Acharn

Well, see, that's why members of AA refer to non-alcoholics as "normies." You're not like us and don't understand us. I think it's possible for normies to understand juicers, but there's no particular reason for them to.

I'm sorry to say that sometimes not everyone is welcome. However, in one of the Traditions it says, "The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking." It used to be "a sincere desire," but then they realized how silly that was. No alcoholic can be sincere. I only was able to do the first three steps, myself, but I haven't had to take a drink in 47 years.

The actual phrase is "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." I've heard there are groups that are Christian, but most are not, any more. I was always lucky to be able to find groups that called themselves "recovering Christians." The "higher power" can be anything. I just accepted Alcoholics Anonymous for a while, then left it undefined and tentative. It just seemed to me that either there is a huge conspiracy to make my life good, or there's some kind of power watching out for me (since I got sober). I don't know why you would want to claim you're cured. I never heard anyone in AA say anything except that they were one drink away from being the same as before. You never get cured. You learn to avoid the poison. Of course I haven't been to a meeting for several years. There's no group in Nakorn Sawan, and I never found being a Loner helpful.

Oh, thanks for telling me. My niece usually gets it for me and I hadn't realized it isn't the Zinger any more. It looks, smells, and tastes the same to me. I usually scrape off the salad dressing and put a slice of cheddar cheese on it.

I found the same thing about Pattaya in 1983.

Try the Zinger (chicken burger). No chili, but usually a large dollop of mayonnaise. You can scrape it off (I usually do).

I can't help you with gallon size, but my Big C here in Nakhon Sawan sells 3 liter jugs of white vinegar. I use it for washing the floor tiles in my bathroom and decalcifying my coffee pot. Sorry, I don't remember the price, but it's cheap.

XE.com converts it as $28,713,287.24. I guess the OP rounded up with a little poetic license, or when the exchange rate was higher.

I suppose I'm revealing myself as a terrible person, but I find Chuwit refreshing. Of course, I used to follow Thai politics more closely than I have since the last coup, so I'm more used to normal Thai high society people. I used to really enjoy Police Captain Chalerm, too. Alas, since the coup Thai politics has been boring, and I don't bother to remember names any more. Maybe a new government, if one is ever created, will be more interesting. I'm waiting to see who knows where all the bodies are buried and threatens to reveal stuff during run-ups to votes of confidence. I especially look forward to individual Senators deciding they need to spend more time with their families.

Minor quibble: two or three years ago the USD was down to 28 Thai Baht for several months. It was below 30 for six to eight months (I'm not going to look it up -- see https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/ for Thai baht).

??? I've never had to show a rental contract or lease. Is this a new thing? I do have to furnish a copy of the tabian baan and the owner's ID Card. Is that what you're talking about? Granted, for the last fourteen years I've been living with relatives (by marriage).

I get recycled.

??? Why on earth would that happen? Evolution is random. Species produce more complex and less complex variants all the time. It's just that evolutionary pressures on predators seem (to me) to be more likely to favor intelligence in predators than in prey species.

I get letters from Social Security and Tricare at my address in the boondocks outside Nakhon Sawan.

If you drive a truck you get stopped about every 50 kilometers for the price of a cup of tea.

When I see a case like this I'm suspicious. Maybe the cops got the right guy, but the fact that they interrogated him for 24 hours (or more?) makes me suspect a false confession. There's a lot of pressure on the cops to "find the killer," and they are often happy to serve up any convenient scapegoat. From the postings on this thread, I notice that few people share my skepticism, and, indeed, sound like they would happily join a lynch mob to prevent an inconvenient trial.

Well, he didn't say he didn't know the answer, he explained that the questioners didn't know what to ask and would not understand his answers. His basic assumption was that life is cyclical. Birth --> Sickness --> Old Age --> Death --> Birth ..., without end unless you practice the Eightfold Path, which leads to the ending of Birth, which is the end of suffering. By the way, Suffering includes not getting what you want and getting what you don't want, as well as any minor disappointment.

Well, just so. They don't KNOW that. It's a hypothesis, which means it's the best story they can make up from the facts they know and other hypotheses they have. Back in the '50s there was discussion among science fiction fans about why aliens have never (as far as we know) visited us. Any intelligent entity will have evolved from a predatory animal. Therefore they will have aggressive instincts. Therefore, when they have evolved far enough to develop nuclear weapons they will eventually end up destroying themselves. I'm 85 years old, and not at all sure I won't live to see the nuclear winter that ends 95% of life on Earth.

You're right, but in fact there are very few pimps in Thailand. Some of them are police officers. There is relatively little real human trafficking, although the NGOs that make a good living from it want you to believe otherwise. Even the Kazakhs on Soi Nana are mostly here by choice. They may not like their job, but it pays fairly well.

Soi 22 is on the other side of Sukhumwit, and some distance south. I wouldn't call it "in the area of Soi Cowboy," but that does give a general idea.

I don't have to believe something came from nothing. I believe everything has always been here. That seems to me just as reasonable as believing everything was created by a god who has always been here. I'm not trying to convince you, or anyone else. It's just that this is what I believe. I really don't believe that 4 billion years is an infinitesimal part of 14.5 billion years, which is what I understand is the current consensus of astronomers of length of the current cycle of Samsara. I can imagine much larger amounts of time, but technically there was no time before the Big Bang. I don't know what the current consensus of astronomers is for the "end" of the universe. I gather they don't expect a real ending, just that eventually entropy is maximized everywhere and things just sit there with the universe expanding forever. Myself, I believe it will all contract to create a new monoblock and a new Big Bang, but I gather most astronomers believe there is not enough mass (I think they include "dark matter" and "dark energy") in the universe to bring about a contraction. When asked if Samsara would ever end, the Buddha refused to answer, saying the question was unprofitable, having nothing to do with the extinguishing of suffering, which was all he was teaching.

Well, the material for the Big Bang came from Samsara, this physical universe. After it used up its fuel it collapsed and created the new Big Bang. Of course, there's no way to prove this, and most astronomers believe there's too little mass in Samsara to be cyclical. That's OK, I disagree with them. As for how humans evolved intelligence, the Earth has been around for a little over 4 billion years. That's a long time for the primordial soup to try different chemical combinations until several of them were self-replicating with controls to prevent change (which work poorly). I think the current consensus is that life as we know it appeared a little over 2 billion years ago. That's still a long, long time. By the way, we don't have any idea how smart the dinosaurs were. We keep finding more creatures that use tools. What do you mean, "How were the laws of physics created ...?" They're inherent in matter and space. Most of your questions come from believing in a creator god and believing the universe had to have a beginning and an end.

THB ฿3 Billion is about USD $88 MILLION. I don't believe these scammers ever got that much. Nowhere near.

1. There are no podiatrists in Thailand. Surprising, but true. 2. I don't eat oysters, so I can't help you.

I don't believe in a creator god, like the Christian god, but I can't deny there are powers greater than myself in the universe. I accept the Buddhist understanding that Samsara (the physical universe) has no beginning.