Dustdevil

12 hours ago, tumama said:

 

There's no country on earth that understands that. Plenty of people in U.S on death row have been exonerated . That's why I'm against the death penalty. Hard to free someone who's dead. Although they should give them the option of assisted suicide. 

Lots of people miss the one great exception to the "uselessness" of the death penalty: that of serial killers. Just read "Mindhunter" by John Douglas, the original FBI profiler, and any number of books by him and Robert Ressler, who coined the term "serial killer"; Roy Hazelwood, etc. These people, along with forensic psychiatrist Ann Burgess, studied and interviewed convicted serials for 30 years, aside from helping catch them. First, convicted serial killers have always been guilty of the crimes they've been charged with. They are different from other types charged in the sense that it's nearly impossible to convict the wrong person of being a serial killer.  Second, just listen to a tape recording of two serials torturing a 12-year-old girl to death inside their van. People against the death penalty for serial killers have listened to the tape and come away having changed their minds.

Serials cannot be rehabilitated; they are by definition so narcissistic that they are literally incapable of feeling remorse, and they only thing they care about is getting off on killing...and each murder escalates in MO and signature. (MO is what they do to commit the crime--that can change. Signature--a term Douglas coined--is what the killer has to do to fulfill himself. In the case of Ted Bundy, the signature for him to really get off was to return to the victim's body later and have sex with the decapitated head. He escaped prison TWICE, by the way, and killed again, his last victim a 12-year-old. Still crying tears about his eventual execution?)

Ressler surprisingly disagreed with Douglas (he, unlike Douglas, had been an old-school cop before joining the FBI), believing the likes of Bundy and the cannibalistic Dahmer should stay alive in order to be further studied. Douglas said they'd already studied them enough and there were always new ones to study.

The most prolific of all, and one of the vilest (he loved to torture and eat children) was a Russian during the 1980s. I forget his name, and I certainly won't waste my time looking it up, but anyway at first, of course, the dogged detective on the case had a lot of trouble convincing his superiors there was any connection to all those dozens of decapitated and mutilated children...because in our Glorious Soviet Union there's no such thing as a serial killer--that's a decadent Western phenomenon. They relented, eventually, and he was caught. The Soviets were pretty merciful, I'll have to say. He got the death penalty all right--a bullet in the back of the head while on a routine walk along the corridor. He should have received the hot seat, IMHO.

 I've heard Commonwealth people say, Oh, I wouldn't live in the States; they have the death penalty. Yes but they were living in the Gulf Middle East for money! A little hypocritical, seems to me. And not all states have the penalty; the ones that still do are taking a hard look at it--except for renegade Texas. TX is still out of control with capital punishment. If they could hold a referendum, the Houston population alone would abolish it. But...I agree with Douglas. Serial killers do not have the right to life.

Just now, Kadilo said:

You sound like a Canibal. 

If you say so. The world is "cannibal," however.

8 hours ago, HooHaa said:

raging bull comes close, but food is generally inferior here. thankfully i split my time.

They like to put a sugary sauce on all savory dinners.

Not while Trump goes rogue on tariff wars.

7 minutes ago, rkidlad said:

English is the language of Shakespeare. It's nuanced and rich. Chinese, much like Thai, would be too simple and direct. Language is also culture. I wanna speak a language where I can express myself in a million different ways. There is a good reason other than the Americans using English for it to be so widely used. 

I agree. The thousands of characters in Chinese make the learning of it more difficult than English. If you're, say, a Saudi learning English,  once you know the 26 letters and some basic grammar and lexicon, you can build on that and learn the nuances much quicker than with Chinese.

2 hours ago, rkidlad said:

My missus has always been attracted to 'farangs. Yes, white men. As a child, she would watch Hollywood movies, listen to Britpop and had about a hundred crushes. Because she liked the culture so much, she asked her parents if she could attend English lessons. She did stuff in her free time, asked her teachers what things meant in movies and music, etc. Her English is awesome, but she basically learnt off her own back. You can pretty much learn anything if you really want to. 

 

Now, with her job and travel and the circles she's in, she can't imagine not being able to speak English. She knows how it opens doors, creates connections and opens the mind. She knows that if she couldn't speak English her life would be very different. Some people say they don't need to know English - they're happy. Great. My missus feels her life wouldn't be anywhere near as interesting if she couldn't speak English. 

 

As the Korean director of 'Okja' put into his movie, "Try learning English. It opens doors". It was apparently a joke mocking the mindset that English language speakers think they're supreme. Well, it's the world's language. Maybe one day it will be Chinese. But for now it's English. Learn the world's language or don't. Up to you. Just don't fall into the trap of thinking you should not learn it because of something as ridiculous as nationalism. 

Chinese is way too complex and difficult to become the world's second language. For some, yes, but not the world. If you're a business exec do you have time to learn the 10,000 or more characters that would be required to read commercial documentation and financial news? And the four tones  needed for speech, besides?

3 hours ago, robblok said:

If you don't see it and your mate's don't than its not that in the open as the article makes it out to be. Remember these organisations have an agenda too and want things to look bad so they get more donations.

