onebir

24 minutes ago, Jack Mountain said:

China’s national debt is currently 54.44% of its GDP, a significant increase from 2014 when the national debt was at 41.54% of China’s GDP. China’s national debt is currently over ¥38 trillion (over $5 trillion USD). An International Monetary Fund report from 2015 stated that China’s debt is relatively low, and many economists have dismissed worries over the size of the debt both in its overall size and relative to China’s GDP. China currently has the world’s largest economy and the largest population of 1,415,045,928 people.

 

https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/countries-by-national-debt

I think that's the central government debt only; there's apparently a lot more at various levels of local government, and many SOEs that are too important to fail...

Or a ceramic heat bulb?

(They don't emit any visible light; they can get hot enough to char/ignite some materials though.)

27 minutes ago, Peter Denis said:

Show her a plate of 'original' haggis and then explain how it is made...

Nah, that's just Scot krok!

8 minutes ago, clarky cat said:

im trying to put my wife off trying to visit the UK

Just show her the weather ????

2 hours ago, OliverKlozerof said:

Earplugs don't work.

It might be worth experimenting with different kinds; apart from the foam ones, there are now silicone earplugs.

It looks like these were originally developed for swimming, but one Chinese manufacturer (not on Lazada, unfortunately) does a range that attenuate differently across the frequency spectrum. I bought the two with the highest overall attenuation; one pair has hard plastic inner stems, the other is solid silicone (better for sleeping). They work pretty well, last a long time, and haven't lost effectiveness like the foam ones over months of use (tho they're more expensive and potentially easy to lose).

Of course this does nothing to deal with noise pollution itself. ????

2 hours ago, OliverKlozerof said:

We're definitely not alone, though we appear to be a minority. Some years ago I discovered the Amtrak train system in the US has a 'Silent Car,' where no one is allowed to use cell phones, etc. People who use it love it, and the silence is strictly enforced. How civilized.

This is what the London Underground was like before the Walkman...

14 hours ago, sncoem said:

It always amaze me ho old men can be boring...

How can they even keep a girlfriend ?

Anyway the solution is easy..

 

No need to guess where he sticks these

2 hours ago, thai dweller said:

Why the hell do I need an import license for a pair of black lights in the first place?

Useable for growing marijuana??

On 11/24/2020 at 9:50 AM, OliverKlozerof said:

I live in just one small room, so no space for squat rack, etc.

You could try bodyweight one-legged squats & one arm pushups (really hard, but somewhat technical. There are various books suggesting bodyweight exercise progressions for building up to these).

I've recently been doing two TACFIT HIIT routines in a ~2x1.5m space & had modest but visible improvements in body composition (albeit from a previously quite detrained state) within about a month.

These use relatively light dumbbells or a kbell, but in cycles of 6-8 exercises each for 30-40s, only resting between cycles, this gets demanding enough. Having felt how the kbell exercises use more varied ranges of motion to the dumbbell exercises, I'm also trying to learn to do some TACFIT bodyweight exercises too.

I was a bit of a gym rat in my 20s but this kind of training only became popular (?) after I went couch potato, & I was sceptical about it working (esp for 30 years-older me). So I haven't followed the instructions very closely. In spite of this, it does seems to work quite well, and doesn't require much equipment or inhuman determination, so I'm starting to take it more seriously.

The answer to TAT's high-flying prayers?

1 hour ago, Skeptic7 said:

Aladdin anyone? ????

 

 

 

 

A Lad in Luck

On 11/24/2020 at 8:46 AM, Surelynot said:

Thought I was the only one in the world who hates this piped, loud rubbish........even with noise cancelling earphones you can still hear it......I do not want to listen to someone else's music...ever. 

Same here. Who knows, perhaps there's even a silent majority...

22 minutes ago, Oldterrier said:

Thanks for all your replies guys. But I'm kind of wishing I hadn't asked now. Risk of death ? Maybe you're assuming I'm a bigger drinker than I actually am. Let me just say, I've just finished 3 months of 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week. I use beer (never spirits) as a relaxant. I will typically drink 8 Pint cans of Stella a night, just to help me switch off. It has little affect on me, other than helping me relax. I get plenty of sleep and have no ill affects in the morning. My alcohol tolerance must be very high as when I'm home in Udon Thani, I generally drink a box of 12 large Singha's every day without getting noticeably drunk or suffering hangovers.

