Gaccha

I rest my case. (By the way, the best place to get married in Europe is Cyprus if your a bloke)

Why Cypres? You can't just say that without any argumentation.. :-)

Apologies. I can't remember the exact details, but at my old legal offices a nice map of Europe was passed around with each of the fundamentals of divorce on it.*

In any event, it roughly went like this:

-all assets prior to marraige are not taken into account (so your house is safe)

-all income by each party is kept with each party except for 10% paid by the wealthier party

-reasonable costs paid for children upkeep

-future income/assets not considered

Just be careful if you are the high-earner that your nice other-half does not ask to relocate to the UK for 6 months, as what would you know, this may entitle them to have the divorce go through the UK justice system.

*[as a side point here, it is of course irrelevant that you are married until you are divorced, since prior to divorce marriage changes nothing, except if you are affected by an 'identity': you behave differently because you should etc.. I have asked many a married man why they married and I have yet to hear any answer which was valid. The only answer I would accept is if they said they felt socially forced into it. Anyone who says it creates stability, makes you think more carefully, is good for the children, et etc have no substantive grounds for their arguments, unless they are so vulnerable to ideational issues that it changes their behaviour. How weak-kneed, how pathetic. I behave as best as I can whether or not there is an underlying threat to take half my wealth]

As far as procreation is concerned, I am quite sure that the majority of pleasure seekers who arrive here will do what they can to avoid it. However the current notion that evolution has some sort of intelligent agenda driving hapless creatures to do its bidding relies on procreation for every argument. Many go as far as to believe evolution will cause them to act against their wishes. i.e. they're actually in Thailand to procreate even though it is the last thing they would ever want to do.

Sometimes things are simple. And none of this has anything to do with the meaning of life.

You dismiss an area which philosphers and neuroscientists are getting quite excited about. If you are a determinist, and I am, then you believe all the future is set, and that means in a real sense you have no control. But it does not follow that you should not be punished or should not try to make the right decision. This is an odd paradox, well explained in Daniel Dennet's "Freedom Evolves". The upshot of his argument is you can only control the past (!?) and not the future...

You are also looking at this at two levels. Evolution undoubtedly gets men procreating with bar girls. The men are also keen to avoid having the woman conceive if there is a cost to it. The mistake that anti-evolutionary psychology makes is to confuse the very real conscious-decision making ability of humans (we are more than simple animals) with the parallel pressure of our genes. You can enjoy life, have meaningful moments of happiness, find true depths of relationships, be a good father, try to be a moral person. At the same time, in the parallel world of genes, you are acting as an efficient and effective transport machine for your genes. They even implanted your moral goodness as it has 'survival advantage'.

Just enjoy yourself. You only live once, unless you are 007.

[This biological reductionism is proving to be a good tool to fight identity creation by various power groups. The phrase "sexpat" must surely have been coined by those with interests in discouraging certain tendencies (e.g. leaving the UK, leaving UK women. taking young women). Find the origin of the word, finds its first usage, subject it to a 'double reading' (a la Foucalt) and then you will know your enemy.]

The other point made about sex as a money redistribution is self-evidently true. There are now more female millionaires in the UK than male. This is not becasue of a rash of entrepeneurial skills among women in the UK but because of the fantastic gains from divorce. I have no axe to grind-- I have never married, but as (among other things) a lawyer I look at the rational logic of the structure. It is a zero-sum game. In return for promising half their savings to someone they will strongly dislike, they get nothing in return (judge-made laws have introduced rape into husband-wife abuse (this makes no logical sense), favour the wife for custody of the child, allow no-fault divorces, and 'presume' a 50-50 split of assets). This is such a bad deal that if it did not have the long-time socially accepted term "marriage" attached to it, would be laughed at by the wealthier party (normally the man). The modern day marriage has nothing to do with a marriage of even just 30 years ago, and no connection at all with 'marriage' of 300 years ago in the UK. But note the power of the term. See how people will do something totally against their interests for the benefit of an identity. Same same but different with the word 'sexpat'.

I rest my case. (By the way, the best place to get married in Europe is Cyprus if your a bloke)

Btw, women (in general) are the only hunters that put themself out as bait.

Amusing but not true. With virtually any animal species, the females will wish to offload the energy loss of child-rearing and will always carry out a "bait and switch" strategy. The word 'cuckolded' (a man bringing up another man's child) comes from a real natural phenomenon of those birds.

