Something Wrong with the Post and Word Count

On an interesting note, I've just noticed my post and word count isn't updated in Blogger as it should. Might be something wrong. I guess it got to do with my template variation, but I'm not sure, I'm going to double check again to see what is wrong in a short while.

Low Softdrink Diet

I would like to point out a few things about my previous diet. Normally, every day I would drink about 4 bottles of softdrink everyday. I would have a bottle of Ice Tea in the morning. During the lunch, I usually like to cap off 2 bottles of softdrink, which may include Coke and another drink. In the evening I would like to order one more. To cap off, I usually drink around 4 x 280 cc of softdrink everyday. That makes up to 1120 cc of softdrink. That was a typical day.

Anyway, I was just watching this documentary called Super Size Me which suddenly make me rethink some of my diet. After seeing through the film, I started to be rather alarmed with the massive amount of sugar that was consumed - which came mainly from the softdrinks that was consumed every day. I've noticed that about 5% of the softdrink is sugar which means that I consume about 56 grams of sugar from softdrinks alone! That doesn't include the amount of tea, coffee, cakes, sweets, and other stuff I eat on a daily basis. Thinking about it, I think one of the reason why lately I've been rather easily tired and irritatable is partly due to excessive amount of sugar in my body.

I decided that from today onwards, I am planning to cut sugar consumption especially from Softdrinks to a minimum level. I want to notice if there would any change on disposition or health in any way - and hopefully it would be for the better. Whatever happens I'll post it in this blog again.

Psychological Foundations of Religious Belief

Here is one very interesting article I found in the SK General forum, so I decided to post it here as it does have a few interesting theories here:

Psychological Foundations of Religious Belief

UBC Professor Ara Norenzayan probes the psychological foundations of religious belief in his research. At issue, how and why people believe in the supernatural.

Sigmund Freud, possibly the world’s most famous psychologist, argued in his book Civilizations and Its Discontent that religious belief ought to be classified as a mass delusion.

While much of Freud’s writing has been left behind, his dismissal of religion persists in much of academia today. In what became known as the "secularization hypothesis," many academics believed that religious belief would die off as society became more advanced.

Professor Ara Norenzayan, a social psychologist at UBC, is out to show that religious belief still has a powerful effect on those who believe. Armed with $105,000 over three years from Canada’s granting body, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Norenzayan is using psychological experiments to show how and why people believe in the supernatural.

"The idea is that, with the growth of science and technology and affluent societies, religions have become less and less powerful," says Norenzayan, who came to UBC in 2002 from the University of Illinois.

"Many great thinkers in social sciences, from Hume to Freud, have speculated that, as people become more exposed to science and their lives get better economically, religion would become less of a grip on people’s minds. Except, it seems that all the evidence shows that that is not the case."

Indeed, with the religious overtones to violence in Iraq, Palestine and Israel, as well as countless other places, the grasp that religion wields on contemporary society is still very potent. But while religious belief can lead some to kill, Norenzayan believes religion can also motivate people to dedicate their lives to humanitarian causes.

"I am most interested in the question of why is it that some aspects of religiosity lead to hatred, violence, war, [while] other aspects of equally strong religiosity may lead to peaceful, tolerant kinds of attitudes towards the world."

He cites a recent study by Jeremy Ginges — a researcher at his alma mater, the University of Michigan — that looked at support for suicide bombers in the Palestinian Territories. What the study found was that support for bombings was related to the frequency with which a person attended mosque, but unrelated to how often a person prayed at home.

"It goes to show, in a very important social issue like this, that these kinds of questions are very important to learn about," he says. "It’s the communal aspect of religion which seems to be much more the issue and not the devotional side."

Norenzayan’s research has already looked at this issue. One particular study, conducted with graduate student Ian Hansen in Canada and Malaysia using Buddhist, Christian and Muslim university students, studied at different forms of religiosity. He found two distinct types: devotion, or faith, and religious exclusivity, or how much people privileged their own religion over others. He found that devotion promoted tolerance, whereas exclusivity, not surprisingly, led to intolerance.

He mentions a quote by prominent British biologist Richard Dawkins who once argued that, along with the atomic bomb, the belief in God was one of the greatest dangers to world peace.

