Smoking Ban In Thailand To Have Teeth

Police ready to arrest breakers of smoking ban

Responding to the Public Health Ministry's regulation to ban smoking in air-conditioned pubs, discos and clubs from February 11, Metropolitan Police Friday had all of Bangkok's 88 police stations ready to arrest and fine any rule breakers.

City deputy police commissioner MajGeneral Suporn Phanseua said all officers were ready to reinforce the new rule by fining smokers Bt2,000 and venue operators Bt20,000.

Police will act upon public complaints or the Public Health Ministry's request for inspection of entertainment establishments, rather than pressuring the establishments themselves, he said, adding that he believed all venues would give full cooperation.

Smoking is already prohibited in airconditioned restaurants but the ministry's regulation to include airconditioned pubs, discos, bars and parts of outdoor public venues such as Chatuchak Weekend Market will take effect as of February 17. [via The Nation]

Ed. I just can't see bar-keeps risking a Bt20,000 fine to let people smoke. They are already getting hit with fines for incorrect music licenses so they don't need to give the police an easy excuse for further fines. On top of that I suspect non smokers will blow the whistle on offending bars so there can only be one outcome.  Nosmo King. 

 

Sierra Tangos

• It's the Blues Factory 7th Anniversary Party tomorrow, Feb 9

 

• Department of Special Investigation (DSI) on Friday asked prosecutors to formally charge ousted prime minister's wife Pojaman Shinawatra and two executives on charges of assets concealment involving SC Asset Corp, a listed firm on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). [via Bangkok Post]

Ed. Strikes me as too little too late

 

• If you are planning your next trip to Thailand then May is a good month to miss as it's Cobra Gold time

 

• Paper saying Thaksin plans quick return [via Bangkok Post]

 

• Slain Canadian tourist "begged policemen to stop" [via The Nation]

 

• Florida v Hull Annual Belly-Button Jewelry Contest

Florida's Entry:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scroll to end of this post for Hull's entry.......

 

 

• Eye opening post from Martin Meenagh via Neil Clarke under the headline, "Afghanistan - It's Time To Get Out":

Here is a list of all those major powers who have invaded Afghanistan at one time or another. I do not pretend that it is authoritatively exhaustive, but believe that it may be.

• Alexander the Great
• Arab Islam
• Mahmud of Ghazni and the Ghaznavids
• Genghis Khan
• Tamerlaine
• The Turks
• The Moghuls
• The British Empire
• The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 1979-1989
• NATO

Here is a list of those who managed to hold the place without any major massacres, corruption, devastation, or the ultimate collapse of their hold from exhaustion, bankruptcy or foreign invasion so far.

0.

Here is a list of those who ended up being accused of overstretch, brutality, the collapse of self confidence, and folie de grandeur (and that was those of the group not remembered by a species prone to psychosis as monsters).

All of them.

 

• Sex Tourism - Sex Travel Adventures Of An Average Joe is a pretty self explanatory blog title. The only additional thing you need to know is Joe spends most of his time travelling in South America. Worth a read if you want to compare the fleshpots of South America with those in S.E. Asia.

 

• Video Downloader aTube Catcher - if you are looking for a complete video downloader that supports a wide variety of video portals and offers lots of extras not found in any other video downloader you might want to check out aTube Catcher (via Genbeta). The software supports 90 video portals currently including Youtube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, Myspace, Dailymotion, Bebo, Break, Metacafe and Stage6.

Videos can be downloaded by pasting their url in the tool. If you want to download more than one file you can use the queue manager or provide the url of the Youtube playlist which will download the videos that you want from it. Videos are automatically converted into another format (avi, mpg, mp4, psp, 3gp, mov..) after download if you choose so.

Some functions of the utility are still experimental but very promising. Users can log into Youtube for instance to download private videos from the website. The video capture function will monitor a network card which will automatically download videos from the supported websites to a folder on your hard drive.

[via gHacks Technology]

 

 

• Enso Words is a free program that offers a number of text-related functions that can be performed universally within any application. These include a spellcheck, word definitions, thesaurus, word and character counts, uppercase/lowercase conversions, instantly Googling selected text, and others.

  Enso Words is part of the Enso group of applications, a collection of task-oriented software that employ the same basic interface and method of interaction with the user. They are designed to perform simple tasks - tasks that might otherwise interrupt your workflow or require shifting your focus from your work- quickly and easily.

  This is an exciting and promising line of products. The spellchecker (which is the main draw for me) is very nicely implemented and has a nice feeling to it, and I’m sure that any glitches that exist at the moment will be fixed in future releases. [via freewaregenius]

Ed. The beauty of this product is it works anywhere that you can highlight text, whether it be online or offline. Spend just 5mins on the tutorial and you will know all you need to know about Enso Word to use the product to it's full effect.

 

 

• The Mozilla team has released a new version of Mozilla Firefox. I did not get an automatic notification that a new version has been released and had to go to Help > Check for Updates manually to find out that a new update for Firefox has been released. It is most likely that the automatic update will kick in later today, for now use the way described above or go directly to the Firefox homepage and download the new version from there.

The release notes contain a list of things that have been fixed and improved in Firefox 2.0.0.12. The list contains three critical fixes, one high fix, three moderate and three low ones. My advise is to update the browser immediately to close this security vulnerabilities. [via gHacks technology]

 

 

 

• Amii Grove - Zoo UK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Elle in violet

 

 

 

 

 

• Hillary's dream - Driving Miss..........

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• My name is Alice Smith and I was sitting in the waiting room for my first appointment with a new dentist. I noticed his DDS Diploma, which bore his full name. Suddenly I remembered a tall, handsome, dark-haired boy with the same name who had been in my high school class some 40-odd years ago. Could he be the same guy that I had a secret crush on way back then? Upon seeing him however, I quickly discarded any such thought. This balding, grey-haired man with the deeply lined face was way too old to have been my classmate. After he examined my teeth, I asked him if he had attended Morgan Park High School. "Yes. yes, I did. I'm a Mustang," he gleamed with pride. "When did you graduate?" I asked. He answered, "in 1959. Why do you ask?" "You were in my class!" I exclaimed. He looked at me closely. Then, that ugly, old, bald wrinkled, fat, gray, decrepit son-of-a-bitch asked, "What did you teach?"

 

• Florida v Hull Annual Belly-Button Jewelry Contest

Hull's Entry (aka Matty's bird):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and the winner is......

 

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