It has been a tough morning for me this morning. I've been hit with a number of challenges to my resolve to devote my life to science. The first came via PhD Comics (that's a bad sign already), where I found some information telling me that the pot of gold at the end of hot coals (mixed metaphors at their best), is actually a lot smaller than other metaphorical pots of gold. I don't even get a leprechaun. Or a pony.

The second hit to my resolve came via the news of further happenings in Indonesia. You see, it seems like it's a really good time to be a lawyer in Indonesia. Especially if you're representing young Australians who just happen to have a few illegal substances on their person. I would personally model my practice on that of Hotman Paris Hutapea. The guy is a celebrity lawyer, big on bling, and probably not adverse to using the Chewbacca defense. You may have heard of him recently defending Schapelle Corby - and a fine job he did of it too! Schapelle is only one in a long line of Australians who have been caught in Indonesia partying hard. There's the Bali 9, some bloke in Sumatra, and Michelle Leslie. It's hard work keeping track of all these Australians doing their country proud, but thankfully Google recently added a news search feed feature - so you can just subscribe to the Australian Full Body Cavity Search feed XML, and keep track of all your favourite Australians facing the death penalty.

On another note - the Beastie Boys (God bless em), have started releasing some vocal-only tracks from their last album. You can grab them from the remixers section on their website. With any luck, my DSL should be alive by this evening, and then I can have a crack at grabbing some fresh new samples, and seeing what rubbish I can produce.