us a plan without credit history: Verizon. It was a huge disappointment. It seems that the company messes up the user interface of it's phones, in the name of uniformity and "ease of use". I couldn't deal with my pay-as-you-go phone, which was really horrible, and switched to T-Mobile as soon as I could. There I could keep my old Sony-Ericsson, because they have a GSM network, but they don't have a 3rd generation network in Cincinnati area. How pathetic is that? And what good does it do anyone that they have Google phones if they don't have the 3rd generation infrastructure to support them? In general it seems that none of the American networks supports 3G very well outside the main cities along the coast. And that is my main complaint about American technology: you can get it, but it is limited to the rich areas and rich people living in them. Try to get internet connection or 3G in Kansas or North Dakota. You'll be happy to have limited cellular connection and dial up internet there...

Good Things, Bad Things: Society

2009-07-02T19:55:00.002-04:00

This post is part of the "Good Things, Bad Things" list I am trying to compile to describe our life here in Cincinnati before the first anniversary of our relocation.

There is no way around it, American society is a very ill society, almost to the point of a-socialism. If I may add a word to the English dictionary I would call it asociety. From top to bottom, from social infrastructure to daily life - nothing works in this asociety. On the list of bad things in Cincinnati, and perhaps the entire nation, I would say that American society is by far the worse.
American society is plagued by the following social pandemics: xenophobia, prejudice, and puritanism. I will now go on to explain in short what each pandemic is and how it manifests itself.
Americans are xenophobic. I don't think it's the result of the atrocities of September 11, most probably it is rooted far more in the past. They hate, fear and are repelled by foreigners on any level from the federal to the personal.
On the Federal level, this xenophobia starts with their requirements for visas. For example, Israelis are able to enter Canada as tourists without a visa, whereas they are required to have a valid tourist visa to enter the US. One may say that this is because Israelis tend to overstay their visas and work illegally. While this is true for some Israelis, it certainly isn't true for all, but more importantly the same incentives for Israelis to overstay in the US apply also for the Canadian case, so why the difference in policy.
On the personal level this xenophobia manifests itself in the most bizarre ways that American will use in order to avoid having strangers and even acquaintances in their home. For example, if they throw a party, they will do it in their yard or garage, just as long as no one will be allowed in their home. We see that every weekend in the area and it's unbelievable. It is as if Americans are afraid of having people in their homes.
Unfortunately, this xenophobia is not limited to their domiciles. D now faces something that I realized when I started working at the University: people hardly speak to each other at work. When they do, it's mostly on work issues and not personal stuff. As unbelievable as it may seem, people can spend a whole day here without ever talking with any of their peers. In Israel, when you're working there is always people to talk to. When you enter the office there's always "what's up?" and "how are you?". When one gets coffee (another big problem here), someone always joins in and you talk while making coffee. You even drink it together most often. People go to lunch together, all in the name of socializing. People care about each other and become friends, and then they invite each other home. It is unheard of that people are not invited to eat lunch with others on their first day at a work place. Absolutely none of that happens here. People here are like impenetrable bubbles, or even repelling magnets; if two happen to be too close to each other they utter "excuse me" and scurry away from each other without making eye contact.
The strangest thing is that Americans do it with the utmost politeness. If you happen to walk across someone he or she always greets you hello or nod their heads. They smile. They say "excuse me", and "thank you", though they don't say "your welcome" here, just a kind of an impolite "uh-huh".

Xenophobia goes well with prejudice. It's not pure racism as used to be here in the past, but undoubtedly it's better to be a white male than a black woman. Not to mention an alien. In Cincinnati neighborhoods are color-coded: the good are populated by whites and the African-Americans reside in the bad ones. This goes on to affect the schools they will study in, thus affecting their chances of social mobility. In general I would say that a black may become rich and successful, but it will take a unique talent, whether in sports or academy. The vast majority, perhaps 99%, will not be able to escape the fate of their ancestors. Perhaps a new African-American president will help bridge these gaps, but I have serious doubts. I think that most whites are still afraid of the Blacks around them, either because they have a different skin color (thus evoking xenophobia) or because they are used to thinking about them in terms of poor and violent people.

Perhaps as a method of helping them feel better about their ways, the people here tend strongly to be puritans. It's not a simple "bible-belt" thing, as we don't live in the area, but it's close and stems from the same Christian devotion. For example, women here tend to wear clothes that are less revealing than in Israel, while the summer here is as hot as in Tel Aviv. In D's new work place they have a booklet of instructions regarding proper behavior and attire: no Crocks, no jeans, and naturally no cleavage. Understandably, they will avoid saying words like fuck and shit, but they will also use words like gosh and hack, instead of God and hell, all in the name of the God they will not utter His name. Confused? So are we.

What's even worse, it seems to me that Israeli society is striving hard to become more American than American. Which means that we take the things that work well for us as Israelis and befoul them by imitating probably the worst society to have ever existed since the Roman Empire.

Good Things, Bad Things

2009-07-02T18:36:00.012-04:00

I have been toying with the idea of writing a list of things I like and dislike about Cincinnati, and America in general. The more I thought about it, the more it appeared to me that this list is going to be long and hard to complete. Not to mention the fact that it's going to be impossible for any reader to follow.
So, instead, I decided to compile this list in parts, where each part will try to encompass a single aspect of our lives here. I think that it is becoming to do it between America's birthday and the anniversary of our arrival here, so hopefully I will be able to complete it in the allotted period of time.
Naturally, most of the analysis will be based on a comparison between the two countries that I lived in: Israel and here.
What are the topics?

Hopefully, I can make this list interesting and on time for our anniversary here, which is about two months from now.

The siege syndrome

2009-06-26T08:26:00.004-04:00

Israelis like to say that they are under siege. I don't know if it stems out of the Holocaust, the first decades of Israel's existence, or maybe from millennia of antisemitism in Europe, but it is quite preposterous now. It is not that Israelis, and Jews in general, are liked everywhere nor by any one, but enough with this siege syndrome. So, when I get an email asking me to support Dr. Yoram Blachar, who is up for or has been elected as the Worlds Medical Doctors Association (or something of the like, I don't really follow) against a fierce opposition that claims that he supported Israeli torture of prisoners, or a highlight about an Israeli Facebook group, whose goal is to counter another Facebook group that calls for a boycott over Israel, I am left speechless. This is preposterous. At least theFacebook group could attach a link for the other group that we know it is real.

And even if Facebook decides to boycott Israel - fine, let them. They won't be the first nor the last to do so. I think most Israelis drive cars manufactured by companies that used to boycott Israel until the 1990s, succombing to Arab and Isalamic pressure. Mazda, Toyota, Honda, and Mitsubishi - all had been boycotting Israel until the peace process with the Palestinians began and the Arab boycott was lifted in the 1990s. Of Japanes car manufacturers, only Subaru were selling cars in Israel in the 1980s or earlier. Mitsubishi were the first to break that boycott in 1989 or 1990 if I remember correctly.

Being paranoid is not a problem, naturally. People might be trying to hurt you. As anything, it is a good thing when taken moderately, until it makes you do stupid things. It seems to me, from afar, that the new Israeli government has been adding to this siege syndrome. I wonder if it is for political survival purposes, gaining internal cohesion before some controversial military act, or something done without a goal. In any case, playing with fire might get you burnt. I hope this will not be the case for us.

Design changes

2009-06-25T21:33:00.002-04:00

A few design changes have been made by D to make this blog look better. Thanks.

Las Vegas

2009-06-24T11:09:00.004-04:00

I promised in my Delta tirade that I'll write about our trip to Las Vegas. What can be said about Las Vegas that has not been said before? Probably nothing. Therefore, this post will only list a few points that I find unique.
Las Vegas is expensive. Don't let yourself be fooled by the low accommodation prices (we stayed at the Stratosphere for about $40/night). The main idea is to lure you in, and once you're there everything costs. A lot. I like to use an index that I call "The diet index" - how much you pay for a Diet Coke or a Diet Pepsi bottle at a vending machine. As I am addicted to these drinks this is an important index for me. In Las Vegas the average vending machine price was ~$2.50 for a 590ml bottle. That's about twice the price I pay at the university for the same bottle, and I think that the ratio of 2:1 is quite typical to Las Vegas. We ended up spending around a thousand dollars during the five days we stayed there, not including the flights and hotel room. And we actually spent less than the $100 we intended to spend on gambling, so most of the money was spent on food.
Las Vegas is disorienting. D already wrote about the way hotels are trying to disorient their visitors. However, there is more to it. Hotels, and lots in general, are just huge. I think that the lots are measured in squared kilometers (or their American equivalent) and not dunams. Hotels are built huge in order to be able to give it some theme, for example The Paris Las Vegas, The New York New York and The Venetian are all trying to imitate the look and atmosphere of their respective city. That goes both inside and outside. This imitation requires a lot of space and thought. Space is abundant as Las Vegas is practically built out of the desert, but it's not that simple. Since tourism is mainly concentrated at the Las Vegas Strip, which is a single boulevard, the best hotels compete for a central location ("Location, Location, Location").
The disorientation is not limited to the facades of the hotels. It's mainly inside the hotels. In an effort to block the outside world from the gamblers inside the casinos, there are no clocks and very few windows, thus the sense of time is lost. Add to that the constant bombardment of jingling sounds and dazzling lights and inside the casino from all the slot machines, and one can hardly process where one is or what was his or her intentions. The paths between slot machines form a grid that do not lead to or from any exit or entrance, again trying to create a maze where a person will get lost and start playing. Once you're seated at a card table or a slot machine, waitresses with minimal clothes will come to offer you free drinks, in order to keep you sitting. I wonder how come they don't connect people to mobile latrines.
Las Vegas is also the most liberal city I know in the USA. In this sense it even surpasses Tel Aviv. Prostitution is legal in Nevada, and so is gambling (of course) and drinking outside. Almost all the grand hotels offer topless spectacles with some kind of a plot or another. On the strip there are trucks advertising escort services 24/7 (or at least at any hour that we happened to be outside). At every strip corner you can find several magazines with nude photos with the same services. I have to say that you can find that in Tel Aviv as well, but at least in Las Vegas it's legal. D and I have agreed that legalizing prostitution is beneficial to all parties involved, especially the women working in it. One has to accept certain facts about human nature, even if they are not nice, for example people will always want to drink alcohol or prostitution will never be gone. Legalizing prostitution will take crime lords out of this business, just like the Mafia lost ground when drinking was legalized after the Prohibition.
All in all, it was a long awaited vacation and I'm glad we took it. Now we are already back to work: D at her new internship and I teach a (yet another) new class.

Here are some photos that D took:

The Las Vegas Strip as seen at night:

Piazza San Marco - An indoors view at The Venetian:

Gondolas at the Central Canal, The Venetian indoors:

A night look of The Stratosphere, where we stayed:

My D standing inside a street of The Paris (indoors again):

This is a slightly exaggerated size of the actual daiquiris sold in Las Vegas. This one is from the indoors of The Miracle Mile shops, Planet Hollywood

The Paris outdoors:

This is a typical casino room at Las Vegas: a lot of noise and commotion. This one was taken at the New York, New York.

And this is how The New York, New York looks from the outside:

Kindle 2: impressions of the first two weeks

2009-06-21T22:00:00.003-04:00

One of the best things about living in America is the ability to experience all the newest technologies. That is, if you have the money, which we usually don't. However, in the case of Amazon's Kindle 2, one can almost find the perfect excuse for buying a Kindle: it will eventually save us money, as I am an avid reader. So, as the inventory of new books for me to read was diminishing we decided to get me one instead of new books.
After receiving the Kindle 2 I can say that it is a fun gadget and it does make you want to read more. It is fairly easy to use, although in today's world of touch screens I was expecting it to have one as well. I think, however, that there are too many buttons to control the device. For example, there are two "Next Page" buttons, one on each side of the gadget. Most of the functionality is controlled by the "Menu" button and is quite basic.
The display itself is very readable and easy on the eyes, due to the Kindle's best feature: the electronic ink screen. The display is very power efficient and uses battery only when the display is changed, for example when you turn a page. So far I am very impressed by the efficiency: I haven't charged the Kindle since the initial (and partial as I was too eager to start using it) charge. In the time until now I have already finished one book and more than a hundred pages. On the other hand I scarcely use the wireless capabilities, because I haven't downloaded a book from Amazon yet. The Kindle is equipped with an experimental basic text-based web browser. We tried to use it in Vegas to get some information from the Lonely Planet website, but it was too slow and awkward to use.
The web browser also emphasizes one of the few shortcomings of the device: the display refreshes very - very - slowly. There is a significant latency between the command you give (e.g. turn a page) and the refresh of the display. It's less than a second, but more than a comfortable time lag.
By a recommendation of one of D's classmates I downloaded several books from the free and open library of Project Gutenberg. The books in this library come in various formats, ranging from simple text files to a variety of e-book formats, but none of them is the Kindle's native - and property of Amazon - format. However, Kindle itself supports several e-book formats, some of them can also be found at Project Gutenberg. You can also use Amazon's services to reformat a file that is not supported by Kindle, e.g. Word documents or PDF files. To do that just send the file to an email address provided by Amazon. The reformatted file will be sent back to you either by email (for free, but then you have to manually transfer the file to your Kindle) or directly to the Kindle (for $0.10). See the link above for more details.
One last feature, which I find very useful and I enjoy a lot, is the built-in dictionary. If you happen to encounter a word that you don't know (and it happens a lot in Project Gutenberg's books, as they are all from the 19th century or older), simple use the navigation joystick to point at the word. The dictionary will automatically show you the meaning of the word, and if you want to know more, you can press "Enter" to show a page with the definition. If only I had had that before the GRE course I took...

