AsianAtHeart

We have a Tops store here in our province that we frequent. No membership is required, and we've bought Kirkland brand nuts there. Kirkland is the main brand for the Costco chain from America, and Costco has a presence in Taiwan. Costco, of course, is membership-based. I suppose Taiwan is not considered part of "SE Asia"? It might be more accurate to refer to ASEAN, a more specific group of SE Asian countries. EDIT: I responded before I read the rest of the thread...now I see you already listed the Costco locations. Wow! Taiwan has 14 now! I was inside the first one, and there were going to be two at that time, one near Taipei and one near Taichung. At the time I visited, it was the busiest Costco in the world--literally so packed you were nearly forced to go with the flow of traffic from entrance to exit.

Say what?

I'm curious how long you have been in Thailand. Thailand is long accustomed to cultural hypocrisy, or living a double life--whatever you want to term it. For example, the women who work in the sex trade are said to leave their hometowns to work in the big city, and people know better than to ask too many questions. Don't ask, don't tell. When the women return, they rejoin the village as if they had never gone--and no one asks. At the brothel, there are special coverings at the ready to hide the vehicle which parks there from the view of passersby--to save face for the john. The general attitude is: "it's not wrong unless you're caught." I caught one of my students cheating one time. She pointed to her paper, compared it to her friend's which had the same answers, and asked why she'd gotten a zero while her friend had a good score. I pointed to the "Form A" and "Form B" neatly typed on the bottom of the pages, and she immediately caught on. I'll never forget the look of recognition that crossed her face at that moment, followed by her saying "Teacher, bad...bad." (Her English was not so good, but she was confessing her wrong.) She had been caught, and she knew it. Abortions, because of the motivation to hide both the abortion and the illicit relationship that led to it, will be among those things which Thai people would naturally tend to consider in that category of "it's not wrong unless you're caught." At least, that is my understanding.

I hope you haven't deliberately chosen to distort my post. Perhaps I was not sufficiently clear, for which I apologize. It is not a sin to cry. But I doubt you would think it's quite proper to throw a fit or a temper tantrum, would you? I think, however, that we would probably both agree that an unborn fetus has not had opportunity to sin.

It will take time before everyone will see the truth behind the "state of emergency"--but, with this case having already been adjudicated, no change here is to be expected at that point.

You are required to have a teaching license to teach. The waiver simply postpones the requirement, one year at a time. After a maximum of six years, you can no longer apply for a waiver and must have the teaching license. Failing this, you will be seeking other employment. I just heard about one case today who had reached her six years of waiver and, either not wanting to spend the money, or not having it to spend to get her teacher-education courses to have the license, ended up leaving the teaching environment to sell mobile phones.

It is known that ozone (triple-bonded oxygen, i.e. O3) will break down certain kinds of plastic, foam, and most especially rubber. In areas of high traffic, ozone is one of the pollution products from vehicle traffic that can be residual in the air for awhile until it breaks down. Being heavier than air (48 AMU vs. 28 for N2, 32 for O2, 44 for CO2, etc.), it tends to settle (called ground-level ozone). Rubber products tend to turn to mush in its presence; other products will break down in other ways. Because of the chemistry involved, there is less ozone potential with proper pollution controls (e.g. use of a functional catalytic converter). Such controls are not uniformly mandated in Thailand. Draw your own conclusions.

Technically speaking, the age at which a person is first counted in the Bible is 30 days--so I see a little bit of room for a "viability period" here. During its first days of life, a newborn quickly learns to express selfishness. Newborns do not like to cry without a reason--but they soon learn that doing so gets them some attention, and the cry later morphs into a tantrum if they aren't getting what they want. Beyond these observations, I am thankful not to be the Judge who decides. I'm just theorizing. However, we know that the sins of the parents get passed on to their children by their example, and who has perfect parents?

