What Else? No. 2 - Prude Lakorn Edition
“What Else?” is a regular look at all the other things that happened in Thailand, Germany, on the web and in between. A quiet week here on the blog, but I have a few articles prepared. Meanwhile, let's have a quick look what's left this week.
Patrick Winn examines why the M79 grenade launcher is the preferred weapon against political targets. The troubling part is not the easy usage or its availability, but the increasing frequency it is used to terrorize certain political fractions and the broad unrest it creates.
Tumbler, a fellow blogger and twitterer, has dug up a very compelling example that the rift between the so-called 'educated' and 'un-educated' existed long before the deep political crisis of today. A 2008 study on "How East Asians View Democracy" has asked among other things this question: “Do you agree or disagree: People with little or no education should have as much say in politics as highly educated people?”. The results from Thailand are more than sobering...
Does anybody of you watch Thai TV soaps, also known as lakorns? Well, it's always the same pattern isn't it? Andrew Biggs, a Bangkok-based journalist and TV/radio host, has written a piece for the Bangkok Post on a certain hypocrisy often seen on Thai TV. Explicit violence? Hell yeah! On-screen love? God forbid, NO!
And finally it's time for the "WTF?! of the week" where I ‘honor’ stories, persons or anything that makes us initially shout those three letters of confusion. Photographer John Le Fevre has tweeted that English language section of Thailand's government PR department website was blacklisted by Google for being a malicious site, which I also retweeted. But currently Google says the site is not suspicious and it appears to be back to normal again. However, Andy from the blog "Changwat, Amphoe, Tambon" has tipped me off (thanks for that!) that the website of the Thai Senate is still spreading malware through its site:
Of the 258 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 166 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2010-03-05, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2010-03-05.
Malicious software includes 24 exploit(s), 14 scripting exploit(s), 11 trojan(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 1 new process(es) on the target machine.
"Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page for www.senate.go.th", Google, March 5, 2010
Ouch! The best part is, according to Andy, that this hasn't been fixed since December! While he calls it a "Webmaster fail", I call this the "WTF?! of the week"! One cynic fellow has told me this is yet again another evil plot by the elites to keep the common person away from informing oneself about our political institutions - well, click it at your own risk...