In summary, I think that the Kindle is an excellent book reader and something that I will recommend to any book-lover. The only small problems with it are the slow refresh rate of the display, and the non-functional web browser. If Amazon are looking at further improvements to the Kindle I recommend they start there. In addition, I think that the price ($359.00) is too expensive, and should have at least included a free gift for several books to be downloaded from Amazon. In a short time the Kindle changed my reading habits and made reading a better and a more educating experience. Just remember: you cannot use it to read books during take off and landing, but I think it's okay to use it in steady flight if you turn off the cellular connectivity.

To Vegas and back with Delta

2009-06-20T20:36:00.003-04:00

We spent a few days in Las Vegas. A more complete account of that will follow sometime soon, I hope. In the meantime you can see D's account here.
This post, however, will be dedicated to the worst airline company I have ever traveled with: Delta (do yourself a favor: don't follow that link and book a ticket with them). For starters, they are the stingiest most penny-pinching bastards in the industry. Everything - and I literally mean everything - costs an extra. The extra for checking in luggage is not new, but is still annoying. From here it just goes straight down: do you want to eat on a four and half hours flight? No problem - you can either get two tiny "complimentary" peanuts packages or pay for a sandwich. Are you thirsty after eating "all these peanuts"? We'll fetch you drinks, don't worry. It will take us a full hour before we start doing it, and then it will take us another full hour to traverse the entire length of a Boeing 737 aisle (it's not long, believe me), and then we'll give you a small cup of water or soda. Don't think of getting another one before landing.

What about in-flight entertainment? Contrary to most airlines (including Delta) that use a small airplane that doesn't have in-flight entertainment systems, we had a system on both flights. However, this is probably only for extortion purposes: Delta charge for everything, except maybe some TV shows. They charge $2 for the headsets, and about $5 for every film, game or other entertainment during the flight. May I remind you that it's a 4.5 hours flight, which is roughly the time to fly from Tel-Aviv to any Western European destination?

The seats in coach have such a small leg-room that I think Delta actually broke El-Al's record here. Do you want to stretch your legs or God forbid use the bathrooms? You're pushing your luck, pal, because for every stray cirrus cloud seen from 40 miles distance the pilot turns on the "buckle your seat-belt" sign and you're not allowed to get up. This literally left about 10-15 minutes of flight without being constrained to the seat. Needless to say that with other airlines I was able to go to the restroom and use them while the aircraft experienced much greater disturbances.

Since the seat-curfew was enforced on both flights (to Vegas and from Vegas) I am quite certain that it's a policy with Delta. Like in any crime one can only ask what is the motive behind this crime? Well, it could be as benign as the simple explanation: it's easier to control the crowd when they all are seated and buckled to their chairs. It could also be something more problematic: someone realized that this way people will not be able to get to the kitchenette and ask for more drinks, or nobody will use the restrooms, thus the airline can spend less on toiletries. I am not joking here, from all the stinginess I have experienced from Delta I am quite certain of the latter being the real reason.

Weather

2009-06-14T16:16:00.002-04:00

In Israel summers are very dull: hot, humid and no rain. In Cincinnati it's quite the opposite. It started as a nice day. Really.

Sitting on the balcony

2009-06-06T18:58:00.002-04:00

We have a small balcony. It was mainly unused so far, except maybe for piling up snow in the winter. As spring is almost over and summer is upon us, the neighbors all started putting garden chairs out. Today we also bought a couple of foldable chairs and now we are sitting outside, with our laptops, naturally. Thanks God for wireless LAN.

Israeli general consul at UC

2009-05-16T20:42:00.003-04:00

The Israeli general consul in the US for the Mid-Atlantic states was at UC on Thursday. He gave a nice speech in which he explained the Israeli stand on many issues, mostly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. No doubt, he did a good job at that, and was able to answer many questions from the audience, even two provocative questions from a pro-Palestinian student.
However, I was disappointed by the scope of the address. I feel, and expressed these feelings to whomever cared to listen, that a formal Israeli representative should represent Israel - as a whole - not just a poor side of it, namely the conflict. Israel is so much more than a conflict, even though this is what attracts most of the media attention. Israeli representatives should show that Israel is a westernized, relatively liberal, democratic society with many success stories, especially in arts, sciences and technology. This is even more important when the meeting takes place in the College of Arts and Sciences!
There are many reasons why the focus of such meetings should be changed. Firstly, many Americans (and I guess many citizens of other nations as well) don't know Israel other than what the media shows, which is the conflict. That limits their views to only views regarding the conflict, and usually forces them to take sides based on this narrow aspect.
Furthermore, when all you do is talk about the conflict you shed light on both sides of the conflict. Some of this light, perhaps most of it, is spent on your side, naturally, but there is also some light that goes to the other side. Why waste so much energy? Why not show just your country? Just your side?
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, when you depict Israel as what it is - and not what the conflict prism causes it to seem - you enable broader perspectives. I think it would be easier for a Westerner to identify with Israeli success stories than it would be for him to identify with Israel's stand on a bloody conflict. People are more bent towards things they can identify in themselves and their culture (modernism, democracy, liberalism) than towards conflicts and wars. Why not provide them with the opportunity to do that?

There are enough success stories to tell. Lately, I have just finished reading on how Americans are coming to realize Israeli success in the Clean-Tech field, which is the new buzz-word now. Why don't you tell us a bit about that, Israeli general consul?

Mediterranean Food

2009-05-16T17:57:00.003-04:00

We've been wanting to eat some Hummus and Pita for a while now. Today we decided that it's time! We Googled for Mediterranean restaurants in Cincinnati and found The Mirage. It's a mix of Mediterranean food and Russian ancestry, which makes it perfect for us: we both miss the sound of Russian and the taste of Hummus. We had a plate of hummus, which was tasty but a bit too watery, with real pita breads! The rest of the food was even better: I had lentils soup, which a very Mediterranean taste, D had Falafels plate, with real vegetarian salad, and I had beef shish-kebab. Everything was great. We will definitely go back for more great food and feeling of home.

Update: Work Load

2009-05-03T19:38:00.002-04:00

It appears that I am the only one that started teaching right on the first term. According to the associate department head responsible for teaching, usually they give new faculty a quarter to get settled, and only then, on the second term, they start teaching, and even then only one course at that quarter. I started right away with two and continued with that rate. I’m also the only one with 7 courses a year. Usually the faculty teach up to 6 courses a year, and they have one quarter off after three consecutive quarters of teaching. It sucks to be at the bottom of the totem pole.
So, now I try to use the time off that I have every now and then to prepare my classes for the summer. It's not easy: I work full time with the two classes I teach now, I try to get some research done (even wrote a paper), and most of the time I am just exhausted from starting to each at 8AM every other day.

We have better prospects for D's quarter, on the other hand. She has finished two courses already, and now her time will be divided between only three classes and her work. It's still not easy, but at least she will have Mondays off now, and will be able to free some time over the weekends. Or so I hope.

We even find some time to follow several TV shows: Lost, Heroes, Lie To Me, Hisardut, and D sometimes catches episodes of Grey's Anatomy.

40 Hours a week?

2009-05-01T17:15:00.001-04:00

I recently received my paycheck and there they took off the hours we spent in Israel over the winter. It seems that for the 10 days off I paid with 80 hours, 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week.
I think that at the rate I have been working since we got here I already finished my working hours this year.

Yom Atzmaut

2009-04-27T20:49:00.004-04:00

My favorite holiday has always been Yom HaAtzmaut, independence day. I think that the reasons for this are rooted in my childhood. For one thing, when I was little, my family used to meet with other families of my parents for a Kumsits. As a child, staying up until late, eating barbecue food and being with the "grownups" used to be something I liked. Back then, when the national public television was the only channel, there was no TV on weekends and holidays, and independence day used to be the only day with TV. I used to enjoy the Israeli movies that were aired, though they were "burekas" movies.

The day before independence day is Israeli memorial day. The proximity of the two dates has always puzzled me: how can you be mournful one moment and joyful the next? Israelis are indoctrinated as children that the "fallen" have bestowed upon us our lives in Israel. Their sacrifice is the reason for us being there. I also remember that as a child, with - luckily for me - no known relative who had been killed in service, but with many family members, who had perished in the holocaust, I used to think that the holocaust remembrance day should be more significant than the IDF memorial day. Of course, as a grown up I understand that both are equally important: mourning cannot be measured in quantitative values. There is no "my pain is bigger than yours".

So, why this long introduction? It is my first independence day abroad, and I was wondering how I would feel, whether it will feel like a holiday or not, whether I will feel some mourning on IDF memorial day or holocaust memorial day. It turns out that I do feel and in some absurd way it feels that being abroad makes me feel even more. It is as if being abroad has caused me to feel it from the inside, rather than something that comes from the outside, from the public symbols of these days. Today the movie Beaufort was screened at the University's cinema. I felt that I had to go to the movie, although I saw it some years ago. It is not an easy movie, and seeing it the second time doesn't make it easier to watch. It is as sad as it was the first time, even worse, as one already knows how the plot develops. The screening was organized by the Jewish students organization and "Bearcats for Israel", which is the pro-Israeli organization here. I was expecting people to come, and was surprised to see that I was the only audience when the lights were turned off and the movie began. Afterwards several people came in, one of them I think I even recognized. The strangest thing is that I tried to think how these people interpret the movie.

There are several reasons why non-Israelis will have a problem understanding the movie. Firstly, the movie was screened with Hebrew soundtrack and English subtitles, and so many of the innuendos of Hebrew (and specifically the IDF jargon) just get lost. Secondly, they lack context. When I came out of the movie I saw only 4 other people, all of them looked Indian. There was no introduction to the movie, and I guess that no one leaving outside Israel or Lebanon can even try and understand the situation and all the feelings surrounding it in the year 2000. Furthermore, there are several strong scenes in the movie, in which the leading character - a young officer who is the commander of Beaufort stronghold - is tested. I think that this thing is simply lost to anyone who hasn't had military training, which is obviously anyone who watched the movie today. I couldn't help wondering how they feel when they see it. Some (may be most) of them left at some point or the other, and I wonder if it was because they couldn't understand the movie, or because they had other better things to do. Perhaps I am mistaken, because it seems that most of the comments left by people in IMDB are very positive.

In conclusion, I think that if anything, the fact that I am here causes me to identify even more with the Israeli memorial days/independence day. It's such a shame that I don't have anyone to tell (except D here and the brave readers of this blog).

Some updates

2009-04-15T23:26:00.002-04:00

Spring quarter has begun and we're about 25% in it. Spring itself, however, seems to be a crazy season here. The weather has been oscillating from warm shiny days to damp, rainy and even snowy days. The period of the oscillation can be measured quite accurately to 3-4 days. When the weather is warm everything looks very nice and indeed spring is beautiful here. D has posted some photos in her Flickr album.
Last weekend we also had our first ever guest here in Cincinnati! We had a friend of mine from New York over for the weekend. She had to rid herself from Passover sticky Seders (there are two here in the US, because diaspora Jews apparently celebrate each holiday twice) and fled to our sanctuary. She spent three days with us, which allowed her to experience the entire cycle of weather. On gloomy Friday (originally, Good Friday) we went to the Cincinnati Art Museum, which surprisingly was more impressive than what I had expected. The museum showed an exhibition compiled by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem on Surrealism and Dada works. This type of art is usually not my cup of tea, and indeed I could (and did) summarize some of the works as: hey, I can paint better than these blotches of paint on canvas. I did like the classic Alpha Romeo they put on exhibit in the museum: now this is art!
It cleared on Saturday and we went for a great walk in Ault Park, which is a lovely park minutes of walk from our house. Most of the photos in D's album were taken there (although a week earlier).

When it comes to observing the Passover tradition I'm glad to say that we didn't observe any of it. We didn't go to any Seder. We didn't eat any unleavened bread, on the contrary: we ate pizza. I think the only relation to the holiday's tradition was drinking wine on Seder. By the way, pizza and wine are our traditional way of celebrating this holiday, as we have done that in four of the last five years. Naturally, we also worked, studied and taught during the Passover week. So basically, we didn't feel any holidays spirit.

Today we made our first significant step into mutual recognition between us and the matrix, aka the State of Ohio: both of us took our driving test and passed. So now both of us hold a valid driver's license issued by the Bureau of Motor Vehicles of the grid. As stated in a previous post, we were required to pass all the driving tests administered, as if we haven't been driving for the past 17 years or so. At least now we hold a license that will - hopefully - enable us to be free of the passports we were carrying all the time: it is, after all, a valid ID. The driving test here is very short: about 15 minutes in total. The test has two parts: maneuverability test and actual driving. In the former one needs to drive from an original position through a rectangular area defined by 4 cones and then proceed either to the left or to the right of a fifth cone (called point), bringing the car to a stop with its rear at the line of the point, and parallel to the general direction of the area. Then, from this position one must reverse the car to its starting position (description of the test can be seen in this animation). The rules are that the motion forward and in reverse should be done without stopping and that the cones must not be driven over. Then, if one passes that part of the test, the second part of the test is a very short drive outside the testing center's parking lot. This proved to be very short and very easy. The funny thing, of course, that if we had failed the test, we would have simply get into our car, driving with our international license. Anyway, this is past us now, and thus, we have finally completed the work plan defined about a year ago for our relocation.