"What I would say to Dawkins is, it’s not the belief in God that seems to be the culprit — it’s something else. It’s the social cohesion aspect of religion that gets entangled in real life with the belief in God, but that belief — in and of itself — does not seem to be the origin of the connection between religion and intolerance."

Another study that Norenzayan conducted asked: what psychological factors motivate the belief in supernatural agents? He set out to prove that, at a fundamental level, religious belief was tied to a fear of death.

"In a series of studies," he says, "we found reliable evidence that the more you remind people of death, the more likely they would be to say they believe in God, the more likely they are to say that they’re religious."

More striking was Norenzayan’s findings in regards to people’s openness to belief systems from other religions. While he concedes that atheists remained unfazed, Christians, for example, were more willing to believe in Buddha and ancestor spirits.

"The reason this is very striking is that this shows that the connection between thoughts of death and belief in a supernatural world is not simply identification with your own culture," he says. "There seems to be an openness to the supernatural that is triggered by the thoughts of death… In a strange way, it is an interesting and hopeful finding that people could become temporarily open-minded about other worldviews."

Norenzayan has several more years of research planned for this topic. His next goal is to study religious fundamentalism, for which he plans on traveling to parts of the world where radical religious movements are thriving.

He says a big factor in his move to UBC was the University’s position as a leader in the growing field of cultural psychology. "My interests are in understanding how is it that individual psychology relates to the larger collective processes in which people live," he says.

"For a long time psychologists weren’t involved in understanding or studying culture or cultural differences, assuming that psychological processes are universal anyway. Now there is a growing movement in psychology to acknowledge and examine these issues and UBC is one of the centres of this field."

Shame on Advertisers !

I just can't help but be exasperated at the tendacity of marketers to market their products every way possible that at times its really tasteless. Here is one example on how they are using Blogger to advertise their products: homeloans

... Pretty shameless advertising isn't it?

Metal Gear Solid 3

I just found out the next episode of one of my favorite game series, Metal Gear Solid 3 is finally out. Just to make a long matter short, bye bye world. I've got to rescue this world for the next few days and can't be disturbed ;)

Role Model ?????

I'll translate some of the major points in the news report posted above just incase one of the international viewers decided to visit:

Joy, one of the pair from the popular and sexy duo Triumph Kingdom, that used to hit the airwaves in Thailand many years ago, was caught in polic sting operation as an agent selling amphetamines.

Sigh... I always used to remind myself other than the glitzy life they live, movie stars and singers make very bad role models in general. Other than a few socially responsible stars such as Bono of U2 (pictured below), I suppose I find that most of them are aloof and rather cynical in nature. Talking about it, another popular local singer - Mos, who has a clean boy image, was awarded an anti-drug award for his contribution to the Thai society in the fight against drugs. On an interesting follow-up, a few years later, he was featured prominently in one of the advertisements for those energy-drinks - which is considered as a type of drug. Ironic isn't it?





Thinking about it, I guess I'll just leave this latest ramble as it is, and wait for people to flame me for making cynical remarks about their role models in general ;)

Paper Crane for Peace?

During the last few days, I was surprised to see so many people I know suddenly out of the blue been folding paper cranes like the picture I've posted below:





In our society where many of the younger generation choose to enjoy going to department stores, going to movies, playing video games, and other modern joys, its strange to see alot of people going back to the fine arts of paper folding or origami. Anyway, I've just got to the bottom of it when I just finally figured that this fad happened because our government annouced a peace initiative in which they will fold paper cranes inorder to show that they are trying to find a peaceful solution to the trouble southern provinces. In part of the speech, our PM made a reference to air-dropping all the paper cranes made by the rest of the country over Southern Thailand.

