GriffJon.com Blog

May 05, 2008

Waterboarding

( politics )

Seriously, can the debate be over now?

Amnesty International video on waterboarding -- showing as a movie trailer in theaters now!

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February 23, 2008

Blast from the past

( politics )

Edit: OK, I was really excited about this article below until I got to the end when it started talking about "So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign." -- it was published in 2004. Sigh.

Ok; so now can we get something done?

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.

'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.

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Disenfranchise this!

( politics )

Students at Prarie View A&M in Texas (a democratic stronghold) have a seven mile trek to their polling place -- not horrible, except that they're students with a lower than average number of cars (and certainly there's a place on or near campus to host a polling location?). Regardless, they marched, en masse, to go vote -- and blocked the highway in protest as they did it.

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February 16, 2008

Peace Corps, Espionage, and Bolivia, Part II

( politics )

Bolivia charged a US embassy official with espionage. He's been removed from the country with promises from the US Embassy that he will never set foot in Bolivia again, after it came to light that he's been asking Fullbright scholars and Peace Corps volunteers to spy on Venezuelans and Cubans in Bolivia, says ABCNews:

... the first time in history that the Bolivian government has charged a U.S. embassy official with a criminal offense -- let alone for one as serious espionage.

Officials from the two countries met for hours yesterday in La Paz in an attempt to quell the growing tension and called a truce last night. Both sides declared their intentions to better relations and made clear that the official in question -- Assistant Regional Security Advisor Vincent Cooper -- would not return to Bolivia.

"We accept the [U.S.] ambassador's explanations, and we want to get past the issue," said Foreign Relations Minister David Choquehuanca at the press conference that followed the more than three-hour-long meeting

A sad footnote that scooted in to the end of the ABC News article:

The U.S. Embassy in La Paz acknowledges the July incident, having received complaints from Peace Corps staff last year about the matter. But both the embassy and the State Department claim it was "an error," emphasizing that it should not have been interpreted as a request for U.S. citizens to spy.

What was the error? That the volunteers and scholars were asked at all, or that the ask was "interpreted" as espionage?

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February 10, 2008

Peace Corps Spies?

( Development )

Damnit, State Department; there's a reason why Peace Corps is set up outside of your purvue and has strict policies against volunteers who've served in intelligence roles. Volunteers can't /do/ anything if they're targeted for political violence and untrusted be the people they're supposed to be trying to help. Sure; there will always be conspiracy theories around anything the US does; that's the nature of the world today (and the global community has good reasons to be cautious, I might add.

But asking volunteers (and fullbright scholars) to keep tabs on Cuban and Venezuelan doctors (in Bolivia, no less) is shortsighted, petty, and stupid. You're asking a huge number of super-idealistic, mostly politically left, fresh-out-of-college folks to do low-level spying; and not (a) refuse (b) rebel against it (c) leak it to the press?

"I was told to provide the names, addresses and activities of any Venezuelan or Cuban doctors or field workers I come across during my time here," Fulbright scholar John Alexander van Schaick told ABCNews.com in an interview in La Paz.

Van Schaick's account matches that of Peace Corps members and staff who claim that last July their entire group of new volunteers was instructed by the same U.S. Embassy official in Bolivia to report on Cuban and Venezuelan nationals.

..."He said, 'We know the Venezuelans and Cubans are here, and we want to keep tabs on them,'" said van Schaick who recalls feeling "appalled" at the comment.

"I was in shock," van Schaick said. "My immediate thought was 'oh my God! Somebody from the U.S. Embassy just asked me to basically spy for the U.S. Embassy.'"

A similar pattern emerges in the account of the three Peace Corps volunteers and their supervisor. On July 29, 2007, just before the new volunteers were sworn in, they say embassy security officer Vincent Cooper visited the 30-person group to give a talk on safety and made his request about the Cubans and Venezuelans.

"He said it had to do with the fight against terrorism," said one, of the briefing from the embassy official. Others remember being told, "It's for your own safety."

This of course is against PC policy and Bolivian law.

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February 01, 2008

:w saves

( geek )

I saw that on a t-shirt last night at an OLPC meetup; setting the stage for today's xkcd, a emacs/vi/etc. beatdown:

(I use nano)

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January 22, 2008

Why has no one ever told me about sunchokes?