Spring Time

2009-04-07T12:54:00.002-04:00

I have never lived in a country that has actual winter until we came here. Here was the first time that I saw snow and experienced real cold temperatures (though not as cold as the Northern areas experience). Here is also the first time that I see and understand the meaning of a real spring. Back home, the winter is a sort of autumn, autumn and spring are mild versions of summer, and summer is unbearable version of it. What I see here now explains why so many holidays are related to the spring, and why spring is a symbol of life. During the winter, all the trees were without leaves. It took the first days of precipitation in a liquid form (i.e. rain) instead of snow to convince them that the worst is over and that they should get back to life. All of a sudden the world, that used to be colored by shades of gray and brown has been recolored with all sorts of colors: green for grass and shrubs, white, pink, red, and purple for the flowers on the trees and on the ground. On a nice day, like the one we had on Saturday, everything looks so beautiful, and then the true meaning of the word spring emerges: the world springs to life.

Naturally, not everything in life can be perfect. Thus, the American taxes season is upon us, and all the tax return forms are due April 15. Taxes here are much different than the ones we had in Israel. Firstly, there is an income tax at any level: federal, state, and local (city). Each one of them requires a different set of forms to be filled. Not only that, there are several variations for each form, and it is almost impossible to know which form to fill. For example, on the federal level the same form has the following types: for citizens, for resident aliens, and for non-resident aliens. To make it even more confusing, the residency of an alien is defined differently by the Internal Revenue Service (the IRS) and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (the INS). It turns out that you can be a non-resident in the eyes of the INS while still being deemed a resident alien by the IRS (I think that the other way around is impossible, but not sure of that). Furthermore, since there is a huge variety of non-resident visas, and the IRS considers each one differently for residency purposes, it is even more confusing. And if that is not enough, there are other forms that need to be filled out if you didn't have any income or if you changed status during the year.

On the state level it is approximately the same thing, only that here you have an even more complicated task: if you moved from state to another you are considered part-time resident. Since we came here in September we are part-time residents. However, we arrived from out of the country, and this is a completely different story, which I don't know how the local officials treat.
Then you have the locality tax. In Israel the locality gets its money from the tax on your property (Arnona). Here it's another form of income tax (perhaps there is a tax on your property too, I don't know).

I have had my taxes withheld during the year. It means that I receive a salary after some of the money is put aside by the university as part of the taxes I owe to the federal government, state and city. Apparently, this is not like in Israel where the payments are accurate and usually you don't need to do anything at the end of the year. Here they take a "rough" amount and in the end of the year you fill out the tax return and learn how much you still owe the government, or how much the government owes you. It turns out that the government owes me quite a large amount of money, almost half my withheld taxes. Strange.

Thinking about all the forms and paperwork sent by April 15 to the federal and state services just makes me shiver. Let's assume that there are about 200 million tax payers in America, and each one prepares a single federal tax return, a single state tax return and a single locality tax return. That's already 600 million forms, each with multiple pages. There goes some forests...
Then, someone has to read these forms and make sure that no one tried to pay too little or get too much money back. Assuming that it takes 10 minutes per form per person, 6 forms are processed each hour, making it 100 million work hours. The checks from the government(s) usually come back within 5-7 weeks, according to their site. This means that between 15-20 million hours are done each week, or 3-4 million hours a day, or between 300-400 thousand people are paid to do it. That's not including hierarchy and supporting personnel (IT, HR, administration). It is a safe idea to believe that for every official that checks a form there is at least one that is either above in the hierarchy or support this person's work. Thus, 600-800 thousand people, not including the 10% of hidden unemployment, redundancies and undesired bureaucracy.
These people are paid, their offices have electricity, heating and cooling, plumbing, and other necessary working conditions. The offices themselves are in buildings, taking up place and real estate value, usually within the downtown of some major city. I guess that the costs of these services are about $100K per person (at the very least, probably as much as twice that amount). So, it must cost about 50-100 billion dollars just to collect, process and return all the tax forms.

Perhaps collecting taxes as it is done in Israel would be much more efficient. Everything is collected upfront. There is little need for additional tax returns at the end of the year, and those who venture it usually are turned away with nothing, which deters people from actually trying to do it. This could save dozens of billions of dollars to the American tax payer. Come to think of it: this could save money to me!

Back to the Grind 2!

2009-03-29T21:54:00.003-04:00

So spring break is over. It was far too short and I feel that I am definitely not as rested as should be before the beginning of a new quarter. The previous quarter was very busy indeed, and in the last weeks of the quarter I was working too hard - around 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. The students seemed to like my work, especially the students in my new class. I did try to give them a full academic curriculum as well as a nice time in class, using clips and figures. It seemed to be working and I am glad that they felt good with that. One of them has even left a comment that he hopes the department will keep me in the next years. After the comments in the fall quarter I am glad to have this kind of a feedback.

Meanwhile, it seems that we need to pass a driving test in order to obtain a drivers license from the matrix-controlled state we're living in. As newcomers to the US we are required to prove that our driver's license is real. This is of course absolutely preposterous: in order to take the driving test we will drive our own car to the exam center, and should we fail we will simply get back into the car and drive it back home. That's because our driver's license from Israel is apparently good enough for driving as tourists, but is not good enough for driving as Ohioans. As part of this ridiculous process we took a written driving test (aka "theoretic" test) and passed it (naturally). I was expecting to get the license right away and got very upset when I was told that I need to schedule a driving test. D received the news with much more acceptance than me, which is funny because it's usually the other way around.

Back to the quarter ahead of us: again, I teach two classes, only this time both of them are classes I have already taught, so there is much less work preparing for them (checking assignments and exams is still a hard work). I also take 6 credits of "research", which means that I am free to do whatever I want, as long as the adviser agrees with me. D is going to be very busy with a full curriculum and her part time work. The worst part is that I teach (as always) on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays starting at 8 in the morning, while she starts her day in the afternoon. Tuesdays and Thursdays are the opposite: she goes to work early in the morning, while I am not teaching, and intend to spend the time at home. Thus, we will rarely see each other at the university, and I will not have a partner for lunch.

Chicago

2009-03-26T15:56:00.002-04:00

Spring break is almost over, and I haven't updated on our trip to Chicago. Chicago is located almost 300 miles north-west of Cincinnati. According to Google maps, that's almost 5 hours of driving. Naturally, we didn't think that driving for 5 hours straight is a good idea, so we made a few stops for food, coffee and basic i/o functions. The drive up there took us about 7 hours, and after this trip I can add two new states to the list of states in which I have been: Indiana and Illinois. (The others being: California, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming). But, that was just the road trip.

Chicago itself is everything we were promised. I was worried that people promised us too much, but the city lived to the expectations I had. We found a hotel in the financial district downtown (aka 'the loop'). The hotel itself was very good and was worth the money we paid for it, but the area itself becomes very dull at nights and during weekends. Next time we'll take the Near-North area, which is right to the north of the loop. The Near North area reminds me of Vancouver, and that's a very high reference in my standards. It is not as beautiful, or full of parks/forests as Vancouver is, but it has all the vibrant life of a city center with people living in it. For those of you who are not accustomed to North America, city centers are usually zoned for finances and business, and become desolate and sometimes scary places at night. Near North, on the other hand, is quite the contrary, with posh residence towers, lots of shops, and great restaurants. The best part is that Chicago's public transportation is efficient and safe, which is excellent for people not wanting to move their car in the city. This, too, is different than most North American cities, where owning a vehicle is a must. In short, this is an excellent city which combines all the good things from NYC (vibrancy, variety, public transportation) with the good things of a smaller city (safety in the areas where we have been).

It's hard to summarize a city into words. D took quite a few photographs of the city and here they are:

This is the Chicago Cloud-Gate. A beautiful metal bean that was recently added to Chicago, and have become a major tourist attraction - and for a good reason. It cannot be described in words, just watch the photo and go visit!

This is the view from the John Hancock Center towards downtown. John Hancock Center is the fourth tallest building in Chicago (the Sears Tower being the first, and you can see it in the right half of the photo, with the two antennae), but the view from it is better than the view from the Sears Tower, because it's not too close to the other sky-scrapers.

This is the old water tower, one of the only remaining buildings from the Chicago great fire. Once, it was the highest building in Chicago, but as you can see from this photo, the John Hancock Center simply dwarfs it now.

From the John Hancock Center, if you look to the north, you can see the shoreline of Chicago and Lake Michigan to the right. The lake (I guess in Hebrew we would call that a sea) is large enough to have actual harbors and ships. Chicago has prevented people the shore from being used by entrepreneurs, making it a beautiful shoreline. The beaches that you see to the left of the lake are not really sand beaches, as they appear from above. Rather, they are concrete shores covered by a small layer of sand. To the left of the beaches the big road is called Lakeshore Drive, and the buildings on it are considered the most expensive real estate in Chicago. Well - something to aspire for.

The John Hancock Center as seen from the beach I described earlier.

The Chicago Cloud-Gate again, this time - if you look really carefully - you can spot D and me!

This photo, taken from Millennium Park, shows you how the city is layered up with towers and sky scrapers. I love this one.

However, Chicago is not just beauty and no brains. When we were there we were amazed at the number of academic institutes in the city. Six universities in or immediately adjoining the city, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, DePaul University, University of Illinois Chicago, Loyola University Chicago, and the Illinois Institute of Technology, are among the top echelon of doctorate-granting research universities. We saw the University of Chicago as part of our tour of the Hyde Park area and D was impressed by the school of business. In addition, during that tour we saw this building (photo taken from Wikipedia):

This building is right across from the Booth School of Business. It is a beautiful house designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and it undergoes major reconstruction. It will be ready towards its 100 anniversary next year. It will be interesting to visit there in a year from now. In general, I think that Chicago is worth a few more visits.

Ohio is not a real place

2009-03-18T19:55:00.000-04:00

Recently I have noticed that too many weird stories are related to the state of Ohio. While this is a large state, it is by far not the largest or most populated in the United States of America, and since California is both the most populated state and the weirdest one (i.e. creatures like Michael Jackson have a residence there) it should be California that gets all the weird media attention. However, this is not the case. Just in the last 2-3 months I read in Ynet the following stories:
An actress fell to her death after hanging from a rope during a show in the church. (Dec 19, 2008)
A 4 year-old shot his babysitter! (Jan 6,2009)
A father was sentenced to 16 years in jail after electro-shocking his children.(Jan 31, 2009)
A family objects to execution of a son who murdered his mother. (Feb 7, 2009)
An autistic 18 years old is accused of killing his mother. (Feb 25, 2009)
A transgendered woman forced her husband to train until his death. (Feb 15, 2009)
A university dean sprayed on a sign of another university. (Feb 25, 2009)
A woman breast-fed her baby while talking on her cellphone and driving! (Mar 1, 2009)
A letter finally reaches its destination in Ohio after 47 years. (Mar 14)

And, finally, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, is an Ohioan (timeless). Need I say more?

So, after all the aforementioned evidence, I can only come to the conclusion that Ohio is not a real place. It's a matrix-oid state, where the rules of the universe do not apply, and reality is controlled by a giant sentient computer. It is probably all a secret project of the Feds. Oh, I hear someone knocking on my door. I knew Google shares information with them! I knew it!

(Tomorrow's headlines on Ynet: Israeli arrested in Ohio for raving unintelligible nonsense on Ohio Matrixoids.).

Weekly summary: signs of spring

2009-03-08T19:12:00.000-04:00

The last week was very busy. On Tuesday I had a presentation at the Dayton-Cincinnati section of the AIAA (that's the aerospace counterpart of the more famous IEEE). It felt like attending the Israeli aerospace conference: you drive an hour north, the conference has many small rooms with little attendance, and everyone tries to be polite. It was a new experience for me, being my first conference ever, and I'm not sure if I liked it.

On Wednesday I had my birthday. As always, this is a good time for reflections on the previous year. I received a lot of emails and posts on my wall in Facebook with birthday wishes, and thanks for everyone. D and I didn't have time to celebrate, as both of us are extremely busy at the moment with end of the quarter tasks. D wished me a happy birthday, bought me two books, and we promised that when the quarter will finally be over we will have more time to celebrate.

A positive development is the vast improvement in the temperatures. The last few days have been warm, above 20 degrees (Celsius of course), and yesterday's weather was very nice. I wish I had not been so busy with work and laundry yesterday so that I could have enjoyed it, like some of my neighbors did. On my way to the laundry room and back I saw a few of them hanging outside in the parking lot, playing music and getting some rare rays of sunshine. Today is a different story. It is still warm, but we have already had two sirens warning us from the risk of a severe thunderstorm, which could develop into a tornado. And since the buildings here are basically built as boxes of cardboard and wood, a tornado can simply lift everything up and crash it down. We can hear the wooden beams attached to the roof stretch when the wind blows. The trees have not started blooming again.

Others signs of spring follow also: the infamous spring break (that's when all the young American students fly to resorts in Mexico, get drunk, naked, and wild) is just around the corner. Today started the daylight saving time ("summer clock" as it is referred to in Israel) in the US. So now, not only that we are 800 Km west of where the Eastern clock is (meaning that the sun rises and sets late relative to the East coast), now it will happen even an hour earlier. So, again, we will wake up before the sun.

Yearly summary: 35

2009-03-05T21:15:00.000-05:00

It was my birthday yesterday. I am 35 years old now, and it's a good time, as any birthday, to think about the previous year and analyze it in terms of successes and failures. As always, my categories are: family, love, friends, work, academics, and life in general.
Before progressing to the analysis itself, two things overshadowed any other thing this year: the death of my mother and the relocation to Cincinnati. These two play a major part in any of the categories that follow, but more importantly they have an enormous impact on my daily life in general.
Family: undoubtedly, the death of my mother this year was the most significant event that changed my family life. The obvious thing, of course, is her being missing. She was the most significant member in my family to me, and I don't mean that I loved her more than the others, but simply that she was the closest one to me. My relations with my father and sister have always known ups and downs, each for its own reasons, that this is not the right time or place to divulge. However, my mother was always a person to whom I could talk and tell much of my life. Naturally, it was the case when I was younger and still lived with my parents, but even after I moved out permanently we still had a good relationship. Seeing her losing the shape of a human being - physically and mentally - was very hard for me. At some point, towards the last days of her life, when she could not control her body anymore due to the tumors in her brain, I was even hoping that the suffering would end for her. It's not easy, and it's not something to be proud of, but that's how I felt at the time.
After her death something has changed in the relations I have with my father and sister. This is also accompanied by the fact that I am away, but I think that now we are a bit closer (in the emotional sense) than we have ever been. I don't know how long this will last, and whether it will withstand the distance of me being here, or when I get back. Only time can resolve this question, but as of now I think that my family relationships have improved, and some of it is due to this tragedy.
In all, I'd say that the family aspect of the last year was very bad, but hopefully some good will come out of this.

