Monthly Archives: June 2009

Security

Mother hacks school grades

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The AP says a mother tried to help her daughter’s chances for college by hacking the school’s records.

Caroline Maria McNeal of Huntingdon is accused of using the passwords of three co-workers without their knowledge to tamper with dozens of grades and test scores between May 2006 and July 2007 at Huntingdon Area High School in central Pennsylvania, the state attorney general’s office said.

McNeal, 39, is alleged to have improved her daughter Brittany’s grades and reduced those of two classmates to enhance Brittany’s standing in the 2008 graduating class.

First of all, why was she able to get the passwords of her co-workers? Actually, there is no second question. The fact that they shared passwords says a lot all on its own.

McNeal was charged with 29 counts of unlawful use of a computer and 29 counts of tampering with public records. Each count is a third-degree felony punishable by a maximum of seven years in prison and a $15,000 fine, said Nils Frederiksen, a spokesman for Corbett’s office.

Harsh penalties for changing grades, but I do not see anything in this investigation about those who gave the passwords so she could change the grades. No charges against them? It also does not explain how she was caught. Did students notice the changes? Did the IT department see irregular behavior, such as grades changing outside of normal hours/cycles? Did a co-worker turn her in as part of a plea deal?

Energy

Hummer fails Chinese test

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China is set ‘to block’ Hummer takeover.

Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery emerged as the surprise buyer for the brand earlier this year.

But China National Radio said Hummer is at odds with the country’s planning agency’s attempts to decrease pollution from Chinese manufacturers.

Standards in China for clean air and efficiency that exceed those in the US? That normally would be good news, but thanks to product management at GM it’s now bad news for America.

Poetry

Her Dreaming Feet

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by Simone Muench

Stretched in quotation marks, Times Square flares aortic in the bee-
bronzed dark. Broadcast of vendors & shoulders bustling with cannon
percussion in the retinal ring out of peignoir signage. A harmony
of women swim in the aquarium-fluorescence, unlined linen

dresses translucent beneath the yellow & claret lights. Compass
of this square fizzied orange soda sadness. Like gold teeth submerged
in a glass of green tea, a scrim between the lenticular & surreal–noble gas
marquees shift in the drizzle from flamingo to bordeaux, converge

with human activity, an arcade for the conspicuously need-to-be-kissed.
But digital billboards of nightgowns won’t hold us up when tenderness
turns to concept & is backswept from view. No more aerialist
tricks to resist, so the conductor retires to the wilderness

while the city smoke-stiched with bluing alleys writes its own discography
as its lights buzz out a new alphabet, divine a new topography.

Food, History, Security

Secrets of Sriracha

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The NYT gives an in-depth look into the Hot Stuff in a Squeeze Bottle

“I knew, after the Vietnamese resettled here, that they would want their hot sauce for their pho,” a beef broth and noodle soup that is a de facto national dish of Vietnam. “But I wanted something that I could sell to more than just the Vietnamese,” he continued.

“After I came to America, after I came to Los Angeles, I remember seeing Heinz 57 ketchup and thinking: ‘The 1984 Olympics are coming. How about I come up with a Tran 84, something I can sell to everyone?’ ”

What Mr. Tran developed in Los Angeles in the early 1980s was his own take on a traditional Asian chili sauce. In Sriracha, a town in Chonburi Province, Thailand, where homemade chili pastes are favored, natives do not recognize Mr. Tran’s purée as their own.

It’s described as a melting-pot of ingredients for America’s diverse tastes. One thing is for certain, Americans love sauce. The most interesting part of the story is how the family migrated from Vietnam.

To limit potential losses, Mr. Tran split the family into four groups: One group went to Indonesia, another to Hong Kong. A third went to Malaysia, and a fourth to the Philippines.

David Tran traveled on a freighter, the Huy Fong. Everyone ended up in United Nations refugee camps, before the family finally began to regroup.

“I was in Boston,” Mr. Tran recalled. “My brother-in-law was in Los Angeles. When we talked on the phone, I asked him, ‘Do they have red peppers in Los Angeles?’ He said yes. And we left.”

That was the start to a US operation that now generates 10 million bottles a year (2 million go into the non-Asian market) and is found across the country in chain restaurants. The plan today to limit potential losses is a completely different story.