One of many things I like about Chiang Mai is that its red light district is not all-encompassing and spread out all over the place. It can even be a pleasant walk at night sometimes. It's only one or two streets, for a few blocks. The women I notice and admire there are the ones in the regular service industry--store clerks, cooks, Air Asia ground staff, and professionals such as pharmacists; they're lovely and they work hard, quickly and efficiently with a smile. In BKK the nearest 7-11 from where I was staying had a Muslim girl working there with her hijab on, the only one who was grouchy, lazy and obviously resented western customers. I really wanted to tell her she should look up to her Thai co-worker girls and try to emulate them. Stupid ***ch.

Just now, altcar bob said:

..but they are reported to have the second smallest penis on the planet,think India is first

Ever watch Japanese porn (Who, me?? I was only told about it!). Japanese men have that rep, but not Indians.

3 hours ago, Samui Bodoh said:

While one should avoid overly simplistic answers to a serious problem, I can't help but say that Thai men often are reared with an attitude that they can do no wrong and that 'Face' matters more than anything else. Further, Thai society doesn't seem to place a great deal of emphasis on 'rights and wrongs'; can anyone outline the Thai equivalent of a personal moral code or the Thai equivalent of personal responsibility? When young Thai men seek a role model, perhaps they see Prayut (and other leaders) who simply took/did what they wanted by bypassing all norms and proper behaviour? And, perhaps more importantly, get away with it?

 

How does Thai society treat women? Are they valued as equals with all the same rights and privileges? Or, are they seen as a prize and something to own?

 

In light of the above, are we surprised that there are incidents like this?

 

You can't draw firm conclusions from one or two incidents, but I suspect that we will see even more of this kind of behaviour in the future.

 

It is terribly sad to see young lives snuffed out before seeing them reach their potential.

 

RIP

 

I think young Thai women have the same problem about saving face and often downright arrogance and nastiness if they happen to be beautiful. The more followers some of them have on Facebook the more arrogant and rude they are. 

11 hours ago, chickenslegs said:

If he was nationalistic he might have bought bed sheets with a correct representation of the Union Flag.

I was going to say--the man may be British, but what's visible could resemble an Aussie flag.

1 hour ago, kannot said:

 Money first and wait till the Chinese get going then money is EVERYTHING

Chinese in Asia also generally have absolutely no regard for wild animals. And their superstitions regarding "medicines" directly cause poaching of magnificent animals such as the South American jaguar.

1 hour ago, masuk said:

It's got a lot to do with attitude;   canals, rivers, are seen and used as rubbish disposal areas.    A recent stay at Kuta Beach, Bali, was a wade amongst the plastic.   As the tide went out, the beach was glistening with plastic cups, bottles, bags.

In Thailand, Jom Tien (Pattaya)  was no different apart from the addition of certain rubber items.

 

It's little wonder that the animals who attempt to live in the ocean are dying of plastic in their guts.   

ASEAN countries need to wake up, and the use of plastic bags, cups, bottles abolished and possibly, wastewater from apartment blocks  should be processed before dumping it in the ocean.

 

The Gulf Middle East is no better. Back in '94-'96 I lived in Jeddah along a canal that everyone used as a garbage dump and the city had to clean it up periodically with small bulldozers.

10 hours ago, Damrongsak said:

Man with head tattoo must always watch back.

 

Yes--chicks dig that.

But he was not in China, he was in a third country. Also, the Chinese government tries to meddle in western democracies' freedom of speech. I hate that.

I know of a celeb in the Los Angeles area who found this in her house: 

12 hours ago, JAG said:

Actually, I seem to remember reading somewhere that the Japanese prison system has a particularly unpleasant regime - especially if you're a foreigner.

They probably make inmates sing karaoke with a boss and drink bad sake 23 hours a day. Sorry, no office time and no salary.

20 minutes ago, krobert6 said:

I was there at the time - the idiot was throwing his stuff all over the floor and ranting inside one of the main arrival doors - It took them about 1 hour to cuff him - about 20 police and security there.  Should have tazed him and cuffed him in the first few minutes

Yes. There was a lunatic from Afghanistan on my plane on the tarmac at Dubai Int'l Airport. The cops arrived in about 15 minutes and cuffed him. End of story.

Saudi Arabia exports the most oppressive piety in the world, leaving aside the Taliban and ISIS. Those who go along with it (not all of them do) are hypocrites who go for weekend jaunts in freewheeling Dubai and Bahrain for wine, women and song, all of which are forbidden at home, in great excess, to say the least.

Like others have said, naive old bugger. As an American I got irritated by an episode of the TV show "Househunting International" when this fairly young couple goes to Chiang Mai and are starry-eyed telling everybody their apartment was "only" $550 a month. Come on, for God's sake, they're spoiling it for everybody. In CM you can get a nice one in a good area such near the university for $200-250. Brag to the world your place is "only" $550 and you're not only silly but you'll drive prices up.

1 minute ago, Misterwhisper said:

Tow it out to Koh Chang and scuttle it off the island's east coast. Then it can join almost the entire Thai fleet that's been lying there on the bottom since 1941 courtesy of a handful of French warships sent over from Indochina. To this day, the event is touted in Thai history books as a "great victory"; a rather typical OTT description, just like classifying this 1,000-ton nutshell of a vessel a "battleship".  

A lot of hack journalists confuse "warship" with "battleship" because they don't know anything about ships. Some CNN silly woman kept referring to a crashed 737 as a "jumbo jet."

1 hour ago, chippendale said:

Wales?

Never mind politics; I think I'm in love with your avatar girl.