How I (almost) stopped the genocide in Darfur

Four elephants fucking

The huge red statue near Ein Karem, Jerusalem, has always attracted the attention of Jerusalem's locals, who tried to explain the meaning of this strange monument. Hot air architects claimed that when looking at the statue from a certain angle, it exactly reflects the spectacular view of Jerusalem Mountains behind it; most of the natives, however, claimed that the anonymous artist merely tried to immitate four elephants fucking.
Anyway, I was happy to see a mini-model of the statue near Brooklin Bridge, in Manhattan (see pic below). Finally I found out something, in which Jerusalem is bigger than NY.
BTW, transferring pieces from Jerusalem - and not only model, but the real things - is a very good idea. Many of Jerusalem's residents would be very happy to transfer The Western Wall to Tel-Aviv, the El-Aztza mosque to Saudia and the holy churches to the Vatikan, being left finally with a city in which one can merely live normal life.

Urban Paradise

No doubt: From a social-democrat point of view, Manhattan is heaven: people of all origins, colors and religions mix with each other, enjoy both the high energy of the city and the the relaxing calms of the parks in it; healthy sportive people walk, run, ride bikes or skates; over-crowded streets, full of tastes, colors and odors gives higher chances for earning money not only to the large concerns, but also to small businesses of the middle class; Safe feeling, even in places which were previously notorious for crime and violence - Harlem, China Town, small subway stations; High awareness of the locals to the environment - recycling bins for different kinds of garbage are found at every street corner.
All of this is such a great success mainly because NY is not America. The monicipilaty does all it can for making the life of he who insist to enter Manhattan's center by car harder; there is very efficient public transportation; the municipalities well marks many trails, which are dedicated only for cyling or for jogging; there are hardly any real malls within Manhattan; On market days, the police closes many streets and makes them pedestrian malls.
So finally it works - not only in the dreams of naive dogmatic environmentalists, but in the everyday reality in Manhattan. Unfortunately, this is exactly the opposite of the rest of America - and of my country, which always imitates from the US only the bad ideas, not the good ones.

Pieces of my soul

I'm used to say, that every one of my ex-girl-friends took with her a little piece of my heart.
Travelling in the US gives the same feeling. Everywhere I encounter them: close and further relatives; old friends, whom I've long time no seen; artists and scientist, whom I don't know personally, but I know theirs names.
Fresh ex-Israeliens. "YORDIM" (descenders), in the common Hebrew slang. I can't blame them. You live only once, and every one has the right to look for his own happiness.
But sometimes meeting them is a bit like an occasional meeting with an ex-girlfriend: I can't blame any one, but I feel that while going away, they took with them a part of my heart, a part of the dream of me - and of my country.

Mathematical queeze

A typical heavy smoker starts to smoke when he is 16 years old. It takes 10 years to educate a smoker not to smoke next to non-smokers. Only later is it possilbe to start teaching him to throw the remainders of the cigarettes into a garbage can, and not on the ground, which takes 30 more years. A typical heavy smoker dies from cancer when he is 55 years old. What is the chance to educate a heavy smoker to throw the used cigarettes in a garbage can during his lifetime?

BTW (a typical story from home)
Once I was riding in a road in Haifa, my hometwon, when a remainder of a cigarette, which one driver threw out of his car, hit me. Well, this driver had very bad luck, to throw his cigarette to the wrong direction: I rode very fast, caught him in the next traffic light, and threw the used cigarette (which wasn't burning anymore, of course) into his car, shouting on him. He was utterly shocked.

Statue of Liberty

At the ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island, many tourists stand outside and take pictures of the Statue of Liberty. Meanwhile, the locals, who are used to the views on the way, sit comfortably inside and read papers.
Only one strange guy stands outside, holding his bike in a very strange angle, and works hard for taking pictures of the Statue of Liberty with his bike on the background.
It's high time you begin to appreciate how hard I work for bringing you new stories & pictures.

The Velvet Underground

At Westchester County, NY State, there are a few parks with cool single tracks. Furthermore, the authorities well-marked the trails, and added signs with safety instructions (which I obeyed as much as I could - beside the first instruction, which reads "never ride alone").
Such an initiative is blessed, of course, though I must admit I found it also quite funny. Mountain biking is a bit
kind of an underground activity, with hidden trails and American-Indanian-like descriptions of the track, such as "on the huge rock turn to the left, and on the third blue bush - to the right". Thus, "regulation" of mountain bike trails by the authorities is a bit like organization of a trans party by the government.

How I (almost) stopped the genocide in Darfur

Visiting (again) Manhattan, which is, for people like me, an urban heaven, made me imagine a little my "alter-ego": if I can't beat them, why won't I join them - i.e. "descend" myself, and go to the US?
Luckily, there are plenty of practical reasons for making such a step inappropriate for me. As for the pure Zionism & ideals - well, I'm not sure that morally, it's a bad thing for a person to leave his homeland. However, there's one thing I'm sure about: morally, wherever you live in, you should do your duties, and be an active citizen.
A political animal as I'm, at my short visit in NY I found the time to visit one event of the democratic party, and even planned to go to a demonstrations, which calls Bush to stop closing his eyes referring to the Genocide in Darfur. Unfortunately, there were no demonstrations about it in NY at the time of my visit there.
BTW, In Israel we can't do much about this issue, as it involves Muslims, and the last thing we are lacking in Israel is problems with Muslims.

Mountain biking, NY State

some of the best mountain biking in the Northeast is just north of the city NY City, on Westchester(Urban Adventure - NY City / David Howard).
Yetserday I had a great cycling in the Sprain Ridge Park, north of NY City. I used Google maps to ride the 20 kms to the park only on rural little roads, and in the park itself I used the maps of the excellent local mountain bike association.
The park is tiny even in Israelien terms, and from most of its parts the voice of the birds mixes with the noise of the nearby highway from the east, and of the yelling children in the nearby
swimming pool from the west. But the trails there are really cool, offering many nice jumps and obstacles.
Disoriented as I'm, even in this tiny park I succeeded to lose my way and "enjoy" a few hours of panic until I got back into the civilization: the trails within the parks are quite confusing, and once I left by mistake the marked trail I entered a loop of unmarked trails, in which I wondered for a few hours, not finding the trail out. Never is it recommended to short-cut your way outside the trails in a park, but finally I did so - I just cut my way through the woods to the direction of the highway, and walked parallelly to the highway, towards the direction of the park's entrance. And it worked.

Clinton and the outsourcing of the US-presidency

I guess that had I been an American, I would have been a supporter of the Democrats. That's the natural choice for a left-wing environmentalist.
But cycling near "Ground Zero" encouraged me to re-think about it: after all, the main guilty in the 9/11 terror attacks - (well, beside Bin-Laden and his crooked friends, of course) - is a Democrat: Mister Bill Clinton. Why?
Well, I agree that G.W. Bush is not the smartest man on Earth, if to use a bit understatement. But Bush became a president only a short time before the 9/11. The one who was the president and did actually nothing when El-Quaida murdered hundrads of people in terror attacks in Kenya (and in many other places) is the very same one who was stupid enough to not understand what every 10-years old child in Israel knew: that Arafat was a fucking liar, who even for a moment didn't mean to follow any peace agreement, on which he signed. For god sake: why all the presidents of US have to be either naive dreamers, who dedicate all their time to stupid "peace" ceremonies (which only lead to worse wars), instead of defending the citizens of the free world from cruel crazy terror attacks - or ignorant arrogant Texans, who try to bring "democracy" to the world, while they hardly know how to spell that word? Aren't there, among the 300 millions Americans, some smarter candidates?
Shit, I knew it. So why won't you, dear Americans, simply outsource the US presidency job to a smart Indian? anyway you outsource everything to India, so why not also the US presidency? after all, India's leaders seem to treat theirs problems with the terror and with their crazy neighbors from Pakistan in a much smarter and more responsible way than that the US presidents use, when they try to solve the problems of America.