As usual, as being a rather skeptical person to unpractical ideas, I'll explain why this is not desirable. The first issue I want to raise is that air-lifting paper cranes over the southern border is dangerous to people living below the airdrops. I remembered distinctively about a newspaper report about the US airforce air dropping reasons to turn against the Talibans in Afganistan, in which they mentioned that some of the airdrop were done in densely populated areas in which some of these make-shift homes where literally destroyed by the weight of the paper stacked on the roof collapsing the whole structure. The second major issue I do want to raise is that air-dropping tons of paper cranes will pose a serious problem of litter down south as people has to clean up the mess from all the paper cranes. The last issue that I want to raise is that I do think it would be more well worth if the people in Bangkok would engage in recycling used paper instead of using paper in this rather wasteful show of support. However as typical to the current regime, I've learn to be rather tolerant of such media circus, and I'm not that cynical considering this one has the least dent on the tax-payer's money compared with many of the earlier policies implemented before.

Seriously I think there are many other ways of showing support. Holding mass peace rallies is one example. Having different institutes do collective petitions for peace and understanding is another cheap way to get it started. There are so many ways to show support, and I wonder why its all about paper cranes? Maybe I'm just out of touch with the current trends and fashion, but oh well, that is my viewpoint on this issue.

Anyway, I do think the show of love by our brothers and sisters in our country should help make the life down south more tolerable as it shows that no matter what the government, the police, the army, and all the seperatists are doing, the people of Thailand are still the people of Thailand, and it would take more than just a group of misguided gung-ho group of seperatists and terrorisms to divide this land.

Duo Language

Yesterday when I was strolling back home from the Silom area (a business hub where there are lots of foreigners) I happen to stumble upon a very interesting exchange between a fruit vendor and a farang (slang for foreigner).

I'll transcribe the conversation here:

*The Farang walks towards the fruit vendor*

Fruit Vendor (in broken English): What do you want?
Farang (in Thai): เอา Papaya (I want papaya)


*The Fruit Vendor looks confused. The Farang then points at the papaya*

Farang (in Thai): เท่าไร? (How much?)
Fruit Vendor (in English): Ten Baht.

*Transaction takes place*

The funny part about this exchange is that if you didn't notice, the Thai fruit vendor was trying very hard to converse in the English language, but the Farang in the inverse was trying to speak the native tongue to the vendor which lead to a rather odd converstion I have to conclude ;)

Post Election Day Changes

One curious note is that after Bush got elected to President of the world's sole super-power, he commanded the US forces to invade Fallujah. That would be a very unpopular decision before the voting and thus the reason why he ordered the strike specifically after the election period - as I'm sure many families would be sensitive especially if their sons/daughters are in a far off land fighting a war.

In the same lines, I have a reason to think that there would be a number of new things implemented after the TRT party gets into power for the 2nd term in Thailand. The first would be the increase of the Diesel prices. The second one would be the introduction of many new taxes to fund the populist policies initiated to "convince" votes before the election. The third prediction is that our country would be off to some new strange crusade and there would be many more extra-juidical killings.

Its just strange, I just think I have seen the future ;)

The End of Independent Thailand?

I was shocked, when I first heard about this annoucement over the radio yesterday. I thought it was a joke until today I read about it again.

Agreement allows Singapore to Station Military Personnel in Udon Thani

AIR BASE ACCESS: RTAF admits S’pore deal
Published on November 19, 2004

Agreement allows island state to station military personnel in Udon Thani

The Royal Thai Air Force (RTAF) yesterday admitted it had struck an agreement with Singapore that would allow military personnel from the island state to train at an airbase in Udon Thani.

RTAF commander-in-chief ACM Kongsak Wanthana told a press conference at its headquarters yesterday morning that the deal was fair as the RTAF would get military materiel and know-how as well as the right to use Singapore’s air-base facilities in return.

The admission came amid concerns that the deal with Singapore would sour the Kingdom’s ties with other neighbours like Malaysia and Laos.

Democrat MP Piraphan Salirat-vipak said during yesterday’s House meeting that the deal might violate the Constitution as it required parliamentary approval.

He also called for disclosure of the deal’s details.

An RTAF source said that in a memorandum of understanding signed last Friday, the air force agreed to allow Singapore to use its Wing 23 Base in Udon Thani three times a year in exchange for seven second-hand F-16 fighter jets worth more than Bt1 billion.

“Normally the Singapore military holds training at the Korat air base two times a year. Three more visits at the Wing 23 Base won’t be a problem,” the source said.

ACM Kongsak yesterday said Singaporean personnel would be allowed to train for three sessions a year, for no more than 60 days a session and involving no more than 20 aircraft each time. He dismissed the prospect of Singapore establishing a permanent air base here.

