In New Zealand (Wellington) in some of the hillier suburbs, the council has put up Hitching posts. Which are essentially like the bustop signs, but with (HITCHING POST)

In Thailand it is accepted practice for people to park horizontal in front/behind traditionally vertically parked cars in parking lots.

The Horizontal parkers simply leave the handbrake off, and when the blocked off vertical parkers wish to make an exit they simply push the car out of the way.

Makes for fun when you have a whole row of horizontal parkers. ( finally a reason for excessive bumper area on cars ;-)

Chiang Mai is one of the best places to spot this.

You give informed consent when you purchase your international flight tickets. Read the fine print.

Yup, people are blissfully unaware that most fruits they eat probably have a coat or two of the shit. Also when you buy clothes/electronics they also will have been exposed. Clothes especially are treated to higher levels of pyrethrins than most other products (for obvious reasons). I doubt the people getting excited would have the same reaction when they walk into farmers (NZ equiv of sears/gap)

takuan: Mostly insects. Mites fleas, parasites, moths are the main targets. Basically invasive insect species.

They are a very diluted pyrethrin + water vapor solution. Pyrethrins are very toxic to insects and fish, but completely harmless against mammals/reptiles/birds and any organism with a lung based circulatory systems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permethrin

The concentration used in the fumigations is less than 0.5%.

You are more in danger of suffering more damage as you walk the tarmac between plane and terminal from carbon emissions than you are from this stuff.

This is fairly standard. I can't believe this made front page.

Many of my flights around asia especially on budget cariers, have been fumigated.

It's not actually that bad as it is made out in this article. However I expect that none of the people on board had experienced it before, and it is the first time I have heard of Air NZ doing it ( we are paranoid about bio-security here... re delicate eco-systems) probably because we usually stick to protocol.

Basically what happens is flight attendants / ground staff, each take a small canister of spray and walk backwards down the isle spraying the (clear) spray up into the air circulation system.

Yes you inhale some of the crap, but it's really not that bad after having past through the air filters and ac system. It is definitely nothing like a "thick smog". I am assuming that who-ever wrote this article is playing to the clean/green fear imagination inside kiwi's. As I kiwi who has traveled I am aware of how much we are the hypochondriacs of the world when it comes to bugs and sprays.

I have been shooting e-mails at TVNZ (New Zealands tax payer funded stations) and other related ministries.

They have just implemented DRM on-demand video service. I can't get to any of the content at all from my non Windows XP desktop. Even windows users are SOL, because wmp9 and up are only supported. On top of that the on-demand service requires personal info to be sent.

Yuck, the worst thing is that it violates half a dozen guides and policy's including the Digital Stratgy , and the Privacy Act.

Just like to point out there have been open source simcity like engines and games, that are far more evolved than this. While it's a great peice of history and deserves to be gpl'd if you want something a little more appealing. Check

http://lincity-ng.berlios.de/

There is also an opencity project but having not used that I can't comment.

Whats with the China Bashing?

Technically this doesn't violate copyright as the poster says. It's a License violation, as such is contract law not copyright. I hate it when people misinterpret OSDL licenses ;-)