More than half (57 percent) of Australians believe that if an Australian citizen is convicted of trafficking drugs in a country where the death penalty applies, it should be carried out.

'It's their country, and if they choose to make those rules we should be prepared to travel under those rules," one respondent said.

Fair enough. All that means is that I will never travel to those countries.

I've never taken drugs once in my life, but I can't abide a place where the line between life and death is so narrowly drawn. Forget it.

CNN.com - Asia's 'grim view on drug crime' - Dec 1, 2005

The term ambient findability describes a world at the crossroads of ubiquitous computing and the internet, in which we can find anyone or anything from anywhere at any time. It's not necessarily a goal, and we'll never achieve perfect findability, but we're surely headed in the right direction.

Fascinating, disturbing and highly relevant article.

O'Reilly Network: UFOs (Ubiquitous Findable Objects)

Dear Sieveking

(Why do you ‘Dr’ me? Had we not dropped the honorifics?) As things worked out, I wasn’t free to hear a single instalment of our serial [The Magician’s Nephew] except the first. What I did hear, I approved. I shd. be glad for the series to be given abroad. But I am absolutely opposed – adamant isn’t in it! – to a TV version. Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare. At least, with photography. Cartoons (if only Disney did not combine so much vulgarity with his genius!) wld. be another matter. A human, pantomime, Aslan wld. be to me blasphemy.

All the best,
yours
C. S. Lewis

[ from boingboing, and, to some, indication that lewis might not approve of the forthcoming movie.

I, personally, think the text does nothing of the sort. From the perspective of 1959, and indeed all the way up to the millenium, he's right. There was simply no way to do anthropomorphic animals well until very recently. It's by no means perfect, but there can hardly be any question that the computer generated animals of the current movie are not appreciably inferior to those you'd get from animation. A high quality computer generated Aslan is hardly a human pantomime. Wether the film is *good* is another story, but i don't see that Lewis would oppose it in principle. -k]

nthposition online magazine: Blasphemy in Narnia

Some of these are great. The Beatles' Hard Days Night parody made me laugh out loud.

Worth1000.com Photoshop Contest - If h4x0rZ r|_|l3d

Lee was chosen by organisers as a symbol of the fight against ethnic divisions.

"We will always be Muslims, Serbs or Croats," said Veselin Gatalo of the youth group Urban Movement Mostar.

"But one thing we all have in common is Bruce Lee."

If it hadn't come the BBC, i'd be certain this was a joke. I'm not saying bruce lee can't be a symbol or anything, but you've gotta admit the above quote it pretty funny.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Bosnia unveils Bruce Lee bronze

(CBS) The latest in Christmas trees by be the start of a new craze — or it may just drive Santa crazy.

A Chicago man has come up an item that could turn the holiday on its head: pre-lit fake firs that are upside-down, resting on what is usually the point at the top.

[ That looks fucking stupid. Not as stupid as the "Early Show" glued-on-smile brigade, but stupid nonetheless. I want to know where my genetically engineered Firefly+Fir tree is, dammit. The one that glows itself via bioluminescence via a protein added to the water? *That's* fucking cool. I hang brain on the upside down tree. Stupid dark ages technology. -k ]

CBS News | A Topsy-Turvy Christmas | November 9, 2005 11:00:06

For decades, tourists have paid thousands of dollars for the chance to surf, snorkel and splash in the crystalline waters here. Now they're paying $5.50 a bottle to drink it.

In perhaps the most bizarre consequence of a failed municipal electricity experiment, a small Japanese company, the Koyo USA Corporation, has begun bottling desalinated water pumped from 2,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean and marketing it to Japanese consumers as the purest, most nutritious beverage on earth.

Those companies claim deeper seawater contains more nutrients and fewer pollutants than surface water. Kona's water, according to Koyo's chief operating officer, Kozo Kayama, is better because its source is deeper and older.

"The water you're drinking is older than Jesus," Mr. Kayama said of Koyo's Mahalo water.

[ Wait, I'm confused. Older than the story of the Lord Jesus Christ's life and resurrection or older than Jesus was when he died (for our sins, etc)? Those are very different numbers, after all, and I don't drink any water that hasn't aged for at *least* one thousand years.

I guess it could be said, though, that the majority of the water on earth is probably hundreds of thousands or millions of years old. Unless something caused it to break down into H2 and O, it could have gone through the cycle of evaporation and rain countless times. How does one guage the oldness of water?

How... oh nevermind, I'm done. Silly snake oil vendors. -k]

Hawaii Finds New Exportable Resource: Ocean Water

Newmark said his news project will involve Web technology to let readers decide which news stories are the most important. At least one Web site is already working this field. Digg.com invites readers to submit stories to be posted on its Web site. "Once a story receives enough (votes) from (the site's visitors) it will be promoted to the front page," the site explains.

What a great idea!

[ Ugh. That sucks. Sorry bro. -k]

Internet Daily: Craigslist plans to make news

TiVo has announced an expansion of its TiVoToGo service to include PSPs and iPods.

The move will be welcome news for TiVo users who own one of the popular video playback devices. Up until now, moving video from a TiVo box to a PSP or iPod, involved a complex chain of conversion software to get files into the required MPEG-4 format. Now the conversion will happen natively as part of TiVoToGo.

[ Smart, and necessary. If TiVo's gonna survive, they need to position themselves as the easiest turnkey solution and the one that has the most consumer-friendly features. -k]

TiVo Ties In With PSP And iPod | News | Media Center PC World

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin has been heading an effort to "re-brand" her city, and she and a group of marketers have come up with a new slogan: "Every Day is an Opening Day." Plus, they commissioned a song, "The ATL," composed by R&B producer Dallas Austin

Uhh, ok.

NPR : Re-Branding the City of Atlanta