Reference: The judgement of the World Court 1962, Bangkok Post, June 25, 2008

The essence of the agreement between Thailand and the French in the early 1900s with respect to the border between them in the region of Preah Vihear is that the border corresponds with the watershed line. The opinion of the World Court in 1962 that Preah Vihear falls on the Cambodian side is based on the logic that the French had drawn the map that way and that the Thais had seen it but had been silent on the issue of Preah Vihear. In so doing, the Court took it upon itself to interpret Thailand's silence and concluded that their silence could only mean that Thailand had accepted the map as drawn. This interpretation is logically flawed because the silence of the Thais may also be interpreted to mean that they were waiting for positive verification that the French line corresponded with the watershed. It is very clear that Thailand had never accepted anything but the watershed line as the limits of their territory. Now that we know that the French map does not correspond with the watershed; and since the watershed still stands as the only agreement that both Thailand and the French had explicitly accepted, it is clear that the Court erred in its opinion and that the matter should be reviewed in its entirety. The map drawn by the French and the opinion passed by the World Court contravene the treaty between Thailand and the French with respect to their border in the region of Preah Vihear.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Striking a good balance, Bangkok Post, June 25, 2008

It is reported that Thailand's central bank is formulating plans to control inflation by increasing interest rates (Striking a good balance, Bangkok Post, June 25, 2008). This monetarist tool applies when inflation is driven by consumer demand in a surging economy and may not apply when inflation is imposed by external shocks in a stagnant economy. In that case, the monetarist medicine may be worse than the disease as we have seen during the stagflation years in America some years ago.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Atoll leader asks Australia for aid as tide rises, Bangkok Post, June 21, 2008

It is reported that man-made global warming has caused a rise in the sea level sufficient to inundate an atoll in Kiribati, a chain of 33 such islands (Atoll leader asks Australia for aid as tide rises, Bangkok Post, June 21, 2008). Atolls form when a volcanic island sinks by subduction until only a ring of coral around the submerged island remains. Atolls exist as long as the rate of subduction is less than the rate of coral growth. When the rate of coral growth does not keep up with the rate of subduction, the coral island becomes inundated with sea water. It is a natural geological phenomenon that cannot be related in any way whatsoever to man-made global warming or greenhouse gas emissions. One should also consider that if rising sea level were the cause of such inundation it would affect all atolls not just one; and that available sea level data do not show that the sea level is rising. South Pacific islanders have been abandoning sinking atolls since time immemorial. They are not climate refugees. They are subduction refugees.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Gore has right stuff for second turn as No. 2, Bangkok Post, June 21, 2008

The article in the Bangkok Post by Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg News pitching Gore for Obama's running mate (Gore has right stuff for second turn as No. 2, Bangkok Post, June 21, 2008) reads more like eulogy than politics. The article argues that Gore has been wronged, that he has suffered, that he has gotten over it, that the 2000 election was a tough loss for him, and that in spite of it all he did not sulk; and therefore the nation owes him. Let us hope that no presidential candidate ever chooses a running mate on such a silly basis. As of this writing the odds makers have Obama ahead two to one over McCain. Clearly, this election is for Obama to lose and I can think of no better way for him to do that than to select Al "global warming" Gore as his running mate.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Dykes planned to prevent city flooding, Bangkok Post, June 18, 2008

It is reported that the Thai authorities are planning to spend 30 billion THB to build a 100-km dike to protect Bangkok from rising sea levels caused by global warming (Dykes planned to prevent city flooding, Bangkok Post, June 18, 2008). Bangkok tends to flood during the rainy season particularly when high tide and increased river flow coincide. These floods are getting worse year by year because Bangkok is sinking. Sooner or later Thailand will have to invest in appropriate flood control infrastructure to deal with this problem. However, that has nothing to do with rising sea level, global warming, or greenhouse gas emissions. For a start, there is no evidence that the sea level is rising. The globe has not warmed for a number of years and over the last year it has cooled significantly. The core basis of the Kyoto Protocol, that man, through his use of fossil fuels, holds a knob that he can turn to control global temperature, is inconsistent with the data.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Model students or not, Bangkok Post, June 18, 2008

