Useless information thread

[SoBad]

Originally Posted by stringertom

Why complain? It sounds like a healthy, cool way to relax! Hope it's a high-quality vodka...a shame to waste good pomegranate on Skol-like rotgut.

The beverage can be a catalyst that merely facilitates an outpour of emotion rather than being the root cause. There are good deals on Fris around here. Tastes good and pure.

[Mike Bulgakov]

Originally Posted by SoBad

The beverage can be a catalyst that merely facilitates an outpour of emotion rather than being the root cause. There are good deals on Fris around here. Tastes good and pure.

I spend most of my time in the U.S. in the San Francisco area. It has been several years since I noticed FRÏS around here, but it was sold at a cheap price. The current cheap import seems to be Svedka from Sweden. I have never tried it, and it is sold in a plastic bottle. I know a shop that sells 1.75 liter bottles of Stolichnaya for $21.95, which seems too cheap.

[Mike Bulgakov]

Originally Posted by SoBad

The major challenge in analyzing issues around events that involve consumption of high quality drinks is the effect that the drinks have on the ability of the parties involved to recall the details of those events at later times. What I do remember is that the 1.5L bottle of pomegranate juice cost $13 at the supermarket. Does that sound excessive?

Do you have access to a Trader Joe's?

[SoBad]

Originally Posted by Mike Bulgakov

Do you have access to a Trader Joe's?

Not soon - we got snowed in on top of the storm from last week. I am looking for my notes from Instrumental Chem at the moment, trying to figure out how to manufacture coca-cola at home. Got some Jack D still...

[SoBad]

Originally Posted by Mike Bulgakov

I spend most of my time in the U.S. in the San Francisco area. It has been several years since I noticed FRÏS around here, but it was sold at a cheap price. The current cheap import seems to be Svedka from Sweden. I have never tried it, and it is sold in a plastic bottle. I know a shop that sells 1.75 liter bottles of Stolichnaya for $21.95, which seems too cheap.

With the modern communications, trasnsport, and logistics, you just can’t afford to get comfortable with brands or merchants anymore – things change too fast. I was unpleasantly shocked by the new design of the Stoli bottles a year or two ago. Fris looks good, tastes pure, and is reasonably priced around here.

[stringertom]

Originally Posted by SoBad

Not soon - we got snowed in on top of the storm from last week. I am looking for my notes from Instrumental Chem at the moment, trying to figure out how to manufacture coca-cola at home. Got some Jack D still...

Old #9 is fine just on the rocks!

[Mike Bulgakov]

Sex, spies and secrets: How officials fall into honey traps

The Indian Army officer who fell into a honey trap in Dhaka did the only thing that you should do under the circumstances: He told a superior officer what had happened. He may suffer embarrassment and a pothole in his career, but he can sleep in peace knowing that he did not betray his country and do jail time for doing so. Honey traps, the intelligence parlance for seducing and then blackmailing a target into working for you, are probably as old as sex. It was sex that persuaded the Israelite Samson to reveal to Palestinian Delilah that his long hair was the secret of his supernatural strength.

Sex and seduction have been used in espionage ever since. Few will deny that the overpowering allure of sex can make you lose your mind, and this is what a crafty intelligence handler will employ. It also happens to be easier to set up. Indians, being relatively more inhibited about sex than many other people make good targets and there have been numerous instances of Indian officials falling for the honey trap. There is the story of how a young diplomat fell for a ballerina in Russia in the 1950s. But when the KGB approached him to work for them, he laughed at their face. He then took a flight to New Delhi and confessed all to prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru who let him off with a caution. The man later rose to the highest offices in the land.

Other stories did not work out so well. K.V. Unnikrishnan of Research & Analysis Wing fell for a Pan Am airhostess who turned out to be a US intelligence agent. In the 1990s, there was the story of our Naval attache in Islamabad who was honey trapped by a nurse in Karachi and pressed to work for the ISI. He came back to India and tried to convince the authorities that he had recruited the nurse to work for India.

But on interrogation, he broke down and confessed. Since there was no evidence that he actually passed information to the ISI, he was dismissed from service and not jailed. There have been other serious instances of honey trapped individuals who were spared punishment because there was simply not enough evidence for conviction. The most notorious one is that of an IB officer who would have become the chief of the organisation had he not been detected y the IB itself in an undisclosed relationship with an American agent.

