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I order a lot of parts for work.

Lots for from overseas.

If I order from St Witz or Singapore by 930 am today I can have it 830 am next day.

I don't know where you live, but you can hire or steal a truck pretty easily here in Australia (one of the most heavily regulated countries in the world). And our regulations haven't stopped recent idiots mowing down people with cars on purpose (Melbourne!!!). They're thinking of putting bollards in place in strategic locations - because you can't regulate away what we don't want happening.

Yes, some things kill at lower rates than the examples but I had to end somewhere.

Vehicle ownership is not essential. You can have public transport service everyone just fine (e.g. Singapore). Of course, some people argue that what is good for Singapore may not be suitable for themselves (i.e. it is essential in my scenario because I say it is). And you can extend that same argument to firearms (that they are essential in someone else's scenario). Firearms have a measured economic benefit, protection benefit, health benefit (active outdoor sports), military benefit, etc.

Modern civilisation works fine (I'd argue it works better) without private vehicles. Try having a civilisation without firearms - you'll have to have awfully large mobs of bobbies armed with nothing but sticks. Good luck with that

I grew up in a Christian home (Methodist) but never really bought in and considered myself an atheist from about ~12 years old or so.

@poolcleaner said that atheists might be the worst at "respect(ing) my beliefs and recogniz(ing) that I am not recruiting them and they are not recruiting me".

There's two parts of that. Respecting other beliefs, and not proselytizing.

Just speaking for myself, I would say that I am an atheist specifically because I don't respect the Christian beliefs that I grew up with, and feel much the same way about the dogmatic elements of any religion. Most religions share the basic tenet of the "Golden Rule" (or claim that they do), and as far as I am concerned that is the only thing of value to be found in any religion -- although it can exist perfectly fine outside of any religious context.

That's where proselytizing comes in though. For a while when I was younger, I wanted to "spread the good news" of atheism -- to show others what was so obvious and important to me, that idea that the Golden Rule works just as well outside of any religious context. I was "indignant" (as poolcleaner put it) and quick to tell people that I am atheist and to sort of "pick a fight" about it. I wanted to show people just how stupid and wrong they were.

I think LOTS of atheists are like that, especially early on after they part ways with religion. To be fair, a lot of that is defensiveness since atheists tend to get proselytized to a LOT by Christians that learn/discover that they are an atheist -- especially in the US.

Now I'm 20 years older and I live in a country that is 95% Buddhist, 4% Islamic, and 1% Christian/Other. Thailand isn't even really close to the most diverse Asian country in religious terms (Singapore has 5 religions with 10%+ of the population, with Buddhist being the most at 34%) but there is an air of practiced religious acceptance / tolerance here that is WAY different from back home in the US.

I'd wager that amongst the major religions, Christianity might contain the highest percentage of the "proselytizing type" -- those that really strongly believe in the message enough to want to spread it to those who don't, or those that have never really questioned their beliefs but who nonetheless buy in enough to think that it is important to get it out there. On the other hand, there are many more Christians who may be very strong believers but who are comfortable keeping that all internal and not proselytizing.

With atheists, I'd say that there is a high correlation between being very "out" / open about their atheism and being the "proselytizing type" of atheist. So, if you know that someone is an atheist, it is fairly likely that they will be a bit "indignant" about it. If someone is an atheist but doesn't feel the need to inform others about it, most people would never know/assume they were an atheist. I'm not talking about "closeted" atheists; just the difference between those who are going to tell you within 10 minutes of meeting you that they are an atheist without the subject ever coming up, and those that will only mention it if you directly ask them about it.

Keeping that it mind, I can actually believe that from an outside perspective, known atheists might be more aggressive than known Christians just due to that sort of selection bias. Maybe.

Desal can be awesome ... for islands with a high percentage of revenues coming from tourism (lots of Caribbean examples), or for City-States that have high population density and lots of money-making industry (Singapore).

California is *huge*, with lots of revenue coming from agriculture. Not enough tourism per square mile to pass the costs on to visitors, like with Caribbean islands, and not really enough population / commercial density to make it an ideal solution for those uses either.


...On the other hand, economy of scale can't start kicking in until you get some early adopters. By throwing some money at this now, California might be making a smart investment towards having better and cheaper desal options that could fill a higher percentage of their water needs in the future.

Straight after submitting my earlier comment, I came across an article on the BBC site that covers this - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35966612

The author of that article shares my suspicions about Delaware LLCs (and drags out a quote that "Somalia has slightly higher standards than Wyoming and Nevada."), and also says that those who wanted to avoid taxes preferred other places, like Bermuda, the Cayman Islands or Singapore, and not Panama. FATCA has also made things harder.

I was surprised myself!

The very best vegetarian meat substitute dish I ever had was in Singapore, and was a tofu-skin "chicken" drumstick with sugarcane in the middle. It didn't really try to be like chicken, but was absolutely delicious.

Nope, not true.
Almost every international airport I've been to in the past 10 years (NZ, Australia, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Singapore, Japan, New Caledonia, Dubai, UAE, USA, Mexico) has the same checks for fluids above 100ml in a little clear plastic bag, the same "remove your laptop, etc".

At least most of them have dropped the retarded "take off your shoes" bullshit.

Odd ive used my vpn and seems everywhere seems to work although i dont have one specific to Thailand. Singapore is the closest my vpn connects through.

English is the official language of India, although the current Hindu nationalist party is trying to push Hindi as an alternative, and one of the official languages of Singapore (along with Malay, Mandarin Chinese, and Tamil).

It's not the official language of the others, but is widely spoken.

What other language do Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam and India have in common?

So it would seem that the concept of red-light cameras is debated by special interest groups on both sides, with strong lobbying from red-light camera vendors. The wikipedia summary explains the controversy thus: "Authorities cite public safety as the primary reason that the cameras are installed, while opponents contend their use is more for financial gain. There have been concerns that red light cameras scare drivers (who want to avoid a ticket) into more sudden stops, which may increase the risk of a rear-end collisions."

The same Wikipedia article summarizes the research thus: "A report in 2003 by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) examined studies from the previous 30 years in Australia, the UK, Singapore and the US, and concluded that red light cameras "improve the overall safety of intersections where they are used." While the report states that evidence is not conclusive (partly due to flaws in the studies), the majority of studies show a reduction in angle crashes, a smaller increase in rear-end crashes, with some evidence of a “spillover” effect of reduced red light running to other intersections within a jurisdiction. These findings are similar to a 2005 meta analysis, which compared the results of 10 controlled before-after studies of red light cameras in the US, Australia and Singapore. The analysis stated that the studies showed a reduction in crashes (up to almost 30%) in which there were injuries, however, evidence was less conclusive for a reduction in total collisions. Studies of red light cameras worldwide show a reduction of crashes involving injury by about 25% to 30%, taking into account increases in rear-end crashes, according to testimony from a meeting of the Virginia House of Delegates Militia, Police, and Public Safety Committee in 2003. These findings are supported by a review of more than 45 international studies carried out in 2010, which found that red light cameras reduce red light violation rates, crashes resulting from red light running, and usually reduce right-angle collisions."

There are enough interesting sources there that you can still find confirmation for your particular bias, whatever it is, if you so choose.

went to 3 different Chinese New Years dinners this week. Lots of hot pot (aka steamboat). Earlier tonight was the first time we did Yu Sheng (description). It's not well known outside of Singapore & Malaysia, so it's not surprising they didn't mention it.

Not only did the german ship seem dangerously close to the bank to begin with, they seem to have overcorrected a massive amount when they had plenty of time to reverse thrust.
At the same time, it didn't seem like the Singapore ship even tried to evade an obvious vector of collision. Crazy.

Singapore. Malaysians tend to say tree for three as well (and @westy has a lot of typos)

This video was way ahead of the curve, the technique has just come up again recently.

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