JWD

Worst of Breed

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:57:00 +0000

And once again we wait with bated breath as Banco Itaú is about to defend its title as worst bank ever. To nobody's surprise, they manage this with ease.

But let us begin at the beginning.

I had a transaction to make that required a signature. A third signature, to be precise. After having been there in person already. Difficulty number one: I was not in Brazil, so that required a fax to a foreign number. As it happened, they could not do this. After lots of negotiations, emails back and forth and with some help in Brazil I managed to get the fax (by way of a Brazilian number) and even return a signed copy by fax. Foreign machines can dial into Brazil. Total transaction time, two weeks. Total time I spent, a couple of hours.

Next, just one short day later, I made a credit card purchase, which got blocked. This is something Itaú does quite frequently. Last time (and an account manager earlier) I asked for help and got a phone number of the credit card central. And told them exactly what I thought of that. This time, I hadn't got anything back yet when I decided to just try and call. The phone numbers are, after all, on the back of the credit card: One for metropolitan areas, one for the rest, and one for the exterior, and then two more for the credit card company.

First try, the number for the exterior. That resulted in an automatic message informing me that I was not allowed to use this number from this area.

Second try, the credit card company. Very nice, but couldn't help me, as unblocking this transaction is something the bank would have to do. Fair enough, the bank blocked it. So they connected me to the authorization central of the bank. Who, after asking me for all manners of detail claimed they were not responsible and gave me a set of new numbers to call. Which turned out to be the numbers that are on the back of the credit card. Indeed, the ones that I am forbidden to use from this area, whatever that means. I did even try a second time. They still didn't work. In other words, there is no chance to make this work from outside of Brazil.

Hard to do business with? Impossible to do business with. Excuse me for being a customer.

Saving the Brazilian rainforest

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 18:27:00 +0000

Words fail me.

Tucholsky on satire

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:49:00 +0000

[...] Does satire exaggerate? Satire must exaggerate, and at its most profound it is unjust. It inflates truth to better show it, and it cannot but follow the word of the gospel: the just will suffer with the unjust.

Translated from Kurt Tucholsky, Was darf die Satire?

Moses on the mountain. An exegesis.

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:02:00 +0000

I have just had occasion to read a few verses of Exodus. It was - interesting. I must admit that I did not remember any details from it. But let me quote:

"And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments."

So, with a critical analysis, what does that tell you? Moses spent at least thirty-nine and a half days procrastinating, or he was the worst legasthenic ever.

A few lines further down the legasthenic theory is effectively destroyed, but an interesting new fact is raised:

"...as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God."

Couple that with the carefully described fact that Moses did not drink any water. And ate no bread. Specifically. Now you know where the Jesuits get it from. Now me, I grew up in a wine region. Believe me when I say that I know a few people who had trouble writing fast, and whose face shone, without touching bread or water. Their noses normally glowed, too. But then, that may have been too undignified for Exodus. An aptly named book.

A foggy conspiracy

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:37:00 +0000

So here I am, in sunny California. Uhm. Let me be accurate. I am in rainy Yosemite after coming from the foggy, soggy coast. Obviously, the gods of fog and rain are conspiring to make my days off more interesting. (The days I was working were, of course, perfect.) Given the forecast for today all I really need to know now is if bears stay inside in thunderstorms.

The joy of technology

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Sun, 10 May 2009 18:18:00 +0000

Water. There is no water coming out of the tap. As the porter informs me, there is no water coming out of any tap in the building, and no one really knows why. The cause, it seems, is not inside the building. So. I don't suffer alone, but after pondering this fact for a bit I find it not very helpful. I already have a shelf full of candles. I would much rather not have to stock up on buckets of water, too.

Cars. My car is still in repair. Apparently it takes about four weeks to get a replacement part for an ignition from the factory and about a week to even find that out. The car is produced in Brazil.

I have a rented car now that sports a CD player. This is nice, as I am not very fond of the local radio. The problem with the CD player is that it pauses for half a second whenever the car hits a road bump. Or when I accelerate or brake. The roads here have many bumps, and driving a car does require you to accelerate sometimes. So now all my music sounds like it was sung by stutterers with a memory problem, all the way to work and back. It is a good thing I don't sing along, or I might acquire some strange habits of speech.