The best known recent example was the systematic manner in which the East German secret service under Markus Wolff used young men to seduce middle-aged West German secretaries working for senior officials. In this way they harvested a huge amount of intelligence. Wolf was to write in his autobiography, "When it began, I had no idea of the harvest it would bring." Such was their power that one secretary refused to believe that she had been honey trapped, declaring "He did really love me."

No doubt the Americans, too, used honey traps to get at East Bloc secrets, but we know more about the latter's use of the technique because they lost the Cold War and their secrets are there for all to see.

The most worrisome aspect of honey traps for India is its extensive use by the Chinese intelligence. There have been several instances of Indian officials - of RAW and the Indian Foreign Service - who have been trapped in China.

In 2009, the British counter intelligence service, MI5 distributed a 14-page booklet to various British banks and businesses entitled "The Threat from Chinese Espionage" which spoke of an extensive Chinese effort to trap people through long-term sexual relationships. Some time back, an aide of the then prime minister of UK, Gordon Brown who was picked up by a Chinese woman at a disco and the next morning found that his official Blackberry was missing.

But the case that has made waves in UK in recent times is that of the 26 year old Russian girl Katia Zatuliveter who had an affair with a 65-year old Liberal Democratic MP Mike Hancock who happens to be in the Defence Committee of the British Parliament and worked in his office as a researcher. The British counter-intelligence service MI5 wanted to deport her from UK, but she filed a case with the Special Immigration Appeals Commission which upheld her case last month.

President of SIAC Mr Justice Mitting said, "Nothing in the material which we have analysed suggests, let alone demonstrates, that the appellant exploited her relationships for the purposes of the Russian state." The panel actually said that her relationship with the MP had been "enduring and genuine".

This is the problem with honey traps in the modern world. Sexual relationships are relatively free, and the issue really is not so much about being trapped, which can happen to the most discreet person, but whether or not you then do the bidding of the foreign power.

It is obvious that if you are a diplomat, intelligence officer or a military officer you are a prime target in a foreign country. You must employ your commonsense when entering into relationships. It is not all that difficult.

Indian diplomats are no exception to falling to honey traps and the story goes back to the days of Jawahar Lal Nehru, first prime minister of independent India.

The case of Madhuri Gupta, an Indian diplomat in Islamabad, is unique in the sense that usually women play the bait to trap male officers. Pakistan has always been one of India's most challenging and key diplomatic missions. Obviously, Islamabad features on the list of world capitals where diplomats are advised to exercise extra caution.

Guidelines are provided to Indian Foreign Service and intelligence officers on overseas missions. These include keeping personal obligations to minimal, being sensitive towards foreign intelligence agencies and non-disclosure of information voluntarily that could be detrimental to foreign and security policies.

Apart from Islamabad, Beijing is another crucial mission. During the Soviet era and the days of iron curtain, bachelor diplomats were not posted in the eastern European countries. In the late 1970s, a diplomat was trapped in the Polish capital, Warsaw, and had to be recalled.

Way back in the 1950s an Indian diplomat was honey trapped in Moscow. When the Russian intelligence agency, the KGB, confronted the diplomat with the pictures of his activities with the girl agent, the diplomat apprised the Indian ambassador about the whole issue. Nehru, who was the then external affairs minister, let off the young diplomat with a mild caution. This explains the thin line that exists between a diplomat falling prey to a honey trap and turning a traitor.

But Madhuri Gupta, 53, posted as the second secretary (press and information) at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, crossed the thin line. She was arrested on April 22, 2010 by the special cell of Delhi Police for passing on sensitive information to ISI agents, she had befriended. On January 7, 2012, a Delhi Court will pronounce its order on framing of charges against Gupta.

RAW officer K.V. Unnikrishnan was another Indian officer convicted and punished for falling prey to the charms of a suspected agent in the disguise of a Pan Am air hostess. Unnikrishnan was then posted at the RAW office in Chennai and was dealing with the LTTE. He was arrested in 1987 and jailed for leaking out sensitive information.

- With inputs from Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury in New Delhi
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/s.../1/165363.html

[Mike Bulgakov]

Sunday 11 November 2012


Luanda, capital of Angola, retains title of world's most expensive for expats

Luanda, the capital of oil-rich Angola, is the most expensive city in the world for expatriates to live in while London is now cheaper than Rio de Janeiro, Hong Kong and Sydney, a survey has revealed.

By Aislinn Laing, Johannesburg

The southern African city won the dubious accolade for the second year running, narrowly edging out Tokyo, which was followed in third place by the Chadian capital N'Djamena, Moscow and Geneva.