Kongsak said the deal was in line with a Cabinet resolution in 1983 to allow military personnel from member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to use RTAF facilities for training.

The air force chief said that although the MoU would expire in 15 years, a review could be made every five years.

Defence Ministry spokesman Maj-General Palangkoon Klahan said yesterday that the deal with Singapore, which is viewed as a close ally of the US, was not to pave the way for a return of American air bases in Thailand.

Panya Thiewsangwan, Bancha Khaengkhan

The Nation

Another lightning fast movement secretive move from our armed forces, which is typical in our current government era which practically controls all aspect of our daily life. This latest episode, by allowing a 15 year license to be allowed to conduct military exercies in Thai soil for over half a year(3 sessions, 60 days, and 20 aircraft limit) with full autonomy. What worries me, is that for a few fighter jets, it seems that our current armed forces are willing to give autonomy over our homeland to a neightboring country. This is no longer the typical military cooperation, but it seems like our country is more and more becoming a colony and a precursor for more prosperious countries as Singapore - and I suspect on a later stage - USA to set up full military bases in our country. We can learn through history, such as in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms - Lu Bu, the great warlord was invited to be a guest of Liu Bei. As Lu Bu was a great warrior, he later betrayed his benefactor, Liu Bei and took over his land with his superior army. That is a classic example of why military bases placed by a 3rd party country should never be allowed to extended stay unless the country is willing to place a risk on the guests to be civilized enough not to take advantage of the hospitility.

I do believe Singaporians to be trustworthy, but what worries me as a Thai citizen is that with military bases like this, I am sure that sometime in the future there might be a high-profile fugitive from Singapore might get safe passage out of Thailand based on this military agreement. A good example would be of the numerous cases in Okinawa, where US soldiers have used military immunity to escape from the local law, though at the late due to relationships between the country, have been allowing local judicial courts to trial these soldiers. I am afraid something on the same lines may happen soon based on this agreement.

Other than that, I have a reason to believe our relationships with our immediate behaviors would further slide down. Singapore and Malaysia have bad diplomatic relationships at this moment due to numerous spats especially over water resources which they had a public verbal spat on the Asian WallStreet Journal between the two government. By siding with Singapore on a military standpoint, it seems as if we are at odds with Malaysia. The countries in the north of our borders had past spats with the USA, and would certain feel more insecure with Singapore, a close allied nation with USA, operating in Thailand closer to their borders.

I wonder how short sighted our military leaders are in their decisions? I don't think they should be blamed alone. The Interior Ministry which deals directly with this matter own a huge explanation to the Thai public. Our PM who have handpicked the who military brass should no lnoger claim innocence like he has done on numerous occasions before and explain why would he allow his government to risk the Indepence of our country for just a few used F16? What did our airforce chief, ministers, and PM gained from this deal?

I believe our the Thai Public needs a better explanation than the common phrase our PM always say:

I always do what is good for the country.

Maybe I should paraphrase it into my interpretation of his misguided quote:

What is good for me and my cronies' business is good for the country.

Small World

Have you ever wondered how small our world is? Today I just got that feeling again when one of my old bosses, send an email that was forwarded to me about a person in the gaming industry back here trying to setup an Game Development OpenSource courses and wanted me to correspond with that fellow. On an interesting note, I was just corresponding with this wonderful fellow just back a week ago, so it just amazes me how small our world really is :P

Oh well, I guess that is it. Small World, small post, just another random rant ;)

Spam of the Day

I'm rather frustrated with the massive amount of spam I've receiving in a few of my accounts. It seems someone has taken one of my email account and submitted it to many email listing and its overloaded though I have a spam filter installed.

Talking about spam, it makes me think about SPAM which is a delicious canned meat, that I liked alot on my sandwiches. If you have never heard about it, here is a picture to marvel at one of the most misunderstood food today:


Anyway on related issues to spam, I just got one stupid SPAM so I decided to post a copy here since I find this spam to be rather amusing in how they tried to fool the spam filters :P

meds on special

stop the waste of time no need to make appointment
Censored

deal for meds on pain relief, high cholesterol, obesity, men's health,
anxiety control, seizure, asthma, alergy and sexual health.