I can just about imagine the engineers sitting there trying to design the CD player. They were probably running out of novel ideas and had to come up with something revolutionary by five thirty. One of them probably said: "Hey guys, let's do something totally novel and build a CD player for a car that never hits road bumps!" And another chimed in with: "Cool! This is new! And those would be the cars that don't accelerate, so let's build one for cars that don't hit road bumps and that don't accelerate!" And then they were happy and went home.

This car is also produced in Brazil.

Amsterdam

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:25:00 +0000

Amsterdam, city of the god of weed, of crazed cyclists and of canals. Trust me on the canals. I will be lying to you about everything else shortly.

And now look back, to the city, and some weeks into the past. There I was, ambling along on a sunny morning. To my left, a cyclist was chasing pedestrians. To my right, someone was getting not stoned, but more stoned.

Wandering on, enjoying the sun, looking at the houses and canals, and taking photos, as is a tourist's due, I finally arrived at the Nieuwmarkt, the new market. It is in the middle of the oldest part of Amsterdam, a wide square with something like a tiny fortress in it. Only the fortress is really a café, and it has no cannons. It was getting past noon, and I was getting hungry. On my map I found the market, bordering on the red light district, which in turn spills over into an area with restaurants. So, hungry but hopeful, I set out to cross the red light district, which I presumed would be empty at noon.

There were crowds in the streets branching off from the market, students, tourists, and whoever else walks around the city in the light of the day. A Buddhist temple, Chinese takeaways. I turned left, and the red light district with the first big windows appeared, the crowds thinning. Amsterdam is famous for those windows, and how justly I had not before understood.

It was a veritable menagerie of the bizarre that I came to, Mr. Hyde at his most inventive and terrible. There was count Dracula's elderly aunt, in a layer of cracked face paint, and black lace panties.There was a fairy, full like the moon, her skin the colour of ivory. And she was wearing not much in pale orange, smiling seductively over all her plentiful cheeks. There was Mama Bear, without her fur. And there was the jolly bouncer, in a doorway, and he did cry out: "Wanna come in lads, or are you just window-shopping?" And he did not wear a top hat, or a tail-coat with velvet sleeves.

I leave you to contemplate those sights in all the depth they deserve, while I walk on and take a right turn along a canal.

Picture a peaceful canal on a sunny day, a street of slightly seedy clubs and bars, facing an old church on the other side of the canal. The church is called "Old Church", and the name of the street I know not. There is a tourist standing by a bridge gazing over the water, still slightly shaken. His back is turned to the creatures of the morning, and a jolly bouncer is standing in a doorway behind him.

The tourist crosses the bridge and leaves the picture, and the sun glitters on the water.

Staying awake on Easter Island

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:25:00 +0000

Easter Island is a rather nice place in the middle of a lot of ocean. Very nice people, good climate and let's not forget the statues. The food is also very good, south sea style with lots of local fish. But how does one stay awake after that sudden change in climate, coming from the continent? Me, I'll try coffee or, to be more specific, an espresso after lunch.

And here comes the snag: There is no espresso on this island. It is on the menus, you can ask for it, even plead. You can describe it and negotiate an agreement about the size of the cup. You will always, really always, get a normal-sized cup of filtered coffee that tastes like somebody's already had it. With a slight tang of something burning. Served with a big smile. I do feel a bit like Parzival, who, upon entering this sacred isle, unbeknownst insulted the guardian of the holy bean. Salvation awaits on the continent.

Summer time

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:31:00 +0000

There's as of last Sunday only 3 hours difference between central Europe and Brazil, keep in mind when calling.

Brazilian radio

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 02:00:00 +0000

The average Brazilian radio programme has many admirable qualities. One of them is - alas - that you can listen to it. I am driving an average 45 minutes a day to work. And back. Along the ugliest road known to humankind. Zoom in. Here's me, pressing the button on the radio. Skipping an average of 8 or 9 channels with advertisements. Another with Gaúcho music. The traditional music is swell if you like Bavarian folk. Then there's a channel with a guy called Soapy Sam who whines about Jesus. In the most sickly sanctimonious voice I've ever had the misfortune to listen to. Time to briefly wonder why in the country with the highest homicide numbers through fire arms world-wide nobody has shot him yet. Just my bad luck, probably.

Go through all channels twice or thrice. Then, there's the one channel that has music. From the 80s, and it's always the same 3 or 4 songs. Good ones, but after a few days of driving even the Dire Straits start to sound like nails on a chalk board. I've been here for more than a few days.