Researchers often cannot see the forest for the trees so deep are they in the data, their hypotheses, and their statistics and often end up making discoveries that are statistically significant but trivial otherwise (Model students or not, Bangkok Post, June 18, 2008). What the American researchers have discovered is not that ethnic "Asians" differ in educational achievement but that there is no such ethnic group. Asia is a very large and ethnically diverse place. Demographic data recorded by American universities and employers do not reflect this reality.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Surviving the rough times, Bangkok Post, June 17, 2008

The lecture by Thailand's finance ministry on how to survive the rough times (Surviving the rough times, Bangkok Post, June 17, 2008) is bitter irony because it is the finance ministry itself that sits at the nexus of a banking system that is inherently metastable and ill-suited for surviving rough times. The Bank of Thailand, the country's central bank and bank regulator, is not an independent body. Although it is held responsible for bank discipline, in fact it takes its orders directly from the finance ministry. At the same time most of the nation's banking assets are held by state owned banks. The manager of each these banks is held accountable for the bank's performance and yet she too takes orders from the finance ministry. That makes the finance ministry at once the nation's bank regulator and its largest banker but without any accountability whatsoever. The ministry outsources that responsibility to the BOT and to the managers of state owned banks. The finance ministry acknowledges that a "public service accounting system" needs to be applied but it has not been applied and there are no plans to implement such a system possibly because it implies that the responsibility for making policy directed loans will shift from bank managers to the government. The banking architecture of Thailand is not built to survive rough times.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Ireland votes "no" to Lisbon Treaty, June 15, 2008

The failure of the EU to form a federation along the lines of the USA first with the failed draft constitution and then with the failed Lisbon Treaty shows that the all or nothing plan will not work. They might wish to follow the way that the USA has grown by first forming a federation of the willing and then allowing other EU members to join if and when they wish to do so. The EU already exists at least at two levels - the economic union alone and the common currency club. It should be pretty simple to extend the idea to three levels. Britain, for example, has rejected the Euro but apparently wishes to join the federation and Ireland has rejected federation but has adopted the Euro.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Parking remains a lost art for many Bangkok drivers, Bangkok Post, June 16, 2008

According to a Bangkok Post Commentary (Parking remains a lost art for many Bangkok drivers, Bangkok Post, June 16, 2008), "Unless you're burning off premium benzene at over 40 baht per litre, cruising on LPG/CNG, or second-guessing the merits of gasohol - you park your car". The article also says that a certain soi in Bangkok is "exacerbated by oversized commercial trucks loaded with carbonated soft drinks, who ... can roam the streets of Bangkok at all times, thus continuing the plight of brittle bones and calcium deficiency in our population". Referring to a car parked at the entrance to a soi it says "You turn into the soi where that vehicle is parked on either side of the lane".

I would like to offer my humble suggestion that these sentences are nonsensical. Along with most of the article, they belong in the category of odd prose. Parking isn't the only lost art in Bangkok, apparently.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Abhisit urges PM to call general debate, Bangkok Post, June 14, 2008


It appears that Mr Abhisit is too polite to be an effective opposition in Parliament against the Incredible Hulk. We have neither an effective opposition bench nor a vigorous free press that can hold the government accountable and therefore we must depend on civil society to perform that critical function of democracy. That is why we need civic groups like the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD).

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Fortune teller, June 15, 2008

At a Buddhist temple that we often visit with gifts of food there is a Las Vegas style slot machine that offers prophesy instead of a jackpot. When the coin drops, a light that moves in a circle stops at a random spot that was your destiny and a computer voice tells you which row and column to use. In a glass case next to the machine lie many rows of printed pads. You must find the pad that is yours and tear out a page. It contains your fortune in Thai and Chinese script. Devotee bow to the machine to accept their fate before collecting their fortune. Gambling is more than skin deep in Asia. It derives from a belief in the overwhelming importance of luck. When life itself is a game of chance, gaming is not limited to casinos or lotteries. It is a way of life.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: About politics, Bangkok Post, June 12, 2008

One wonders how much actual work is involved in being a Minister in the Government of Thailand. Many cabinet members work two full time jobs and yet have sufficient leisure time for family and recreation. The Minister of Finance, the Minister of Commerce, and the Minister of Industry also work full time as Deputy Prime Minister. The Prime Minister himself moonlights as Defense Minister.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Odd prose from an advertisement in the Bangkok Post, June 11, 2008