Picasso sketched out a couple of his masterpieces. St. Peter was convinced
and let him in.
When George W. Bush died, he went to heaven and met the man at the gates.
"How can you prove to me you're George W. Bush?" Saint Peter said.

I don't know, but it worked for your ass.
A guy walks into a bar and orders a drink. Aftera few more heneeds togo
tothecan.He doesn't want anyonetosteal hisdrinkso he puts asign onitsaying,
I spatin this beer,do not drink! . Afterafew minuteshereturnsand there is
another sign next to his beer saying, So did I!

To round things off, this post was just posted that I could ramble in circles and then mention that I just had a new template up. I hope you liked this new and clean template ;)

The Longest Journey

I just bought a new game the last weekend called The Longest Journey which was touted as one of the greatest adventure (puzzle) game ever created. It was placed it in a rather obscure part of the shop, but due to my rather huge curiousity I happen to stumble upon the box set there. After playing the games for a few hours, I have to admit I'm rather impressed by the game - with its immersive story telling and intelligent puzzles and I highly recommend people to pick this game up though it might be hard to find considering its over 4 years old ;)

Changing Templates

After a short break from work and play, I've just decided it might be a good time to change this web template because I prefer something more plain :P Talking about it, I am a person who thinks plain is better as a personal preference, though at times I marvel at how some people feel that having the latest and most fancy technology is better than just a "easy to navigate and use" layout!

Should be ready in a day or two up to how much free time I got :)

The Fight Over Faith

Before I go on, I just wanted to point out that I was watched the following special feature called The Fight Over Faith on CNN. Reminds me completely of my highschool upbringing, and realizes my biggest fear that Religion can divide people, and this show does help reinforce that idea.

Maybe its time for liberals, and scientific masses to rise to address the challenges of the religious conservatives in their narrow view of our world...

Crazy Idea on How To Fix Thailand's Flawed Democracy

I remembered distinctively in the Business Textbook that I studied ages ago that they used to mention this following quote very often:

The Customers are Always Right

The years I first heard about that quote, and until now, I learnt that the above quote is not the reality of the world we are facing, and a clear example on how outdated are the books that are used to teach us. Much like how there are some types of books like "Things They Don't Teach You at Havard Business School", "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" become popular, it is quite evident that a number of skills, philosophy, and know how in the business world is certainly different than what are taught in the books. One clear example is the quote I mentioned earlier. If I have to update the above quote, I'll write it as the following:

The Customers are Always Right if they haven't Bought our Product, but the Customers are at our mercy when they have.

As you notice the irony of that quote. Its a clear example of what we call a half truth, one that is very common in today's business world - the art of telling half-truths and white lies - and becomes more frequent once there is less competition in the market.

Talking about it, brings me back to the topic of slimey politicians in my country Thailand. The picture I posted above is taken outside my home. For a translation, it means that Mr. Yuranan (Sam), a famous movie star and deputy spokesperson and Candidate to the Din Daeng area of the Thai Rak Thai Party, has contacted the local district municipal to ask them to clear out the sewers in our area. A strange observation is that this has been done in a convienent time just a few months from the general elections.

On a similar occasion, the Government has arranged a freebie fair at the Impact Arena, where the fair was explain to have showcased the Government's initiative in solving the countries woes from the grassroot level to solve the nation's ill. This fair seem to be a large advertisement by the TRT party just a convinent throw away from the general elections that makes this fair suspicious. In this fair there was numerous freebies and benefits given to attendees such as registration for the various Ua-Arthon programs that the government has been pushing along with other freebies such as free eyeglasses, food, and drinks. Also transportation were free for students and people from other province to visit this fair in which a train of buses were seen ferrying to the fair where people claimed that they were paid by their local MP to attend the fair to get free stuff. To make matters worse, this fair was paid by the tax payer's money which I find very distasteful.