Then there are radio comedy shows. Well, I assume it's comedy. People are laughing, unless they brought donkeys in and shoved some raw ginger where the sun don't shine. The principle is fairly easy. Every 30 seconds somebody in the show says an incredibly funny word, such as "mattress", in a squeaky voice. Then he (or she, as the case may be) starts to bray hysterically and repeat it a couple of times just to make sure everybody understands just how funny a mattress is. Everybody else - that's 3 or 4 more guys - starts repeating the word and braying hysterically, too.

The show then proceeds like this:

Funny dude: Mattress. hahaha. MATTRESS. MAAAAAATTTRESSSSS!!!!!! hahahahahhaha. HAHAHAHAHA.
Everybody else: MATTRESS. MAAAAAATTRREEEEESSSS!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!

That can easily go on for five minutes or more.

And the lesson? Don't try to beat the radio. The radio beats you. Every time.

Iguazu Falls and Vale dos Vinhedos

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 17:04:00 +0000

New photos from Iguazu falls and the Vale dos Vinhedos are online.

VoIP and Security (aka governments may snoop on skype)

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:32:00 +0000

It appears that there is a backdoor in skype that allows interested parties, such as governments, to snoop on your calls. That hardly comes as a surprise in a closed network that has been trying very hard to resist all scrutiny of its encrpytion and security mechanisms. If true - and that seems to be very likely - it is still dishonest business practices.

So...how to defend against it? Drop skype. Discontinue its use. There are a number of applications out there that use open standards and protocols such as SIP/RTP and IAX. The call is of better quality than skype calls, too. There are free phone registries and calls and video can be encrypted. In short, you can have better quality, good security and actually even better convenience without skype at all.

Here's how:

Register with an SIP service, such as Free World Dialup. That will give you VoIP telephony, dial-in/dial-out, and an online registry. There are many more out there with various service offerings. Google will help.
Get a VoIP softphone. Often providers will offer freely downloadable software; there is also open source software available on the net. For Linux you can use software such as Twinkle (with built-in encryption). Twinkle and some others should be available through your distribution's installer.
If your software has built-in encryption you should enable it (in Twinkle this is in the profile under the security tab, enable ZRTP). Alternatively get Phil Zimmerman's zPhone that encrypts your connection for a number of applications and providers.
You're ready to roll. Your VoIP number will look similar to sip:123456@myvoipproivder.net. Give your number to your friends, maintain your application's buddy list for greater convenience and chat in privacy.

And if you're a webcam freak: That also works. Not every application has it but some do.

Remember: This whole thing is independent of application and provider. It's one network. It's an open standard. You pick what you like, your friends pick what they like and it works. If you'd like to get my numbers feel free to ask. And don't expect me on skype.

For your other instant messaging needs I would strongly recommend a Jabber client such as Psi, since the Jabber protocol also features end-to-end encryption and is completely open. One of the more well-known Jabber services is offered by Google. Here, too, software and provider do not matter, and fred_flintstone@gmail.com will be able to have malcolm_x@someotherprovider.com on his buddy list, chat, send files etc. without any problems.

The setup takes a few minutes each, call it half an hour in total if you've never done it before. So if you value your privacy: What are you waiting for?

I saved Brazil

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:20:00 +0000

Truly, I did. Sort of. Well, I did save the Brazilian economy. All right, I did not. But I did save the roots upon which the Brazilian national economy is founded. That is, I got officially ripped off. Again. If you read that other post you will know that a bit more than a year ago I had to redeem the national debt on account of not having with me a very much superfluous piece of paper any kid could fake when entering the country. If you have not read it imagine an old chewing gum wrapper with a stamp on it.¹ Meanwhile I have traveled far and wide, over sea and mountain, and I have left and entered Brazil many times. For almost a year without my proof of redemption as apparently the payment had been successfully registered.
A few weeks ago I entered again, and....

For easier perusal I will call the two officials Herby and Frank. As far as I know these are not their real names. They did not look like Herby or Frank.²

(Herby) "There is a fine registered on your name."
(Me) "Oh no, would that be this one year old thing for not having my chewing gum wrapper with me?"
(Herby) "Exactly."
(Me) "But that was paid a year ago. Look at my passport! I've been in and out of the country many hundred times."
(Herby) (calls Frank)
(Frank) "There is a fine registered on your name."
(Me) "Oh no, would that be this one year old thing for not having my chewing gum wrapper with me?"
(Frank) "Exactly."
(Me) "But that was paid a year ago. Look at my passport! I've been in and out of the country many hundred times."
(Frank) "But it is registered here and that means you have to pay."
(Me) "I see. Since I paid already, can I get the money back?"
(Frank) "I'll register it in your passport and all you have to do is go to the Federal Police when the clock strikes midnight and wave all your receipts while walking around the reception widdershins and reciting Hail Mary. Then they will return your money."

