Attractiveness of Thai Culture

To the newcomer, first-time visitor, and even those who stay longer, there are a few aspects that are quite attractive: - Smiles: Thai people are culturally conditioned to smile (even if they don't want to). When someone smiles at you, you feel welcome. - Very little traffic horn honking: This is really nice, where it ... Read more

Role of Speech in Intellect

From 2001 to 2009 I was in a PhD program in the US that had, as many do, students from around the world. Included were students from many Asian countries, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Macau, Thailand, etc. The mainly western professors always became impatient with these students, in their first few years in the ... Read more

Burma now Myanmar in Wikipedia

On 21:07, 13 August 2015 the English Wikipedia article entitled Burma (Myanmar) was renamed Myanmar. One might think this is a simple thing, but far from it. There were several discussions and votes taken every few years on this topic. Note that the main focus was on the concept of the Common Name (as defined ... Read more

Bureaucratic Knowledge – Wikipedia

It is safe to say that the current Wikipedia is slowly dying a death by atrophy. Due to Google algorithms, the death is slow. Nevertheless it currently has a lot of information that is interesting and important (and of course a lot that is trivial and wrong). So, what better system might there be to ... Read more

Web 2015 – What Not To Do

Dear Interwebs, We have a problem. It's not me, it's you. Here is my list: - No Flash - No Popups (in-page or new window) - Cookie and Privacy Policies - Mobile Friendly No Flash Flash is insecure and slow, and there is no good reason for it, except for very limited cases, and usually ... Read more

The Problem with Robots

I've been watching Real Humans and Humans, along with other robot movies. I'm a fan of these and other science fiction TV series and movies. My first science fiction novel was The Tar-Aiym Krang by Allen Dean Foster, who went on to write Alien, Outland, and a host of other fantastic books. So, back to ... Read more

Life Coaching = Astrology + Spam

What is great about Life Coaching is that life is a generalized concept. Just as it appears sometimes that an astrologer or fortune teller can have insight, it is the generalized nature of that insight, combined with pattern recognition, that makes life coaching not only possible, but lucrative on a level completely divorced from the ... Read more

NAS – TimeMachine – AlmondPlus

Note: This post is out of date. The AlmondPlus people sent a refurbished replacement to me, after charging $50 for shipping, and this thing doesn't work half the time, and takes 5 minutes to boot up normally. Piece of junk. Don't trust these hucksters. Oh, and the orginal device died a month after the warranty ... Read more

What's Wrong With Twitter

We can now contemplate the departure of the CEO, whom frankly I always thought was supposed to sell it to Google, as he did Feedburner. Not meeting expectations, what can we see as obvious failures? More Jackass Attitudes A prime example of the ongoing jackass behavior is how Twitter deals with third-party apps. How does ... Read more

Atmospheric Water Generation

It appears that for a good part of the world (the hot and humid part), the water problem will largely be solved. Combined with renewable energy resources (solar, wind, hydro, geo, tidal) this becomes a compound solution, both decreasing relative humidity and temperature, as well as generating clean water. Think of it as air conditioning ... Read more