When pressed on this topic, government respresentatives claim that they are doing everything right to the constitution in which the government has the right to showcase their archivements to the people. They said that instead of sending the message accross traditionally through the parlimentary session, they said pushing it in fairs would be better as more people can learn about it in a fair setting. When pressed about the numerous freebies, the ruling party representatives claim that it was part of the government intiative for a while, and its nothing wrong to show it on the government show. Regarding using tax-payers money to arrange a fair that seems to be advertising TRT, the goverment claimed again that it was highlighting the archivements of the government - not a single party and it was not constitutionally wrong - but just done in a different means that older dinosaur goverments did not have the ability to conceive this idea.

Due to that reason, a number of academics and opposition politicians has called the EC(Election Commission) to look over how the goverment been legally buy votes by using loopholes in the constitution. The latest complaints comes hot in the heels of the questions about the various Ua-Arthon programs, the 1 million Cow project, the SML project, and other various initiatives that were declared this year where well-disguised popularist policies that were drafted to gained the votes of rural Thailand. However as I suspected, these complaint has been dropped so quickly that there were huge questions on how neutral the watchdog EC has been. We can see that many neutral watch-dogs and institutes whether the EC, NCCC, or the Senate has been increasing falling under the TRT influence and been rather skewed in its interpretation of laws that seems to always favor the ruling party and all its business kins.

Thinking about it, I was thinking about the variation of the quote I've posted earlier:

The Voters are Always Right before Elections, but are a no-one after it.

This it makes me wonder if the best way to solve the ills of this flawed democracy in which politicians engage in vote-buying, handouts, and popularistic policies just before each election when we are the voters and their boss, is to engage the elections just so frequently to the point that politicians can no longer keep up with the vote-buying, and being corrupt to get that much fund would then just be so balantly evident to the point they can easily get caught instead of siphoning funds from long-term policies!

It might sound crazy, but since Democracy the last few decades in Thailand is so morally corrupt, it just makes me wonder if it would turn to the better with these crazy ideas ;)

Updates in the Cycle-soft Website

As being a lazy webmaster/president of a rather odd multimedia club, I've managed to make a big update today as there are a few big annoucements and changes.

The first annoucements is that Lertsiri Boonmee's Short Film - Mini-Gum Gaw was an official selection at the DIGITAL POWWOW 2004 Film Festival and will be shown on November 11, 2004 and details are enclosed below.

Also I've updated the website with a new photogallery and a forum (finally upgraded our service to include a DBMS), so things are on the upturn. Anyway here is the logs of the updates there:

November 11, 2004 - Short Film - Gum Gaw Updates

After the sucessful premiere of Lertsiri Boonmee's latest Short Film - Mini Gum Gaw at the Fat Rama Film Festival on July 28, 2004, this film was an official selection at the DIGITAL POWWOW 2004 EVENT. The DIGITAL POWWOW is Thailand's largest Video and Broadcast Convention and will be hosed by many top broadcasting companies along with sponsors from Panasonic, Apple, and many many more!

This year, the event has been scheduled to be held on November 11-13 at the Royal Golden Jubilee Building, Soi Soonvijai, New Petchburi Road. You can catch Lertsiri's film at November 11, 2004 from 10:57 to 11:14 AM.

For more information visit Lertsiri's Website at http://www.cycle-soft.com/users/lmb

November 5, 2004 - New Additions to the Site

During the last few months there was a furry of updates at the site in which the webmaster (who is a lazy bum) has decided to finally index them from this main page. The updates are as follows:

Cycle-soft Photo Gallery (http://www.cycle-soft.com/photo)
We just created our own Cycle-soft Photogallery in which our members share pictures of their day's events with each other and also contain other pictures that deal with the things we do in RL both in work and play. This gallery is open to view to the general public.

Cycle-soft Forum (http://www.cycle-soft.com/forum)
In this page we have created a quick forum for our members to discuss, though primarily this forum is created as an additional resource for the administrator of this site to index resources and exchange information with the website visitors.