Router

At the day before my flight to the US, I attended an event in Cisco company, where I received a scholarship, which is annualy given to researchers in the areas of Internet and networking.
I'm very thankful to Cisco for the generous donation, but I must say that the event amused me a little: in addition to the scholarship, I received a router. Router is a chip, which manages and routes data traffic in a network (you may read about it in www.whatis.com). Yes, my profession is, more or less, to design such router. But What The Fuck should I suppose to do with a router, when the highest-technology device at my home is an old noisy radio-transistor? Actually, had all the people been like me, Cisco - and all the other High-Tech companies - would have been very poor. Never have I bought any electrical device. No DVD, no TV, neither a PC are found at my home. Just an old microwave and a basic audio system, which I received from my always-upgrading family members, who bought themselves new ones.
Does anyone of you wanna buy a second-hand unused router?

The narrowest park in the world

The riverside park in Manhattan is probably the narrowest park in the world: at some sections it's merely a single track. But don't you underestimate it: it enables one to cross Manhattan all the way from the north to the south, almost without using roads. In addition to a few other bike lanes and to the fact that Manhattan's streets are quite reasonable for cycling (well, surely safer than some roads in Haifa, my hometown) you find out that finally it's indeed possible to get to every point in Manhattan by bike relatively safely.

Why do I hate cars, reason

More fire works, Jul/4

#755

Those who don't know me well think that I hate cars just because of the air pollution they cause. Bullshit. I would have hated cars even had they exhausted fancy perfums, and not stinking toxins, which cause the death of tens of thousands of people all around the world every year.
He who drives too much becomes inevitably nervous, impatient and lazy - at least for the time he drives (and frequently this affect lasts long later). I know that this is not very scientific, but I have got many examples from the every-day life.
On 4-Jul, USA's independence day, I sat at the East River Park in Manhattan, to watch Macy's yearly Fireworks, which were indeed fantastic.
When the show finished, all the crowds, some hundreds of thousands of people, started to leave the place. Though it was very crowd and things moved very slow - here and there the police closed this or other passage for an unknown reason - everybody were patient and smiling to each other, and no one pushed or shouted.
But when we started to cross the streets, the noise began. The traffic was quite light - most drivers guessed that 4-July's evening is not the best time to enter Manhattan's center by car. But the few who did so, made a hell of a noise. How comes that hundreds of thausends pedestrians go home quietly and understand that pushing and fighting each other will yield no avail, while the very same people, when they enter cars, become so nervous and childish? How comes that all over the world, not only in Israel or India, but also in "cold" and "polite" country such as Austria or Swisserland, the combination "patient driver" (or "polite driver") seems like a contradiction interns?
As I said. The bad impact of cars on the human society is much wider than "mere" air pollution.

BTW

Sometimes people suspect the statistical facts which says that "X people in L.A. died from air pollution in the previous year". "How is it known", they ask, "that this person died from air pollution, and the other one from something else?"
Well, once I asked this question in a lecture regarding the damages of air pollution. And here's the answer: This is a statistical model. The researchers don't say that John Smith died from air pollution, while Jim Kelly died from something else. They compare many towns in the world, having different levels or air pollution (and many other relevant parameters, of course), and check the longevity, the rate of cancer etc.

BTW (2)

The central celebration of USA's independence in NY was a fireworks show, sponsored by Macy's, a huge department stores' chain.
Some Israeliens may find it funny, that in US even the celebration of a national holiday is merely an ad for a private company. To those people I would like to remind, that unfortunately the situation in Israel is much worse - and we must fight for changing it. US has got many disadavantages, but in the US at least the enforcement of the work rules, the businesses' regulations and the air pollution standards is much higher than in Israel.

Travel date: Jun-Jul/2006

Old Kato

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