I have not walked widdershins around any reception desk at midnight and the proud nation of Brazil still has my money.³ Sometime in the future when I have steeled myself I will try to get my money back and risk the downfall of the Brazilian economy. For now, let it be known far and wide that it was I who saved it.

¹ Of inferior quality.
² I do not personally know anybody called Herby or Frank but if I did they would look different.
³ May it rip off many other foreigners and forever prosper.⁴
⁴ It is, after all, only polite to bestow good wishes as the occasion arises.

Music, the other way round

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:29:00 +0000

I accidentally came across Max Raabe & the Palastorchester performing Britney Spears' "Oops, I did it again". Synchronized to the original video. (Which I had to watch over and bloody over again doing physical therapy after a meniscus rupture years ago and I'm still trying to forget all about it.) I recommend to watch it and to not, under any circumstances whatsoever, consume any liquids at the same time.

In order to properly enjoy that I recommend to first watch one of their "taking the piss out of the 20s" performances, such as "Kein Schwein ruft mich an". It helps to speak German,

New photos

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 16:30:00 +0000

from Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile are online.

German constitutional court declares trust in integrity of information systems a fundamental right

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:43:00 +0000

Today the German constitutional court has declared trust in integrity of information systems a fundamental right. Thereby blocking the German government that got more greedy and voyeuristic by the day, surpassing Orwell's wildest nightmares. In doing so they created a new fundamental right, far more extensive than 25 years ago, when they did so for the last time. Again, the constitutional court remains about the only public institution I feel inclined to trust. The history of the constitutional court is a history of limiting the power of government and strengthening individual rights. It has also been the only official body that has ever driven family politics, by forcing the government through constitutional considerations and legal decisions.

This is a fundamental decision of historic dimension.

Slowly I turned

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 00:55:00 +0000

How not to bring money into Brazil

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 15:16:00 +0000

In two words: bank transfer. There is, on the international side, Moneybookers, which is a very reasonable option. On the other side there are Brazilian banks that engage in daylight robbery.

I recently tried a transfer of 400EUR to Brazil with Moneybookers. The exchange rate on the stock exchanges for EUR/BRL was 2,59 on the day of the deposit.

With a (big) Brazilian bank involved the calculation looks like this:

First you get cheated on the exchange rate: 2,49 instead of 2,59 (3,9% charge)
Second, there is a charge for an incoming international transfer of 105 BRL.
Third, there is yet another fee of 3,79 BRL for the currency exchange, on top of the exchange rate cheat.
Moneybookers fee 3,50 EUR. This is the only reasonable part of this affair.

In addition to that I have to physically sign and deposit a document confirming I'm not up to anything illegal with the dosh.

That means from EUR 400 I end up with BRL 887,89, which is an effective exchange rate of 2,22 or a 15,6% charge on the Brazilian side alone.

If, conversely, I pull the money out of an ATM I get the market rate plus a 1,5% charge on the European side (a tad more than Moneybookers), saving roughly 14% on the transfer. Given that document I have to bring to the bank after a transfer there is not even more legwork for getting the money into the account.

So ATMs it is from now on, and I have to say that for a genuinely modern banking system like the Brazilian one this kind of barriers for international operations is stick-in-the-mud, backwards and ridiculous.

The nature of evil

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:07:00 +0000

I just came across an interesting essay on the nature of evil by Andrew Bernstein.

Visa made easy

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 17:01:00 +0000

Being a foreigner I occasionally have to prolong my Brazilian visa. It is done now. And I have to say the whole process took a mere six months. I shall from now on use the approximate age of the universe as my reference for bureaucratic processes here. With that in mind six months is but the blink of an eye. No time at all, really. After only three months I got a pink slip from the Ministerio de Justicia to confirm that I am currently in the process of visa prolongation. It is illegible, but official. I can pass borders with it. While the passing borders bit is not guaranteed by law in practice it works well.