( Food )

I had sunchokes (Jerusalem Artichokes) for the first time at a Restaurant Week visit to Circle Bistro. They look like fat ginger root and taste like mild artichoke hearts. A and I located some at Central Markup. We tossed them in olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, sage and garlic powder and roasted them for ~30 minutes and they were delish. Turns out they're basically the root of a sunflower and grow like weeds in the Northeast; so I'll be adding them to my garden as soon as I can figure out when they should be planted (you can cut up a sunchoke and plant it like a potato.

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January 06, 2008

Pomegranante: Just a Good Idea

( Food )

This week has been a week of adding pomegranate to things. Glazes, reductions, berry syrups. It's good. Thus far:

*A pinot noir/balsamic vinegar/pom glaze reduction with sauteed savory-spiced (salt, garlic salt, lemon) portabello mushroom slices (sautee the mushrooms with olive oil and spices until tender, then add some wine, vinegar, and pom glaze and reduce until damn yummy)

*Just plain pom glaze on fish

*added to orange or teriyaki-sh chicken

*1 tbsp each of wine, pom glaze, honey, sugar, and balsamic vinegar with ~8 mashed blackberries makes a really nice dessert topping for a lemon cake of vanilla ice cream.

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January 02, 2008

Resolve 2008

( life )

Yeah yeah. I've had at best mixed results with NYE resolutions, but I like to keep posting them to keep me in check.

-Expand my DC friend set
-Network more with local DC ICT/development types
-Write more blog entries at my professional blog
-Write at least one entry a month at OLPCNews and get the OLPCLearningClub wiki off the ground
-Fish my resume around and hopefully find an international development centric position (that pays)
-Move further and further away from Microsoft; set up virtualization or good emulation for when I need XP-only programs, find viable alternatives to as much as possible
-Continue going to the gym regularly, as I get closer to my target weight shift more and more to strength and endurance training
-Get back into dancing (so rusty!) and even take some classes

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December 16, 2007

Torture

( politics )

Salon.com has an exclusive article detailing the detainment of an innocent Yemeni citizen in CIA's black site prisons:

The guards wore black masks and black clothes. They would not utter a word as they extracted Bashmilah from his cell for interrogation -- one of his few interactions with other human beings during his entire 19 months of imprisonment. Nobody told him where he was, or if he would ever be freed.

It was enough to drive anyone crazy. Bashmilah finally tried to slash his wrists with a small piece of metal, smearing the words "I am innocent" in blood on the walls of his cell. But the CIA patched him up.

So Bashmilah stopped eating. But after his weight dropped to 90 pounds, he was dragged into an interrogation room, where they rammed a tube down his nose and into his stomach. Liquid was pumped in.

Mark Twain once said; "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." I haven't supported my government for a long time, and I've almost lost all support for even my country when things like this come to light on a weekly basis and fall on deaf ears.

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November 14, 2007

Hot Hot Sauce

( Food )

So... As I posted last week; I like hot hot sauce. Right? Right. If you know me in person you know I'm not afraid of mortal heat.

I found my match today; and it is MadDog MAgnum 357 sauce. It's supposed to be a one-drop-will-do-ya. Well, it glopped out onto my test chip at Pedro And Vinny's Burrito Cart (think FreeBird's in a cart, veg only, served by a friendly New Yorker in a big hurry); so I ate it, probably about a tablespoon in all.

Note that the "one drop" is one drop for an entire pot of chili, a whole hamburger, etc.

I teared up a bit on the way back to the office to enjoy my burrito laced with the much kinder, but very tasty Uncle Brutha's Fire Sauce No. 9 Chile Verde Garlic and Ginger . I was feeling a bit ill by the time I got back; then nauseous, and ended up in the bathroom preparing for Porcelain Goddess worship (I can't even remember the last time I had to pay homage for something I ingested). A few seconds later I woke up on the floor of the bathroom, sweating balls, and stumbled to our office's storage room and laid down to sweat, endure some GI burning pain, and contemplate my idiocy for a ~10 more minutes.

I'd say that the sauce needed a warning label, but probably the "Made with 6 million scoville unit extract" probably should've clued me in (the hottest variety of habanero, the red savina, comes in at around 500,000).

