"Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam, Marseille and Malmo in Sweden. In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighbourhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities. In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims. Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear "whore, whore". Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin. In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin.
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It’s sad to read how many concessions European countries are granting to Muslims in the name of “offence”. Aren’t you Jewish Eyal? Is it offensive to mention pigs near you?
I can see how it would be a good thing to serve foods that they prefer to eat and I think it’s terrible when anyone is insulted or attacked for any reason but its the job of teachers to educate kids about the realities of the world, offensive or not. In fact, especially if they’re offensive.
Have you ever listened to anything from Pat Condell? Geert Wilders can take good ideas and push them into hyperbole or racism (he’s the PETA of the human tolerance movement) but Condell has kept things on the level. http://www.patcondell.net/
Luck out there.
Yep I’m Jewish. The only reason I’d get offended if you mentioned pig or pork near me is if you were doing it while having a nice pork sausage and I wasn’t offered any :-) As far as I know Jews rarely get offended when people from other religions go about their own ways of life eating or doing whatever they want in a normal way, as long as they let Jews practice their own system of beliefs and lifestyle. Unlike the other two main monotheistic religions Judaism has no interest in converting or influencing people of other religions.
I’m a big fan of Pat Condell, I watched all, or most of his youtube videos. Not only for his stand on Islam but on organized religion in general. Has has a good video related to this food and uber cultural sensitivities, the one where he talks about an archbishop and the case where in the UK a school banned the story of 3 little pigs from their Christmas storytelling activities so as not to offend Muslim students.
Tough market out there for my style. Major macro news driving the market crazy make my life a lot more difficult.
How’s your research and project going?
Andrew Horowitz from “The Disciplined Investor Podcast” says that instead of technical or fundamental analysis, you need to do legislative analysis. Probably not as bad as that but it’s not far off :)
I haven’t been swing trading for a while which is a shame ’cause it’s my favourite form of trading and my most profitable but I guess I’m too risk averse to be trading these markets. The bot has been making good money which is nice but it’s only running live with two strategies. I’m trying to find new ones but it’s slow going, you probably know that as well as anyone.
The researchy things were around getting futures support for Trading-Pulse but I’m dropping that for the first release (it’s much bigger than I imagined) and on improving my bot which has worked out well. Hopefully it leads to some profits :)
Have you heard of the ‘Haredi’ Jews? I’ve read reports of some orthodox communities destroying shops because they sell iPods, beating women who leave their husbands and generally trying to intimidate people in their neighbourhoods who don’t share the same strict values. How big is this? I’ve no idea if they are like the Phelps church - an insignificant group of vocal nutters that get national press because they’re so bizarre - or if there are enough to have power. It sounds like in certain neighbourhoods they’re a large, strong majority. I guess people are people wherever you go.
Yeah legislative, political and credit market analysis. Last month was good, this month I can’t get the same traction. We’ll see, still have another couple of weeks, to either dig a hole or climb up :-). I lowered my risk level just in case, it makes no sense for me to trade big size when conditions aren’t favorable for my edge.
Sounds like you got a lot on your plate.
Interesting to hear that the futures part would have been a lot more work. I wouldn’t have guessed that. I use the performance reports in NinjaTrader quite a bit. Not sure if other platforms offer something similar.
When are you going out of beta?
The haredi jews are the orthodox ultra religious ones. They are a relatively large minority in Israel (with 10 kids a family they’ll be the majority in the relatively near future). They are typically not very tolerant of other Jews not observing the Jewish rules. Sometimes they do resort to violence like blocking roads and throwing stones at cars that pass in their neighborhoos (in most of those ghettos where they live it’s illegal to drive thru on Shabath). I’m not familiar with the piece you wrote about on the iPod etc. this is probably in the US? I doubt they do that outside their own communities and against non-Jews.
Argh, left a long comment which got lost ’cause of the security code!
re futures: yeah, it sounds simple but it grew more and more complex as I delved. To properly match securities I needed to get a definitive list of securities, their exchange, multiplier tick size and CUSIP but the different data sources would have gaps and inconsistencies. I kept trying to import my old trading record and running into problem after problem. To do it right I’ll have to talk to some vendors about buying some sort of datafeed to get all of the current & historical instruments and that grew into a big, expensive mess. I’m still planning on offering that but I figure there are other features which are essential and easier to complete. I’m really disappointed, but if I’m going to get everything else done, I have to put it on hold. The code is still there, just waiting for the data.
re release date: the bot is trading live and so has the ability to earn or cost me much more than Trading-Pulse ever will so I’m focused on that. I’m trying to do both but the priority has to be income first. I’ve still got to do some work that I’ve never tried before so there’s a lot of uncertainty in dates but I’ve been making good progress and I’ve integrated a lot of the suggestions that you and John have made so I’m feeling confident. Currently I’m targeting the 5th of January and think it is very doable.
re Haredi: yes, the news reports did say they focused their attention on other Jews though I still think it crosses the line. Using peer pressure to push people into behaving the way you wish is one thing, beating them up is quite another. Your comment about the Sabbath is interesting. A lot of Christian demagogues in the States claim that the 10 Commandments are the foundation of morals & laws, yet none of them seems to know “keep the Sabbath holy” is in all three versions of the 10 Commandments. I wonder how much popular support they would have if they advocate laws to imprison people for working on a Sunday :)