bkkguy

gosh mahjongguy my heart just bleeds, add a picture to your post of workers at a clothing sweatshop or a Foxcon factory and the whole world would be up in arms demanding a boycott of brands using these abusive businesses and also demanding improvements to staff conditions but because it is a gay massage place we are not only supposed to continue to patronise these abusive businesses but also throw extra "tips" at the staff so the owners can continue ignoring local labor laws and continue with their abusive practices because "if you like the fact that these shops exist then you need to help keep the staff from starving" what you really mean is "if WE want to keep abusing the staff cheaply then we need to help keep the staff from starving" bkkguy

actually I was going to ask if you or your BF had ever taken antibiotics or used an underarm deodorant or questioned why grass (or other plants or bacteria etc), which are also "living things", are so disrespected in Buddhist teachings and what exact level of neural development the Lord Buddha proscribed before respect needed to be granted - but that is probably being really pissy so I will leave you alone with your comfort in your superior knowledge! bkkguy

does it? OK, so prove it - use your "great and deep understanding" and post some quotes here from the teachings of the Lord Buddha or the teachings of Theravada Buddhism that support your claims that it is a Buddhist belief that "ringing bells can pacify temple spirits" and/or "bring good luck", because like your boyfriend, and apparently you despite you superior knowldge, most Thais would support such claims because of their animist rather than buddhist beliefs, but again you will probably respond "LOL" and "prissy" because like most posters here you don't like to be challenged to think about what you post or think you know and understand! bkkguy

LOL is an easy response but for someone that claims to have "pray[ed] and meditate[d] at over 100 of these temples" I would have to seriously doubt your own "great and deep" spiritual understanding of Buddhism as distinct from Thai animist beliefs? bkkguy

when you say "In Buddhism" do you mean generally from the teachings of the Lord Buddha, or more specifically the teachings of Theravada Buddhism, or even more specifically the corrupt animist beliefs that seem to dominate in temples in Thailand? claiming that ringing bells can pacify spirits and/or bring good luck is a Buddhist belief is like trying to claim that Bingo is a Christian belief because it is played in church halls! bkkguy

I didn't think I was apologising - why does this remind me again of The Sound of Muisic? bkkguy

cases like Sandusky's receive a lot of press coverage, often very sensationialised, often very manipulative of public opinion, often swallowed whole without question by the National Inquirer (and facebook) reading masses. Like many other Onion pieces this piece is lampooning this type of press coverage and public reaction. Given the nature of the case it is not surprising that the piece is very black in its satire, perhaps too black for some, but the intent is I think to challenge us to think about how we react to sensationalist press coverage and - perhaps this is a bit of a push, but - how society should cope with complex cases like Sandusky - and no, I don't think the death penalty is the option being pushed by the author I haven't read the actual facebook page thaiworthy picked this up from but have seen a lot of other posts from people "shocked and disgusted" by this Onion article and thaiworthy's simplistic interpretation that we live in "an uncivilized society when people are writing bitter articles under the guise of sarcasm to express their desire for revenge" and indeed your admission that you "have a very difficult time trying to figure out why anybody would write such a piece" perhaps indicates that more such challenging pieces are needed? bkkguy

you can draw your own conclusions, assumptions, insinuations, etc about the author's intentions to your hearts content and make whatever claims you like about them here, it still does not make them the only correct interpretation - neither you nor I are the final arbiter of what constitutes good satire or social commentary and the author is the final arbiter of his intentions! and if you think that your intentions and meaning are perfectly clear in every post you make then far be it from me to comment! bkkguy

strange - most of my US friends would argue that the USA is both a mature and a reasonable society and extra-judicial killings in prision are not acceptable - but the death penalty disappointingly still seems to be divisive! are you claiming that the USA ia not a "mature, reasonable society" becaue there are still psychopaths commiting crimes and we don't know how to deal with them or because you support extra-judicial killing and the death penalty? bkkguy

this is often the case with satire - if it is blatently directed against your beliefs it is easily dismissed as foolish, if it is consistent with your beliefs it is easily considered acceptable, but if it challenges you to think ... bkkguy

I must admit I am more disturbed by your conclusion than by the Onion satirical piece! you seem to see only two acceptable outcomes - the offender is subject to extra-judicial killing in prision (never an acceptable option in a mature reasonable society) or is given the death penalty (again I think never an acceptable option in a mature reasonable society). I think the whole point of this satirical piece is to challenge our feeling of "comfort" that this "monster" has been handled in the best possible way bkkguy

or as the old tounge-twister has it bkkguy

It IS NOT an issue with the copy and paste - at the OS level copy and paste should not modify the data it IS an issue with the forum software. if any web software takes user input from a form field and re-displays that input on a web page then it is up to that software to make sure the input is correctly sanitised and filtered and will display properly before outputing it - the user's use of copy and paste to place the text in the form field is just exposing a deficiency in the forum software bkkguy

there is no such thing as a free lunch - you are not the consumer here, you are the product! Sirius XM Privacy Policy while they provide some complex hoops you can jump through to opt out of some of these (even after you have already opted out elsewhere) their basic attitude is they have the inherent and explicit right to milk your data for every penny they can unless expressly forced by law to do otherwise in this they are only as bad as some other providers of "free" services but policies do not (and should not) be so consumer unfriendly but most people don't seem to care or couldn't be bothered to read the policy! but the more people accept these conditions the easier it is for service providers to get away with invading our privacy and commoditising our every move on the Internet! but some would argue it is already too late - it is so entrenched there is no going back! bkkguy