The apparent exceptions are where the females are more powerful, and the men end up sharing the child-rearing burden, betting the child even if it is not theirs, then the next one probably will be. Some bizarre factors determine how powerful the females are. The distance of plants to eat dispersed the females so they were more vulnerable to a strong male. In these sorts of groups, the females needed to get the strongest male (alpha male) as only those males could dominate the women (it was and is a vicious feedback look ; modern women select the men who are most likely to be dominating to the next generation of women).

So among bonobos the female pygmy chimps do not have to worry about getting the alpha males sperm because a male can never dominate them because the females can stay grouped together: consequently, they are not concerned with which males have sex with them, so they show no signs of emotional distress that we would call 'rape'.

In contrast, the human female, is very concerned with who impregnates her, so is tortured by the possibility of rape. This is, of all reasons, because when we were scavengers (pre-Thaksin, when we were all in Africa), we adopted a niche strategy of foraging for root plants. This helped us survive but the women had to disperse over wider areas.

Eh, think I have digressed a bit...

Thirdly, if reproduction is the main reason why people get the urge for sex then what about gays and lesbians? Are they unnatural? Is this a christian fundamentalist idea the OP is proselytising in the guise of biological science?

Crikey, this above quote is too juicy to ignore.

So lets knife it apart:

If reproduction is the main reason why people get the urge for sex...?

I am certain that the main reason people get an urge for sex is reproduction. Do you seriously think otherwise? The urge/enjoyment is all there to make sure you did it. If sex was not enjoyable we are very unlikely to reproduce very often (unless we developed something like the Tarantula spider mating situation, where the small male after 'making love' is then eaten by the female [i forget all the details and might have selected the wrong spider , but my point still stands ] but still 'makes love' as he has a great urge to do so, but seemingly only needs to make love once... .

...then what about gays and lesbians?

Yes. They also have the urge because of reproduction. Obviously the process is not as effective as when it is straight men with straight women, but it is surprising how many get there in the end. That is, a lot of gays and lesbians end up with children... Of course, otheres don't, but they are also seemingly very useful [in an evolutionary sense, for their DNA, they may be, in practice, terrible at cooking cupcakes for their neices etc.] for raising the children as Aunts and Uncles [this is currently a red hot topic in science]

Are they unnatural?

Depends what you mean by 'unnatural'. The word has multiple meanings, which makes it vulnerable to equivocation. If you mean, "the reason they have sex does not correspond with the system of natural selection" then I think it is unnatural. If you mean,'unnatural' in the second sense as 'revolting", "disgusting" then I personally don't think so. And in regards to the OP, I think you are making a Straw Man argument against him.

Is this a christian fundamentalist idea the OP is proselytising in the guise of biological science?

Eh, well I am atheist. The existence of God is wholly preposterous to me, so you won't catch me spreading the word of the Lord. But you have unearthed an interesting point: scientific explanations tend to reinforce conservative views because they look at how things are and not how things should be... As humans, we often can overcome this problem and get to how things should be.

So let's rejoice. And if you could open your Atheist Prayerbook to p.666, "Welcome to the Dark Side".

Thought this would be an interesting read, but then realised it is focused purely on the male perspective (although interesting in that respect). I realise most TV members are male and there are a higher percentage of male expats here, but there is still a substantial western female population, of which the points mentioned do not relate well to us.

I recall a thread just a couple of weeks ago asking why there is no "male forum", I guess this thread highlights the reasoning that most of all the subtopics in TV are male dominated.

Just would be nice to open a thread which asks a question seemingly to both sexes which doesnt end up automatically relating to the male perspective.

Just a small rant there.

Please go ahead and rant right here. There was certainly no male perspective from my writing. I do understand that feminist theory says, via arguing that there can be no empirical truth (no objective truths), the only way a thinker on female issues can 'understand' (since it can never be 'explained' as there is no 'truth' to explain) is for them to be female. So every topic opened by a man must be "automatically from the male perspective". Some more moderate feminist writers argue as long as a man is sympathethic he can understand.

Which of any of the 3 issues do you want to write about? I recommmend the 'sex tourist' part, it gets a lot of people excited...

We men are not going to 'ged'it' unless you write...

