StoneSoup

My kind of bike: http://youtu.be/9BMcks55vfE

Extremely cool video about a "sport" in Taiwan, of which I had never before heard

For the record: A VISA is a paste-in decal, inserted into your passport at a Thai diplomatic post outside of Thailand, by an official of the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A VISA cannot be extended - ever. It has a fixed "use by" date - which is the last date that it can be used. An ENTRY PERMIT is an ink-stamp placed into your passport by an Immigration Officer who works for the Royal Thai Police. It has an "admitted until" date, which is its normal expiration date. An ENTRY PERMIT can be extended - for the rest of your life, in many cases. You initial ENTRY PERMIT is issued in a Class that is dependent upon the Class of the VISA you used to enter the country. Subsequent extensions of that ENTRY PERMIT may be in that same class, or in another class. The class of many (but not all) ENTRY PERMITS can be converted (the ones that cannot be converted are Class ED and Class O - Retirement). If you get a new passport, a currently active ENTRY PERMIT can be transferred to the new passport at an Immigration office. VISAS will not be transferred - they expect you to carry the old passport, and show the still valid visa from that booklet, to receive the resulting ENTRY PERMIT in your new passport. Cheers! SS

It looks like a duck (martial law), it walks like a duck (martial law), it quacks like a duck (martial law), it swims like duck (martial law) - but I guess it's a pigeon. Whew .... 'Wouldn't want any of that "martial law" stuff getting out of the bag.....

I'm sure that certain junta leaders are still fondly reminiscing about the "good old days" when a red oil drum eliminated all their pesky problems. SS

A VISA is paste-in decal, issued by a diplomatic post of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and is meaningful only at an entry point into Thailand, in that it determines the type of ENTRY PERMIT that is issued to the traveler. A VISA cannot be extended - all VISAS have a fixed and unchangeable expiration date, which applies unless the VISA is voided earlier by traveler having used up the specified number of entries permitted by that VISA. An ENTRY PERMIT is an ink stamp placed into a passport by an Immigration officer - either at entry point into Thailand, or at an Immigration office. And ENTRY PERMIT can be extended innumerable times, until the end of your life, if you meet extension criteria. gawguy - in your case, they are asking about the diplomatic post outside of Thailand, at which you received your last VISA (and its issue date), from which your original ENTRY PERMIT was issued - that being the ENTRY PERMIT that has been repeatedly extended since 2011. Cheers, SS

I love the headline: http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/susannah-mushatt-jones-116-bacon-longevity/2015/10/07/id/695114/

Evidently, Heineken - who own Dos Equis - decided that they need to dump their traditional actor for "the Most Interesting Man in the World" to go with a younger actor. Full article at: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/09/469775625/-most-interesting-man-in-the-world-raises-his-glass-for-last-time?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160309 http://youtu.be/PwyA367LfaY

Saw this trailer recently at a theater in Bangkok - the whole theater crowd was laughing. It definitely made me think of waiting in line at a Thai bank:

Is it my imagination - or is she a bit off-balance much of the time?

A Canadian and his excitable bird, Pebble (it starts slow, but by the end, this had me laughing until I cried):

To me, the very best skewering of the global warming activists, as they whine about "unprecedented warming of the Arctic" is delivered by simply sending them to read at literature and press clippings at https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/polar-meltdown/ It is really worth scrolling down all ten meters or so of web-page, to see the full display of virtually continual hysteria at "unprecedented warming" over several hundreds of years. Cheers! SS

Here's a voice from Redneck America, saying (powerfully) what needs to be said: http://youtu.be/zoJizBrXR08

The headline that attracted me to this clip was: "Jihadist gets run over by ex-girlfriend" http://gfycat.com/FaroffCraftyHare

Flash - do you by any chance know the unit he was in? I was in the 82nd from 1978 to 1981 - departed in November 1981. I'm just curious (I was in various units of the 325th Infantry) SS.

Best political ad that I've seen in a long time:

http://youtu.be/UqcXstB7UJ0

ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!