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The Black Swan Visits the Land of Smiles

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Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan:  The Impact of the Highly Improbable, contends that:

 

“…our world is dominated by the extreme, the unknown, and the very improbable…and all the while we spend our time engaged in small talk, focusing on the known, and the repeated.  This implies the need to use the extreme event as a starting point and not treat it as an exception to be pushed under the rug.”

 

A native of Lebanon, Taleb saw civil war suddenly break out in 1975 after his country had been a peaceful yet highly multicultural land for over a thousand years.  No one believed the conflict would last, nor did they anticipate it would take until 1990 to end.  This war was Taleb’s formulating experience of the “Black Swan” principle. 

 

According to Reuters, the effects of the Bangkok airport shutdowns are already devastating and pervasive.  For example, the protests stranded at least 230,000 and maybe as many as 350,000 passengers for days. 

 

Bangkok Airways (THAI) lost 20 billion baht (about $606 million) as more than 1,000 flights were cancelled and prospective customers abandoned their travel plans.  Low-cost carrier Thai AirAsia lost more than 320 million baht (about $9.5 million). 

 

Although the airport made a “technical return to full operation on Friday” with a promise to return to “normalcy” by December 15, there is some question about skimping on airport security and it has many ambassadors hopping, including our own. 

 

On top of all this, the 81-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand became “slightly ill” with a throat infection and was unable to speak or attend his birthday party. 

 

“The nation had hoped His Majesty would give guidance for ending the country's political turmoil, but now is worried about the health of the monarch,” according to the Bangkok Post.  Reuters noted that during the six decades of the monarch’s reign, he has only intervened in politics three times. 

 

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Olga Bonfiglio is a Huffington Post contributor and author of Heroes of a Different Stripe: How One Town Responded to the War in Iraq. She has written for several magazines and newspapers on the subjects of food, social justice and religion. She (more...)
 
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