Love: I consider the past year to be the best year for my relationship with D. It started with her moving to my place, continued with her being by me in the worst days after my mother died, and then we moved here. The only reason I could survive all these changes is her. I found in her strengths that I hadn't seen before. Less important, but worth to mention, is that my sister finally came to appreciate what D is, and came to respect her for being my true "significant" other. Not in the way the term is used by P.C. minded people, but by the essence of that term: she is part of my life that I cannot live without. Any other words that I can write will only diminish this message.

Friends: it takes bad times to realize who your best friends are and how much they are important to you. Last year had enough of those times and I can say that one of the hardest things now is the lack of my friends. I didn't even realize how many friends I have and how close I feel to them until we relocated. At first I wondered how long will I continue to write my weekly updates, but I felt that I had to do it, because I wanted my friends to be part of my life even though I'm far away. It became an important part of my life, and though it is a "half-duplex" - I only transmit and rarely receive answers, the importance is there. I think that I will try to make it more interactive in the future, with more personalized mails, especially if time permits. However, no technological means can be a substitute for face-to-face, same-room, interaction. Nothing. It's better than it was before, now that we have Skype, and messengers, and emails. Yet, it's not the same. It takes more efforts to maintain relationships like that, and, very understandably, it is far more important to the one away (me) than it is to the ones left behind. The other side of the equation is that I (or we) haven't made any friends here. Will I feel differently if we do make some friends here? I think not.

Work/academics: these two have become one now, and therefore should be discussed together. It was important to me to continue my studies, after a long and logical analysis of how my career is about to come to a dead-end. I think that this has not changed, but I doubt if we have made the right choices. Some of our doubts were expressed in previous posts. I think that this is a new experience for us, and it certainly the first time that I have an opportunity to see how academic life look from the inside. I have not developed any inclination towards academic life or professional life yet, and I am not sure that the University of Cincinnati should be the model upon which I make such decisions. I miss being around people that constantly challenge me. I had that at Ness. I think I can have that at other universities, but I don't feel that here. From the economic point of view, our situation has deteriorated relative to the one we had before moving here. It was expected, and I think that we are doing much better than I thought we would, and certainly our situation is better than most of the rest of the world right now. So, the right decision has been made and implemented, although the situation has not improved. However, right decisions should be judged by the view of a longer time period than a few months. Next year we will be a good time to make such decisions, and follow them through.

Life in general: last year was a year of great changes and not for the best. I think that I am less satisfied with my life now than I was a year ago. However, I have some optimism, because some things improved, and these improvements have the potential of staying for life. Unfortunately, some things have deteriorated, and they will also stay for good.

Weekly update: Back to the Future?

2009-03-01T22:26:00.000-05:00

After feeling bad last week, many wrote responses and suggestions that were nice to read. Thank you all for that.
This week was a bit better than the previous one. The amount of work was not reduced, of course, but now we have something to look forward to: Chicago! We booked a room for the weekend after the final exams week, and we are looking forward to having the best weekend possible. By the way, if any of you happened to be in Chicago and you are willing to share some ideas and suggestions, feel free to send them our way. There are two weeks of lessons and then another of finals, but it lifted our spirits to know that we have something to look forward to. I hope we won't be disappointed.
Another thing that lifted our spirits was that we decided to take some time off for walks. We're still very much out of shape, but at least we're moving again and are not just couch/desk potatoes. Today we even visited the gym in our apartment complex for the first time since we got here. It makes us feel better with ourselves, and I even feel that walking together allows us some quality time together, which we rarely share otherwise due to our other obligations. Hopefully the weather will continue to improve and we will keep doing it; it can only do us good both physically and mentally.
On Tuesday I will give my first conference presentation. It is a small conference in Dayton, Ohio, about an hour drive from here. The presentation is about the little research I was doing in the previous quarter. To prepare myself for this presentation I did some research and found out that I accidentally re-discovered a well known algorithm for solving mazes. Moreover, I expanded this algorithm to the multi-agent case. This suddenly sheds a whole new light on this four days gig.
Finally, a farewell wish to the only person (besides D) that I was talking with on a regular friendly basis: B, another graduate student (or should I say former graduate student). He left on Friday to his new job in a company in New England, and I hope he will have a great time there. He has finished his Ph.D. and awaits the defense of his dissertation in a month. I wish him the best of luck with the new job and the defense.

Save English words

2009-02-23T20:43:00.000-05:00

I came across this site, which asks you to use a long forgotten English word so that it will not be lost for good. I got this word: apanthropinization. Even the spellchecker in Firefox thinks it's a misspelled word. It means: withdrawal from human concerns or the human world. Perhaps this word is suitable to describe itself? :-)

Weekly Summary: Uncertainty

2009-02-22T20:36:00.000-05:00

The past two weeks have been very busy for both D and I. They were so busy that we barely had time to anything, including the weekly update of last week, which has been turned to weekly thought (actually, two thoughts). As a result our lives are dull. We don't do much that isn't directly related to work/studies, and both of us are nervous, stressed out, and basically fed up with this situation. We are looking forward to the end of the quarter and to the (too short) spring break, which will come in about a month from now. The plans are basic: get away from Cincinnati for a short while, probably to the Chicago area. Chicago is the "big city" around here, and when I say around I mean it in the broadest possible meaning; it's about 500 Km from here.

The stress, long hours, work, and studies have a great toll on D. She has been feeling unwell for the entire quarter so far, with two waves of the flu, and a stomach bug. I think that the basic problem is that she doesn't have enough time to rest and relax and so get stronger. Naturally, the continuous deteriorated health, accompanied by the stress of studies and work, and the short light hours of a northern latitude, have all combined to bring down her mood, and mine as well (though I am not ill). The previous Friday was a breaking moment for both of us, as both of us feel that we don't get a benefit equal to our efforts here (specifically the mental). This was the first time we talked about it, and I think that both of us agree that Cincinnati is not meeting our needs at the moment. The question is: what now? D's studies are short relative to mine, and her internship in the summer may prove to be a change in the entire atmosphere (certainly, less stress). We decided to wait for the fall before making further decisions. In any case, I will not abandon my position here before the summer. D's studies will end a quarter after the internship, so if we decide in the fall to leave here, we will be here until the spring, which probably makes it next summer (i.e. a year and a half from now). This is how the train will continue rolling, and, anyway, we still don't know what to do next. Shall we return to Israel? Shall we try our luck somewhere else? And if so, where? Seattle? Boston? The Bay Area?

My studies feel a bit strange to me at the moment. I can't attend the lessons themselves, because I teach at the same time. I am left to study from the posted lectures and the book. So far, my grades have been good, but I fear that they might drop sharply from now on, as there are some concepts that I don't quite understand, or rather: don't have a feeling for. This means that I can't crosscheck my work using "common sense". Next quarter I will not take any classes, as I can't find something that really interests me and coincides with my time. Instead, I will concentrate on research (while still teaching the same two courses I teach this quarter). It should be a much easier time, with less stress for me (and still a lot of work and stress for D). Will my studies really get me anywhere? I have a suspicion that if I choose to transfer to another university in the States, it will probably not accept a course done in the University of Cincinnati.

The heavy toll on our life starts to burden our bodies as well. Both of us have been gaining weight due to the lack of exercise and bad nutrition. The latter is also a result of trying to eat fast and comfort food. This, too, contributes to the bad feeling in various ways: lower self-esteem, less stamina and poorer concentration due to less oxygen entering the brain. We should get back in shape ASAP, but when is P exactly? Next year?

On a happier note: I can listen to "Fitter Happier" with only a negligible amount of clouding in my eyes. Yay. A few months ago it used to shatter me to pieces.

Another thought: liberty and counter-terrorism

2009-02-18T16:17:00.000-05:00

It has been argued in the past that in order to defeat terrorism a nation has to gather information about the intents of its enemies, both domestic and foreign. In the wake of the atrocious 9-11 attacks on the United States, the horrific attacks in Madrid on March-11 2004, and the terrorist attacks on London's tube on July 7, 2005, it seems that governments are bent towards the use of more invasive measures to generate information. However, while their intent is undeniably good, it seems that they (and us) have forgotten to stop and think: isn't it just what the terrorists want? To undermine and perhaps even shutter the foundations of Western Civilizations, namely: human rights and liberties.
Here in the United States there is a growing debate regarding the measures used to investigate terrorists and those suspected of being terrorists. President Obama has repeatedly said in his campaign that he will either accuse or release the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, but will not keep them in custody without end. The issue is not that simple, though. For example what do you do with someone who you know is a terrorist, but you cannot disclose your sources. Should you risk the life of your source, hence risk the chance of getting new information about terrorist organizations? Or is it better to let this obvious danger be loose.
In the United Kingdom this debate has intensified over the endless measures taken by the British government to collect data over the subjects of the union. One must remember that in the UK, as well as in the USA, there are no "itentity cards". This comes from a history of long tradition, where every citizen (or subject) of the state shall not limit his or her liberties due to the use of identity cards. However, the UK is now approaching a state that monitors every subject including all his or her phone calls, cellular location, emails and messages. For the average Briton this is as radical a move as it would be for an Islamist terrorist to repent his deeds and become Catholic Christian. Unsurprisingly, this was too much not just for the ordinary person on the street, but also for one of the most prestigious counter-terrorism agents in the world, Dame Stella Rimington, the former Director General of the British MI5. The Dame has said in an interview for a Spanish journal that the measures taken and proposed by the government are too much, or in her words: "It would be better that the Government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state". Naturally, the Home Office in Great Britain has come up with a response saying that she is "Wrong to suggest that had all the things we planned been passed we'd have been a police state, and wrong to suggest we have somehow stumbled towards a police state."
Again, there is no solution to the problem I state. However, one must always check and see whether the measures taken on behalf of society in order to counter terrorism are not somehow undermining the most important foundations of that same society. I think that some signs of fear over this dangerous trend towards a modern police-state already start to show.

Weekly thought: is democracy the right policy?

2009-02-14T16:43:00.000-05:00

I didn't update about our lives in the previous week, because I was simply too busy to do that. For the same reason, you can also assume that our lives are as boring as can be, and I will not bore you with the minutiae that surround them. The only interesting thing that happened this week were the recurrent Tornado sirens that were sounded all around our area. It appears that whenever there is a thunderstorm in the area these sirens go off, and they sound exactly like air raid sirens. Of course, the alarms were false, and as I understand they usually are. My students and I have concluded that they are another form of the story about the boy who cried "wolf". Instead of a weekly summary you're all invited to share my "weekly thought".

Thus, the only interesting thing about the previous two weeks were the Israeli elections. My views on the success of Israeli democracy have long been known, even before the outcome of this elections, which is again: total stagnation to the point that no one even knows who won. In general, I think that a democracy that generates 5 elections in 10 years (1999, 2001, 2003, 2006, and 2009) is spinning out of control. Moreover, the rate at which elections are held is increasing, as in the previous two decade only 5 were held (1981, 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996). Respectively, the size of the biggest party in the elections is gradually shrinking, from only once below 40 seats (34 in 1996, 44 in 1992, 40 in 1988, 44 in 1984, and 48 in 1981) to only once above 30 seats (28 in 2009, 29 in 2006, 38 in 2003, 2001 elections were for the prime-minister office alone, and 26 in 1999), leaving the Knesset to be ever more divided between factions. Furthermore, the winning side, namely the side that formed the government, has changed in all but one of the last 5 elections (right in 1996, left in 1999, right in 2001 (only PM), right in 2003, center-left in 2006, and right again in 2009) whereas the government was formed by the same side between 1977 and 1999 (with the exception of national unity government led jointly by Likud and Maarach in 1984). In conclusion, the political system in Israel is all but stable, which makes it impossible to generate any kind of movement in any direction, and I don't just relate to Peace vs. War. Think, for example, about the number of national projects done in the first 2-3 decades of the country, and how many national projects have been started and finished since. It's easy: none were started in the last decade or two. I think that the last national project (although controversial one) was the Lavie. In conclusion, I think that the Israeli democratic system has failed, caused us nothing but painful and pricey stagnation, cost us much factionalism and self-hatred, and should be changed. The question is "change to what?" or "do you have another idea?".

Well, I don't. I think that democracy cannot work in any case, but I can neither prove it nor suggest a better way. I can only offer the words of one of my favorite authors, Robert A. Heinlein, who wrote in the book "Glory Road" the following paragraphs. Before them I'll just explain the circumstances: the main character joins an adventure in which he helps the "Empress of the 20 known universes" together with another character, Rufo, who is a comparative-culturolgist: he studies different cultures in the variety of universes. In one of their talks the hero repeats the words of another comparative-culturoligst (Nebbi) who think that the American democracy (which works a bit better than our own) is a "noble experiment", which is bound to fail. This is a quote from Rufo's reply:

"...Nebbi was right. Except that he sees only the surface. Democracy can't work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that's all there is - so Democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group.

