The Slakinski Log

My 2 cents on Jason’s hiring Digg submitters to work for Netscape:

Social news is about voting on submissions and taking good submissions and making them more visible, if Jason hired people to vote on submissions that would be wrong but putting stuff into the pipe/tube isn’t IMHO.

Technorati Tags: digg, jason calacanis, netscape

Captain’s Quarters is reporting:

Paul Martin has bought the support of Conservative MP Belinda Stronach with a ministerial position, changing the balance of power in Parliament and possibly saving the Liberal Party’s grip on power. Martin induced Stronach to cross the aisle this morning by making her the Minister of Human Resource

Interesting, the person who I thought should have been the leader of the new conservative party and was vocal about not bringing down the minority government seems to have made her move by taking this new position.

The budget vote should be a lot closer and may even go Liberal with this change of events; and with said vote it will kill the hopes and dreams of Harper for an early election.

Technorati Tags: politics

I’m no expert on neo-pagan faiths, but I can guess that a lot of pagans are a little upset this is still the image of the faith.

Herndon says his black lipstick and red eye makeup express the Wiccan religious beliefs he shares with his mother, a priestess in the neo-pagan faith.

If he said that it was solely about freedom of expression, then I might have backed him.

More story over at BoingBoing

For those that didn’t read the fine print:

“Blockbuster boldly announced its ‘No More Late Fees’ policy, but has not told customers about the big fees they are charged if they keep videos or games for more than a week after they are due,” Harvey said. “Blockbuster’s ads are fraudulent and deceptive. They lead people to believe that an overdue rental will cost them absolutely nothing when, in fact, customers are being ambushed with (a) late fees in some stores, (b) so-called ‘restock fees,’ and (c) credit card or membership account charges equal to the purchase price of the video.”

– Full Story

Check out Zip.ca for true ‘no late fees’

My House during halloween? Nope? Just Alex (some BoingBoing reader) on vacation in and around Prague.

From Wikipedia:

Holy Blood, Holy Grail is a work of pseudohistory and New York Times bestseller written by authors Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln and published in 1982 by Dell (ISBN 055212138). It details their own quest for the Holy Grail by investigating the concocted mysteries of the village of Rennes-le-Château dating from the 1950s in southern France and constructing a conspiratorial view of the history of the Western world. After a decade of research, Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln came to the following controversial conclusions:

• There is a secret society known as Priory of Sion that has a long and illustrious history dating back to the First Crusade starting with the creation of the Knights Templar as its military and financial front.
• It had a large role in partaking in and promoting the “underground river of esotericism”, the Alph, in Medieval Europe.
• It is devoted to returning the Merovingian dynasty, that ruled the Frankish kingdom from 447 to 751 C.E., to the thrones of Europe and Jerusalem.
• It protects these royal claimants because they are the literal descendants of Jesus and his alleged wife Mary Magdalene.
• The Roman Catholic Church tried to kill off all remnants of this dynasty and their guardians, the Cathars and the Templars, during the Inquisition, in order to gain power through the apostolic succession of Peter instead of the hereditary succession of Mary Magdalene.

Sound familiar to Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”? It should, and thats why the authors of “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” are suing Dan Brown!

Full story at BoingBoing

In war, as in life, there are plenty of opportunities to see the full spectrum of good and evil that people are capable of. As journalists, it is our job is to report both — though neither may be fully representative of those people on whom we’re reporting. For example, acts of selfless heroism are likely to be as unique to a group as the darker deeds. But our coverage of these unique events, combined with the larger perspective - will allow the truth of that situation, in all of its complexities, to begin to emerge. That doesn’t make the decision to report events like this one any easier. It has, for me, led to an agonizing struggle — the proverbial long, dark night of the soul.

– Kevin Sites Blog

Washington Post has an article about Jon Stewart’s name being mentioned in todays episode of Crossfire on CNN. Near the end of the show she mentions that they read a few emails in support of the show, one of them is as follows:

At the end of “Crossfire,” Robert Novak on the right and James Carville on the left said they’d received loads of comments from viewers about the Friday telecast. They read two of the messages. The first, from Toronto, said Stewart’s appearance confirmed his suspicions: “Jon Stewart is the most overrated, overhyped comedian in the world today.”

Who is this nameless fool from Toronto? If s/he thinks that CNN is doing there job then they are sorely mistaken… And was the best email they could come up with was one that didn’t even originate in their own country? I feel for America when now the two top stories is Cheney’s daughters sexual orientation and what Jon Stewart said on CNN — isn’t the election in 2 weeks? CNN, please help the people make an informed opinion when the vote… I think that was the gist of what Jon was pleading with you to do.

Actor Christopher Reeve who stared as Superman passed away at the age of 52.

Staysea recently posted an article on her blog about the ‘Pit Bull problem’

I’ve been asked recently why I haven’t commented on the Ontario governments idea to ban Pit Bulls. To be honest with you I haven’t commented because I think the whole business is a piece of garbage and theyll never pass province wide breed discriminatory legislation. I am, however, commenting because the experience Jason and I had tonight while out walking Happie made me realize the situation is much worse than I had thought. Not everyone is dismissing the issue as nonsense like I am. . . . Hopefully some good will come out of this issue being brought to the governments attention. Most likely the legislation that will result from this will be new laws and stricter enforcement/sentencing for people who own and train aggressive dogs of any breed.

Problem comes in during enforcement of laws. I don’t think they can because of illegal breeding (aka Puppy Mills) exist now and nothing rarely gets done about it. Pits come in from the states that were bread for actual bit fighting — a hobby for some less than well-to-do people in Detroit.

I don’t think out right banning of this breed is going to work either, we don’t believe in the death penalty for known rapists and murders but we are willing to kill thousands of possibly innocent dogs at the tip of a hat? I’m not cool with that. I’m also unsure of what a dog registry is going to do, why does whenever an issue come up they think a registry is going to fix it? Can someone explain the logic there?

I also think that charging owners for their dogs behavior may not work well either. If an owner adopts a dog that was brought in from the states — lets say one of those dogs that was trained and participated in pit fighting — and the dog was deemed rehabilitated so it was safe to be adopted. Now that dog has a bad day and strikes out, is that really the owners fault? More often than not a dog is perfectly loyal to its dog owner, and they may never know the true aggressive nature of their dog. Owners who train/breed aggressive dogs need to be dealt with, but blanket laws that are too wide in scope might punish the innocent.

So what do we do then? Honestly I think we need to do something… Licenses not just for our pet(s) but for pet ownership(aka mandatory dog training at a certified establishment) ?, stricter import laws of ‘aggressive breeds’?, properly enforce and charge puppy-mills and dog trainers who train for aggressive purposes. I think these could all help.

Now I’m going to say something that may contract all I said above, I don’t mean to… Shannon and I picked Brittany Spaniels for our pets for a number of reasons I wont go into here, but what I will say is that I can’t train Watson’s pointing capabilities out of him, nor either of there energy levels (although sometimes I wish I could :)) What I’m trying to say is that if you think that you can train out what centuries of breeding has put in, then you may be sorely mistaken - pun not intended.