I'm feeling mostly normal now :)

I'd say that I've learned my lesson, but I probably haven't

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November 07, 2007

Salsa Recipe

( Food )

I've updated my recipe for my homemade salsa.

http://griffjon.com/recipes/howtomakeSalsa.pdf

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August 25, 2007

CITI Bank student loans suck update

( grad )

I got a response from CITI - they will allow me to pay the backdated interest before it is capitalized onto the loan (though, not really, because they're offering to let me pay the amount which increased from capitalization for each backdated month - gee, thanks guys!!!)

To quote:

"On 08/15/07, we were notified that you were no longer in school as of 5/20/07. Therefore we ended your In-School deferment for loan 21 on 05/20/07; which would make your first payment due 06/18/07. [...] Since your deferment had ended in the past, we could not make your first payment due in the past; therefore, an Administrative forbearance was approved for the period -5/21/07 to 08/14/07."

Gotta love their logic. We can't bill you retroactively, but damnit we'll charge you interest! I suppose I should be happy they didn't charge me late fees and put liens against my property and paychecks?

Oh, wait - speaking of late fees - a bonus: my American Airlines credit card with CITI got slapped with an (1-day) past due charge, even though my bank records indicate that they withdrew the funds (epayment) on the due date. Yeah, I'll be canceling this card; I want as little to do with CITI as possible.

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August 17, 2007

Loan Sharks

( grad )

So, one of my loans will have entered repayment on the 25th (or at least that's when citi will mail me my first bill). It's already gathering interest dust on it however.

I can't set up an auto-payment from my bank that's more than the minimum amount due (said amount of course maximizes the interest I pay to citi; not something I want to do). I can reschedule my loans once they both enter repayment (the other will do so in November). To pay more than the minimum I have to go through a rather painful web process to extract money from my bank with no way to automate/schedule payments.

Said online payment system is wonderful, not only because of its usefulness, but because you have to go out of your way to read the fine print and click the box to apply your payment to the principle. Otherwise, it just applies it to your monthly interest servicing. So I could make a payment of $500, and if I didn't check that box, it would just pay a fraction of that every month to my monthly statement, prolonging (and increasing) my interest payments.

Double extra bonus? if you go to the trouble of paying online and remember to post the "extra" to your principle, your automated monthly payments of the minimum get fubared: "Attention E-Z Pay customers: Payments made online may advance your next payment due date. Please note this may change or prevent your regularly scheduled automatic payment from processing."

So not only have they started charging me interest without telling me (nor is the date of when these things change available online, and the customer reps have to do extra work to find it), it's made very difficult to pay anything but the interest-payment maximizing minimum. Thanks, Citi, are you familiar with the term "predatory" ?

This story gets better; I've earned $100 in backdated interest. The backstory:

I graduated GWU in May. They're horribly slow about updating CITI about my graduation date - surprise. I'd called CITI in early June to check with them, and as I'd not been listed as graduated I was told that I was not gathering any interest. I checked - when GWU did get around to updating my information, would I get backdated charges? I was explicitly told that I would not. GWU just notified CITI yesterday (Aug 16th), and I immediately got three backdated interest charges applied to my account. I just got off a huffy call with a CSR who basically told me that yes the agent had given me incorrect charges but no they would not remove them or backdate a payment to June... So I find their online contact system:

I am very displeased with CITI's handling of my loans and customer service representatives I have spoken with. Upon my May 07 graduation, I called CITI to investigate payment options. I was told that GWU had not listed me as graduated and that I would not accrue any interest payments until they had done that. I clarified this statement to make sure that none would be applied as back-dated, and was told they would not be. On August 16th, however, three interest amounts were added to my account (21) for a total of $95.12. I called customer service to investigate this charge and was told that these were interest charges from June, July and August, and what the representative had told me in June was incorrect. Had I been told that interest would be back dated, something I specifically asked about, I would have begun making payments, which is why I carefully clarified that point. It is reprehensible that CITIs representatives would give false information in the first place, and worse that they are powerless to remove these charges which I was ensured would not exist. Providing false information and not offering to do anything to make up for it, especially with loans, is irresponsible, poor business practice, and bordering on predatory.

I will be satisfied when these three interest payments are removed from my account. I have filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, and will remove it once this issue is resolved.

Their response rate to BBB complaints is decent, so I'm hopeful for something at least.

To quote xkcd, "what now, bitches?"

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August 14, 2007

XYZZY

( geek )

I can't think of anything geekier than my liking this article: Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther's Original “Adventure” in Code and in Kentucky

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