he is only debunking astrology, not "all previous modes of thought" - and what else should you do when a better theory comes along? cling to your old beliefs? Arthur C. Clarke's third law the critical issues is if the villiger really wants to understand he can study the physics involved and scientific research will continue to improve our understanding of this field compare this to religion where no amount of scientific research has any relevence because belief is based on faith compare this to astrology, homeopathy, chiropractic etc which claim to be "real" science but can offer no explanation of their field that can be understood within our current understanding of the real world. OK our current knowledge is limited and often wrong, but our knowledge grows (in an ideal world) by investigation and research, but there is no incentive for large scale scientific studies of these subjects because there is no funding becuase there is no money to be made from discrediting these fields, and these fields have no need to do extensive research because they rely on the fact that their practitioners can claim almost anything and their supporters will believe them - this is real magic, not science! bkkguy

all references to this quotation seem to be traceable back to a single 1951 book by Swiss-Canadian astrologer Werner Hirsig and so far nobody has been able to identify a verifiable source for this from collections of Einstein's writings and speaches compare this with a 1943 letter to a Eugene Simon where Einstein says you show me your sources and I'll show you mine - but they are easily googled personally I will stick with Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist who heads the Hayden Planetarium in New York: bkkguy

as always we can rely on The Onion: No One Murdered Because Of This Image then there is always John Stuart Mill to remind us why nobody - not even a prophet - should be above comment or criticism bkkguy

yes, I would have thought that being called smarter than HeyGay is certainly a back-handed compliment! bkkguy

all I have said is that the results are so far not statistically significant, you are the one who said "there is a clear majority against bkkguy’s assertion" so don't question my plans - you have already manipulated the results in your favour! yes it does - to obtain a statistically significant result with a 95% confidence level and a confidence interval of 5 for the population of registered users of this site would require a sample size 247 but as you say the population size is the key - this thread has had 421 views and for that size population the required sample size is 201 but how do you calculate unique views and thus a sample size? and what percentage of those who have seen this post have also seen the bangkokbois blog or would go and read the blog before they voted? even if you do a best guess of 20 that would require a sample size of 19 and the fact that this is a self-selecting sample means the results have to be interpreted with even more caution as I have explained above, statistically it is difficult to determine, but if you want a strictly personal opinion I would say that if 10-15 regular posters here had voted then this would probably be a reasonable response because this would include enough of the people I think I know the opinion of about this blog from posts here and elsewhere, and these where the people I was thinking of when I made the original comment about the blog! I don't think 10-15 responses from regular posters here is an unrealistic expectation so if you want to continue to question my motives for starting the poll the go right ahead, but I couldn't be bothered responding further and if you or kokopelli or anyone else needs more theory then go and research it yourself - Statistics 101 is not that difficult a topic! bkkguy

so the poll has so far not produced a statistically significant result, so I have not commented on it, but then the esteemed Khun TW makes a statistically unsupportable claim about the result - sorry, obviously I should have known better than to challenge such a worthy opinion! bkkguy

a "clear majority" - 5 for, 3 against, a total of 8 votes from 609 members - less than 1.5% of the target population have voted and the sampling was by self-selection and you are claiming what exactly has been "proved" here? I have a good manual on common problems with the interpretation of statistics if you would like to borrow it but even if you want to ignore the rigors of valid statistical analysis then looking at the top regular posters here 3 didn't like and 1 liked, so you and fountainhall will have to try a bit harder if you seriously want to prove my assessment wrong! bkkguy

how subtle is the gay theme allowed to be? it is based on a play by Tennessee Williams after all but it was Hollywood in the 1950's! Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) with Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift the BBC TV remake in 1993 was just as subtle and was an interesting production but while Maggie Smith could take on Hepburn's role, Taylor and Clift are not greatly threatened by Rob Low and Natasha Richardson, but this version is probably closer to the original play script so I keep both on my media player! if you don't know the movie don't be too put off by the crap on IMDB - possibly the best plot summary (complete with significant spoilers) is http://www.imdb.com/...053318/synopsis and an interesting quote from the IMDB Trivia page and from wikipedia (same spoliers) bkkguy

interesting - perhaps it is just me but if I am trying to decide if I like the "style" of blog or a specific article I can't ignore content and attitude - I think "style" goes beyond just good grammar. when I say I like the bangkokbois blog's "style" it is because I like his choice of content, and I like the way he presents the content - the wit, the sarcasm, the turn of phrase, the use of language, the captions that go with the images, etc even in the strictest "literal sense" I don't think you can ignore content and attidude and context when considering whether a piece is "well written" - do you use the same critera to judge a piece in the Bangkok Post, the New York Times, the North Korean Nationalist Daily and Fox News? bkkguy

#7 was posted - by you I may point out - AFTER my comment on likes and dislikes and even then you then went on to make disparaging remarks about bangkokbois, so I don't see why you are classing this as a "like", and given you have already admitted on another thread that you use selective quotes to support your arguement I won't bother checking the rest of your "results" bkkguy

given the statements made here and elsewhere by "regular" posters here I am willing to stand by my comment but I have started a poll so I may be proved wrong do you like the writing style in the bangkokbois blog vote away! I am sure fountainhall will be the first to cast his vote! bkkguy