Perhaps I'm one of those "religious nutters"...but I support legalization of abortion. There is no gift of God, given to mankind, more sacred than freedom of choice. In matters where the Bible does not prescribe a clear standard (e.g. no stealing, no adultery, no murder, etc.), it is proper to allow each one to take personal responsibility for such choices). While I would not choose an abortion, unless medically necessary, I do not feel it is my place to make this choice for someone else. Most of those who claim "abortion is murder" believe that this is the Bible's teaching. It isn't. In fact, all but one of the "abortion" texts in the Bible come out in favor of it. Most people do not study carefully enough to see this. If you search online in a KJV Bible, look for "untimely birth" and read all of those passages. You will see that Job wished to have been one (an abortion). You will see that King Solomon says it would be better for a man to have been an "untimely birth" than to have lived an evil life during which he fathered 100 children. Wow. DEEPER THEOLOGY (For those interested) The word "murder" in the Hebrew Bible comes from the word "ratsach" which is defined as the unlawful killing of a "soul" (Heb. "nephesh"--meaning a breathing creature). The unborn hasn't yet taken its first breath. It is not yet numbered as a person in the Bible, and not counted as a "soul" until after it is born and living independent of its mother. Those who say life begins at conception are correct: it does. But soulhood begins after birth, and it is of the soul that the Bible says "all have sinned." If a zygote has a soul--how could it have sinned? Without even a brain yet, it is not yet capable of having made a decision, much less a moral one. Definitions are important. An abortion is "killing" but it is not "murder" (and the KJV mistranslated "ratsach" as "kill" in the sixth commandment--most modern versions translate it correctly as "murder").

I'm against most abortions, but in favor of legalization. It should not be up to me what someone else does. A friend once shared how she and her husband badly wanted a baby. She got pregnant, and found out the baby had a serious deformity that meant it could not possibly live. It was basically dead, just on mother's life support. Keeping the baby to the end of the term would have simply made it more traumatic, and would have delayed the couple from conceiving again. Did she want the abortion? No. But the abortion was the better option in her case. Should she have to tell all her friends and neighbors why she wasn't bringing a baby home from the hospital? Should she have to wait to full term, then pay for a funeral? She chose to have an abortion, but felt that everyone shamed her for it. Abortion is a private matter, and needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis. Legalizing abortion makes it easier for women to get the health care they need, and receive proper education at the same time. It goes a long way toward removing the stigma from persons who had no other choice.

Sorry about your stings. I used to fear centipedes and want to kill them, too, before I learned how good they are. Now I catch and release them in the garden. Centipedes will eat snails, and snails definitely need more predators!

Thank you for this article, and for the update on the American legal situation. Eventually, every principle of the American constitution will be repudiated. I believe it will largely happen just one step at a time. The public would rise up in anger if all were taken down at once. By taking out one thing here, one thing there, and at each stage having a mixed reaction from the public, the dirty work is accomplished. War is being waged on multiple fronts: against gun ownership (the right to bear arms), against abortion (the right of conscience on one's own health and body), the freedom of speech, the right of lawful assembly, the principle of innocent until proven guilty, and so many more. Folks, if we don't stand up for our rights, we will watch them get revoked, one at a time. This time the abortion issue, next time ??? Don't get me wrong: I am not an abortion supporter. Elective abortion is a great evil--though there are times when a medical abortion is a necessary life-saving measure. But the issue here is not really about abortion per se. It is ultimately about liberty. We've lost a lot of our liberties in just these past two years. And more is coming.

I've weathered many typhoons (not many in Thailand, though). The wind speeds are the least of my worries. In my experience, a Cat. 5 storm was less to be feared that an almost-Cat. 4 (Cat. 3) storm. My theory about the reason why is that, while the wind will certainly cause some damage, it is the flooding that is the worst, damage-wise, and the super-high windspeeds of the Cat. 5 storms seem to cause the typhoon to drop its load while still at sea, bringing less water inland. That's just my theory--I don't know if others would see light in it; but my theory is based on personal experience. Being on the western side of the mountainous region separating Laos from Vietnam, we're unlikely to get much wind in Thailand, and the mountains will catch their fair share of the water, too. What we are getting right now, per the satellite imagery, is the cloud formations that are getting sucked toward the typhoon from further west of us. These were probably formed over the Indian Ocean, and are now heading toward the Pacific, passing over us into the cyclone. The typhoon itself will reach us in a few days.

It's not an unfounded fear. It's a reality. See the excerpt below from this ARTICLE which quotes Dr. Fauci on the matter.

You mean the Bill Gates who practices medicine with a tenth-grade education? The "chip" didn't come from the airwaves.