"It seems to me that the human being is driven or motivated by 2 very basic need, The need to procriate and self preservation."

,,,The upshot of all this biology lesson, is that some men wil try a mass- procreation strategy (a la the Pattaya experience) and others will not (a la Wigan pub). Not all men have a chronic urge to procreate. So you could regard a certain strategy as the dirty-old men strategy. You then need to take a constructivist approach to way the idea has a bad impression in our Western societies. I will leave this to Peace Blondie to explain.

The sex tourist, which is the starting idenitity that we should look at seems at first glance a definitionally clear concept. So let's shred it. Lots of young English ladies head to Ibiza for their Summer holidays to " 'ave some fun". I am certain they would deny that they are going to seek sex. But sex is actually a requirement of the fun. They can only cavort with boys and enjoy the thrill of being chased (chaste... ) by offering sex to the winning male. To put it crudely, they are as much sex tourists as the plumber from Dagenham fulling in love with a Thai bar-girl.

Now lets have a look at all those expats 'forced' here by their jobs. How about the diplomats.... Well, it turns out that UK diplomats choose to go where they go. And to put it flatly, you would have to be anti-social to choose Chad over Thailand. It is fine going to Chad for 2 weeks, but could you be posted there for 3 years. As for the other expsts, I don't seem them rushing to the escape hatch.

Lets turn to the final constructed identity point: the married man. This man is viewed as off the circuit, as having nothing to do with the dirty life of the sex tourist. Well, I have a big, flashing red light come on at this point. In study after study it is married men who are the main users of prostitutes. They get married in order to gain easy access to sex. That's what marriage amounts to... You can dress it up anyway you want but that is all it is. In other words, married men are likely to be victims of their desires to hump everything in sight more than single men. I have a pretty low sex drive. Paradoxically, this makes me less attractive to females as they can't control me.

Okay. Now the final point:

"So, just a thought, perhaps coming to Thailand for sex is not simply a matter of the farang exploiting younger thai ladies for simple gratification?"

I think you are onto something, along with the replies. I find it very hard to accept there is any exploitation going on.

The concept of prostitution is littered with paradigms that try to assert an exploitation. Let's destroy each one in turn:

"The women have no choice"- Obviously they do have a choice. Tesco at 35 bahts an hour is not bad work (air conditioned and easy hours). It is depressing that the social construction requires the young earn enough to look after the old but that is an issue of the welfare system, not the sex industry.

"They are slaves"- The vast vast majority turned up of the bus at Ekkamai or Mo Chit Bus terminal. The numbers who are forced into it must be staggeringly trivial. This was a hot issue last year in the UK. The Home Secretary did a nationwide police raids on brothels fearing huge numbers of slaves. They turned up with 11 girls who had overstayed their visas. Comical.

"They are trafficked"- This is a particularly nasty attempt to make prostitution unacceptable. It has some purchase in academic circles. It confuses trafficking where the person wants to be trafficked and slave or forced trafficking. It then assumes that working as a prsotitute is quanitiviely worse than being forced, for example, to work as a domestic slave housemaid. I can't accept this and nor apparently can many prostitutes.

There is an endless cycle of accusations and counter-accusations as part of the process of constructing idenitity. This identity creates power. Since few people can barely be bothered to read my post, let alone articles on these subjects, in 20 years time some one will ask the same questions you have posed, except by then it will be via a 3D holograph machine or something...

I write a post that attacks three 'truths' of life in Thailand, by counter-intuitively arguing:

1. married men here are worse with the Thai girls than single men

2. there is no such thing as a 'sex tourist'

3. naughty randiness in a man will ultimately lead to a settled, orthodox, conservative married life (this is implied via the biology lesson)

4. there is almost no exploitation (except by Tesco Lotus)

...and the worse I get is to be told my language is flowery. Well, I am not having this, I am going to bump it to the top of the pile, at least until PeaceBlondie gives it a response...

There is an endless cycle of accusations and counter-accusations as part of the process of constructing idenitity. This identity creates power. Since few people can barely be bothered to read my post, let alone articles on these subjects, in 20 years time some one will ask the same questions you have posed, except by then it will be via a 3D holograph machine or something...

Kmart, see you on the 3D holographic Thaivisa forum in 20 years time... or do sit up straight in class. And do your tie up. And stop fidgeting.

Im prompted to have a stab at this because of the many, many posts I see that comment on the farang presence in Thailand in very superficial terms.

You've mixed up at least three crucial issues, and annoyingly each one requires a massive amount of explanation. But, heck, since the alternative is returning to my reading of Japanese security norms through poststructuralism I will have a timid crack at this.

"It seems to me that the human being is driven or motivated by 2 very basic need, The need to procriate and self preservation."

I actually don't think you are being sufficeintly reductionist here; it is your DNA that through a process of reverse-engineering (natural selection) had determined your reasons for existing. Whatever maximise its chance of survival will tend to succeed. You need to self-preserve only in as much as it does not compromise your ability to pass on your genes (it does not matter how much you procreate, to your DNA). As a man, since the cost of procreation is so cheap (a new batch of 200 million semen can be produced in a day) you might as well do it with everything in sight...

...but until very recently everything in sight was almost always pregnant (they didn't have contraceptives when cave-dwelling) so it was almost always pointless going for a woman who was over 16ish, because she would be most likely pregnant. You could spot this by her youth. Her youth also made her massively more fertile since there wasw little point in her DNA maintaining her fertility past 27 since she was likely to die in childbirth (or if not, an agonising death by teeth decay). The upshot of all this biology lesson, is that some men wil try a mass- procreation strategy (a la the Pattaya experience) and others will not (a la Wigan pub). Not all men have a chronic urge to procreate. So you could regard a certain strategy as the dirty-old men strategy. You then need to take a constructivist approach to way the idea has a bad impression in our Western societies. I will leave this to Peace Blondie to explain.

The sex tourist, which is the starting idenitity that we should look at seems at first glance a definitionally clear concept. So let's shred it. Lots of young English ladies head to Ibiza for their Summer holidays to " 'ave some fun". I am certain they would deny that they are going to seek sex. But sex is actually a requirement of the fun. They can only cavort with boys and enjoy the thrill of being chased (chaste... ) by offering sex to the winning male. To put it crudely, they are as much sex tourists as the plumber from Dagenham fulling in love with a Thai bar-girl.

Now lets have a look at all those expats 'forced' here by their jobs. How about the diplomats.... Well, it turns out that UK diplomats choose to go where they go. And to put it flatly, you would have to be anti-social to choose Chad over Thailand. It is fine going to Chad for 2 weeks, but could you be posted there for 3 years. As for the other expsts, I don't seem them rushing to the escape hatch.

Lets turn to the final constructed identity point: the married man. This man is viewed as off the circuit, as having nothing to do with the dirty life of the sex tourist. Well, I have a big, flashing red light come on at this point. In study after study it is married men who are the main users of prostitutes. They get married in order to gain easy access to sex. That's what marriage amounts to... You can dress it up anyway you want but that is all it is. In other words, married men are likely to be victims of their desires to hump everything in sight more than single men. I have a pretty low sex drive. Paradoxically, this makes me less attractive to females as they can't control me.

Okay. Now the final point:

"So, just a thought, perhaps coming to Thailand for sex is not simply a matter of the farang exploiting younger thai ladies for simple gratification?"

I think you are onto something, along with the replies. I find it very hard to accept there is any exploitation going on.

The concept of prostitution is littered with paradigms that try to assert an exploitation. Let's destroy each one in turn:

"The women have no choice"- Obviously they do have a choice. Tesco at 35 bahts an hour is not bad work (air conditioned and easy hours). It is depressing that the social construction requires the young earn enough to look after the old but that is an issue of the welfare system, not the sex industry.

"They are slaves"- The vast vast majority turned up of the bus at Ekkamai or Mo Chit Bus terminal. The numbers who are forced into it must be staggeringly trivial. This was a hot issue last year in the UK. The Home Secretary did a nationwide police raids on brothels fearing huge numbers of slaves. They turned up with 11 girls who had overstayed their visas. Comical.

"They are trafficked"- This is a particularly nasty attempt to make prostitution unacceptable. It has some purchase in academic circles. It confuses trafficking where the person wants to be trafficked and slave or forced trafficking. It then assumes that working as a prsotitute is quanitiviely worse than being forced, for example, to work as a domestic slave housemaid. I can't accept this and nor apparently can many prostitutes.

There is an endless cycle of accusations and counter-accusations as part of the process of constructing idenitity. This identity creates power. Since few people can barely be bothered to read my post, let alone articles on these subjects, in 20 years time some one will ask the same questions you have posed, except by then it will be via a 3D holograph machine or something...

op keeps talking about roid rage..

op was beaten up a lot in highschool.. mommy doesnt let you cry on her lap anymore?

or are you just some jealous fat guy whining over the internet where he cannot get confronted by those who are not big pussies?

Seriously your rant is the most pathetic one i have seen on this forum.. all i see is jealous of guys in shape and tries to give dignity to bar girls + tries to show off because some bar girls chose him over 2 young english dudes

You really are some sort of

You should either get a life and change your attitude or change your login to "petitesamaawng"

I am deeply impressed with how rapidly everyone has got a good grasp of what I went through. Except for 'small goats cheese', not a single person has questioned that maybe I was lying and actually did say something ( I didn't ) or must have been drunk etc etc.

I feel like I am part of a family...

On a related topic, does anyone know of any Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software that will deal with Thai script? There are some progams, e.g. ABCThai, that will do a word for word translation for Thai - English or German, but typing in the Thai script, using a virtual keybord or whatever is very time consuming an prone to errors. As far as I know, OCR programs such as Omnipage or ABBYY Fine Reader cannot parse Thai. Any suggestions?

DM

I was having a look at this a few weeks ago. I believe Acrobat 8 has finally got around to a lot of the Asian languages. Check it out and please come back and tell me. It certainly does Japanese.

Galileo's championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime. The geocentric view had been dominant since the time of Aristotle, and the controversy engendered by Galileo's presentation of heliocentrism as proven fact resulted in the Catholic Church's prohibiting its advocacy as empirically proven fact,

Good good. Well done. In other words, it was not that 'The World is Flat' was a controversy it was whether the Sun revolved around the Earth or vice-versa that was controversial, since it questioned the (preposterous) view of the Church as humans being special (being in the image of God).

Actually, both views are wrong. The earth revolves around the Sun and the Sun revolves around the Earth-- it is a question of where you are standing. Of course, the orbit the Sun would take around the Earth would look very odd if the Earth is centred. This is an interesting but complex point which I am sure you can investigate further if you are interested.

....electric shock devices on sale in Pattaya and other places. Do they work...how big a shock do they give ?

The torch come shocker devices require good batteries (in Thailand?) and require the person you intend to shock to remain still and expose some flesh to allow you to place the device against the skin then press the button, zapp! A pepper spray gives you distance - and distance is time to react.

Exactly. With the spray you can take on multiple parties and get away before they recover: much better than a baton or the electric thing-- at least until taser come out with a multi-firing automatic taser...

op keeps talking about roid rage..

op was beaten up a lot in highschool.. mommy doesnt let you cry on her lap anymore?

or are you just some jealous fat guy whining over the internet where he cannot get confronted by those who are not big pussies?

Seriously your rant is the most pathetic one i have seen on this forum.. all i see is jealous of guys in shape and tries to give dignity to bar girls + tries to show off because some bar girls chose him over 2 young english dudes

You are a Daily Mail sub-editor!! You have managed to inductively reason that I am fat, was beaten up a lot in "high school' ( i love the American English) and was with bar girls.

The girls were a couple of friends who drove past me in their jeep and rather liked me. I don't know why they did this but you may have and should have guessed (deductively reasoned) from my good luck that I am not fat...

As for sitting on my mommy's lap ( i love the American English-- it is so cute ). My Mum is very dead so it would be pretty tough to cry on her lap. As for being beaten up at school- never happened to me.

I reckon there is an odds on chance you are a 'roid user. And a small but real chance you are the actual man in KK.

( I appreciate the other writers' responses.)

so you were walking in the road drunk and talk about others being idiots?

good 1 buddy. it's not because you moved in the middle of nowhere to finally be someone better than the average that you can walk all over the street as if you owned them.

Is this aimed at me?

I am practically a teatotaller . I think maybe a half pint of lager had passed my lips that day. He was driving at a very fast speed.

The road had no pavement. I was on the edge. The road was packed with people as it is a small sideroad that leads to a nightclub. The 'roid rager was plainly there to "impress" the girls.

And "middle of nowhere". I live in Bangkok.

You sound like a Daily Mail sub-editor: keenly looking to create a story where there is none... Or are you the man in question...?

It was one of those rare times when one party really was entirely blameless.

As for the pepperspray: I would be baffled if it is illegal. Some of my Thai friends are practically carrying enough arnaments to start a small border incursion into Burma. They have the electric shock thingy, the spray, the truncheon, the handcuffs. I am pretty sure there is a by-law/rule against carrying them onto the BTS and the MRT... but that is about it.

Nice to see 'shoeboat' is so polite to 'shoeboat' ?

This is the logical conclusion of the TV Forum moderators' desire for there to be no conflict in the forum. Unfortunately, it does mean there is no careful fact- checking, so Shoeboat has inevitably answered Shoeboat's question wrongly...

In fact, refunds are available up to 1 hour before the train journey.

I am now keen to watch Shoeboat flame Shoeboat for getting the wrong answer...

You carry pepperspray around?

Ever since I got bitten by a dog. At around 11pm, they become nasty, reaaaaaally nasty.

Also, used to it-- since carrying it around in England. I never lose my temper so I will never misuse it. A lot of my Thai friends do the same. It is obviously pretty normal here.

"What- did- you- say?" came the oddly effecting, not fully enunciated, Dick van Dyke London accent. "I didn't say anything". "What-did-you-say?" repeated the Mary Poppins extra voice.

I carefully repeated the entirely accurate answer. I considered smiling to assuage the concerns of this buffoon, but wondered if this homo erecticus would think I was mocking him if I smiled(or "disrespecting him" to use the lingo). "I didn't say anthing".

I don't believe the term "disrespecting him" was ever used in London during the early 1900s.

Apologies. I am showing my age. I am actually not old enough to remember chimney sweeps... so I jsut guessed the lingo...

Social Darwinism is at play all around us

I think your right. I think the aversion of the Thai police to make an appearance, even the odd guest appearance , in the nightlife areas, coupled with farang aversion to the Thai police, means anarchy and the preservation of the self take hold... at least in places like Issan.

I was in Khon Kaen in Issan in the pleasant nightlife area, having a very lucky night, having just had two lovely young ladies stop their car to chat me up then buy me a drink. Obviously fearing there must be some underhand reason for their sheer niceness I only just noticed the truck coming at me at very high speed...

I pushed the girls out the way (they were looking the other way) and I jumped into the grassy verge. The truck skidded to a halt and then reversed at high speed towards me. The electric window opened. In the driving seat your classic 'roid rage too-many-beers smashed up face, shaven-what's- left- of- his- hair Englishman glared at me. I actually thought he wanted to ask for directions.

"What- did- you- say?" came the oddly effecting, not fully enunciated, Dick van Dyke London accent. "I didn't say anything". "What-did-you-say?" repeated the Mary Poppins extra voice.

I carefully repeated the entirely accurate answer. I considered smiling to assuage the concerns of this buffoon, but wondered if this homo erecticus would think I was mocking him if I smiled(or "disrespecting him" to use the lingo). "I didn't say anthing".

I wondered why he was so keen to know what I had said. Perhaps he was keen to know what I felt of his driving abilities and whether he deserved to keep his driving licence...

I wondered if he was doing this because he wanted to maintain his image with the girls. I only wish I could have reassured him somehow that his image was safe: I would later discover from the young ladies at the nighclub that they they thought he was a f(&(*&%9!^d both before and after the incident.

I carefully unbuttoned the side pocket of my trousers and took hold of the pepperspray, undoing the safety catch. Having never experienced anything as bizarre in this in my everyday life in England (except when volunteer policing) it felt a bit of a shock. Was this plonker about to try to beat me up. I regretted now not buying a truncheon and handcuffs.

He glared at me. Then drove off. The girls were baffled.

I only wish he had asked me what I was thinking... because then..., I would have had to run away...

I appreciate that being in Issan must at times be a perfect working simulation of an anarchial system but this seemed a bit extreme. He seemed to be very worried at losing face. I, on the other hand, was literally worried about losing my face, with it getting pulverised by this ape-like, semi-human entity.

I often read in this forum about the need for Thais to save face, but again and again, it is the farang who so badly need to save face....

And in the unlikely event this person can read--- shame on you.

despicable post. The OP should be banned. No wonder we're being increasingly intolerated in Thailand.

