Testing out the trackbacks to make sure they are working. Read about NASCAR coming to Canada at RacingBlogged.com.

I was reading some stuff at CNET News.com, and came across an article entitled “The coming crackdown on blogging“. Turns out the article doesn’t have THAT much to do with blogging after all.

Author Declan McCullagh talks about efforts to extend “a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet”. Such an extension would count hyperlinks to a candidate’s website as a contribution for example, and the impact on blogging is a question of whether or not blogs would be given press exemption. Bradley Smith, the gentleman interview by McCullagh, says the time is right to act because both Democrats and Republicans used the Internet to their advantage in the last campaign.

Here’s my question – how is this relevant? First of all, I don’t consider the Internet a form of media, like newspapers or radio for example. The Internet is more like another world, complete with it’s own newspapers, television, radio, etc. For that reason, I do not think the Internet should be treated the same as a form of “traditional media”. Secondly, the Internet does not equal the United States and the United States does not equal the Internet. What about people in other countries linking to a candidate’s website? Certainly the interest is there.

Trying to regulate the Internet is a bad idea. We’ve seen this many times over the last decade. When will the lawmakers learn?

Robert Scoble is always talking about the power of RSS, and even though it all sounds great, it’s just not the same until you experience it. And I just did. Yesterday I posted about pheedo and the changes they made that I didn’t like, or get notified about. I took the ad code out of my page and was generally just upset. I don’t like my page design being messed with.

Today, Adam Kalsey from pheedo left a comment on that post with an answer to my complaints and questions. He posted a link to a page describing how to customize the ad code. Wonderful move Adam, thanks so much! As a result, pheedo is back on my page, and just as Adam said it would in his comment, it looks better than ever! Thanks Adam.

That’s the power of RSS. Of conversational software. A better experience for customers, and the power to do better for companies.

The new Formula 1 season is about to start, and I am pleased to announce, just in time for the first race, RacingBlogged.com – a new racing-focused blog written by Martin and myself. We’ll be adding features and tweaking our site over the next few weeks, so check it out and send us your feedback!

Oh, and go Schumi go!

Today is my mom’s birthday, and while Teacher-Patti doesn’t yet have a blog of her own, I am sure she’d love a comment or two on this post! Please contain yourselves and refrain from making “your mom” jokes, or I’ll be forced to retaliate 😉

As I am sure you have heard if you live in and around Edmonton, or in Canada for that matter, four RCMP officers were shot dead today just northwest of the city while executing a search warrant on a property believe to contain stolen goods and a marijuana grow-op. Terrible, terrible news. It’s being called “one of the deadliest days in the history of the national police service”. My thoughts go out to the families of the officers.

A growing collection of news stories can be found here. The news has already appeared in the United States, Australia, and the UK.

For those of you that don’t know, pheedo is an RSS advertising company. They must have also acquired BlogSnob, which I used to have on the right side of my page. I say used to have, because they recently changed the way it looked without notifying me, and it made my page design all weird. Not only that, but I logged into my account to see if I could change it back, and no such luck.

I think that was a dumb move on their part. And I won’t be using their service anymore because of it.

FLAPJACK himself left a comment on my last post about the pancake auction, and asked if I could redirect folks to the new listing (apparently eBay took the old one down or something). And well, happy to oblige 🙂

SAME OLE ONE DAMN PANCAKE

I am sure you have heard on the news that Ontario has banned pit bulls as pets. Fine, I won’t debate their logic or action here. What I do want to point out however, is how much of a complete asshole Earl McRae from the Ottawa Sun is.

In his latest article, Mr. McRae takes a very negative view of pit bulls, and agrees wholeheartedly with the Ontario government’s decision. He even goes so far as to say:

Actually, pit bull owners should take solace that their banned brutes haven’t all been sentenced to immediate death, which is what I would have done — pit bull genocide — the way all those mad cows were dispatched to the Great Beyond to keep us safe and healthy.

He makes it very clear in the article that pit bulls are dangerous creatures. And he insults people who would buy such an animal:

Personally, I believe anyone who buys a pit bull — even those owners who look and seem harmlessly normal, even loving — are closet oddballs with psychological disorders, otherwise why would they want as a pet a pit bull that, through reputation, is a loose and scary cannon?

Granted, Mr. McRae is entitled to his opinion. What he fails to point out, however, is that a dog is not born crazy any more than a human is. A dog of any breed can become dangerous if it is given the right environmental factors. And likewise, a pit bull can be a very friendly animal if brought up to be so. Perhaps Mr. McRae should also note that animals sense fear – if I was a dog and I had read his article, I’d want to tear him limb from limb too.

I am all for spaying females and neutering males of any breed, but I draw the line at genocide just because a particular breed has a bad rep. If we’re going to kill all the pit bulls, we might as well kill all the pit bull owners too. Clearly, that idea is as tasteless and stupid as the article by Earl McRae.

Read: Ottawa Sun

It is being reported that Carly Fiorina, who was until recently the CEO of Hewlett-Packard may become the next president of the World Bank. Wow! I think Carly is an amazing business woman, and I have no doubt she’d make an excellent president.

I don’t know why HP decided to get rid of her. In my opinion, they didn’t give her a long enough chance after the Compaq acquisition. In any case, she’s moving on to bigger and better things!

Read: NYTimes.com