1. Due to energy awareness of people around the world with in this decade, crude oil has to be classifying as main power source since long time ago.
2. Ethyly alcohol or called ethanol is one type of alcohol in form of no color, clear liquid but very sensitive flammable with very high octane.
3. Unfortunately, most topics today for ethanol is to use as fuel, substitute or mixed with gasoline that are processed from agriculture.
4. This seems to be a diamond of agriculture time.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Global cooling

The global mean temperature for May 2008 is reported to be 14.39C, or 0.35 Centigrade degrees cooler than in May of 2007 when it was 14.74C. The six-month moving average temperature in May 2008 was 14.4733C, or 0.3534 Centigrade degrees cooler than the corresponding value for May of 2007 when it was 14.8267C. It appears that the planet has a mind of its own and has embarked on a cooling trend despite all those greenhouse gases that human activity has emitted and a runaway global warming scenario past the tipping point that the IPCC had predicted. The global warmists are being rather quiet about these data. Had temperature differences of this magnitude been in the other direction there would have been plenty of noise.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: The Cosmic Christ, Bangkok Post, June 10, 2008

The genius of Deepak Chopra (The Cosmic Christ, Bangkok Post, June 10, 2008) is more in marketing than in cosmic affairs. Seizing a window of opportunity some years ago, he sold touchy-feely philosophy as Eastern mysticism to the New Age market in the West; and when he discovered that conservative Christians eschewed New Age religion he entered that market segment as well and sold them exactly the same stuff re-packaged as Jesus Christ. It is a superb marketing achievement.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: More Japanese join test of fuel of future, Bangkok Post, June 9, 2008

It is reported that Japan intends to use household fuel cells to "kick its addiction to fossil fuels" (More Japanese join test of fuel of future, Bangkok Post, June 9, 2008). It should be recognized in this context that these fuel cells run on natural gas and therefore they do not represent an alternative to fossil fuels. In this arrangement hydrogen is not a source of energy but a delivery mechanism. As for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, there is no real way around the stoichiometric relationships of methane combustion whether it is carried out in conventional engines or in fuel cells.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Global viewpoint, Bangkok Post, June 8, 2008

Ever since America ascended, it has been predicted with some regularity, particularly in times of economic shocks, that it will soon decline; and these predictions continue to this day (Global viewpoint, Bangkok Post, June 8, 2008). And yet America hasn't declined. The failure of these predictions may have to do with innovation. It is something that America does particularly well and something that fundamentally alters the equations that pundits use to make their forecasts of doom.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

The inconvenient truth about college professors from Dave Barry's 2004 commencement address

This is your big day - the day you leave college prepared by your professors to go out into the Real World. The first thing you'll notice is that your professors are not going out there with you. They are not that stupid; that's why they are professors. They've figured out that college is a carefree place where the most serious real problem is finding a legal parking space. So your professors are going to stay in college until they die. This is called "tenure". But you have committed the grave tactical blunder of acquiring enough credits to graduate.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Opposition leader jailed for contempt, Bangkok Post, June 3, 2008

What China can learn from Singapore is that it is not necessary to cling to the old and clunky one-party system to run an autocracy. It is perfectly safe to allow other political parties to exist as long as you have the right kind of legal and criminal justice system in place to make sure that they don't actually get to rule. Once it does that, China can become a full-fledged multi-party democracy with constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and human rights but with certain safeguards in place to protect the state from lunatics and anti-state elements. That way the world can fully embrace China as an upstanding and democratic member of the international community just as they fully embrace Singapore today.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Polar bear numbers set to fall, Bangkok Post, June 4, 2008

The survival of the polar bear is threatened because man made global warming is melting ice in the Arctic according to an article in the Bangkok Post (Polar bear numbers set to fall, Bangkok Post, June 4, 2008). It is true that the Arctic ice anomaly - the difference between how much there is and how much ice there should be at any given time of year - was down in negative territory by October of last year. The loss of Arctic sea ice emboldened global warming scaremongers to declare it a climate change disaster caused by greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and to issue a series of scenarios about environmental holocaust yet to come. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the ice anomaly has completely disappeared. In fact, an ice breaker cruise ship that was supposed to give adventure tourists a look at a Northwest Passage opened by climate change became stuck in the ice. The article on the threat to polar bears due to ice anomalies in the Arctic is itself an anomaly given current ice data.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand