Same Old, Same Old Populist Policies

Thailand's newly elected Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej on Monday pledged to re-introduce a host of populist policies associated with the previous Thaksin Shinawatra administration, including a controversial crackdown on drug dealers. Samak, making his first policy statement to parliament, promised debt moratoriums for farmers and the poor, access to cheap health care, cheap housing and loans for small and medium sized businesses, repeating the populist polices first introduced by Thaksin and his Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party during his two-term rule from 2001 to 2006. [via Earthtimes]

 

Sierra Tangos

• My latest offering for The FARANG Speaks 2 Much was posted on their blog today

 

• Coyotes Go Go will host a dance contest on Sunday February 24. It will kick off at 10pm with contestants from 9 big name Pattaya bars competing for Bt.20,000 in prize money.

 

• The risk of being infected by mosquito-borne dengue fever, which can be fatal, runs high this year, health officials warn yesterday. So far, four people have died from the fever this year. The situation will be far worse than last year, partly because of global warming. Mosquitoes carrying the disease have adapted to these swings in climate conditions and are able to survive and reproduce at an alarming rate, he said. This tougher breed of mosquitoes will most likely increase the rate of infection, he said. [via Bangkok Post]

 

• Australian police have arrested an Australian woman they say tried to smuggled almost 900 grammes of heroin into Auss from Thailand. She produced two internally concealed packages containing white powder, believed to be heroin, the AFP said. [via Bangkok Post]

 

• A 25 year old Australian woman in Pattaya 'falsely' accuses 3 Thai men of rape [via Pattaya City News]

 

• 3 men arrested following Beach Road assault on American tourist [via Pattaya City News]

 

• Fix Stuck Pixels on Your Monitor with Killdeadpixel - like previously mentioned JScreenFix, Killdeadpixel unsticks pixels by displaying a quickly changing, high-contrast graphic over the pixel—but Killdeadpixel does it with a neat little draggable graphic, so you can just place the unobtrusive graphic over your stuck pixel and let it do its work. Despite the site's name (which is a misnomer), a stuck pixel is normally stuck showing red, green, blue, or a combination of those colors, and that is what this site can help with. A dead pixel, on the other hand, will display only black. Luckily dead pixels can be fixed with another method. [via LifeHacker]

 

• Check your Hard Drives with HD Tune

HD Tune is a hard disk analyzer that offers a wealth of information about the internal hard drives that are connected to the computer. It does display general information like the type of the hard drive, the serial number, capacity, firmware version and buffer size which are nice to know because it allows you to check if that hard drive is the correct one. I remember more than one instance where a friend of mine bought a hard drive only to find out that the clerk handed him one that had a lower capacity and different model number.

Far more interesting is the information about the supported and active transfer mode. If the active transfer mode does not equal the supported one you need to check on that because your hard drives are not running at top speeds then. A list of supported features of the hard drive is also shown which give you a wealth of information as well.

The temperature of the hard drive is shown in the program window as well and in the system tray so that you can react if it should rise to a level that the manufacturer deemed risky. If that is the case you need to check on the cooling system of the computer and probably add another fan to it. [via gHacks technology]

 

 

• Kimberly Holland from Playboy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Zdenka Podkapova sets off the fireworks

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

• The Canadians have decided to redesign their currency to prevent the radical Muslims from even touching it! It is also hoped that this will have a positive effect on tourism: 

 

 

 

Muslim terrorists have to kill themselves if they see a naked woman, those Canadians always find the solution!  Must be the pure water up there in the North.

 

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