But a democratic form of government is okay, as long as it doesn't work. Any social organization does well enough if it isn't rigid. The framework doesn't matter as long as there is enough looseness to permit that one man in a multitude to display his genius. Most so-called social scientists seem to think that organization is everything. It is almost nothing - except when it is a straitjacket. It is the incidence of heroes that counts, not the pattern of zeros."

I would add that a similar notion of "looseness in government" should be used when thinking about the perfect organizational structure of a company. I guess I would not be alone in that thinking.

Short update: another dump of snow in the upper dimensions

2009-02-03T21:58:00.000-05:00

It started snowing fiercely in the morning and haven't stopped since. Unfortunately, the car's service was scheduled for today, so we had to drive there. They gave us a replacement car, which was nice of them, but the drive there and back, a matter of 15 miles top in each direction, took me 1.5 to 2 hours in each direction. At least now I can say that I am a veteran snow driver.

And in unrelated issue, I found this excellent clip on Youtube which explains what are the 10 dimensions that the Superstring Theory predicts. All the geeks and enthusiasts are welcome to enjoy.

Weekly summary: the important things

2009-02-01T20:49:00.000-05:00

A short update this time.

In recent weeks I wrote about some not so important things, for example the new president and the new era he represents. It's good to know that we're past that and now the real important things can be discussed. Let's talk about the groundhog day for example. The winter so far was colder than usual. If you remember, the temperatures plunged to -19 Celsius at one time, and were below freezing for most of January. Last week we had a couple of days of ice storm, which left about a foot of snow on the ground and another centimeter of ice layer in between two layers of snow. The university was closed for part of Tuesday and closed on Wednesday. The worse, however, is that the storm knocked off power grids in the Midwest (that's us) and there are about million people without power now. Again. Lucky for us, our power still works. When there is no power in warm September, it may be annoying, but at least you're not freezing to death. The icicles outside thawed only today, when the temperatures soared to 9 Celsius and it was sunny. Not for long, though, because there are some forecasts for another storm next week, which will probably not hit our area. I can't believe that I say that, as usually I love the winter, but I would be happy to see some spring soon. Also, we have become very busy in the last few days, and the next time we will have time for fun will be in the spring break, and that's too far... We started to think about spring break, and maybe we will use it for some days in Chicago. We'll see how things develop. Anyway, spring break is too short to come for a visit.

The Superbowl is on now. Instead of watching it in a pub, like any other newcomer to the USA would do, I am watching it at home on my laptop (the other one, not the one I'm writing on right now). D is studying for one of her 4 tests this week or work on one of her 3 assignments. I had to do a few "work" things myself, and still need to study and do the new assignment in the class I am taking. No rest for the wicked.

By the way, what's the deal with not showing us who was eliminated on last Survivor? The production don't want us to know it's Arik, after a failed attempt of coup against Bashevkin?It's so typical of the production not to want Bashevkin to be eliminated as he is a guy that generates "rating". Yes. We're updated, we see it when we're too tired to study or work.

More snow and ice

2009-01-28T12:32:00.000-05:00

I think we have a foot of snow. I haven't measured that, but it snowed for a few hours and now everything is white and beautiful. The twigs are covered by ice that fell all night long.
Which brings about more photos to upload:

Snow!

2009-01-27T11:49:00.000-05:00

After wishing for a foot of snow, it started snowing yesterday evening. It hasn't got to an entire foot, but we do have about half a foot already, with more snow to come in the evening and tomorrow morning.
Meanwhile, enjoy the photos:

And how can one post photos of snow without dogs playing in it?

Weekly Summary: The Dawn of a New Era?

2009-01-25T22:36:00.000-05:00

Well, I guess the major thing that happened this week was the inauguration of president Barack Obama. Everywhere one went everyone talked about it: in the news, in the halls, in talk shows. Some claimed that the presidential oath was not conducted correctly. We saw the inauguration live, staying at home on Tuesday until the afternoon. The speech was supposed to be the most important piece of the ceremony, and it did sound very good and appealing, although I am not sure that it appealed that much to the American ears. Obama called them to leave their old ways and be responsible. He went as far as blaming them for the current economic crisis, because they didn't work hard enough. I couldn't agree more, but I suspect that the American people doesn't like to be reprimanded in such a bold way. In general they don't like to be criticized. Criticism is a big issue here, and should be handled with extreme care. On the other hand, the speech repeated parts said by president Bush in various other occasions, as we saw in Jon Stewart's show. Finally, the best thing about the inauguration was the enthusiastic crowd. To summarize here is a beautiful picture that shows the crowd, using Microsoft's amazing technology: Photosynth. Personally, I think that Obama should be a magician to keep all his promises.

The rest of the week went by quiet briefly. We had a lot of work, as always. D received an offer for internship from a company she was keen on working for in the coming summer. She is likely to accept it, but there are still uncertainties regarding the scope of her position. If they are satisfactorily cleared she'll probably work for them in the summer, which might pose a problem with the current work she has. However, the current position will lead to a coding position in the summer, and this is something that D is not looking for. I guess you can call it "good troubles".
Generally, the next year is still vague for us. I still don't know if I will teach next year or become a full time student. From the economical point of view, we certainly need the money, but on the other hand my studies are not progressing well enough. I think that the department heads are still not sure what to do with next year.

A group of pro-Israeli students and organizations launched a display at the university that supports Israel's last offensive in Gaza. The display is an answer to the previous pro-Palestinian held at the same location. I think that none of the displays went too well, and most people succeeded in ignoring the two. Those that did come were probably people that have already taken sides in this issue, and so nobody has really changed his or her opinion on the matter. Nonetheless, it was a good oportunity for us to meet a few Jewish students and maybe link us to the Jewish/Israeli community here. So far the only offer we have is from a religious group organized by a Rabbi here, and I guess we'll prefer to keep away from that group. Hopefully, there will be other beginnings. I think that we need some kind of social life.

On Friday we went to a cabaret show called: "Bringing Sexy Back". We won tickets to this show when we won a world trivia with a few of D's friends from school two months ago, and it was time to do it. Anyway, I have to say that the term sexy should be removed from the title. I think that the women actors in the cabaret were cled in more clothes than most Israeli women wear on a regular day at the office. It's so typical to the conservatism in Ohio/Kentucky to define this show as sexy (and even rated "R" for sexy and adult related jokes). I don't want to waste too many words on it: it was mostly boring and not funny. Some gags were fine, and the singers were OK, but that's it.

On the other hand, we have too many TV shows to follow right now: The 5th season of Lost premiered, Arik is still in Israeli Survivor, Fringe has returned with a few more episodes, and Heroes Season 4 should be back in February. After complaining that there's not enough TV, now we don't have time for all the TV and work.

And finally, the weather surprised us with two days of above freezing temperatures. It even got to +15 Celsius on Friday. Don't worry, it went below freezing on Saturday and snowed today. I like the snow, and -5 or even -10 are not that bad, after all. I just hope that it will not get to -20 again. And I want a foot of snow! By the way, we realized that we measure snow accumulation in American units, simply because we hadn't had the oportunity of measuring snow accumulation back home. :-)

Have a great week.

Weekly update: God bless America, and the rest of the world too

2009-01-19T19:25:00.000-05:00

This is the end of a long weekend, the "Martin Luther King" day was celebrated today in honor of this great leader that was assassinated for having a dream. Combine this with the upcoming inauguration of the first African-American president and you have a reason for celebrating human rights and equality in the USA. Is it so indeed? I still feel that there is a large gap between the poor and the rich, where the poor are usually members of the minorities and the rich are members of the white majority, and perhaps this gap is even increasing. In one of Cincinnati's more upscale shopping malls, the Kenwood Towne Centre Mall, we saw that almost all the shoppers were white, while the people cleaning the food-court area were black. This gap, in my view, with its widening and almost unbridgable distance, is one of the biggest challenges that the American society needs to overcome. You could claim that Israel is following the same example, with increasing gaps between poor and rich. To this I can say that: you're right, it does, as mentioned before. However, it is still not as bad as it is here. And, finally, except the bad example we have with Ethiopian-born Israelis, the difference is not based on racial discrimination or the tone of the skin. Again, this might change in Israel as well.

One of the customs of a long weekend is shopping. We have decided to follow the tradition and went shopping today. Part of it was the tradition, but more importantly it was Circuit City going out of business sale. The prices were not as low as one would expect from this kind of a sale, but still, I managed to buy a good Sony Vaio laptop for less than $700 (after taxes). D couldn't find the media player she wanted to buy, but we decided to get one online. There's nothing like tradition.

The previous week was full of work and studies, but not only that. D started working for a company that her professors have found. The people in this company are certain that D and her friend will continue working for them during the internship part of their studies, which starts in the summer. There is no guarantee of that, though, and D continues to look for internship options. I handed my first assignment in the degree. As I mentioned in one of the previous updates, the professor teaching this course is K. I don't get to go to the lectures themselves because I teach at the same time. However, it is easy for me to ask the professor questions regarding the homework, and occasionally help him correct problems with the solutions manual that accompany the textbook. Therefore, it seems to be beneficial to both sides of the bargain (or as some call it "the win-win spirit").

I also had time to play a bit with Windows 7 beta on my old (very old) laptop. You can read about my initial enthusiasm, and later admission that my archaic laptop is not cut for this. As a new user of Windows Vista (installed on the laptop I purchased today) I don't think it is horrible, but it does become a pain when it requires you to authorize every single thing you do. It seems that Microsoft has decided to eliminate some of the pain in 7, and perhaps improve the performance of the operating system. My conclusion is: if you have time to play with it on a spare computer, especially if it meets the requirements, you are welcome to give it a shot. It will probably be better than Vista. Perhaps it's Vista Service Pack 2. It is definitely similar to Vista in many aspects.

This week was as cold as your mother in law. The temperatures went down to -19 Celsius on Friday morning, when we left to the university. This is subzero even in Fahrenheit's scale, in which the zero measures the freezing of a water / salt mixture. This may mean that the roads will be frozen even with the use of salt to prevent it. I think it has been below zero Celsius for more than a week now, with the occasional improvement when it snows. There isn't much snow, though, only an inch or two when it really snows. That's disappointing for me. I want some accumulation on the ground to play with the snow, build a snowman perhaps, and make a snow angel. So far all we have is a thin white coating, which doesn't thaw since it's cold, but doesn't accumulate either.

One final note regarding Gaza: I'm glad that this cycle of violence is finally over, and I do hope that Hamas has learned its lesson. I don't feel we'll be that lucky though. Only time will tell who has emerged from this conflict with the upper hand, and what will be the Israeli response to every rocket, which will undoubtedly be launched. As I have been saying in recent years, Israel should react with full power to any attack on its citizens. I think that if we had done so 3 years ago we wouldn't have to cause so much damage now. I also think that the international community has yet again showed that it doesn't mind when Jews are being killed. Luckily, we live in a conservative state in the US, where the general public supports Israel actions, but we did have a Palestinian display at the students' center at UC. As I understand, the Jewish and Israeli organizations are working to set up a pro-Israeli display to counter that one.

7 is dead

2009-01-16T20:16:00.000-05:00

The experiment with Windows 7 has failed.
It "freezes" too many times, probably because of driver issues or incompatibility to my old hardware. I still think that Microsoft has improved Vista and that this improvement (Service Pack 2 so to speak) is now Windows 7. Enjoy it if you have a compatible hardware.

The question now is: 7 is dead, who is the next OS on my laptop?

"As cold as your mother in law"*

2009-01-15T22:43:00.000-05:00

It's -17 degrees Celsius now in Cincinnati.
It was -17 degrees Celsius when we left the university on our way home.
It's also windy. That brings the "feels like" bar to -27 Celsius.

This is the coldest temperature I have ever experienced

Here's a screenshot of two different sources that confirm it, on a Windows 7 desktop.

* The quoted phrase is from one of D's professors.

Windows 7 Beta - day 2

2009-01-13T18:10:00.000-05:00

After my previous post on playing with Windows 7, I have experienced some "freezes". So far I haven't been able to locate exactly where the problem is, but I suspect it is related somehow to the fact that Windows Media Player is unable to deal with my old video adapter. This is only a preliminary suspicion, and perhaps there are more or different reasons for the "freezes". When the display freezes, I cannot do anything to know and have to shut down Windows 7.
Another annoying thing that I suspect is that the system shuts down whenever it tries to put the laptop to sleep. I have canceled the automatic sleep mode and it appears to have stopped the involuntary restarts of Windows.
Well, a few hiccups are to be expected from a Beta version, especially if it's running on hardware that is not supposed to control it.

Playing with Windows 7 Beta

2009-01-12T17:03:00.000-05:00

Those of you who know me (which, as far as I know, are all my 3 readers :-)), should know by now that I am a geek who likes to play with the newest and shiniest operating systems. No, I didn't try to run Apple's OS X on my computer, though I had thought about it in the past. I decided to come back to Microsoft, who had just released the beta version of the newest 7, available for download here.
What can I say about it so far?
First of all I would like to mention that my veteran laptop, which has been the playground for so many versions of operating systems (Windows XP SP1, SP2, SP3, Kubuntu 7.04, 7.10, 8.04, 8.10, and the KDE version of OpenSuse 11). It is almost 5 years old, and as such it has 1.5 GHZ CPU, only 750 MB of RAM, and an old ATI Radeon Mobility 9200 video adapter. The latter two specifications are much less than the minimum required to run 7. Nonetheless, the setup procedure went quite smoothly. I am happy to say that, finally, this Windows is probably the fastest, and simplest, version of Windows to install. Everything take about 20 minutes and you're done. Unfortunately, unlike Linux, the distribution does not come with extra packages like an Office suite, antivirus, and other useful packages. Still, for Windows it's pretty nice, and it's free (after all you are a Beta tester) to use until September.

