OPINION

Smart cybernoids

Re: "Thais devoted to mobile: Telenor Asia study finds high usage of phones and generative AI", (Business, Nov 11).

A majority of humanity, not just Thais, have now become genetically modified organisms, with the mobile phone functioning as an essential cyber body organ. Despite being highly technophobic in this respect, I have to admit the device can be life-saving, as evidenced by the latest appalling news that doctors in Gaza hospitals are having to perform surgery, often without anaesthesia, with only the light of a mobile phone to guide them under conditions that Dante could never have envisioned.

I have other stronger words on this issue, but I better contain myself.

Gassed out

Re: "But we need CO2!", (PostBag, Nov 13).

It's heartening that JC Wilcox managed to grasp from his scattergun education that CO2 is an important part of photosynthesis.

If only he could grasp that too much of it absorbs and reflects heat back to the earth, leading to a global rise in average temperature and catastrophic change to the climate.

His hilariously naive comments come at a time when EU scientists report that 2023 will probably be the hottest in 125,000 years, thanks to a record-breaking October. And the dangerous rise in global temperatures almost exactly correlates with man's excess production of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide.

Drunken buffoons

Re: "A dreadful decision", (PostBag, Nov 13) and "Activists note flaw in 4am plan", (BP, Nov 10).

I agree with DNL that keeping the bars open until 4am is a stupid idea. Are there really foreigners who will say now they'll come to Thailand so they can get drunk in bars until 4am instead of only until 2am? And if there really are such binge-drink drunkards, are they really the kind of people the Tourism Authority of Thailand wants to attract?

On one hand, the government always says they want to attract high-quality tourists, while on the other hand, they go out of their way to attract the opposite. Songkran is another example of that.

Respecting Buddha

Re: "Buddhist wisdom", (PostBag, Nov 10) and "Isoc's role in society", (PostBag, Nov 6).

According to Karl Reichstetter's latter letter: "Buddhism at the very end is actually no religion".

Oh really!

Are we to believe that it's only a philosophy or a way of living which helps us to understand our role in the world, as the former writer insists?

The fact remains Buddhism is considered one of the world's main religions, next to Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. A brief perusal of any encyclopaedia will verify this.

The above two men are entitled to believe what they want, but in acting as if it's an absolute truth that Buddhism is not a religion, they most certainly are wrong, and in fact, insulting the hundreds of millions of Buddhist worshippers worldwide who deem Buddhism to be the true religion, par excellence.