No debt to society
Re: "Boys owe a debt," (PostBag, July 19).
Harry Ghoos thinks the cave boys, as most people refer to them now, owe a debt to society. If one follows this line of logic, then kidnap victims should owe a debt to their rescuers, banks to the police, and intelligence agencies for thwarting terrorist attacks.
A few of these kids are at an age where they don't know whether to be a fireman, a policeman, a pilot, an army officer, a doctor, lawyer, an Indian chief, or whatever. How does Mr Ghoos expect a kid to repay society before that kid has decided what he wants to do with his life?
As for the privilege of attending a World Cup game by invitation, these kids did not ask for it. The offer was made to them. It is nothing but more PR by Fifa. If Fifa was willing to pay, even I would have taken advantage of such an offer. But preferring Beethoven to brawling, perhaps I might not.
David James Wong
Heart of stone
It's been quite a while since I've seen a more mean-hearted letter than that of Harry Ghoos. He says he is upset at hearing about all the things the rescued boys will get.
Harry, these are kids we are talking about. They did nothing to deserve being trapped in the most horrible of circumstances. These boys showed great fortitude during their ordeal. Furthermore, their wonderful smiles during their time in the cave and after their rescue, seen around the world, could not have been a better advertisement for Thailand and all that is so good about its people.
This is in obvious contrast to people like Harry. Get a life, mate!
Martin R
Every child counts
I agree 100% with Mr Ghoos. There many more children in Thailand who face life-threatening hardships every day, so why don't the authorities get on the bandwagon of these children?
MR P
Lawsuit deserved
What an ungracious, immature and self-serving person Elon Musk is proving to be.
He is reported to have apologised to one of the heroes of the Chiang Rai cave rescue, Vern Unsworth, for calling him a "pedo", which is short for paedophile.
But instead of issuing an unreserved apology he said: "My words were spoken in anger after Mr Unsworth ... suggested I engage in a sexual act with the mini-sub..."
What Mr Unsworth, in fact, said in an interview on CNN was, "He can stick his sub where it hurts."
While this is a vulgarity, it is nevertheless in common usage and is often used in a jocular sense when you are telling someone where to get off.
For Musk to take this literally, or pretend to do so, is pathetic.
Go ahead and sue him, Mr Unsworth.
David Brown
Too little, too late
It took Elon Musk three days to issue an apology for his "pedo" remark (BP, July 19). The apology was only forthcoming after Tesla stock plummeted 3.5% and there was a public outcry, not to mention displeasure amongst his stockholders.
Aside from the threatened lawsuit, it seems very much as if Mr Musk might have lost his shirt and that Tesla might have gone the way of the dodo. I hope it still might. Rich people with little to no brains should not be put in charge of large companies, nor should they be allowed to run countries. This much has been made clear.
449900
Timeless futility
Re: "Keeping the faith", (PostBag, July 18).
Faith is a human response to overcome our primeval uncertainty, an uncertainty that resulted from our ancestors' inability to answer questions. Let us be quite clear. There is no such thing as a perfect anything in this world. Perfection exists only in our imaginations (Hollywood style -- ancient and modern) or in the fictional logic of numbers.
We can deduce from our human senses that there is something, and we can also know that if there is something then it exists solely in the undisputed and proven space-time continuum. We can get something from nothing, can we? Maybe the answer to that question is that there is no such thing as nothing, after all, and that if there is something, there must be something for it to exist in. Repeating the same shallow ancient ideas, beliefs with no real foundation either in logic or reality is a futile repetitive exercise of our time.
Nick
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