After the installation has ended (it took two reboots in the installation process, plus two other reboots for updates after the installation, which is stupid, because the entire system was ready for download only a day ago) the system loaded up. The GUI looks nice and slick. Very similar to the Vista one, only with the new taskbar showing only icons and not window's names. The Aero glass could not load on my machine, because my video adapter is not capable of doing it. Still, most of the features work, and it can run Gadgets. I tried the CPU/Memory gadget and it showed a surprisingly low CPU and memory usage. Surprising, because the 750MB on my machine are less than the required 1 GB and the memory used was in the range of 50%-75%.
The system was fast to respond on this archaic machine as well. I would say that it was almost as quick as a fresh installation of Windows XP if only I could remember how a new installation of Windows XP runs on that machine.

As far as drivers are concerned I had two problems. One was solved by the automatic driver update that Windows 7 ran on the computer. The other one was with my video adapter. This card has not been supported for Vista by the manufacturer, and Microsoft added a Vista driver capable of running Aero by themselves. This driver, once installed on my computer, has caused the display to flicker without end, and I had to roll-back to a default VGA driver, which lowers the display resolution. Finally, I have decided to try my old XP driver from the package that had come with my laptop when I had purchased it, and voila, it works. So it doesn't support Aero, but it still enables me 1280x800 resolution. I think that it caused the CPU usage to rise, but I haven't had time to check that out.

In conclusion, so far the system have shown a relative stability and agility that are impressive for a beta version running on hardware that is not intended to run it. I think that Microsoft has finally come up with a good version of Vista. As always, it's Service Pack 2 that does the work.
I am not sure if I will keep it or not, and anyway the Beta expires in the summer, so a new operating system will be required, or I will dump this old laptop. However, if you have the time and the proper machine to spare (Microsoft strongly advice against using 7 on the primary machine) I suggest you give it a try.

Weekly summary: back to the grind

2009-01-10T19:42:00.000-05:00

The first week of the winter quarter is now over. That's 10% on the status bar, if you wonder. It was a busy week, but I think the next will be much worse. However, before that I would like to update about the good news that we received during the week. On Monday we were informed that D received a scholarship for her superlative performance during the previous quarter. This is important not only from the economical point of view, and we do appreciate the money, but also from the academic point of view and its reflection on her CV. We now know that the great amount of work she had put in this quarter paid off. Congratulations! Later in the week we learned that D's professors had arranged for her and another girl in her class to work part time for a company. The professors promised the company that D and the other girl will commit 20 hours a week to the work, and this will add even more stress to D's tight schedule. Nonetheless, there are upsides to this work as well: this is a project that will probably take long to evolve, and it has already been arranged that D and the friend will spend their internships (starting in the summer quarter) with this company, and probably after they graduate the company will hire them full-time. We still don't know if we're happy with all these arrangements, as the company and the project are not fully known at the moment; however, if everything goes well it will take the load of finding internship for the summer and work afterwards off D's shoulders and that's a good development, specifically in the current economic climate.

I also learned this week that my father had undergone a medical operation and a catheter was inserted to one of his arteries. He had kept the date of the operation secret from my sister, who is pregnant, and from me and told me only after the operation was over. He is fine now, or so he claims. This is one of the reasons why I cannot trust him to be sincere about his health, and it makes me worried: what if he is hiding other medical problems?
On the other hand, my sister gave birth on Thursday to a baby girl, my first niece. My father was excited when I talked to him about it and said that she is adorable. My sister and Yuval, that's my niece's name, are relatively fine. By the way the name my sister and brother in law chose maintains their tradition to name their children with names that relate to water and start with the Hebrew letter Yod: Yam is my eldest nephew and Yarden is the younger nephew. I don't know if she plans on having another child, but in case she does, you're welcome to suggest names that keep this tradition.

And now to the "boring" stuff of our day-to-day lives. As I mentioned, this was the first week of the new quarter. I teach two classes this quarter, one of them is a class I taught in the previous quarter and one new. I also study one class, which is my first in the course of my studies here. Overall I will be very busy this quarter. Teaching a class you have taught is much easier than teaching a class for the first time. First of all, you have all the notes ready, and there is no "race" between the classes you prepare and the ones you teach. In the previous quarter I usually prepared the class only a day in advance, which is very bad, because you don't know exactly how things will unravel in the next lessons, and also it is very stressful and tight on schedule. The time needed to prepare for a class now is also much shorter, I spend only 15-30 minutes instead of the 5-6 hours I spend on preparing a lecture for the first time. Finally, and probably most importantly, in the second time you have a chance to improve your previous way of teaching. You know which parts were not understood well enough in the previous quarter and you can linger on them longer and improve the explanations. I already received a feedback from one of the students that I am explaining very well and taking the time to make everyone understand.
Unfortunately, the other course is new and I still have to prepare about 75% of the lectures. This course is also very busy, with a lot of material to cover, but I have only 8 students, and it's easier to keep a good pace. Hopefully, it will not be too fast for them.
The course I am taking is a mandatory course in Analytical Dynamics. The lecture hours coincide with my lectures in the second class, so I don't have time to go to the lectures. However, I have the book, I know the professor (:-)) and I know some of the students that take the course, so I hope everything will be fine. So far, the first assignment seems OK.

D is taking a full schedule as well. This is both the requirements of the International Students Office (the office that maintains records of international students for the Department of Homeland Security) and the requirements of her program. In the previous quarter she studied almost 7 days a week, 16 hours a day. That was before the new work she now has, and I hope she'll have time to do everything and that we will have time to enjoy ourselves. I don't expect much, just a few hours every week to go out or spend a night in catching up on TV shows. Speaking of which, the holidays in America have caused a break in the TV shows we follow (Heroes and Fringe), Lost has not started yet (premiers on January 21), and the war in Gaza causes a break in the Israeli Survivor (which we follow because we know one of the contestants), so we don't have any show that we can follow right now on Hulu or Nana.

Regarding the war in Gaza: I found one of the best things about living in Ohio: it is a right-wing American state. In the last week I was asked several times about Gaza, the reasons for the Israeli offensive and my views. I did my best to explain the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially the problem with the Hamas, and its never-ending efforts to launch attacks against Israel in the last decade or so. It is not easy to explain something, which has such a long history, to people, who may have heard a few things here and there, but have not followed the conflict as we Israelis have lived it. Still, they come from a strong belief in Israel and its right to live peacefully. Part of it I attribute to the fact that they don't know too much about anything, but another part is that the American media is much more unbiased, relative to their European counterparts. I am certainly happy that I don't have to live in a European country, specifically not in the United Kingdom. I think that this article summarizes well the problems and the solution, and it is much better than anything I can write.

Ending with a more positive note: a week or so ago I posted "The Legendary Sunjay Gupta". It seems that I am not the only one who noticed this doctor. It seems that Obama's transition team wants to appoint him to be the next surgeon general. Could it be that the transition team reads this blog? Or maybe, the opponents of this appointment do. In any case, it seems that more news will come of The Legendary Sunjay Gupta!

Quick update

2009-01-06T14:25:00.000-05:00

This is a quick update for news that cannot wait for the weekly update: D received a scholarship for her excellent grades in the previous quarter. We're very happy for the extra money and I am very proud of her! Kudos!

Weekly Summary: On The Brink Of...

2009-01-04T17:35:00.000-05:00

It's Sunday evening, the day before the new quarter begins. This quarter I am teaching two classes, one of them is new for me and the other one I taught in the previous quarter, and taking one class and 3 points of research. It is going to be a very busy quarter and I hope I'll have time to do everything I need to do. The problem with the quarter system, especially as it is done at UC, is that it is so intense: the lessons are given on every other day and as a lecturer I have to prepare them, check works, prepare tests and check them as well. In the previous quarter I barely had time for all that, and I had to give up on checking the students works. Now that I start my studies I will have even less time for that, and it's making me nervous. D, on the other hand, is supposed to have an easier quarter than the previous one, but only slightly easier, and I guess she'll be busy as well. We don't expect to have time for fun during the weekends.

Our flights back were long ones. The part from Tel Aviv to NYC went pretty well: we took a flight with Olympic and the flights were very good, there was room for legs (especially in the Boeing 737 from Tel Aviv to Athens), and we had a separate pair of seats for us on the flight from Athens to JFK (it was an Aerbus 340-200, which was my first time to fly in and the seats are arranged in 2-4-2 format, unlike the 3-4-3 format on Boeing-747). Even the food wasn't that bad, although D, being the vegetarian that she is, got the same three meals, which made her quite sick of Greek antipasti.
To break the sequence of 4 flights from Tel Aviv to Dayton, Ohio we decided to spend the night in NYC. It proved to be a huge success, as we managed to meet three different friends in the limited time we had in the evening after arriving in NYC. It also proved to be a good idea because we came rested and refreshed after a good night's sleep to the second part of our flight sequence, which was less successful. It started with us waiting an hour and a half for a replacement steward on the first flight from JFK to Detroit, which made us miss the second flight from Detroit to Dayton by less than 5 minutes. I was at the gate of the second flight even before the flight was scheduled to leave, only to find out that the gate was locked. We had to wait 4 more hours for the late-night flight. This could have been alright if the management of the Detroit Metorpolitan Airport had realized that the temperatures on the last day of the year in Detroit might fall well below freezing point and had warmed up the terminal. They didn't realize and didn't warm the terminal and each time the gate opens to let people board and disembark the planes the terminal temperature dropped by another degree or two. In short, it was freezing cold there. We wore every possible coat, hat and scarf we had, and still were shivering. D caught a cold, which we assume was the blame of that waiting in the terminal, and she is now sitting here being all sick and miserable. We need the legendary Sunjay Gupta to save her. Eventually we arrived in our home after midnight so we missed all the celebrations and fire-works (except the ones we saw in the car mirror as we drove away from Dayton on our way to Cincinnati). Which reminds me: happy new year everyone.
On Friday I went to show my face at the university, just so that people would know that we returned from the vacation. The university was almost desolated, except for three people I know from the department. One of them is B, who is almost finishing his Ph.D. and was awaiting news regarding a possible position when we left to Israel. He is probably the only person that I talk with at the university on a regular basis. He landed the job, and I am really happy for him.

The Legendary Sunjay Gupta

2009-01-01T10:47:00.000-05:00

CNN’s chief medical correspondent is Dr. Sunjay Gupta. Naturally, I don’t know the guy personally, but it’s funny to see how the CNN anchor men and women treat him with adulation. In any health care related item they turn to this distinguished neurosurgeon and ask for his commentary, like sending Danny Rup with a stupid wool-hat to the first snow in Jerusalem. It’s not the first time I have seen Dr. Gupta on CNN, but today we saw him appear twice: once on a research about how running is good for health, and even does not have undesired side-effects such as joint problems, which were associated with running in the past. The other item was about the state of hospitals in Gaza, overflowing with injured people and under equipped. The anchorman asked him: “Dr. Gupta, you were in situations like this, what can you tell us…” and all I could think was: this is a doctor that has been reporting for CNN in the past 10 years (almost), and probably never saw combat casualties. The only blood he probably saw was after a well organized cut in a prestigious American hospital, under the neon lights, and air conditioned (actually, according to CNN's page this is not true and he did perform surgery on field in Iraq). What the hell does he know? It caused me to create “The Legend of Dr Sunjay Gupta, the doctor who cured every disease… except cancer”. We now consider him to be some kind of a Superhero.

Weekly Summary: In-Between

2008-12-28T15:01:00.000-05:00

I haven't updated the weekly blog/mail for a long time, and what better time is it than doing it just before we fly back to the US? The last 10 days were busy times indeed. We met so many people, and I would like to thank each and every one who found the time to meet us, no matter how or when or for how long. It was great to see you all and I'm already looking forward to seeing you again.

We were frequently asked how did we find it here in Israel, or how did we find Cincinnati so far. I have to say that, for me, the jury are still deliberating. There are many things that we don't like in Cincinnati, and we have mentioned a few of them in passing to some people we met here. There are also things that become apparent when you come back to Israel after a while abroad. For example, I am still shocked at how bad people drive in Israel, how dangerously reckless they are and how frequent they use the horn. In three months in Ohio I heard only two honks (not including the fact that the horn honks whenever we lock the car), and one of them was my own doing when I tried to avoid a danger. Here it seems as if people drive with one hand on the cellular and the other on the horn.
I think that the main problem for us now is that we feel a bit "homeless". We haven't settled in Cincinnati yet, and I'm not sure we ever will feel "at home" there; however, we no longer feel at home here. I don't know if it's just because we don't have our "physical" home, or if it's something deeper than that, but it felt a bit like being tourists. Still, all the people I know, love, and want to meet live here in Israel, so probably I still consider this place to be my home. I think that apart from the "physical" home I miss in Cincinnati, I don't miss anything else there. Certainly I do not miss the university, teaching or students. If anything, this visit proved to me how weak my connections with Cincinnati are. I wonder if it would have been different if we had chosen another place, for example Boston, Seattle, or Calgary, which were all candidates at some point or another. No doubt that more people would have pledged to visit us if we had chosen one of these locations. We certainly need more friends there, not just classmates as D has.
D also mentioned how strange it feels to live with our parents. I said that it feels like being a 16 years old again, just without the (few) perks that come with that age. We were living with my dad for a week, and I found that he does his best to manage his new life after my mother's passing. It seems somewhat fragile, and I'm still worried about him. I think that it was a good idea to move out of there while we're still in Israel and we saw him yesterday, but it's hard. My next visit, I'm afraid, will be only in the summer, and even that is not guaranteed, and it's hard to keep an eye from afar. I have to rely on my sister's testimonies, and I think that her words were always more bleak than the true situation was.

