Where is David?

Have you ever wondered what life was like 200 years ago? Let’s see…that would be about 1806, Napoleon is still hanging around Europe, electricity is still just a theory, and the Louisiana Purchase was only recently completed.
If you consider your average generation to be 25 years, that would mean I had approximately 8 generations in between now and then, which would be my great (times 5) grandparents were alive at the time, all 128 of them. (of course, this is probably not the case, but just using average figures here)

Anyways, my point is, of my 128 relatives alive at the time, I know absolutely nothing about them. Sure, there are some family stories about some distant relative doing something or another, but this information is very sparse and difficult to confirm.

What’s going to change in the future, however, is the internet is basically going to be a huge time capsule. There are sites out there that record everything that happens on the internet, possibly the most famous is archive.org. It’s interesting (to me, at least) to think that in the future, perhaps my (and your) distant relatives will be combing through the internet, researching their ancestors, trying to discover where they come from.

I guess they’ll have lots of information to sift through. I can barely find emails in my inbox, so can’t imagine what it will be like to do historical research using the internet in the future. Hopefully Google will still be around.

So to all you in the future, I’d like to say hello and welcome to my webpage. (By the way, sorry about global warming)

Japanese culture summed up in an eight minute, ten second video:

turned the comment feature back on for this ‘blog’…feel free to write what you think about what I’m saying on here, or just to say hi to me (and everyone else who reads this thing)

Didn’t know 2 things about Kevin Smith:

#1. He’s Australian
#2. He convinced me that I, too, can video blog.

Not 100% certain what Net Neutrality means and why I should be for it, and maybe after watching this video you’ll feel the same way.

I’ll be the first to admit, my filtered-down level of news that I receive here in Thailand is not the greatest. Instead of commenting on a New York Times article that I’ve read firsthand, I have to comment on a piece commenting on said article. Still, I persist.
Basically, my main beef is with this article at abc7.com http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=nation_world&id=4675085 .
It is basically saying that President Bush agrees that the latest Iraq violence is similar to the Tet Offensive.

Oh my F’in gosh….the Tet Offensive? That means that we’re entering into a quagmire that no amount of righteousness can overcome, right?

Well, wrong…for 2 reasons.

#1: President Bush is a moron
#2: The Tet Offensive was not a ‘bad’ thing

I think number one pretty much speaks for itself. If you need to look up ‘bushisims’ or some other quote to see how many stupid things the guy has said in the past, then by all means, please do so. He pretty much gives Br’er Rabbit’s Tar Baby a run for the money in stupidity.

Number two probably says more about ABC, the New York Times, and Thomas Friedman than it does about President Bush. Read your history people, the Tet Offensive was a military failure for the North Vietnamese (and Viet Cong). They got their asses handed to them on a platter, 10 of their soldiers killed for every 1 South Vietnamese, pretty much a whopping military defeat however you’re counting.

Somehow, this notion of the Tet Offensive as a military success for the North Vietnamese somehow crept into popular culture, possibly as a result of our fascination with Pearl Harbor, which was a success, but not as much as it could have been.

For those of you ignorant to history, the reason why the U.S. ‘lost’ Vietnam were as follows:

#1: we weren’t there
#2: we knew we weren’t going to be there

Well, the reason I put ‘lost’ in quotes is because it’s hard to lose an argument when you’re not present. It’s pretty much like not showing up for a court appearance, you’re assumed to be in the wrong, but it’s not always so.

#1 is absolutely true and a pretty boring fact that people don’t seem to understand. They get caught up in pictures of helicopters evacuating people from the U.S. embassy and assume that it was the result of a military defeat. The truth is, the U.S. left South Vietnam in 1973, and the North took over in 1975. (Tet Offensive, 1968 by the way).

#2 is a bit more interesting, considering it is a perfect example of America selling its soul to the devil and then completely denying we ever did so. Basically, we completely double-crossed our South Vietnamese allies. The South Vietnamese we were supporting were a brutal, oppressive regime, but they were our friends. A year before we pulled out, Kissinger met secretly with the ‘communist’ Chinese (ahem, if only Mao could see Shanghai now) to basically tell them “It’s ok if you take over Vietnam”. Check this link if you need more info about this.

What’s my point? Well….just….don’t believe everything you read in that darn liberal media. The writer of the NYT article was playing off Americans belief that the Tet Offensive was a bad thing, which is totally inaccurate. While it did indicate a shift in opinion about the Vietnam War, it was not a military defeat like many mistakenly believe it to be.

By the way, the columnist responsible for the article is quite an interesting fellow, and deserves some extra research if you get a chance…….. Thomas Friedman

Speaking of the Tet Offensive, I think everyone’s seen this photo before…….

I’ll let you do your own research to see what the story behind it is……I can’t spoonfeed all this stuff to you people!

a little entry for my friends in China

just a friendly hello from the (other) city of angels.
designed by my tasmanian friend Dave.

An interesting thing about Thailand is that movies are really cheap here, just $2.50 for a ticket. Ok, actually, that’s not such an interesting fact, but let’s roll with it. The point is, I usually watch about a movie a week in the theaters and figured I could share this element of my life for the benefit of mankind in the form of movie reviews.

Minor problem, however. Sometimes, movies arrive in Thailand months behind their American debut, thus nullifying any impact these reviews will have on the majority of people’s choice in movies. Still, I persist.

The first movie I’ll put on this site is ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. I haven’t read the book, so unfortunately my comments won’t do much good for people who would be interested in how it would compare, but I do consider myself an insightful movie-goer and hope some of these comments help people in some way.

Upon hearing the title and seeing the advertising for the film, I immediately thought ‘Chick Flick’. While ‘chicks’ might get more out of this film than others, especially in the fashion industry, don’t be scared away by this movie for that reason, cause I think it has something to offer almost everyone.

Meryl Streep is great, as usual, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for this role. In addition to her, the film is supported by a great supporting cast, and I can’t think of anyone in the film who I would consider did a poor job.

The lighting and cinematography are ok, but this film isn’t about spectacular film style anyway, so that’s to be expected. It’s done in a somewhat romantic comedy style, lots of soft lighting, easy on the eyes, with a realistic feel but not video-y at all. gets the job done in this department.

People who would really enjoy this movie are those who have worked in the entertainment/media industries before. In my experience in working at a record company, there were basically two kinds of people, complete jerks (trust me, I can think of many more colorful words to call these people, but I’m trying to clean up my language here) and really cool down-to-earth people. One part of this film I’d have to disagree with is that the characters are often blends of these two different types, which is something I never saw working in the industry (3+ years).

The character arc of the main character (Andrea) is a bit cheesy and predictable, but luckily there’s so much more to this movie than that plot line that it’s hardly noticeable. Story isn’t this movie’s strong point, but the great job it does at showing an interesting portrait in a life in ‘haute couture’ overshadows this.

I’d recommend it to most people (except kids and frat dudes).

8/10

Not really much news on this front, pretty uneventful, this coup should be ashamed of even calling itself a coup. Check out this link for an insightful explanation into the coup. I’d say this author has a pretty good grasp of the situation.

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/09/30/002511.php

also, about 2 days after the coup, I finally saw my first soldiers in Bangkok. They were guarding the central train station here in Bangkok. I took a couple of photos of them.

Thai coup photos

Sep 30, 2006 - 4 Photos