What an unreasonable response. You are normally a thoughtful type. He asks a legitimate question of the legal position. Leave the moral soul-searching to him.

"The world is flat" - all the most highly respected, wealthiest, learned, most devout people knew that as a fact. They were so sure of it they imprisoned and tortured anyone who said it wasn't so.

Eh, no they didn't.

"The modern belief that especially medieval Christianity believed in a flat earth has been referred to as The Myth of the Flat Earth.^[1] In 1945, it was listed by the Historical Association (of Britain) as the second of 20 in a pamphlet on common errors in history.^[2] Recent scholarship^[3] has argued that "with extraordinary [sic] few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat" and that the prevailing view was of a spherical earth.^{[1]" -- Wikipedia}

Uh, you all seem to be labouring under the illusion that:

atheist-- means to believe there is no God

agnostic-- means can't prove either way

You are going to have to do the poll again...

I am afraid it is much more complex. There is:

Agnostic atheism-- "An agnostic atheist is both atheistic, in that he does not believe any deities exist, and agnostic, in that he does not claim to know that they don't."

Agnostic theism-- "an agnostic theist believes that the proposition at least one deity exists is true, but, believes that the existence of gods are unknown or inherently unknowable."

You can see the agnostic view ain't quite what it is cracked up to be.

Of course, Buddhism has a pseudo- theistic slant-- it is arguable whether it is a religion or not. It could be seen as a form of extreme atheism. Buddha said: "the "suffering" ends when the craving ends, one is freed from all desires by eliminating the delusions, reaches "Enlightenment"".

I could use Buddha's words to explain my (atheist) view that if only religious folk would let go of their preposterous notions of afterlife and heaven they could feel a calmness from knowing that none of this will matter in 100 years time. I take great solace in knowing that none of this matters.

Relgiion is also interesting as they have an evolutionary function . Buddhism by encouraging acceptance of the status quo would have been useful to rulers, and contrasts with the nasty, brutish tribal religions that came out of the backward Middle East that attacked authority.

A good point there H. I've never registered with the British Embassy in any of the countries I've worked in save for Venezuela but when they have a coup they don't muck about, no roses for the troops there. Problem for me is that I am always moving around and I'd be always onto them to register or deregister.

How many people go round with the "I'm not registering with those idle b@st@ds at the Embassy, all they want to do is poke their nose into my life" attitude. Then something goes wrong and we get images of weeping wailing Brits on the television "the Embassy has done nothing for us". How can the Embassy do anything for you if they don't know you are there? Besides which most of these people swagger around claiming they don't need the Embassy as they ar big boys/girls and can look after themselves. All goes pear shaped when the bullets start to fly and they are running around p1ssing their pants.

How very true!

The British Embassies response after the Tsunami was a masterclass of incompetence. The report on the way the embassy responded described the Foreign Office as utterly and staggeringly incompetent. The report was unsparing in its details. A quote from the independent report by the National Audit Office ( a UK governmental body):

"Their conduct was disgraceful and made me ashamed to be British."

or how about this:

"They were out of their depth and totally overwhelmed."

http://www.nao.org.uk/

Why on earth would I provide any details to those fools?

I was here for the Tsunami and I didn't for a second think the Embassy could help me in anyway. But I tried to help them.

Okay, this is rather interesting.

I have just got back from Government House. I spoke to a rather well-connected source who said the same comment that the PM would resign tomorrow. That makes this a two-source story.

But rumours can be confirmed by a circularity-- it could be the same rumour that has simply circled back around and being told to the person who started the rumour. The second possibility is the sources are unreliable. The third possibility are they are reliable but turn out to be wrong... I would describe my source as extremely credible.

I certainly expect a "red mob" attack on the west of the House tonight... (this is me just rumour mongering mind you... )

Why not join them? They handing out free Som Tam and singing Karaoke and lots of Thai whiskey. Just bring a fold up chair. Being the only whitey there you would be popular and may even end up on CNN

No, there is a few of us Whiteys there already. Lovely atmosphere, free drinks, nice view from Government House... I had a lovely time a couple of nights ago. The old Whitey I was with really got into the swing of things: actually stayed the night, wore a yellow hat and carried a Thai flag.

...what I couldn't work out is why were we searched before entering the protest area by the PAD demonstrators... surely, they would want us to bring weapons.