 

Will stopping this kind of routine still pose serious health risks ? 

I think 8 pints is ~180ml pure alcohol (8*473*0.048) and ~11 'drinks' (for some reason beer 'drinks' are defined as 12oz). So that's ~1250ml pure alcohol or 75 'drinks' per week.

This sounded like a lot to me, and googling confirms that. For example the mortality charts in this article top out at 400g pure alcohol per week, about 1/3 your consumption. Somewhere else I read that >24 drinks per week - also about 1/3 your level of consumption - was enough to be in the top 10% of drinkers in the US.

I'm sure DrJack's post is accurate, but seven isn't a huge sample; it might be worth getting some advice from a doctor with experience in alcohol issues.  If there's even a 1 in 1000 chance of a serious problem, and it can be reduced, why not reduce it?

Quote

England will introduce a new system on Dec. 15 allowing passengers arriving from high-risk countries to take a COVID-19 test after five days of quarantine and to be released from any further self-isolation if they test negative.

Took six month to come up with this stroke of genius?

7 minutes ago, ThailandRyan said:

You don't mean, the "90 day fiance" Holy smokes, they followed a television show for there new concept....lol.

TAT is Trump's new gig?

8 hours ago, yellowboat said:

Kunming is a great city, only two hours from Bangkok.   No advertising in the airport.   No advertising anywhere in the city.  Thailand could be a million miles away by looks of the lack of influence.

I've seen fairs selling Thai products + quite a few Thai tourist t-shirts & met Thai students in Kunming, so I don't think it's quite that bad...

Timely

2 hours ago, tgeezer said:

I listened to 1 and then 25 to see how complicated it was and think that I could manage to write out the dialogue. It might make a good topic here.

 

Let's hope it catches on ????

Actually, there are Thai script versions of about 10 of the dialogues in the book, so there's an easy way for you to check your spelling etc for those.

Is available here. The recordings seem about right for the level (eg clear, not too fast,  + tone practice & extra conversations for listening.) Separate recordings of the vocab lists would be useful though.

Details of the book here (+ there may be scans on the interwebz). Based on the reviews, the book's pretty good for 'survival thai', but has the drawback of a funky transliteration system and no thai text for the dialogs. (This also makes it difficult to remedy the lack of vocab lists using text to speech.)

https://www.lazada.co.th/catalog/?q=coconut+mattress

28 minutes ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

Back then, oxygen made up 35 percent of the air, compared to the 21 percent we breathe now.

I think the HBOT mix might be a little thick even for insects accustomed to skimming the primordial soup...

(But if not, I wonder: would Thais would like giant dragonfries?)

24 minutes ago, RichCor said:

While not in Thailand, a good friend in the US suffered a stroke while doing some air travel and part of his recovery regiment involves being in a Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber for an hour a week.

Is he finding it helpful?

Quote

...scientists at Tel Aviv University have shown that giving pure oxygen to older people while in a hyperbaric chamber increased the length of their telomeres by 20 per cent, a feat that has never been achieved before. 

Scientists said the growth may mean that the telomeres of trial participants were now as long as they had been 25 years earlier. 

The therapy also reduced senescent cells by up to 37 per cent, making way for new healthy cells to regrow. Animal studies have shown that removing senescent cells extends remaining life by more than one third.

The trial included 35 healthy independent adults aged 64 and older who did not undergo any lifestyle, diet or medication adjustments. Each patient was placed in a hyperbaric chamber for 90 minutes for five days a week over three months while breathing 100 per cent oxygen through a mask. 

The pressurised chamber allows more oxygen to be dissolved into the tissues and mimics a state of "hypoxia", or oxygen shortage, which is known to have regenerating effects. 

Previous trials have shown that eating a healthy diet can preserve telomere length, while high-intensity training for six months has been proven to lengthen telomeres by up to five per cent.

It looks like there are some clinics/hospitals offering hyperbaric oxygen therapy in Thailand, I was wondering if anyone has any experience with them.