After the prolongation has been officially published the new visa has to be registered again with the Policia Federal. In return for the pink slip, two ugly photos and another set of fingerprints you get black fingers, a stamp in the passport and another protocol slip. Indeed, that very same flimsy piece of paper. To be renewed after 3 months, and this time I may just cut my own stamp from a potato.

In theory I get a replacement, a plastic identity card. It's paid for, too, together with the visa application. All this is done in Brasilia.
Now it appears that two years ago there was some scandal about corruption related to this and these days there is still no material for printing available. The exact cause-effect chain eludes me. Mind you, passports are printed locally and quickly, and they have better security features, too. It's just foreigners who get the run-it-through-the-capital treatment that doesn't work.

You, dear reader, are left to draw your own conclusions about this happy state of affairs. Me, I'm going to get some transparent tape to fix this slip up so it doesn't fall apart within the next few weeks.

Photos from foreign parts

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 21:15:00 +0000

New photos from the southern US and Rome are online. 'Nuff said. I have right now close to 30 hours of traveling behind me and I'm too lazy to write anything about it.

Phones

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 23:07:00 +0000

If you need to get in touch please remember that I will be using my German cellphone for the rest of the month.

Crime in the Rio Grande do Sul

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 16:16:00 +0000

I had planned to find a quiet forest somewhere for the weekend to go for a walk. It's something I love doing, and that I miss here. There are parks, but that is not the same. Further enquiry with friends on where there would be good spots produced some raised hair and dire warnings not to do that. Plus stories of murders in forests. It appears unguarded nature here is even more dangerous than cities, fugitives from justice hide there. Guarded parks and nature reserves are where you can go.

That irks. Yet another restriction, another fence I have to hide behind.

And it set me thinking. For there are lots of stories how dangerous life here is. I have had one car smashed when visiting a restaurant, and I know a fair number of people who have been victims of assault and robbery. It is very different from Europe. However, I was wondering about the numbers. Actual dangers can, after all, be far from perceived dangers. And all of my evidence is anecdotal.
This is like where everybody knows that the police recommends to not stop at red traffic lights at night. They don't.

So I checked the numbers. (And while we're at it: Don't stop at red lights in the night.)

Note: The following numbers are only for crimes against persons (murder, assault, bodily harm etc.). While other official crime statistics are also available I haven't bothered with them.

Development of crime in the RS since 2000

The numbers for the following statistics have been compiled from the published data on crime of the Policia Civil and the Brigada Militar (available at http://www.ciosp.rs.gov.br/). Census data is published by the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (available at http://www.ibge.gov.br/)

Figure 1: Crimes against persons in the Rio Grande do Sul

The number of homicides for 2007 is a projection from the official number for homicides 01/2007-09/2007.

Figure 2: Homicides in the Rio Grande do Sul

Comparing these figures to the population growth it is all too obvious that crime rises proportionally faster. The following graph has been normalized to 2000 = 1 for all figures in order to better compare the percentual change.
In 2000 the Rio Grande do Sul had 10.187.842 inhabitants, growing to 10.582.324 in 2007 .

Figure 3: Rise in crime vs. population growth in the Rio Grande do Sul

While population has increased by 3.8% homicides had increased by 12% till 2006 and a projected 27% in 2007. Crimes against persons had increased by 10% till 2006. Both numbers have been consistently larger than 10% from 2003 onwards. For 2007 general data on crimes is not available yet. While the good news is that crimes against persons have been going back in the past years their overall growth is still larger than supported by the population growth, and homicides are rising again.

In relation to the population we have in 2006 per 100.000 inhabitants in the Rio Grande do Sul

Crimes followed by death	14
Bodily harm (victim lives)	792
Others	36

I conclude that the numbers support the perception that crime is a problem. And it is increasing. (The number for Germany, e.g. for crimes followed by death is roughly a fourth of this in 2006. Compare http://www.bka.de/pks/)

Deaths through firearms in Brazil

It is in this context also noteworthy that Brazil has the largest number of homicides with firearms in any country that is not at war according to a study by the Instituto Sou da Paz. (Compare also IANSA, Instituto Sou da Paz.) At the time of this writing the number of deaths through guns is a reported 300.000 since January 1st 2007.

Floripa airport

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 01:40:00 +0000

DST starts in Brazil today

noreply@blogger.com (J.) — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 13:22:00 +0000

So if you're in Europe remember that we're now only four hours apart, till October 28, when it will go down to three hours. C.f. DST 2007