Luigi's Restaurant (http://www.cycle-soft.com/~luigi)
Luigi's Restaurant is our member's weekend restaurant in which we cook new and delicious dishes based on various forms of crusine and socialize. If you want to know what is cooking in our kitchen, feel free to visit our popular cooking reality show ;)

Picture: Bright Idea

Picture: Bright Idea - This picture is a good depliction of me right now. I've got some crazy idea in my head and I'm working on it. Anyway, regarding the picture, I think this was a retouched picture I did of some picture that I got from somewhere which I don't remember, Talking about it, I don't think my mind has been as clear as I would like to think it is LOL

The Extreme Part of Secular Education

During my years of education I have been rather complaining about the lack of plurality in education, based on my experiece as a high school student. During my highschool years, I've been to an assortment of schools, in which I want to categorize them as Catholic, Protestant, and Buddhist schools. In these schools, I've found that religion has placed from a rather liberal to in some schools a conservative and integral part of the school life.

In the example of one highschool I went to, one of the core required course was Bible Studies, in which I had an awful straight D score through my school year. During these years, I've been complaining and campaigning against forcing religious studies in HighSchool without giving an alternative choice. Though I was banking on the support of my classmates who were Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, and people of other religious background, I learnt at that time that it was highly inadequate to start a movement. The reason why I came to that conclusion lies on the fact that most highschool students were not mentally mature enough to understand the implication about how the abuse of religious freedom is dementrial to them. However they understood the importance of highschool grades - and the majority of them temporarily converted into good Christians to get good grades. That was something I could not comprehend, and thus a big struggle of my later highschool years - my crusade against the lack of religious pluralism in school.

Based on the lessons there, I found out that the majority of people, though what religious background, most of them were self-serving bastards, and will not stop at all ends to get what they want. That may be a rather harsh observation, but as I considered myself to be a socialist, its not strange to have such a observation. Though I have been highly cynical, one of the good points I've noticed is that it doesn't matter what religion, the students are in, they have a common understanding of each other as human beings with their instincts for survival. This pluralism, though in a rather odd way makes me believe that religious pluralism is indeed possible, only if the people have other agendas to focus on - where the energies won't be directed against each other, but to a common goal.

Anyway, reading the news of the education system, I have been increasing amused at seeing the opposite happen at France, where many schools have banned all religious artifacts in school. The example of education in France is called secular education, and what we see there is a case of extreme Secularism. The hot issues that were faced dealt with the ban of clothing related with religion. Religious necklaces were banned. Sikhs were banned from wearing turbans. Female Muslims were banned from wearing their Islamic veil and robe. This has caused a rather large stir in many religious circles for the zero tolerance against all religions - and a huge dent in world-wide confidence in the secular educational system.

I'm rather horrified to see the secular movement resort to such extreme measures where students - who many don't know of their religious upbringing in detail, have to derived with the freedom of religious expression. By taking out the right of religious identity, this has caused a huge void on the highschool students in France in understanding about the unique balance we have in the world with all the religions and how human and how similar each of them are like with each other. Once these students have friends of different religions, they get to see how students of other background are just like they are. This is a better way to control the ethic, religious tensions these days than just a token show between the religious leaders. Common misconceptions and distrust cannot be healed in one generation, but in many, in which it should start here with the youth.

As mentioned earlier, there should be no place for extremists in our world where they seek to bend everything in a skewed unilateral viewpoint. Our world is a huge place where humans of many social standings, races, and religions interact, and thus the only way can go forward to keep an open mind and a flexible moral integrity in dealing with situations as an informed moderate.

Picture: Daily Mirror on US Elections

Picture: Daily Mirror on US Elections - I just found this picture at the Daily Mirror - a rather radical English Tabloid to be very interesting so decided to post it here. Anyway there are a few new interesting political developments in Thailand, and the next blog, I'll write a short satire about it :)

Featured in Future Gamer - October edition 2004

Just a short note before I sleep today. I just noticed I was featured in Future Gamer - October edition 2004, in a column. If anyone is interested, you could buy a copy of that magazine :)

What's Cooking in the Kitchen

The last 2 weeks, I've done a few new dishes just for fun:

The first I made 2 weeks ago was Homemade Ravioli with Bolognese Sause. In this dish, which is similar to Italian Wonton - in which I made my own dough, and stuffed it with cheese+spinach and then boiled it before putting home made Bolognese Sause (spagetthi sauce) on top of it. This dish was excellent ;)

The second dish, which was done with left over spinach, was baked spinach with cheese. This was absolutely fabalous! As budget isn't a factor, we just had excessive cheese and spinached, and it was rich and delicious!

