Colombia is taking a new approach toward eradicating cocaine plants — rather than spray with insecticide from the air, they’re sending in workers, guarded by soldiers, to rip it out by hand. Unfortunately, the rebels have been attacking the escorts and scaring away the workers.

Web 2.0, that is, according to Dion Hinchcliffe.

Apparently there’s a security hole in Movable Type that I’m not aware of, because trackback spam has been appearing in some of our entries while remaining invisible in the admin view. I’ve turned trackbacks off for new entries and am trying to figure out how to clear the crap from existing entries. If there are any MT gurus in the audience with suggestions for fixing this problem, I’d love to hear them.

Update (3:46PM): Turns out it wasn’t a security hole, but a combination of an ID10T error on my part and a plugin that doesn’t quite work right with Junk spam. Issue has been corrected and Trackbacks turned back on.

According to a story in the Irish Examiner, text messaging is gaining ground on the handwritten note as the medium of choice for the suicidal to express their final thoughts. What’s most frightening about this is that these people are able to satisfactorily sum up their lives in the 300 characters or less at which most messages are capped.

If you don’t have a subscription, pick up a copy of the March 2006 Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. David Ira Cleary’s short story “The Kewlest Thing Of All,” is prime Futurismic material. Never thought I’d get jealous of Asimov’s (just the authors published therein) but I wish we’d gotten this story. Couldn’t find an author page, but here’s another of his stories.