In a totally unrelated note, but something I wanted to do a long time ago, I'll try to summarize why I think the Americans are over the hill:

They are lazy. They don't like to work, they don't want to work, and they don't work. You can attribute the current financial crisis in America directly to the fact that they, as an entire nation, have ceased to manufacture things for quite a while now. Everything is manufactured in China, or India, or some other 3rd world country.
They are ignoramuses and insulated who think it's a bliss to be such people. They have no idea or wish to know what happens in the rest of the world. They don't want to learn about obscure places which use the metric system. They don't want to know that there is such a thing as the metric system or why it's better to use it. They think their undrinkable wash-water is a great beer, or that their undrinkable mud-water is a great coffee, or that 30 MPG on the freeway (miles per gallon if you have to know, it's about 12.5 Km/liter) is a good fuel consumption.
They live a life of superficial, surface-deep, facade, without any attempt to take anything deeper (except, perhaps, inhaling the smoke of their cigarette). You can see it everywhere before Christmas with all the richly and ridiculously ornamented houses. You can understand it fully when you realize that in order to prepare for a job interview all you need to do is wear your best suit and look sharp. It is almost a profanity to ask them to think, God forbid to understand.
There is no such thing as American society. As we mentioned in this visit, there are huge gaps between rich and poor, and between the races in America. There are only three things that are extremely expensive in America: nutritious food, good education and good health-care. Poor Americans cannot afford to eat vegetables, they eat junk-food, they can't afford good schools or universities, and they can't afford going to the doctor. You can see this research on how the difference between poor and rich in America has grown in the past two decades regarding life expectancy. American society is a mix of several classes which meet only at the mall: the rich buy, the proletariat sell and the poor people (namely, Afro-Americans) clean the mess after them.

I have only one reason why Israel is over the hill as well: we follow everything the Americans do with such zeal that we will shortly overpass them on the way to our demise. If there is one thing Americans are good at and Israelis are unable to do it is to postpone our gratification and to be patient. We need everything now, at this very instant. That's why people cut each other on the road just to be one car ahead at the infinite traffic jam on Ayalon.

So, finally, where is home for us? Home is where our high-speed internet is. :-)

On the move

2008-12-16T09:05:00.000-05:00

We are currently at the Dayton "International" airport. We got up at 5am, the temperature was -5 Celsius, and it will not go over freezing point today. From here to Washington, from there to JFK, and from there to TLV, where the weather is somewhat warmer. We will stay in Tel Aviv for the next two weeks, and return on December 30th to celebrate the New Year in the States.
It is my first "home vacation" after such a long term abroad. To some extent I feel that I'm not entirely home in either places; in Israel we don't have a home anymore, and we will be staying with our families, with all the consequences of that. On the other hand, I still don't feel that Cincinnati is my home, although I did start to feel at home in our flat. Perhaps if it was another city in the USA, e.g. Boston or Seattle, it would feel differently. I don't know.

We spent the few days before our flight celebrating the sudden change from a very busy quarter (for both of us) to total freedom. I think that D even found that there is too much free time on her hands. We spent it well, though, with going to pubs, watching a movie (the new James Bond - what a horrible film), more pubs, and more shopping. It was a much deserved time off and I think we enjoyed it greatly.

We'll see you back in Israel soon.

Weekly Summary 11: Thanksgiving

2008-11-30T23:07:00.000-05:00

Americans celebrate this strange holiday called Thanksgiving, which is related to some heroic story on the first settlers that came with the Mayflower more than 4 centuries ago. Nowadays all that is left from this holiday are the long weekend, the shopping after Thanksgiving day, and the large feasts during which flocks of turkeys are being consumed. We did them all during the last few days, so we have truly lived the spirit of this holiday.
The weekend was long, starting on Wednesday afternoon and finishing tomorrow morning, and we got to rest a bit, although, as always, there was a huge list of tasks to complete. I'm glad to say that I'm almost there, the term is almost over, and I can see the end coming. Tomorrow starts the last week of studies, with one class taking their last midterm (no final) on Wednesday and the other taking one midterm the same day and the final on next Monday. So, until the end of the term I still have to check two midterms, one final exam, one final project, and one last assignment. That's about 5 days of work. Still four lectures to go, two already prepared for tomorrow and other two on Friday and that's it! I'll be the veteran of one term. D has her final exams week after that and then, on December 12, we will be over, at last, thank God! See, I bet they celebrate Thanksgiving for that.

The day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday for some reason. Officially it's the start of the holidays shopping season and as you know the economy is not doing that well this season. As we had been doing in the last few months, we again tried to boost the failing economy by going to another shopping spree, that started on Thursday's shopping at Jungle Jim's, the local store for food from all over the world (mainly for us: Jacobs coffee imported by Elite Ramat Gan). On Friday we bought me a new pair of trousers (that's pants in proper English) and three buttoned shirts at the Gap, and on Saturday we went to Target for another "fill in the house blanks" shopping. All in all I think we are about $500 poorer now. I think that since we came here we have boosted the American economy by a sum of $15,000-$20,000 including the car we bought. No wonder, then, that NYSE gained on Friday after hearing how well Black Friday sales were. And by the way, the stores have already started playing awful Christmas tunes and songs. It takes a few visits and then you become immuned to the sounds, and can barely hear them, like a white noise in the background.

And we ate. On Friday one of D's classmates invited the entire class (some 40 people) and faculty to enjoy after-Thanksgiving traditional dinner with his family at his Mother's house. It was amazing. Not the food, that was great, but more the friendliness and all the time and effort they put to make us feel at home. I also got to meet the rest of D's classmates, who are mainly Indians (not Native Americans, real Indians). All of them were in shock after the terrorist attacks on Mumbai this week. It seems that Indians hold a belief that we, Israelis, can deal with terror and conquer it, and especially the Mossad, which they claim to be the best intelligence organization in the world. We had a few chats on this issue, and mainly on other issues which relate to the place of India in the future world, as super-power. They say that some in India have been talking about this for a few decades now, but India is still too divided between the rich and the poor that it will take a long time until India can become a super-power. They were also impressed by the fact that I was in Bangalor last year. So, Dvora, this is for you. They also said that we should consider ourselves settled for a long trip in India after D graduates, as she will have "a friend in each city" in India.

We also spent a very nice evening with Kelly and his family today. His wife and he invited us over and it was nice to see how they live and meet their family. I am very grateful for that, and it was nice to be out tonight, although now we have to pay with less hours to sleep to make up for the lost time.

So, the weekend ends, and a new week begins shortly with still a lot of work to do. Have a good one.

Short summary for those who asked for:

Thanksgiving food
Thanksgiving / Black Friday shopping
Not enough rest in 5 days weekend
Still more food

Weekly update #10: work, work, work

2008-11-24T10:56:00.000-05:00

The current weekly update has been delayed until now because of the excessive work I had during the last week. I think I put in around 80 or so hours last week, and at the current salary I'm paid, if I continue this way, I will be paid around $10 an hour. I can't understand how this happens; I teach only 6 hours a week, and prepare my lessons for them, after I decided that I want better presentations/lessons to use in class. Let's assume that I'm spending 5 hours in excess of each hour I teach, so that's 36 hours a week. The problem is that I still prepare the answers for the homework I give, check the homework, check the exams, and so on. This almost doubles the time I'm spending.
Next week is Thanksgiving, which means we have a long weekend. I guess I'll use that time to rest a little. However, I have so many tasks ahead of me that I don't think I'll get too much rest. We also have plans as we are invited to dinner at someone from D's class and at Kelly's (us! plans! to see other people! confused? so are we!). It's crazy. This 10 weeks quarter term, instead of the 14 weeks semester we had in the Technion, is so condensed. In each class I teach this quarter they have 3 midterms, and 6-7 home assignments and I have to grade them all because I don't have a Teaching Assistant (TA). I've become the corrupt academic type that complains when his research is effected by the lack of TAs and the necessity to lecture in classes. How sad...

Anyway, not much to tell after the views of the snow I posted earlier this week. The weather has improved and became warmer - it's now around zero. I told my dad that yesterday and he laughed and said that I sounded differently than before I had left. There are 22 days left until we fly to Israel, 23 days until we land. I started counting the days now. I don't know if or when we will be able to fly home again after that visit. Firstly, we don't have enough money. Secondly, we don't have time, because spring break is only a week or so. Thirdly, D is supposed to start her internship in the summer, so summer will be busy as well. She has started interviewing for the internship, and as expected, she is doing very well. She is way over the level of the other students looking for internship both in experience and academic background, that the only thing that might prevent her from landing the internship she wants is her being OVER-qualified. She also had an interesting interview with the Forces-of-Darkness from the NW (that's Microsoft, and I'm only joking). The funny thing is that they interviewed her over the phone; if she does well (which she has) and proceed to the next step (no doubt), she will be interviewed there for an entire day. They will probably fly her over for that. Too bad they don't fly the domestic partner :-). I would love to see the Microsoft campus, especially after reading Microserfs a few weeks ago. And Seattle is probably warmer than here at this time of the year.

The maze thing is coming very well. I have improved the communications between the agents to include only necessary communications, which means that the problem now scales to ANY size of the maze and each the only limit is the number of agents in the group. That's vast improvement.
I presented it to another researcher here and he was impressed, I think. He asked me to show this work in a meeting we have next week - so more work. Yay!

Well, see you in three and a half weeks!

Signs of winter

2008-11-19T16:52:00.000-05:00

This week started off with the signs of winter. We had the first snow, which lasted for a few hours on the ground from late afternoon on Monday till the early morning hours of Tuesday. In Tuesday morning we woke up to see a deer, probably the same young fawn we had seen a few weeks ago. We tried to take pictures of it while it was grazing across from our porch, but it disguised itself. Later on Tuesday he was grazing just across from our house on the street. The photos here are of the fawn and the first signs of snow.

Weekly update #9: progress and recession

2008-11-14T11:25:00.000-05:00

This week was focused on the progress we have been making since we came here, and on the uneasy feeling of my friends back home about the financial situation. There is still a lot to do on both sides of the ocean, and hopefully things will improve soon.

In chats with some of my friends from the previous work place. It seems that the management has decided to make some cutbacks, which are defined as a "more humane" way to deal with the financial crisis rather than fire people. I hope that hi-tech companies in Israel don't generate a fake crisis just to be able to "push down" on the salaries and benefits that workers had been given before. Anyway, in order to cheer you up, my friends, perhaps this will help.

In the mean time we, unfortunately without help from the rest of America, tried to get the American economy on the move again. On Friday we returned to IKEA for another shopping spree that ended up with a sofa, two stools, a desk, a drawer cabinet to support the desk, two small cabinets, and an office chair. The total is almost $800, plus 4 hours at IKEA and a day and a half assembling everything. This came after a very successful week, some of which you can see here, which included the official approval of us being domestic partners so that D won't have to pay tuition, and of me solving the multi-agent maze problem within 4 days, which made Kelly very impressed. I don't see this maze things as being too hard or a challenge, but it seems that others do, and everyone suggests that I write a paper for a conference and a journal. If I end up doing so, it will probably be the paper which took people the shortest period of time to work on. I will certainly have to add literature survey, and a few improvements, but the main core is already there.

Another thing that has changed recently is my approach to the students. I feel that I have developed a hard skin so that their grades on a test do not bother me anymore. Today I graded the tests of one of my classes, and the average was 60, compared to the 69 in the previous test they had, and this time I feel less bad about it than in the previous test. This time I know that all the mistakes they were making are their own, because I know for sure that I taught them and told them to be cautious not to make those mistakes. If the students are not listening, that's their problem, and it ceases to be my problem. On the other hand, there are (a few) students that do try, and when they don't succeed, or not as well as I think they should, it is still a disappointment.

Today was my (almost) first time I saw snow falling. It was cold enough for something on the verge between snow and rain, but the temperature was still above zero, and the precipitation too weak for a real snow. D keeps laughing at me for not having seen snow falling, but that's what happens when you live in the desert (Jerusalem doesn't count). She also reminds me all the time that we will have enough chances to have snow, that soon enough we will wish it wasn't snowing. Perhaps she's right, but until then, a good snow fall is in order!

This also summarizes our two months of being here. A lot have changed since we came here: the economy collapsed, a new president was elected, we found a house, a car, registered ourselves to all the medical/dental/life insurance benefits, got domestic partnership approved, etc. Still, this place doesn't feel like my home. We're meeting the plan of this project, and D has even started to think about success criteria. I still don't have friends here, certainly not like the ones I have in Israel, I still miss my family, being in Tel Aviv, my flat there, and the rest of my life there. I don't know if this will change soon. There is so much that needs to develop here before I will consider this place as my home, and maybe it will never be. In the mean time I still feel a bit like a tourist here, and I know that I will feel like a tourist in my coming visit to Tel Aviv. I find myself looking forwards to this feeling. I have never been a tourist in Tel Aviv, and always considered it my home, even when I grew up in Holon, or lived a few years in Haifa. It will be a change to wake up in the morning and go for a stroll in Tel Aviv.

You may be happy to know that in the past month my view of Americans hasn't improved by one bit. They are still a lazy and stupid group of people, who will not budge an inch out of their way to help you. They are entangled in their own bureaucracy without being able to do anything different than the thing they were told to do. If you want something done, you have to do it exactly at the same way they know, and adjust to the pace they are used to doing things. I have a small hope that this is only in the university, because I talked with a secretary that joined the department a month ago, and she was amazed by the sluggishness of the university as much as I was. She said that it's probably because people at the university usually have tenure, and no one gets fired, so no one needs to work hard to justify his or her job. I think she's right, as I've seen similar things in other places, like IAI.

Perhaps Barack Obama will change things. In his acceptance speech he told the cheering crowd that they will need to work hard to change America. His speech sounded to me like the speech Churchill gave when he encouraged the British people to keep fighting the Nazis. Neither of them promised it will be easy, and in both cases the crowd was fearing the present but hoping for a better future. It worked one time, let's hope it will work again, for the sake of America, and for the sake of the entire world.

Good mood and good news

2008-11-12T23:06:00.000-05:00

Today I'm in a very good mood. First of all, the human resources has approved the application and now D and I are officially Domestic Partners. This means that we can get tuition remission for her and enroll her to all the medical benefits, just as if we were married. This means that our financial condition has improved greatly.
Another thing is that I have solved the multi-agent maze problem. It took me only 4 days to solve it from the Saturday until now. It works brilliantly. Kelly is really impressed with that and he thinks I should write a paper for a conference and a journal.
With all these great things that happened to me today I also found a funny site with comic strips that deal with Ph.D. and grad students life. All images are from http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php and they depict so nicely the life of a grad student in the US. I really recommend that you take a look at it. Here are some appetizers from there:

Weekly update 8: Change

2008-11-09T21:57:00.000-05:00

I chose Obama's slogan as the title of this update in honor of his victory in the presidential elections. I don't believe he will bring change to America, at least not in the magnitude required here, nor in the amount he promised he would, but what the hell...

Now that politics are put aside, I can update that we are coming for a vacation in Tel Aviv in December. We will be in Israel for a period of two weeks (starting December 17) and I hope to be able to meet everyone during this visit. We still haven't decided where we are going to stay, and whether it will be with my father all the time or partially at D's parents. The reason to stay with my father is also the reason why not to be with him all the time: he needs our company to relieve him from his sudden solitude after my mother's death; however, I don't want him to have another shock when we leave back.

And on another topic: I started doing a nice research/game dealing with a group of agents (in real life: robots) that travel through a maze. So far I have worked only since yesterday and already I have a maze downloaded from the web and running, simple logic for a single agent to complete the maze, and scalability for a group of agents. I still need to implement a better logic for the single agent and a complex logic for the group, i.e. agents learning from the other. Nonetheless, I enjoy this game and it gives me something to do other than prepare for classes or check students work, which is boring.

Unfortunately, our lives has really become dull other than what I have written here. This week we stayed at the university long hours (13 and 14 hours on Wednesday and Thursday), so I really don't have anything else - and certainly anything funny - to tell. So, I bid you a good week and see you soon!

Weekly summary #7: photos

2008-11-02T10:25:00.000-05:00

First, I'll start with two administration notices:

Some of you have repeatedly asked for photos. Here are some. Since the only drives we have are from the home to the university and back, and since our house is still a mess, the photos are only of the university. Maybe I'll add more later.
I decided that the Verizon phone is so unusable that I left Verizon for T-mobile and now I use my Sony-Ericsson from home. On the other hand, I decided that it's not a good idea to put my phone on the net, so if you need it, just ask for my new phone. In any case, don't use the Verizon phone number.
As always, you're encouraged to follow the links in this update.

The reason this update is late is the Obama rally we attended yesterday at the University of Cincinnati (video). We're not into politics that much, and in the previous post I mentioned that there's not enough interest in the coming elections, especially comparing to their importance to America and to the world. Apparently one the candidates has decided to spark things up and yesterday Senator Obama made an appearance in Nyppert Stadium at the University of Cincinnati. We decided to go, as this is probably the closest we'll ever get to the president of the United States, according to the polls. On the other hand, Shimon Peres has been elected several times in the polls so nothing is decided yet. Or, in other way, you can see this Simpsons clip to understand why McCain will be elected at the end, and pay special attention to the sentence in which Homer says: "... this does not happen in America...".

Before talking about the rally itself, I just want to give you another example on how this country and the people in this city are ready for a totalitarian regime. The doors of the stadium opened at 6, and we left my office at the university at 5 so that we'll have a good chance of getting in. Already there was a huge line. Everyone was standing in an organized fashion and we simply walked to the end of the line and joined it. People were standing on the road at that time, and then came a police officer and politely said: "folks, I need you to be on the pavement". In less than 5 seconds a group of more than 20 people moved to stand on the pavement, with no questions or arguments. Total adherence to the law-enforcement representative.

Anyway, I have some observations regarding Barack Obama as a candidate and possibly the next president of the United States (I guess you knew I would make some comments about him, right?).
Firstly, this is something we saw yesterday, and I don't know if it is not the same in the case of McCain, but the candidacy of Obama has made him a merchandise. We saw people selling everything with his face and name on: T-shirts, bumper stickers, car magnets, and even play cards (that had Bush and McCain as the jokers). Anything you want for a price that ranges from $1 to $25. He has become a rock star rather than a candidate. Again, this might be the case for John McCain as well (I know that Sarah Palin has become an icon as well, as I mentioned in the previous update). Just notice this link: www.barackobama.com in the picture I took yesterday.
Secondly, if the way Obama manages his time can give us any clue on the way he will run the next administration, then he will not do a good job. Yesterday we waited for him for 40 minutes before he appeared on stage, and that's after the other small-time politicians finished their speeches. The crowd around us, comprised mainly by supporters and fans of the Democratic party (unlike us, who were just there for the experience), was getting frustrated with his delay. Some said: "hey, we need to be at work tomorrow, those of us who still have work".
Thirdly, I genuinely think that there is no good candidate in the coming elections. Both Obama and McCain are ill-suited for this job. Obama is too young and inexperienced, although very charismatic judging by the female crowd around me yesterday even sexy, to comprehend and manage the current turmoil in the financial markets and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. McCain on the other hand is too old, and too attached to his Republican party, and to the legacy of the Bush administration. If there is something evident in the current situation, it is that this administration is probably the worst ever in the history of the United States. I think that what people seek is change, and Obama is change for them (his slogans are: "change" and "hope"), but in my view: to say "change" is not enough. In the terms of a systems engineer, you need to define the requirements in an unambiguous manner, and just saying "change" is not enough. You need a plan, preferably a feasible one, and I can't say I've heard one coming from the Obama campaign managers. For example, I think that his plans will leave a HUGE hole in the American budget, which will only drive this economy to a worse situation than it already is.
Last observation I have of Obama is that he started to feel too confident in his success. Yesterday, I heard him use the term "regime" for the current Bush government. I don't know how many of you are aware of the different terms the English language has for a government. Usually, the neutral term is "government", while a positive way to say it is "administration" (that's usually how Americans call their own government), and "regime" is the negative wording for such. Usually the word regime refers to the Irani government, or Saddam Hussein's government. When used in the context of the Bush government it has significant consequences on the way Barack Obama thinks.

Can an African American become the president of the United States with all the prejudices and bigotry here? A few months ago I was doubted that very much; now, in light of the economic crisis, I think that people are so aching for change that some of them are willing to overlook questions of race and color. According to the polls here, he will be elected. If he doesn't it will be the surprise of the century, but it will also show that underneath the surface there is still a dark current of hatred between the whites and blacks in America.

Moving on to other issues, we have started to think about our upcoming home visit. One thing that came up pretty quickly, not surprising given our bent towards good food and coffee, and the lack of such here, is our need for such. I don't know if we can afford too many of those, but we certainly would like to go to some of our favorite places in Tel Aviv, and until now the food wish-list includes:

Joya
Tamara
Vanillia
Arcaffe
A cafe near my home
A good Humus/lafa place (with emphasis on good!) for me
D wants to add Barbari or Yevulim

So, if something here sounds good to you as well, we will be happy to schedule a lunch or a dinner there. Also, if something good has opened since we left, that's fine by us.

Quick updates from the previous week:

I finally got my first paycheck. Hurray! Only a month and a half without a salary.
Still no updates on our other administrative issues with the university (i.e. domestic partnership).
We went to a Halloween party organized by the graduate students at the College of Business. I think that it was the first time that I saw American women allow themselves to dress in "revealing" clothing. I think that more revealing clothing is considered "slutty" here (at least in Cincinnati). We were supposed to wear costumes, so D and I bought hats. She got a large hat and I got a fedora hat. I tried for the "great depression era unemployed". Unfortunately, they didn't have the fedora in red. Which brings me to the last update:
Windows on my old laptop has finally crashed. I had to install the entire system with the KDE version of Ubuntu (version 8.10). That's the first time in my life that I use a computer with no Microsoft operating system installed on it. So far, apart from a few glitches, it behaves itself. We intend it to serve as our media center at home, and it takes some tweaking before you can do that in Linux (basically because of the proprietary media formats used everywhere). Ynet is still a mess with all the non-standard video streams they use, but nothing that a good Greasemonkey script and a good media player can't handle.

For those of you who got this far: mood-o-meter - high for me, low for D. Did you notice that we are at 180 degrees phase from each other?

Weekly Summary 6: Politics and Bureaucracy

2008-10-26T19:00:00.000-04:00

First of all I would like to thank all the people that sent encouraging words after the previous post. Your words are important and appreciated and I thank you for that. This week's post will deal with something most of us don't like at all: bureaucracy and politics. As I mentioned in some of the previous posts, we have encountered a frighteningly amount of red tape in our first weeks, starting with the problems of getting my university ID, entering me to the system and so on. Unfortunately, this has not ended yet. For example, I still haven't received the package with all my social rights and health care. The official "excuse" is that they sent it to another address, which is the hotel in which we had resided in the first two weeks. I doubt that very much, and my guess is that someone simply misplaced the package. My suspicions increased after my visit to the University's Human Resources, where a nice yet a total moron person told me that he will look for the package and let me know. He hasn't done that although almost a week has passed. This has become a major concern for me because now I'm starting to be sick, and I would like to go to a doctor if this condition persists.

Worse still, the same useless HR guy told me that we would not be able to apply for domestic partnership until a period of 6 months has passed since the beginning of D's relationship with me. And for them 6 months are counted from the date of the first document we have, which in our case is our lease on the apartment, dated from September. First of all, this domestic partnership is the only reason I am teaching here, instead of being a regular student. Don't think that I am the only one with incentive to do it; the department is very short in staff. In fact, they have two positions open, after two lecturers left in the previous year. They need me to teach no less than I need their money to support D's studies. If I don't get this domestic partnership approved, and we have to pay for D's tuition, which is circa $20000, I consider it to be a major breach of our contract. I intended to go down and tell the department head that if it is not sorted out, she can forget about me teaching and that we will go back home. D has managed to cool me off, and we intend to try and get this partnership approved using an old affidavit we made to the municipality of Tel Aviv (another bureaucratic superpower). Kelly promised to help as well, and seemed stressed by this new difficulty. In any case, if we don't get it, I guess I will have to have some serious and not so pleasant talk with the department head.

Now to politics. As you know, the presidential elections will be held on the next Tuesday. These are historic elections, and when they are over the United States will have either a first African American president, or a first female vice president. You might have suspected that this situation will raise a special interest in the elections, especially during a major economic crisis. As far as I can see, the students in the university are not so interested about it. Here they can vote ahead of the elections day, even today, and still I haven't seen any strong movement in the voting area. It is assumed that most younger people will vote for Obama, and if this is the case, don't be surprised if Mc'Cain wins the elections. In addition, elections day is not a vacation here; people are supposed to work in that day and then go to vote for their nominee. In light of the lack of interest I see around us, I think the voting percentage will be low, at least in Israeli terms.

By the way, it appears that Sarah Palin is a hit here with the average working class males. In other words, picture election rallies packed with Al Bundys and you'll begin to understand how this can happen. I guess that the fact that the talented and attractive Tina Fey plays her role in Saturday Night Live doesn't hurt, although the writers in SNL are pro-Democrats. Last week Sarah Palin even appeared as a guest in SNL, thus leveraging both the show's rating and Fey's popularity. You should catch a glimpse of this appearance if you haven't already done so.

Something less known is that in the same day people are voting for various offices other than the president. There are of course the U.S. Congress and Senate, but there are also more local offices. Here they vote for judges, district attorneys, state representatives, and even "clerk of courts". I don't really know what that is, but it appears to be someone who is responsible for signing official documents, like a document that title your vehicle in your name. We went to the bureau of motor vehicles (BMV) and titled our Altima in both our names. We also purchased our license plates (here they identify the person or group owning the vehicle, not the vehicle itself). The BMV seemed a more organized and has less bureaucracy than the university. Somehow, my impressions of the federal and state authorities are that they are far more efficient than the university. That's not too hard, I guess.

I read in Ynet that Israel is heading back to elections. Here are some good reasons to elect Benyamin Netanyahu as prime minister:

He did a good job as a treasurer and since we face a big economic crisis he can set a good example on how to lead Israel to economic haven.
He is against government expenditures. He'll probably be able to deal with Shas and prevent them from getting a billion sheqels out of our pockets.
The other options are Ehud Barak and Zipi Livni. It's not that there is someone far better than Bibi to elect.
Governments usually fall within two, maximum two and a half years, in Israel. If Bibi is elected this year, he will be gone by 2011, just in time to correct his mistakes before D and I are back. :-)

To summarize, a story that combine bureaucracy and politics. Yesterday was D's half a day off from her studies, after she returned from a midterm exam (yes, I know, it was Saturday, but hey that's Business School for you). Unfortunately, soon after she got home, the toilet overflowed, and we were afraid that the entire day would be ruined. We called the lousy company that rents our building, and they asked us to try and resolve the situation by ourselves. We thought about calling Joe the Plumber, who is - as you all know - an Ohioan, but finally we decided to buy a plunger and do it ourselves. It worked out, so now I am considering to become a plumber myself. After all, it is a good occupation even in times of economic dire; people will still need someone to plunge their toilets or install a new faucet. I will be better paid than what I make now, that's for sure. Even Joe the plumber makes more than me.