Singapore also made the top ten for the first time, along with Sao Paulo in Brazil. The largest city in the western and southern hemispheres, it and its neighbour Rio de Janeiro have become the most expensive locations for expatriates in the whole of the Americas since the real hit its highest mark against the US dollar in 12 years.

Meanwhile London, previously as high as second on the list, has dropped to 18th position due to the rapid climb of other world cities. While its remains among the most expensive world cities to rent a property, go to the cinema or drive a car, it is dwarfed by others in the cost of basic goods and services.

The survey of the cost of living in 214 cities was compiled by human resources firm Mercer which compares the prices of 200 every day items around the world along with the strength of local currencies against the dollar. Governments and international companies use the rankings to decide how much to pay their overseas workers.

Luanda tops a list increasingly dominated by developing Asian and African economies which are expensive because of the short supply of accommodation, locally-produced goods and competing services such as taxis and mobile phone providers.

The Angola city has seen an influx of oil workers and executives since it became sub-Saharan Africa's second biggest oil producer after Nigeria.

But it was also the victim of a 27-year civil war destroyed much of its basic infrastructure, meaning that up to 90 per cent of its food is imported, along with cars and other manufactured goods.

That means that expatriates face paying up to £12 for a fast food meal, £2.46 for a litre of milk, £7.99 for a trip to the cinema and £4.99 for 100g of spaghetti. The most basic of hotels, those living there say, can cost around £250 a night and a 20-minute taxi journey can come in at £30.

Conversely, the plenitude of oil means they pay just £0.37 for a litre of unleaded petrol. Meanwhile, more than 60 per cent of the Angolan population lives on less than £1.25 a day.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/exp...or-expats.html

[SoBad]

The desperate mercer exec comp consultants keep flooding the news with free surveys hoping for fat expats to hire them at 500/hr+ to justify their fat expat packages.

[Mike Bulgakov]

In Denmark, assets of intelligence services are highly protected. It is better to drug, interrogate, and spread lies about visitors, than to admit to the incompetence of their intelligence assets.

[SoBad]

On the positive side, Danzka bottles can be re-used as flasks, which is environmentally responsible.

[Mike Bulgakov]

There are many bad drivers in the D.C. area.


Here is Allstate’s full list of the 25 cities having the worst drivers, with each citation noting the likelihood a motorist living there is to be involved in a crash, relative to the national average:

Washington, DC: 112.1% greater-than-average accident frequency
Baltimore, MD: 87.9%
Providence, RI: 80.9%
Hialeah, FL: 77.6%
Glendale, CA: 77.5%
Philadelphia, PA: 64.1%
Alexandria, VA: 62.6%
Newark, NJ: 59.4%
Miami, FL: 58.4%
San Francisco, CA: 54.6%
Jersey City, NJ: 53.9%
Arlington, VA: 53.0%
Tampa, FL: 50.2%
Los Angeles, CA: 48.5%
Paterson, NJ: 46.9%
Fullerton, CA: 42.7%
Garland, TX: 41.6%
Elizabeth, NJ: 41.5%
Bridgeport, CT: 41.2%
New York, NY: 41.1%
New Haven, CT: 37.5%
Torrance, CA: 36.7%
Norfolk, VA: 36.3%
Yonkers, NY: 36.2%
Arlington TX: 35.4%

The fine print: the 2012 Allstate America’s Best Driver’s Report is based on an actuarial analysis of company claim data among the nation’s 200 largest cities. Property damage claims were analyzed over a two-year period (from January 2009 to December 2010) to ensure the findings would not be impacted by external influences such as weather or road construction. A weighted average of the two-year numbers determined the annual percentages. The report defines an auto crash as any collision resulting in a property damage claim.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorze...-drivers-2012/

[Mike Bulgakov]

[SoBad]

Originally Posted by Mike Bulgakov

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OFOPd6pgjI

[Rock Strongo]

Yesterday I dreamt that me and my twin sister ran through a very updated and heavily modernised version of the Pyongyang metro (which included a sporting goods store we ran through) to try and catch a train. Weirdly, we didn't have any government minders to spot our every move. It was all very weird, and what's weirder was that the people in the store were westerners.

[SoBad]

Originally Posted by Rock Strongo

Yesterday I dreamt that me and my twin sister ran through a very updated and heavily modernised version of the Pyongyang metro (which included a sporting goods store we ran through) to try and catch a train. Weirdly, we didn't have any government minders to spot our every move. It was all very weird, and what's weirder was that the people in the store were westerners.

That sounds rather disturbing. You weren’t reading this thread before you went to bed, were you…?

