Tsunami tattoos: Skin artists in Phuket, Thailand, have been asked to create more than 20 tattoos commemorating the December 26 tsunami and its victims.

Off the commercial grid: Jeremy Rifkin, author and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, writes that 200,000 of those killed in Asia had enough time to escape the massive wave. The problem: electricity. He writes:

While industrialised nations and transnational corporations have been busy connecting the far reaches of the planet into a seamless communication grid to expedite the instantaneous exchange of commercial information, little or no effort has been expended on creating a global communications infrastructure that would warn millions of people about unfolding natural disasters.