The third and last dish I made was matricana which is penne with bacon and tomato and onion sauce. This dish was a gentle pasta dish, which was a stark contrast with a spagetthi shop my bigger bro took me out to eat which was too spicy (I hated it). Due to that rather awful experience, I decided to make a new pasta dish, and I decided this dish would be nice, and it certainly was.

Anyway updates about these dishes should be updated in the Luigi's Restaurant website soon :)

Blame Game

After reading about the Tak Bai Demonstration and the fallout due to the excessive handling of the round up of protesters by the 4th Army regiment (78 fatalities), I've just felt that I'm just bored, frustrated, and completely aghast by all the people involved in this incident with whold wide repurcussions, that I think its finally time I rear my ugly mouth and play my own version of the Blame Game, in which I point fingers to people who I strongly believe are to blame in all of this.

In the events leading up to the tradegy, I have to profess that I have little love for Muslim extremists. These people who selectively pick key phrases to obscure many of the words of the Koran to brainwash the young and angry population to instigate acts of violence and terror against the rest of the world and against Islam itself. Combined with lack of Koran translation for local dialects, we can see that its easy for so proclaimed "religious teachers" to easily mess how these young people think. With additional apathy due to the lower level of education offered in ponoh schools that have not adequately evolved and supplied quality education that fit in the modern society, more and more muslims are left behind - with lower education, training, jobless, and angry - in which is the reason why muslim extremist has been more visible than other religions.

I also blame the muslim people of down South for rioting during the holy month of Ramadan. That is completely out of context and they should be ashamed for that, saying that this period should be holy, when they cannot control the populace out of rioting itself (though peaceful)

I blame the Thai people for having the Thai Mung behavior (Thai people have a habit to flock to see incidents), and that caused the swelling of the ranks of protesters -coupled with school holidays and unemployment in general.

I blame the 4th Army Regiment who was in charge of security down there, who has used completely excessive and unhumane methods to round up the protesters - much like how we herd up pigs. In breaking up protestors, we use water pumps, police welding bations, and tear gas - but over here we use bullets! I just had the feeling that Thailand is no longer the land of free - but a disciple of Mymmar - the land of oppressed :-/

Our government deserves alot of blame. They have been utterly clueless and utterly out of touch with the people in our country. Their aloofness was again then evident in their dealing with the population down south. Our PM deserves huge blame, for flipflop policies, and also for hand-picking the 4th Army general who seems to be convinced that only hard-handed tactics will stablize the south. In his speech, he still defends that the state was right to take down all illegal mob activities and offered a puny cash compensation, and the opportunity for the families of the victims to go on a Haj Pilgrimage. I find this to be very sickening, much like trying money at the problem, not at the crux of it. To add salt on the wound, we know that our government feels that 10k baht ($250) is the cost of a single Thai citizen, and that its their right that anyone could be killed if they were suspected to be dangerous - much like the war on dark influence and drugs. Our Human Right record has been apalling. and it makes me wonder where did the tolerance and kindness that has been typical character of a Buddhist country gone?

Never before in the history of our democratic country that any government has shown such contempt to the people in its land, and it makes me sick to know the dangerous path we are walking down at the present.

Though I blame many people here in all of this, I wanted to reserve my last words to blame the thing that has been the crux of this problem - the Media. Our media is the single identity that managed to make terrorism and its evil a global phenomenon instead of a local event. Coupled with capitalistic goals of selling news, media sources has been known to spice up reports with sensational headlines and conclusions that has been drumming up the divide. A good example could be spotted with one Buddhist extremist contributor who said that the problem with the south could be solved by using extreme violence like how Indonesia got rid of the communist uprising there by rooting out all support in military aciton. That person was a fool, and military action only serves to divide the people though it can provide short term stability. Political ideology is weak compared with religious conviction where the lure of heaven and all its derviations provides complete fanatical support. We can see that people who are extremists both in religious, political, environmental, and economic issues for these people are the people who will bring ruin to our world and our media are allowing these people to run the media circus show?

The Way You Read

The Way You Read - This is an interesting game that one of my friends passed over about the way you read. It does have interesting observations about how our mind operates ;)