[SoBad]

Originally Posted by Mike Bulgakov

There are many bad drivers in the D.C. area.


Here is Allstate’s full list of the 25 cities having the worst drivers, with each citation noting the likelihood a motorist living there is to be involved in a crash, relative to the national average:

Washington, DC: 112.1% greater-than-average accident frequency
Baltimore, MD: 87.9%
Providence, RI: 80.9%
Hialeah, FL: 77.6%
Glendale, CA: 77.5%
Philadelphia, PA: 64.1%
Alexandria, VA: 62.6%
Newark, NJ: 59.4%
Miami, FL: 58.4%
San Francisco, CA: 54.6%
Jersey City, NJ: 53.9%
Arlington, VA: 53.0%
Tampa, FL: 50.2%
Los Angeles, CA: 48.5%
Paterson, NJ: 46.9%
Fullerton, CA: 42.7%
Garland, TX: 41.6%
Elizabeth, NJ: 41.5%
Bridgeport, CT: 41.2%
New York, NY: 41.1%
New Haven, CT: 37.5%
Torrance, CA: 36.7%
Norfolk, VA: 36.3%
Yonkers, NY: 36.2%
Arlington TX: 35.4%

The fine print: the 2012 Allstate America’s Best Driver’s Report is based on an actuarial analysis of company claim data among the nation’s 200 largest cities. Property damage claims were analyzed over a two-year period (from January 2009 to December 2010) to ensure the findings would not be impacted by external influences such as weather or road construction. A weighted average of the two-year numbers determined the annual percentages. The report defines an auto crash as any collision resulting in a property damage claim.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorze...-drivers-2012/

DC is all politicians and other prostitutes. It's not that the drivers are bad, it's just that everyone is in a rush to connect. And Baltimore is a suburb of DC.

[Rock Strongo]

Originally Posted by SoBad

That sounds rather disturbing. You weren’t reading this thread before you went to bed, were you…?

I did not! Though I've had a recent obsession with North Korea. Could be why...

[Senator Jay Bullworth]

Originally Posted by SoBad

DC is all politicians and other prostitutes.

It's not that the drivers are bad, it's just that everyone is in a rush to connect. And Baltimore is a suburb of DC.

Senator Jay Bullworth (the never-indicted, never-requited, trusted pubic servant): "Janet and Jill, we'll finish playing 'pin-the-tail-on-the-honky' later. Meanwhile, er, Jerome?....this one's yours, please run with it my good friend...."

Jerome (the senator's trusted aide-de-camp): "You got it, ya boozin' womanizer!....'"

Marion Barry, was always harried
he scored his blow, via cash & carry
He'd whip out his bills from a big, fat stack
and cop some rock, 'cause the man loved crack!

He ran on the party machine-backed dough
got busted with primo weed 'n good blow
He copped a plea, he then took the fall,
went straight from jail back to City Hall

This past April, he marked the occassion
with: "we got to do something, about these Asians"
He cracked absurd as he lit up his pipe
If 'words were birds' he'd be covered in white

As useless as this, that you are reading
Barry will never get, a ticket for speeding
In the midst of decay and urban strife
he got the ok as DC's "mayor-for-life"

[SoBad]

Originally Posted by Senator Jay Bullworth

Senator Jay Bullworth (the never-indicted, never-requited, trusted pubic servant): "Janet and Jill, we'll finish playing 'pin-the-tail-on-the-honky' later. Meanwhile, er, Jerome?....this one's yours, please run with it my good friend...."

Jerome (the senator's trusted aide-de-camp): "You got it, ya boozin' womanizer!....'"

Marion Barry, was always harried
he scored his blow, via cash & carry
He'd whip out his bills from a big, fat stack
and cop some rock, 'cause the man loved crack!

He ran on the party machine-backed dough
got busted with primo weed 'n good blow
He copped a plea, he then took the fall,
went straight from jail back to City Hall

This past April, he marked the occassion
with: "we got to do something, about these Asians"
He cracked absurd as he lit up his pipe
If 'words were birds' he'd be covered in white

As useless as this, that you are reading
Barry will never get, a ticket for speeding
In the midst of decay and urban strife
he got the ok as DC's "mayor-for-life"

Nice work. And people complain about taxes being high. The public servants need a comfortable work environment to perform their important public service effectively and those drughouse and brothel bills can pile up pretty quickly, especially when there are ways to put those bills onto an expense report. Maybe that’s why people in DC drive the way they do – can’t wait to get to the office to file that expense report for the night…