Eideard

One product from Tiajuana trumps all others in terms of shock value: death in a bottle.

The drug, pentobarbital, literally takes a person’s breath away. It can kill by putting people to sleep, and it is tightly regulated in most countries. But aging and ailing people seeking a quick and painless way to end their lives say there is no easier place on earth than Mexico to obtain pentobarbital, a barbiturate commonly known as Nembutal.

“It is Mexico where Nembutal is most readily available,” says “The Peaceful Pill Handbook,” a book that lays out methods to end one’s life. Co-written by Philip Nitschke, founder of Exit International, an Australian group that assists people who want to end their lives early, the book is banned in Australia and New Zealand. In the United States, though, it is only a few mouse clicks away online.

The book, as well as seminars that Nitschke offers, lays out strategies for dying. The most trouble-free and painless form of suicide, he contends, is to buy Mexican pentobarbital, which goes by brand names like Sedal-Vet, Sedalphorte and Barbithal.

Those in search of the drug, so-called death tourists, scout out the veterinary pharmacies that abound in Tijuana. Nitschke’s book, however, provides glossy photos of the many versions of pentobarbital that are most suitable for suicide. Buying it can be as easy as showing the pictures to a clerk and paying as little as $30 for a dose.

Morality Nazis will piss and moan over suicide as they always do.

My answer is the same as it for abortion: Not in favor? Don’t try it!

Ready for the latest in spa pampering? Prepare to dunk your feet in a tank of water and let tiny carp nibble away.

Fish pedicures are creating something of a splash in the Washington D.C. area, where a northern Virginia spa has been offering them for the past four months. John Ho, who runs the Yvonne Hair and Nails salon with his wife, Yvonne Le, said 5,000 people have taken the plunge so far…

He said he wanted to come up with something unique while finding a replacement for pedicures that use razors to scrape off dead skin. The razors have fallen out of favor with state regulators because of concerns about whether they’re sanitary.

Ho was skeptical at first about the fish, which are called garra rufa but typically known as doctor fish. They were first used in Turkey and have become popular in some Asian countries.

Customers were quickly hooked. [Har.]

Ho believes his is the only salon in the country to offer the treatment, which costs $35 for 15 minutes and $50 for 30 minutes. The spa has more than 1,000 fish, with about 100 in each individual pedicure tank at any given time.

Hey – I would give it a try.

With millions of new voters heading to the polls this November and many states introducing new voting technologies, election officials and voting monitors say they fear the combination is likely to create long lines, stressed-out poll workers and late tallies on Election Day.

At least 11 states will use new voting equipment as the nation shifts from touch-screen machines to the paper ballots of optical scanners, which will be used by more than 55 percent of voters. About half of all voters will use machines unlike the ones they used in the last presidential election, experts say, and more than half of the states will use new statewide databases to verify voter registration.

With Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy expected to attract many new voters who may never have encountered a voting machine, voting experts and election officials say they are worried that the system may buckle under the increased strain.

“I’m concerned about the weak spots,” said Rosemary Rodriguez, chairwoman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which oversees voting. “So much depends on whether there will be enough poll workers, whether they are trained enough and whether their state and county election directors give them contingency plans and resources to handle the unexpected…”

No one really knows which will be worse. Lousy technology or uninformed voters.

Plus, we still have most of the same old political machines in charge of polling places and vote-counting.

Paul-François Fournier thinks he may have found a way to help revive the ailing newspaper industry. It comes in a black plastic rectangular box with a screen half the size of a sheet of copy paper.

The device displays links to several French newspapers, with black-on-gray type and images that look a lot like ink on newsprint. Fournier clicks on one of the links with a stylus, and up come the day’s headlines in Le Monde. Another click and a full article, as it appears in the printed newspaper, fills the screen.

Seven French publications have joined France Télécom to test a so-called electronic paper, a technology that offers what its supporters say is the most convincing electronic facsimile of ordinary paper in existence. In the experiment, called Read & Go, 120 people in France have been given electronic paper devices, allowing them to download the contents of the newspapers over France Télécom’s wireless network…
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A federal appeals court has thrown out a $550,000 indecency fine against CBS Corp. for the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show that ended with Janet Jackson’s breast-baring “wardrobe malfunction.”

The three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Communications Commission “acted arbitrarily and capriciously” in issuing the fine for the fleeting image of nudity…

The 90 million people watching the Super Bowl, many of them children, heard Justin Timberlake sing, “Gonna have you naked by the end of this song,” as he reached for Jackson’s bustier…

“The Commission’s determination that CBS’ broadcast of a nine-sixteenths of one second glimpse of a bare female breast was actionably indecent evidenced the agency’s departure from its prior policy,” the court found.

In challenging the fine, CBS said that “fleeting, isolated or unintended” images should not automatically be considered indecent.

Living in a society where the morality of prudes prevails politically doesn’t help, either.

ElectronicHouse.com has featured more than its share of over-the-top theaters and their associated A/V gear, but few rival the “Real Total Horn” listening room of Italian design firm Royal Device, at least not in terms of size (or obsession).

True, this story has been around for a while, but it’s surfaced again (thank you MAKE) to the amusement and astonishment of home theater junkies everywhere…

In a nutshell, the subwoofers consists of two horns placed into a subfloor cavity approximately 3 feet deep. The horn walls are made of brick and lined with an anti-resonating material. To keep the entire enclosure from moving about (important for compression) a 1500 pound slab was place atop. Wall and ceiling treatments assist in delivering the horn’s full impact to the listening position.

Check out the slideshow for a construction walkthrough.

We all cherish our privacy. Then we go and divulge everything about ourselves on Facebook, sprinkle our Social Security number like pixie dust across the Web and happily load up on tracking devices like GPS navigators and cellphones.

Researchers call this the privacy paradox: Normally sane people have inconsistent and contradictory impulses and opinions when it comes to safeguarding their private information.

Now some new research is beginning to document and quantify the privacy paradox…Their findings: Our privacy principles are wobbly. We are more or less likely to open up depending on who is asking, how they ask and in what context…

“The cues that we rely on through culture and evolution to tell us there is a privacy issue are not present on the Internet,” he said. Meanwhile, “the same technology magnifies the risk.”

I guess because I’m a geek who’s been online for 25 years, my understanding of cyber-privacy grew with the medium. The same sort of reasonable limits apply to the Web as to my public – and local – life.

DEMOCRATIC SEN. BARACK OBAMA, CAMPAIGN STATEMENT

“Barack Obama has always believed that same-sex couples should enjoy equal rights under the law, and he will continue to fight for civil unions as president. He respects the decision of the California Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage.”

REPUBLICAN SEN. JOHN MCCAIN

He is committed to “the unique status and sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman.” How he says it varies according to the audience, of course; but, he supports the continuation of 2nd-class citizenship for gay Americans.

Anyone surprised?